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Hawking Picks Physics Over God For Big Bang
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that in his new book, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity. 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,' Hawking writes. 'It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.' Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, Hawking wrote: 'If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.'"
Or whom created the law of gravity. Still room for the all mighty.
I wonder if the audio book or the text-to-speech version is better.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
This is why I never did well in the higher math classes in college.
So... I thought gravity required there be something with mass in order to create gravity. Doesn't that mean in order for there to be a law of gravity you need stuff with mass attracting each other? Which requires something, not nothing, so --
Damn. There it goes again, brain matter all over the wall. Excuse me while I get a spatula.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Not Hawking.
Following your argument that God aka Gravity has always existed...
Professor Hawking,
Is this all?
Is that all the best of the best in physics has to argue about? Gravity vs god? Thats like arguing over air vs oxygen.
Can you get back to the energy problem please? Neither god nor gravity will save us from that.
Thanks
Duncan
You could have just said "Hawking Picks Rational Thinking Over Superstition"
.
Trolling is a art,
Sigh.... I'm sure this seemed clever when you typed it, but you should really read over it again just to make sure its not a nonsensical collection of words that doesn't really mean anything.
"If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.""
The mind of god is nothing more than this "reason" we're all looking for i bet,
Perhaps in a mathematical mind god and creation are synonymous...
Sounds about right to me.
-J
A true believer will just argue that God designed gravity that way for that very reason.
Personally, I think scientists should stay completely out of the religious sphere. They're not going to change anyone's mind, science and religion mix very badly, and commenting on theological issues only increases the perception among many religious types that science is their enemy/competitor.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In the forthcoming book, published on 9 September, Hawking says that M-theory, a form of string theory, will achieve this goal: "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he theorises.
You just have to have faith.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Name the cause of everything "physics" or "god" is just an
arbitrary naming, so the discussion is futile.
When I have an empirical proof that god exists, I will believe. For the moment, I have empirical proof that gravity exists, and Hawking simply extrapolated the laws of physics to the extreme, then came up with the big bang theory, and the theory still holds today.
No theist theory holds. It's all there to explain what we can't understand. And when we get to understand, we say "well, you know, God may have played a role anyway"...
But try to convince 90% of the human race that what I say is true. I may have a hard time.
"If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."
I always thought it was a metaphor, as in to "know the mind of God" as he puts it means we'd finally understand everything about the universe, not that we'd know what a literal God is thinking.
Either some people took Mr. Hawking's statement too literally, or I misunderstood...
So let me see,let's try something simple like putting a disassembled watch in a bucket and shaking it until it becomes a watch again ignoring the parts already there handicap.Surely the laws of gravity will succeed and make it so!
Arrogance. Do we really think we understand everything? Every generation from the beginning of time thought they were the enlightened generation. No, it is actually our generation! People from a thousand years from now are going to look back in awe how we figured it all out! Please.
... wouldn't it be more accurate to say "instantiate one or more Gods"? There are so many cultures with so many gods.
Hawking is a fool, and always has been. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing" Any scientist worth the chair he sits in knows matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
a theory about god that doesn't require looking through a telescope. get back to work!
lose != loose
Is that all the best of the best in physics has to argue about? Gravity vs god? Thats like arguing over air vs oxygen.
How many books have you written that have changed my life?
You seem to think that a scientist need only pick the area of his expertise. Physics isn't some computer game where you spec yourself out to be proficient in what you want to be. Hawking is incredibly gifted in cosmology and theoretical physics. To ask him to turn his attention on building a more efficient turbine or green energy could be compared to forcing John Williams to play only the electric guitar from now on.
Can you get back to the energy problem please? Neither god nor gravity will save us from that.
I wouldn't be so sure about that statement (with respect to gravity, forget god). I believe there are hydroelectric plants right now that harvest energy in interesting ways with the help of gravity. If there's a gravity particle, perhaps it could be exploited?
Intelligence is not some resource that we have an amount of. Stop pretending like men who have done far more than you are mis-allocating it. He's already been condemned to a wheelchair, what kind of sick person further condemns him to something he doesn't want to work on?
My work here is dung.
I didn't realize there was a competition. Or is this like Lucy taking the football away before Charlie Brown could kick it?
Pascal sent a letter. He wants his Wager back.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Right, and the law of gravity just exists? Who made the Law of gravity?
He may be breaking the laws of physics, in Louisiana
The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
?
He said because there is the law of gravity-- but isn't it believed that these laws were themselves created by the bang itself? and also evolved over time... So which happened first?
Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.
Could be life on other planets. God can't make some aliens?
It's rather ironic that a leading thinker in 3 dimensional space has such a 2 dimensional mind set.
Sigh.... I'm sure this seemed clever when you typed it, but you should really read over it again just to make sure its not a nonsensical collection of words that doesn't really mean anything.
Not a collection, a 1 dimensional sequence of words. (Cf. subject line, eh?)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."
Is this really Hawking speaking? Has he finally lost his mind? That would be really sad and I hope it's just a case of bad journalism.
1) what about the 1st law of thermodynamics that says that energy/matter cannot be created [from nothing]. How can a physicist say something like in the above quote and NOT discuss the law of conservation of energy?!
2) What 'such law as gravity' is he talking about? The one that Newton (who is mentioned in the article) described? That one is incomplete at best! Einsteins general theory of relativity? That one requires space to exist (hence the 'from nothing' part is wrong). Any of the proposed quantum gravity theories? Unproven speculations!
As the great 20th century philosopher Adams pointed out, if you could prove God existed he would disappear into a puff of logic.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hawking says the Big Bang is simply a logical consequence of the laws of physics. But a theist could argue that these very laws were created by God.
I personally am not religious. But I do hope I'm a logical thinker. It seems, to me, that hawking's argument could still be disputed, because the creation of everything (includes the laws of physics, both the ones we know and the ones of possible parallel universes) is inherently philosophical.
I remember discussing with my ex GF about the existence of heaven and hell (or afterlife in general): I am pretty sure that such place doesn't exist, because it's simply ludicrous from a symmetry point of view. I am also pretty sure that a soul doesn't exist, because I am aware of the fact that everybody is a physical being and his/her actions are a result of deterministic processes. But being pretty sure wasn't enough to convince her, and I didn't try (too hard). I don't think Hawking's argument is going to change the mind of religious folks, either, and in fact, even I don't find it quite convincing.
That said, Hawking has been and always will be one of my heroes and role models. One of the most brilliant examples of what humankind can achieve.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Here goes another thread where any statement made by atheists are instantly modded insightful, while any others that hint at intelligent design get modded to oblivion.
"Well who created the all-mighty then?" That was an easy question. Moses created "the almight" about 1000 BC. He invented the single god, aka "all-mighty", inspired by the single god of a pharao a few centuries earlier (who btw was Nefertitis husband). Before that the hebrews were polytheistic like most other in Egypt. The big question is how Pharaoh had receieved the idea of a single god. Possibly he in turn was inspired by the zoroastrians, a monotheistic religion which had been created several centuries before him. It is not stranger than that.
"If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."
And what if Hawking figured out the complete theory just after he lost the capacity for communication with the rest of the world. Would God notice?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19550880/GUT-The-Grand-Unified-Theory-A-oneact-play-with-seven-blackouts
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
which is what this fundamentally comes down to. You can't dis-prove one theory with another theory because they are both just that; theories. It's up to you which theory you choose to put your faith in.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
It all looks like a big computer simulation to model the best way to create Plutonium from Hydrogen to me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's rather ironic that a leading thinker in 3 dimensional space has such a 2 dimensional mind set.
Last I checked he was thinking in eleven dimensional space, it just looks like two for someone with a one track mind.
Until we can point an exact and computable equation for the entire past, present and future of existence, there will always be unexplored parts of the map. You can fill that void with any assumption you want - from dragons to flying spaghetti monsters, a big fat zero to $God. If you assume that this placeholder is omnipotent and mysterious, that removes all the messy frustration about why it's hiding out in the ignorance section.
Where you run into problems is that these seemingly harmless placeholders become memes. As you add lore around your placeholder of choice, there is competition between memes. Some survive. Some die. Some mutate. Evolution now kicks in. The placeholders become resistant to being replaced with other placeholders. As people start filling in the map, knowledge itself becomes a threat to the meme and it begins to complete for mindspace in which to live.
Now this harmless placeholder is, for all practical purposes, a real living thing scratching at your mind from the void beyond knowledge like some quantum virtual particle leaping out of a black hole.
> Turns out all camps are offended I don't pick a side.
Even worse if you believe in strong agnosticism, as I do. Neither side on the religion flamewar can wrap its head around that belief, especially since belief in strong agnosticism makes arguing over the (abstract) question idiotic. See also: Non-overlapping magisteria.
that didn't work out so well for the Capricans...
"In the beginning, there was nothing. Then it exploded."
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Stephen Hawking begging the question.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
OK, Hawking has officially lost it. He's past his prime. Also according to the laws of physics, you can't create something from nothing. Is he trying to claim that energy from gravity just spontaneously turned itself into all sorts of matter? Where did gravity come from? Where did energy come from?
Really Hawking, you could just say "I have no frakin clue" and people would still think you're a genius. You don't need to try to claim such asinine things. I'm not arguing there's a divine being of some kind that created it all, but c'mon, his argument by contrast is just as insane.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
I'd pick almost anything over God.
Sigh.... it actually is clever and makes sense. You're just too dense to understand it apparently.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
And Paul Dirac is his prophet.
Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. How would the law of gravity work, to create anything, when there is nothing originally for gravity to pull toward? You cannot, as "nothing" would have no mass. It takes two to tango. Creating something from nothing takes a lot of faith.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
"That's deep, Ogre."
Until we can persist ourselves indefinitely regardless of environment or action then we are flawed. This all boils down to answering the fundamental question of whether or not we fully understand ourselves and acknowledge that we don't know everything. If you don't know everything then you cannot comprehend everything and therefore you will never be able to fully explain. The experiments we do on this planet and in space provide us with a trivial understanding of our world, let alone the universe, let alone the formation of the universe. Gravity could be simply explained by saying that two objects are being pushed together rather than their mass attracting them towards one another...boom that represents gravity in a nutshell; it could have nothing to do with the mass of the objects, but rather that they merely exist. Once we "discover" that the mass doesn't dictate the overall graviational force and find out that our little solar system is completely different than other solar systems in how if functions...well then I suspect that there will be many scientists scratching their heads and finding themselves back at square one. Oh well, ice cream is still good and as long as we have sunrises and sunsets and gravity then we should be ok.
There's been a concerted effort in academia to pit science against religion. Probably because many in religion have pitted themselves against science. As man's knowledge of science grew it began to tug at many ideas man had about God. So religious figures resisted and the tension began. But the same thing happened to many scientists. Not content with understanding more about he world and the universe alone, many set out to prove God didn't exist. Of course, there are a myriad of scientists and theists in between. But like so many things political, both sides often attempt to force us and each other to the other side. Atheistic scientists will often vilify and seek to discredit scientists who believe in God and theists will often vilify those who would try to accept certain scientific theories. That Hawking has sought to just into this fray is disappointing. Ultimately, science studies what is around us. It need not prove or disprove God unless there is a need for it in the person's mind. Perhaps he's angry with God over his lot in life. Certainly he could have achieved much more had he been able-bodied. Or could he? Maybe his lot in life is why he was able to focus his energy. Or...maybe there is no God. But there could be.
Sounds me to like Hawking has accepted string theory and gone from big bang to big bump...
But it doesn't change anything. In a cause and effect mentality you always have to end up with infinite causes if your being logical.
Furthermore giving god as a "cause" logically results the same way... well what or who created "God"... in a cause and effect reality there can be no first cause.
Separately... One of my pet peeves with "scientific" creationists is that they love the big bang when the truth is that once you understand and believe in God you have to accept that he could have created the whole of the universe at any particular moment; a logical universe that looks like it has existed much longer.
I like your idea, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Now before I do that I would like to do an informed choice. So.... Which version of gods should i chose to believe ? Roman Polytheism ? Egyptian Polytheism ? Christian Trinity ? Allah ? Yahweh ? Mayan polytheism ? Hindu Polytheism ? Pastafarian ? None of the Above ? And also, I would like to have evidence that that choice is the correct one. After all, it would be quite a shame to believe in, say , Hindus gods, and BAM ! it turns out the viking were right all along. Faith can be very deceptive, since it is after all mostly self contained and not based on evidence. I would not want to spend an eternity being nibbled by cat , because I trusted a random poster to make the correct choice. So i will have to require evidence. After all, if any gods are as good as human suppose they are in judging us, he will be very understanding of that evidence requirement. OTOH it will be likely a fanatical preacher will spit at evidence and such preacher pretend such a god would rather have faith from us. Too bad that all the fanatical preacher from all gods say the same, right ?
Why is it inconceivable that both can be true, or neither?
Get out of your corners folks. Reality is not typically polarized, whichever issue.
... then we should know the mind of God
This is of course just meant to be a grand sounding quotation; nothing wrong with that.
However, is it really resonable to talk about "God" in the Biblical sense (although, even in the Bible it doesn't seem to be quite the same "God" all the way through)? That concept of God quickly runs into the old Russell paradox, for one thing. And if God and belief in God is about truth more than enything else, our thoughts about it must at least make logical sense.
It seems more appropriate to think of God as the Universe, if one must; it may even make sense to talk about God as sentient, who knows.
If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.
I see this differently... if we have a complete theory, then we just know the rules of the game. These rules were there all along, just waiting to be discovered.
Now maybe if we used those rules, and actually built something which an almighty creature might desire, then we might learn something about the mind of God.
I read "A Brief History Of Time" and Hawkings' views are nothing new to me.
That's not what I understood from reading the book. Sure, there's this sentence about knowing the mind of God, but you have to read it in the context of the book. In it, he pounds on the idea of a Creator until it's quark-thin (and even thinner than that) and the rest is just physics. Anyway, "what was there before time" is not a question for a physicist, it would be like asking him the square root of a pork chop. It's a question for philosophers.
Don't worry, in 2 years it's all over anyway
It's annoying that some people use physics as a sort of religion portraying that anyone who is religious must be going against everything that physics stands for. There are/were quite a few good physicists who are religious. In fact, I personally know a physicist who became a religious orthodox Jew because, from what he told me, his research (Lawrence Horwitz).
These so-called scientific arguments really annoy, when they seem to be as biased as the religious nuts they seem to be fighting...
Just find Cain. The oldest test in the book.
I suspect that the thoughts and beliefs of Hawking are being misunderstood. All one need to if one follows this path of reasoning is to ask just what created gravity. Obviously God would be a likely candidate. It should go without mentioning that human minds will never be able to "see" the mind of God. As the old Buddhist master told his student, "Bring me the ocean in a paper bag.". Even at our collective best we will never have the mental powers to come close to understanding that which surrounds us much less our Creator.
"The earth is rotating" is the answer to the question "How does the sun move across the sky?" "Why does the sun move across the sky?" is a philosophical question, and there is still plenty of room for God in those answers.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Well, you're half right. It does make sense, in that it's syntactically valid.
It's only "clever" if you also think a 5-year-old's elephant jokes are also clever.
Criteria for life:
1. Does it respond to its environment? Yes, the universe found a big open space and is expanding to fill it.
2. Does the universe adapt to its environment? Yes, the big open space was cold and had no energy, so the universe spread out its energy and warmth such that it could more easily live (aka, formed stars/galaxies, had background radiation).
3. Does the universe reproduce? Maybe, we don't know what happens inside of black holes, but it's possible that the gravitational pull is so strong that it rips space/time and can push energy into other parallel universes.
4. Does the universe inherit traits from its parents? Very possible that whatever spawned the matter from the big bang also passed information for the laws as well.
5. Does the object obtain and use energy? Yep, uses it to form galaxies and solar systems, and little critters.
He's not far off. The universe almost meets the criteria for a living entity if you are liberal with them.
A> Hey why are you sitting on the ceiling?
B> I’ve lost the faith.
A> In God?
B> No, gravityI just can not accept it’s existence - it fails upon recursive logic. So how do you stay so grounded?
A> I believe in turtles.
P226
When you will have empirical proof that god exists, you will not need to believe in god... the same way you don't need to believe in gravity.
Whatever be the case, proving the existing of a physical or tangible God is a never ending debate. The point religion makes is not WHAT we worship but THAT we worship for the mental strength that one can gain with security of a relationship.
And no I'm not a religious nut or whatever, but I take time to read both sides (science & religion) instead of dismissing either. And I don't claim to dismiss all religions or all science over some issue. One thing I've noticed is, when it comes to Religion everyone is a self proclaimed expert in the complete and unaltered understanding of every religion there exists, but when it comes to Science we all have no problems nodding our heads to the Scientists even though most people don't have a full understanding or ability to verify things for themselves.
Also Science & Religion are not always bad to mix. People understand it badly because they think both address the same issues. Science addresses the "WHY" while Religion addresses the "How". For example, Science can tell you that there is a Moral processing unit in our brain and that is WHY people have Morals or behave the way they do, they can tell you this is so because of genes etc. and explain the functioning of each of them. Which is fine, but Religion tries to address Why this moral processing unit is of importance and is vital in progressing towards a happier life. Science call tell you how you are the way you are, but Religion tells you Why you are the way you are.
What MANY people have no idea about Religion is that religious texts are contradictory on the face of it, but in reality it's just an expression to suit the capacity of the learner. For people who cannot certain concepts, they are "dumbed down" versions of it which when followed would eventually make the mind of the follower ripe for learning the simpler truth. What a paradox.
This is why you see in the Hindu text, there is both talk of God creating the universe as well as the ultimate truth that the triad of Knowledge, Knower and Known all merge into the Self. For people who can't grasp this, the text goes on saying "okay, god create the universe, he did this and that".
People like Oppenheimer are not stupid when they quoted the Bagavat Gita, or in their understanding of the Bible (which today nobody seems to understand it the right way). And Isaac Newton was religious too. So Science & Religion are never in conflict. They are in conflict only when you understand both of them poorly.
Please, before those that agree out of hand Hawking's arguments because he's a smart physicist and "he's Hawking, he must be right", let me just say that you need to read the counter arguments before you make a decision. When you do, you'll find that this "Spontaneous creation" argument is weak at best.
I recommend you read books like "Reasonable Faith" by William Lane Craig and "I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist" by Norman Geisler - they address this issue thoroughly and logically with very sound arguments. If you think "something can come from nothing", reading those books will give you food for thought. Personally, I've found the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Teleological Argument two sound arguments against what Hawking is theorizing (there are others). Those two books I've mentioned go into detail into that, among lots of other things.
And before its asked again, the question "if God exists, than what created God?" is about as weak as Hawking's assertions (and again, is answered by those two books among others).
So if it's filled with something now, what about when it was filled with nothing? Or was that just a different version of something? Where was gravity then?
Also AFAIK, pretty much nothing happens spontaneously. Everything has a tipping point or catalyst before you get an event. Seems like having something happen spontaneously would suggest an outside force, or else why do anything?
talk about the fallacy of affirming the consequent on the largest scale possible in this Universe....
This is a very good argument against anthropogenic climate change, then. Actually, the problem with both modern science and religion is the same: their nature is not fully apparent. It's not that there is necessarily doubt. I'm sure that AGW has its own true believers, and some of them are scientists who have seen the data so they're the best informed-- yet they're zealous about it. Also, the rising is not only expected, but mundane. It's the extraordinary aspects of belief that promote zealotry.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
god IS the laws of physics
god is a metaphor, that some people need to take literally, because not everyone has the mind of stephen hawking, but they still need to understand the world, so mental shortcuts have to do
the whole hullabaloo over the existence of god is really silly, as soon as you realize that everyone has a different way of describing the same thing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My personal theory is that life, the Universe, and everything evolve towards God and at some point any possible Universe will converge to create God. And by definition God exists in all times and places so once it exists it will have always existed. Before that Omega God will be an infinite number of minor gods created in the process of evolving towards God.
It's as wacko as any other theory but it works for me.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
God chooses physically creating Hawking rather then replacing himself with Hawking. Hey Hawking, when you start to approach a singularity with all the 'stuff' in the universe physics like we know them go out the window. I am sure that disproved God. I use to think Hawkings was very smart, then I realized he was just an Atheist always trying to disprove God. This is nothing new, maybe we will disprove this new press release from Mr Hawkings in 2 or three weeks, maybe we can't. But I still have never seen a 'God doesn't exist' article from this man.
The scientific community is willing to accept a preexisting condition of gravity, but not a preexisting condition of God.
So here's the offer; If you can explain how gravity preexisted everything, I'm in. If, however, you want an explanation of a preexisting God, well, I have this book, written by him.
So we choose between the papers on something that can't be very well explained, or the autobiography of the One who made that something.
It's a matter of faith. If you believe Science has the answer, you apply the method and make the best of it. Ditto God.
I'm not finding fault with Science having faith in itself, but I do find fault with them declaring all other faiths not merely invalid or wrong, but beyond that harmful or specious. Contrary to popular opinion, the God of the Bible does not invalidate Science.
Still, it is worthwhile to contemplate Creation. I'm encouraged that Hawking presses the issue. Asking is important.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
All religions should be banned once and for all by law, as they established (see Edict of Milan where Constantine the Great granted full tolerance to Christianity and later Theodosius I established it as the state religion). Enough with this joke*
* I "argue" only against Christianity because for all of us, with Christian education, this is the only religion we have to surpass in our minds. There is no need to argue against Muslim or any other religion, aren't it? Because for every believer, the claims and "truths" of the other religions are automatically seem sooooo ridiculous, and this is the only "proof" I needed to realize that all religions are a human mind fabricated joke...
doikon
Glad that's settled. Now the winners and losers can gratiously shake hands and get on with their lives. Yeah, right.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"In Soviet Russia..." jokes still get modded up here.
define: random.
Not predictable.
predict, predicate, to come before.
random, nothing comes before it.
what comes after nothing? random.
what comes after random, well you can use it as an injection point into the axiom of choice. (given random, you then have a starting point in the uncountably infinite set starting from -infinity and going to +infinity)
What created random? it was created randomly, out of nothing, nothing came before it.
no that does not predicate free-will (in the conscious sense as the outcome would be random and not will-full /a 'choice' [whatever a choice is])
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
And then I have met many atheists who are zealots, or at least hobbyists, about it. Their disbelief is not a passive thing, but an active assertion, a passion, an argument they must make at every possible opportunity. It may not be "faith" in the religious sense, but it has an awful lot in common with "religion" in the pejorative sense.
Robert Pirsig once observed that very few people run around screaming that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Things we are deeply certain about generate very little in the way of zealotry. It is only those things we doubt at some level that generate in us the overwhelming need to convince others. It's as true of religion as of irreligion.
Just as I find religious fundamentalists off-putting, I find atheist extremists off-putting as well, and I'm not overly concerned with the epithets people try to apply to them. Dogmatism by any other name will never be anything greater than sophomoric.
The moment religious folks stop mandating when I can and cannot get groceries because of their "holy" days and stop interfering with what my hypothetical children get to learn in school, I'll stop fighting them. Until such time, I will fight any and all legislation that boils down to "because my religion says it's good/bad" with all I have within me.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
What if God is a higher dimensional life form with their dimensions equivalent of a Large Hadron Collider that they are tinkering around with?
What is on their time scale our universe can expand and dissipate within less than trillionth of their seconds?
This being would probably care less about that happens on some mud-ball in the corner of a lower dimensional universe they can barely perceive...
We cannot disprove this possibility, nor can we ignore the possibility it may be the truth, can we now?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
The only question remaining -- why did it take 15 billion years to figure that out?
Well, someone has to do it: http://www.xkcd.com/774/
I hate it when scientists delve into philosophy, just as much as I hate it when religious leaders delve into science.
Perhaps there is no room for Hawking's (or Newton's) perception of God, but that perception is flawed -- arising out of a Western, medieval concept which is actually quite pagan.
For all their intelligence, scientists often have a rather simple concept of God which barely matures beyond what they learned in Sunday school, or see on TV.
Similarly, religious leaders usually have no more than an elementary understanding of science.
Proverbs 21:19
And atheist scientists continue to try to use science to suggest the nonexistence of an omnipotent being. An omnipotent being, by definition, could render itself immune to all forms of detection, including detection by scientific/rational deduction. In the end, therefore, it's faith one way or the other: faith that there is no God, or faith that there is.
I would have thought Dr. Hawking would have been above succumbing to such a simple fallacy, but I guess not.
It's a turn of phrase. Only an American could think this was for / against God argument.
The Minbari are a very religious people. The Minbari religion does not have a central god figure, nor does it have a pantheon of gods, though on one confusing instance in an early episode Delenn did speak of "The gods." The Minbari have a belief that the universe itself is sentient, and that the universe has the ability to break itself into many pieces and invests itself in every form of life. Consequently, every being is a projection of a part of the universal soul. They believe that the universe uses the perspective of individual sentient beings in a process of self-examination and a search for meaning (similar to the real-life belief of pantheism), this could also be a reference to the quote "We are a way for the universe to know itself" from astronomer Carl Sagan.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
There are definite problems with the logic used in "Mere Christianity". Which is why you're modded "funny" right now, I guess.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The more important issue of this poorly written and inaccurate article seems to have been missed completely. Firstly, Professor Hawking has not "picked" physics over religion. He has spent over 40 years of his life studying the subject and has come to the conclusion from the evidence, a good summary of which can be found on YouTube (Search: Lawrence Krauss Universe from Nothing). Secondly, the quote from The Brief History of Time has been taken out of context. Professor Hawking is using the word God in the same way (and in tribute to) Einstein used it when he famously said "God does not play dice with the Universe".
I do not pretend to understand the mathematics or physics behind these theories, but to dogmatically reject his findings based only on a single article seems highly disingenuous.
It's is very confusing every time I hear something like this ...
So, you're talking about moral and amoral atheists? Could you please elaborate a little where does the moral compass for atheists come? And why would any moral/ethical construt of good/bad behaviour and actions be any better than some else? Sure, killing is usually seen as bad habit, but if we look as close as evolution theory as the primary moral compass, we really should kill weaker people all the time for increased happines and better fitness/higher IQ for everyone (at least over a long time period). If there is no one agreed "final truth" or something like that it's almost stupid to try and even speak about moral, as no one can ever PROVE that their ethical structure is more "fair" or "better" than anyone elses.
Einstein used a kind of trick of language to appear to accept the concept of "God". "God" is whatever force, thing, or being brought about the universe, whatever it turns out to be. Using that definition you can placate both atheists and most religions to some extent. God is the "x" in an unsolved equation.
Table-ized A.I.
God can mean so many different things to different people, but whenever someone hears the word "God" they think it refers to the particular god that they believe in, or at least the most popular conception of god in their culture. In this case, most people are thinking of the Christian god. But I think Hawking's idea of god is modeled on that of Einstein, who emphasized that when he spoke of god he was not referring to a personal god, such as the Christian god.
In any case, regardless of the how the summary and TFA are framing it, the quote in the article says that Hawking simply thinks that God is not necessary to explain the big bang. That is not to say that God doesn't exist. That's a pretty simple and uncontroversial statement, or it should be.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, it's virtual machines all the way...
:).
Seriously, that's why trying to prove certain things may not be possible. Saying they are likely to be XYZ based on certain evidence is wiser, but insisting that you are even close to 100% sure is being silly. If it turns out we really are in something similar to a universe simulator/virtual machine there's no guarantee we can prove anything about stuff outside.
For example, say I create a universe simulator, set up a universe, make copies and mess about with some copies. Pause one, edit and restart it.
How old would that universe be? From the "inside" it might be billions of years or more. From outside it might have just started a moment ago.
From inside that universe, based on the rules, there could be no evidence or need for a creator. From the outside there could be one or many creators involved in designing it, etc. Or the concept of "one" vs "many" doesn't really translate that well.
Yes it could turn out that isn't a creator at all, and it just so happens it's like that. But it could even turn out to be stranger - because the rules outside aren't necessarily the same as the rules inside, heck thinking they must be takes an immense leap of faith in my opinion.
Looking at the evidence, I think the universe isn't quite so simple as many think (even the very smart ones). As such, I personally believe there is a God and he has a strange sense of humour. I may be wrong, but how can a intelligent, rational and knowledgeable mere human being can be so sure he/she is right about the universe?
It's certainly not a simple 3 body newtonian universe we're in. And thank God the graphics are better than Civ2
Hawking went on to prove that black was white, and was then trampled to death by a herd of zebras.
(Apologies to both Steven Hawking and Douglas Adams)
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Who created this law of things can only exist if it first have to go through the process of creation then?
Creation, in this context, doesn't have to involve design in any way, or any kind of "process" for that matter. Also, time-line is irrelevant -- one can even speak of time's creation. What we're basically discussing here is causality. So the gist of the matter is:
"Does existence need a cause?"
Let's assume that there was a big bang. My existence can be causally traced back to it. So, there is no "my existence", individually standing; it is a composite "situation", which is a result of the state of affairs at the bang. But can we speak of any existence which is not a result?
If the question was, "Is there a word that has a meaning by itself?", the answer would be almost obviously be "no".
So, "What caused the big bang?", IMO, is a very legitimate question. There cannot be a first cause -- otherwise the word "causality" would lose its meaning.
But it's not the dramatic reality about all this. What we are really admitting, I think, is that, existence itself is a composition of relations between objects (causality in action). I.e. "Existence is structure".
One thinks then, that reality is composed of objects (matter/energy) and relations (laws). However, our history of knowledge shows that, when you investigate "matter", using the techniques of the time, you always discover that it's "made up" of finer stuff. This stuff, can in turn be structures that are made up of even finer stuff. If not so, that means that it has nothing about it that is not in its set of relations (its properties).
So it's almost inevitable to arrive to the conclusion that what we call matter is a structure, composed of relations of things. Things which are nothing but their relations. At this point, I guess, we can't get rid if the "thing" linguistically, since we need it to define the relations.
In conclusion, it seems that there's nothing other than the laws of nature, that makes up the universe. In this context, causality is enforced by consistency and doesn't have to have a more specialized meaning.
Do we make any progress with this line of reasoning? You can still ask where the laws of nature come from? My metaphysical view tends to have an economical bias, not about the quantity of existence, but quantity of metaphysics involved. :-) So, I just accept that every possible world (any combination of laws) exists.
I disagree with the analogy. The most likely reason that not many people are going around saying "the sun will rise tomorrow" is because there are not many other people who are trying to do things like putting stickers on science books saying that, "tomorrow's rising sun is 'only a theory.'" Or blowing up themselves and sun-believers in the name of a non-sun. When that begins to happen, you will hear more from the Silent Sun Army.
I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
We (atheists) are tired of you (religionists) passing laws that force us to adhere to the tenants of your religions.
Since we don't believe your tripe, you have no business forcing us to act like we do. Let homosexuals marry. Let women terminate unwanted pregnancies. Let people drink alcohol and smoke pot if they choose. Live your conservative lifestyle if you wish, but stop forcing the rest of us to do the same.
We don't agree with you.
very old school form of commentary on spontaneous creation.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Well i did, but tell my father or he'll delete him again.
Message from god, Please logoff, rebooting the Universe
My fundamentalist brother and I get into this tangle every once in a while. It goes something like this:
He: You can't deny that such complex systems as man and animals just spontaneously created themselves. If you are walking in the woods and find a watch on the ground, you don't suppose it just evolved there on its own, do you? Someone must have created it.
Me: Maybe it's just the nature of reality and physics that complexity evolves from simplicity, and this is the big bang expressing itself many billions of years later.
He: But who set off the big bang? It didn't erupt out of nothing. Something [God] must have preceded it.
Me: OK then, what preceded Your god?
He: Nothing. He has always been.
Me: So basically, we have the same answer. You just gave your preexisting conditions a brain and motivations, and I don't presume to.
It's called anthropomorphism... look it up.
Pascal's wagre is, from a Christian POV ludicrous. Faith requires belief, but it is more than that. The point of the theistic religions is to develop a relationship with God. Mere belief is insufficient, mere disbelief is not damning.
None of the mainstream churches teaches that non-believers will be damned (very few even of the fundies do), what matters is this: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A31-46&version=NIV
Try Alan F. Alford on for size.
http://www.eridu.co.uk
Most of these arguments take for granted a perspective of linear time. The idea that there exists an area outside of time and space changes everything. If something exists outside time and space then it always existed which means nothing to it because always is a time concept and before it is meaningless as is the idea of after.
Lol. You have a book written by Him, huh? I can only assume you have his public key and have cryptographically verified the authenticity of it, aye? Where did you find the hash, btw?
Does god use a 1024 bit RSA key, or is he more of a DSA guy?
Robert Pirsig once observed that very few people run around screaming that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Things we are deeply certain about generate very little in the way of zealotry. It is only those things we doubt at some level that generate in us the overwhelming need to convince others. It's as true of religion as of irreligion.
Or rather to make your example actually relate to the real world in any way at all, you have to include the large group of deeply deluded scum running around everywhere screaming that the sun won't rise, murdering everyone who is merely sane enough to recognize madness, passing laws based on their idiotic, deluded, and known to be utterly false belief and generally making themselves a tremendous liability to decent people everywhere due to their cowardly refusal to deal honestly with reality at any point.
By completely ignoring the entire role of religion you do yourself a grave disservice and present yourself as nothing but an intentionally dishonest hack. You could only be preaching to the choir as nobody with even a passing acquaintance with critical thinking could do anything but laugh at your lying scumbaggery.
So, yes, if the deluded cowards would keep their idiotic lies to themselves there wouldn't be a problem. They don't though. They are actively attempting to dismantle our ostensibly free society because they despise America to the pit of their black little hearts because it was founded explicitly on the recognition of the fact that religion can never have any role in the government of a free society or it ceases to be anything approximating free as every example from history clearly documents. They're doing all of this based on a fairy tale we know was invented by a barbarian tribe which didn't even exist until the freaking iron age meaning we know with 100% certainty that it is a bullshit fairy tale since the monster of a fairy tale that didn't exist for most of the history of the universe couldn't possibly have invented the universe which predates it by so long. Again, this is just basic honesty and sanity which are things believers in any of the absolutely falsified Abrahamaic faiths are incapable of simply by their inclusion is said groups of dishonest fools and liars
So, yes, if you completely ignore all of the actions of these religious nutjobs for the last couple of thousand years, turn your head sideways and squint really really hard, you can kind of sort of see something like the point you were trying to make, but if you had any honesty in your approach at all, you'd know you're completely fill of shit.
Just as I find religious fundamentalists off-putting, I find atheist extremists off-putting as well, and I'm not overly concerned with the epithets people try to apply to them. Dogmatism by any other name will never be anything greater than sophomoric.
Yet your utter failure to be capable of distinguishing an understanding of basic historical facts from dogma is what makes your thinking so sloppy and makes you look so completely dishonest and retarded at the same time.
Extra! Extra! Read All About it! Atheist says God didn't create the universe! Extra! Extra! Read All About it!
I do think there's a big difference between fighting for some personal space and being dogmatic about it and taking every opportunity to fight over the issue. You're probably talking more about the latter than the former, I realize, but I think there's also a lot of middle ground besides the two camps you mentioned.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Read title
So how can you say Moses invented the 'single god'? Why are the major mono-theistic religions referred to as 'Abrahamic' religions? And what defined the Jews in Egypt if not this belief, taken from Abraham?
Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe
God: I did not create Stephen Hawking. I mean just look at him!
Suppose a GOD truly exists as you describe as a "psychopath".
Why would anyone with any soul at all ever worship a deity proclaiming his/her intent to cast so many righteous individuals (in terms of their own belief system, right or wrong) to an eternity in hell because they worshiped the wrong way?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
If they are wrong, and there turns out to be a judgement day they will spend eternity burning in hell.
The standard Christian thing, believe or burn in hell for ever. Such a good argument it has been used by the Mafia ever since.
Now others have pointed out that you are also invoking Pascal's Wager, something that relies on your god being so stupid he doesn't realise that you are only believing in the hope of a reward. A reward you will never get since only non-theists go to heaven.
Science and God are not mutually exclusive.
WATER IS STILL WET
Just asked god what he thought of this..and he said no comment like he has been doing for the last 2000 years.
Bald can be a hair style, for those who choose to shave their heads.
The notion that God created the universe isn't some tool to prove that God exists. The notion that God created the universe is something you need to take with faith. If you have no faith in God, you don't have faith he created the universe. If I wanted to build someone's faith, I'd start with showing that God is good and loving then go forward from there. Just because the beginning of the Bible starts with God creating the universe doesn't mean its the part designed to build your faith the most.
I know God is real. Jesus is LORD. I know for an absolute fact. www.goodnewsjim.com
Hebrews 11:3 "It is by faith that we understand that the universe was created by God's word, so that what can be seen was made out of what cannot be seen. "
God spoke to me.
Catholic is pretty mainstream and here is their thoughts on what happens to unbelievers after death:
Those who have rejected God and His love are condemned to torment in a temporary hell until the resurrection. At the resurrection the condemned souls are reunited with their bodies and then they are cast into the everlasting hell with the devil and his fallen angels.
Unbelievers go through the same process as Christians. The difference is that someone who does not believe in Christ or His Church is not condemned for that fact IF, and this is ONLY IF, they are invincible ignorant of Christ and His Church.
Anarchists never rule
I believe the problem lies in the definition of God. There is this obsession with defining God as some entity that exists separate from our existence.
I say bullshit. God is the position and momentum of every particle in existence at every moment in time with infinite precision. God is all the laws of physics that control the evolution of those particles' position and momentum. God knows laws that we don't understand or fail to model; our physics are just poor approximation for God's laws, further distorted by our limitation of finite measurements.
This is why God knows everything. This is why God is everywhere. This is why God is all powerful. This is why there is only one God. It's the only way I can reconcile the classical concept of a God with the scientific world that I know is correct.
:(){
...Pope Picks God over Physics For Big Bang
It's because he tries to explain mathematics in a language that's originally designed to help apes to find food. Similarly you can't explain quantum physics in human tongue, it just isn't built for that.
Who created the laws of the universe? Forget about the universe! Who created the atom and got all that atomic power to hold together? We've seen what happens when you pop them.
Open Standards Portal
Moral atheists get the morals form the same place as modern Christians: modern secular humanism principals which boil down to "do not directly harm other people". The bible is full of evil stuff: kill your kids if they back talk, its ok to kill people who don't observe the sabbath, etc... The old testament is down right vile in places. Christians have generally rejected the "bad" parts of the bible and embraced the good parts: love your neighbor as yourself, turn the other cheek, etc... And the good Christians chose what is good the same way the atheists did.
Anarchists never rule
Christian's official dogma regarding after life has changed so dramatically in the last 2000 years it is pretty hard to take it seriously as a word of god.
Hell was invented in the late 6th century and purgatory in the mid 11th.
With that in mind I ask you do you really believe in God because you have a concern about after life, as some existential quest, or are you just a bigot who doesn't he is one ?
Religion is mostly a social thing.
That's what religious people don't get about atheists. Nobody is trying to limit or judge your thinking, but it would be very reassuring for us if you could sum up your beliefs in non-self-contradicting sentence.
On this side I guess Buddhism is much less scary. It's also mostly based on mythological bullshit but at least it's pretty consistent.
Pope Picks God Over Physics For Universe Creation.
the half below the bell curve never will, nor can you realistically expect them to, understand the world like stephen hawking
so you are going to have to put up with people anthropomorphizing and otherwise taking mental shortcuts to describe their world. the alternative: an iq test before you can have an opinion, is a worse option
we need to learn to accept that some people can only go with the simpleminded and the literal. not everyone is meant to be a great scientist and understand reality at a maximum of the humanly possible. for the simpletons then and their religious tomfoolery then, we need to have begrudging tolerance, and silence. don't worry about it so much, because the way it always has been and always will be
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fuel, meet Fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJlN9jdQFSc Yes yes, flamebait :)
Why can't humans grasp the concept that 'Maybe everything has always existed in some form'? We seem to like 'beginnings and ends, for some reason. Even though we are born and die, the basic building blocks for us were/are there before and after, just in different form.
i have empiric evidence about many things, and some ranting on in here about questions which .. so pardon me, since i only have the german translation
are answered in the holy books 'god does not conveice, nor is he conceived' and some say only
god can create something from/out of nothing. Yet, i told many people about imo, the greatest discovery ever, and still, only 1 person did believe me. My evidence (which touched me on this side) was so terrible and also so wonderful that it does surpass a human mind. There is a good book by Martin Buber which is called, Tales of angels, spirits & demons, there is a good explanation in it about creation and why there is death/birth
Es ist ein Ding bei mir, und bei mir allein seit Anbeginn, zu
schwer und zu grausig für deine sanften Geberhände,
mein freundlicher Gesell, -- das heißt, die Erde mit
Fäulnis nähren und mit Schatten decken, daß sie aus
dem Samen gebäre, -- das heißt, die Seelen mit Blut
und Schmerzen fruchtbar machen, daß das Werk aus ihnen erstehe.
you can find this text on archive.org too, only german version (i think)
i once did set out to find the reason for everything after having read many
books, to find the answer to why there is death/suffering/badness/etc
and i found the answer, yet i had to endure great suffering myself, but
this journey was in my opinion the only worthy experience on this earth,
since i was bored of speculation and true ignorance. People speculate
and go on and on and on, and assume they know about forces they can't possibly
comprehend, if it weren't for an equation, i personally think the
'Quanten Schleifen Theorie' would make considerably more sense as to this
very first moment in time. But all of this is mostly suggestive speculation.
And therefore i pity most of the scientists who just trust in evidence by
for instance finding one little particle that, to them does explain everything. Imo,
the answers are all right infront of us. But many people just don't SEE.
so this unary operator $god would tell us what? i bet it would break down the shell.
i'd just not trust technology all that much, trust me. ;) May peace be upon you all.
and people will believe in what they believe, it's just meant to be.
"The moment religious folks stop mandating when I can and cannot get groceries because of their "holy" days and stop interfering with what my hypothetical children get to learn in school, I'll stop fighting them. Until such time, I will fight any and all legislation that boils down to "because my religion says it's good/bad" with all I have within me."
Hear hear..... once they are relegated to the same importance in the law etc as a football team fan club (which is basically what they are) then all the bashing will probably cease all by itself. Its their infernal interfering in other peoples lives that makes people angry.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Read and be enlightened. Quote:
"Another way of looking at it is to ask what is the "curvature" of the earth's surface. Over a considerable length, how much does the surface deviate (on the average) from perfect flatness. The flat-earth theory would make it seem that the surface doesn't deviate from flatness at all, that its curvature is 0 to the mile.
Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.
The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile, as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat earth to the spherical earth.
Mind you, even a tiny difference, such as that between 0 and 0.000126, can be extremely important. That difference mounts up."
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Consider this: The real reason we exist is because there is no reason we don't. Cause and effect is an illusion. God exists because there is no reason for God not to exist as well. There are an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of Gods
I wonder if God has laws also....
or would He cease to be, otherwise?
Who IS this God person, anyway?
From the short summary he's not talking about timetravel but about relativistic spacetravel, which are two entirely different things altogether. I'd assume that Dr. Hawkins knows this, or at least he should having written a book to explain Einsteins theory of relativity and inventing a way of describing time within that theory. Seems to me he's regressing...
Who was so stupid, he forgot to deceive himself, before any other?
(all of the trolls disputing this statement to the contrary)
i also am able to carry on conversations about god with people who are very religious and possibly not so bright. even though i am not a believer, because i understand the symbolic interplay between the idea of god and the facts of the universe, then there is no cognitive dissonance going on in my head when i talk to them. i merely translate what they say into what i think i know, and i translate what i think i know into a literal framework about the idea of god when i talk to them. and everyone is talking about the same thing, and everyone happy
in fact, i said i was not a believer. but i believe in the universe and its laws. so, in effect, based on my definition of what god really is, i guess i am believer than too
so intelligent people who believe in god is not a contradiction. all that is happening is that intelligent people understand god less literally, and more metaphorically and deeply, such that at its root, their faith is no different than a positivist nonbeliever's humanism and understanding of the physical world
really, this is the truth: the debate about the existence of god/ not is a complete joke. everyone is simply arguing about the same thing
of course, those who are very literal and not so bright and are negativist about humanity use the idea of god as justification to murder abortion providers and become suicide bombers. but this isn't an argument against god, this is an argument against the negative and the stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hawking probably uses 10% of his brain, he is probably one of most intelligent people on earth....
God has inifinite wisdom, and I am sure/know He has to be our Heavenly Father. So people (humans)
do not have a clue, know matter how much they know or learn.
This debate is getting so frackin' boring. There is no frackin' reason that both cannot coexist! NONE! except the narrow minds of either side. Hawking and Dawking and others can go stick it where the sun dont shine and so can the pope. I believe what I experience first hand and that is it and that is the way it should be for anyone sane.
This kind of thing fascinates me. But I have always wondered what came before the Big Bang? It just doesn't make sense that there was nothing (also sometimes called the singularity?) then it just comes into existence. I always thought every effect had a cause. What was the causality that caused the Bang? Now I know there is a theory that one "brane" collided with another, but that just pushes causality off to a lower level. It doesn't make sense that the universe could also be eternal and infinite.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
not to the idea god
if someone were so negative and stupid as to use god as justification to suicide bomb or murder abortion providers, then your argument is with stupid and negative people, not god
god is just a metaphor. in fact, your hostility to the idea of god is the same sort of irrationality that drives those who have to fight for the existence of god. the extremely intolerant atheist who insists on the destruction of theism is just as wrong as the religious fundamentalist who insists you believe as he believes: its the imposition of your will onto other people, which is more wrong than the existence or lack thereof a silly metaphorical idea. god can be interepreted a million different ways, so your argument is with certain wrong interpretations, including some interpretations that reject his or her existence but are still just as violent as a religious fundamentalist. belief in god or not does not define anything at all, its a red herring, a false pointless argument
just accept that people think differently about the world, and always will. whether or not their thinking includes the idea of a god holds no meaning, positive or negative, either way. in fact, if you waved a magic wand, and removed all the world's religions, new ones would spontaneously spring into being. why? because belief in god is a sociological and psychological phenomenon of human existence: it is never going away. you need to accept it, or you at war with mankind, not god. some day you will die. do you fight this ugly truth? or accept it? well, you also need to accept that belief in god, like sitting on the toilet every day, just happens. it does no good to accept an unbending fact of human reality
i am a nonbeliever. yet the idea of god doesn't threaten me, i'm perfectly at peace with it. i am completely beyond the argument, such that i am comfortable even calling myself a believer nowadays, deceitfully, mischievously, or just because i'm bored. with such contempt do i hold the whole debate about god's existence. it is such a colossal waste of time and thought. the root of the argument is about conformity, which is the real danger, whether for or against god
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Being a moral atheist is a total win win, compared to being a mere Theist.
Version 1:
Dead Atheist: Oh!, um hi God..., didn't think you existed, oops!
Deity: No problem, it's not like I left any useful clues... Welcome to my heaven.
Dead Atheist: Nice... How come I qualify?
Deity: Because you were a moral and ethical being, because you lived by a code of ethics; you understood that love was the right thing to do even in a universe that you had good reason to believe was completely and utterly godless. You were moral because you chose to be, not because you "believed" in some silly magic book; or were too scared, or weak minded, to think for yourself.
You chose to do the right thing, even when you did not have to; you lived by a moral and honorable code, not by some mythical manifesto of terrorism and fear...
Dead Atheist: So what happens to all the myriad god followers, "believers", the Theists, martyrs, crusaders, suicide bombers, terrorists, etc?
Deity: Tricky one that! They are not really worth anything much, because they never thought for themselves ethically speaking... What do you suggest?
Anyway, no hurry, they can wait outside indefinitely while you decide what to do with them. Welcome to heaven!, go pick yourself out some virgins...
Etc...
Version 2:
Dead Atheist: Hello, Anyone There...! (nothing, nada, zip, zilch, silence, nope...)
Dead Atheist: Thought So! (vanishes in a sudden total existence failure)
So........
Looks like a Win Win to me!
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
"some people use the same term ("God") to describe very different things, rather than describing the same thing with different names"
and i am asking you to accept that this is the way it was, and always will be, and this cacophony is never going away, and you need to lose your discomfort with this ugly but inescapable status quo of humanity. unless you want to do away with free will and wage a crusade for cognitive conformity. which is obviously worse. and yes, i know, such a crusade for conformity is going on, in the name of religion. but fighting that crusade with a crusade of your own ("there is no god!") basically means you are just as wrong as everything you dislike about theism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The problem is that it doesn't take much to be percieved as one of those extremist atheists, especially by a certain kind of religious people. It's enough to simply question religion or to claim that religious arguments are only valid for those who believe in them. That's hugely offensive to some religious people, who then make a big fuss about being under attack from evil atheists and try to make smear all atheists to be bad, extremist dogmatics.
This seems to be especially true in the US. Atheists are more distrusted than any other controversial group, including gays and muslims.
So yes, there are douchebag atheists. I would keep in mind who accuses atheists of this,however. If it's someone whose millenia-old religious dogma and the power dreived from that suddenly has competition, I would be skeptical about their claims.
which was my original point
lol
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is a very good argument against anthropogenic climate change, then.
That's not necessarily true.
Let's pretend for a minute that anthropogenic climate change is not only true, but is much more severe than anyone's suggested: if it's not halted within 10 years, all human life will perish within 20. Let's also pretend that only someone who's an expert in this field can fully understand this.
If you were a scientist who was pretty sure that was true, your zealousness and need to convince others of the truth of that fact wouldn't indicate that you were uncertain -- it would indicate that convincing others of the truth of that fact was extremely important.
"Because there is a law such as gravity" If there is a God, who do you think created such laws?
Why is it that science and God are always held at opposition. Isn't it naturally logical that a hypothetical God would have used natural laws that he likely put into motion to begin with? God wouldn't just use magical fluff, he'd obviously be the greatest mathematician and scholar in existence.
"the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist"
Isn't God often attributed to have always existed or having created himself?
Even Stephen Hawking can do nothing but grasp at ideas when it comes to literally proving the existence or lack thereof, of a creator god.
What if there was a God, and he actually created the entire universe. Now tell me that what actually happens when you die is nothing, your just dead. We could just be some form of entertainment for him, or he could just not care anymore and moved on to other planets, solar systems, galaxies, universes (with would actually make it multiverse). Not that I care, I just had a thought. (I'm an atheist also.)
Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
Oh so you mean "Creation Ex Nihilo". So in other words, "Hawking follows complex equations to conclusion that contradicts one of the fundamental axioms of science."
Don't get me wrong, Hawking is brilliant. But it seems, as a lay person, that he has let the equations run away from him on this one.
Of course, it all depends on what one's definition of "nothing" is.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Then he turned around and said "Bazinga"
Faith is all fine and good, but faith is not "knowing for a fact".
1) I hope I never have occasion to be in front of a jury to begin with.
2) If I am ever in front of a Jury, I hope none of them think like CrazyJim1.
I think saying "all atheism is alike" is like saying "all Christianity is alike."
Not even close.
Atheism is an answer to a single question - "Do you believe that God exists?".
If you answer "yes", you're not an atheist. If you answer "no", you are an atheist. Therefore all atheism IS the same, since it include no other questions, no answers, no beliefs or tenets of any kind. You could argue that not all atheists are the same, and you'd be correct, but the difference between them would have nothing to do with atheism.
The main problem is that if you just ignore the Christians, they pass laws outlawing the teaching of evolution and other such stupid things.
I am secure in my atheism. I don't go out preaching it. But I'm sure as hell not going to sit down and shut up when someone tries to use religion as a reason I should or shouldn't do or accept something.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I know a few people who are quietly atheist. Perhaps agnostic would be a better word, as they do not believe in God,
Nope, that's atheist, and the more people who use the term properly, the less often I'll have to answer "Prove to me God doesn't exist!" or worse, "Prove that atheism is true and correct!"
And then I have met many atheists who are zealots, or at least hobbyists, about it. Their disbelief is not a passive thing, but an active assertion, a passion, an argument they must make at every possible opportunity.
And yet, we should make a distinction here -- the disbelief itself is very much passive, and even in the most "militant" atheists will admit that, given sufficient evidence, they would believe. It is the consequences of that disbelief in light of such ubiquitous belief that leads to the "passion" you're talking about.
I have a passion for truth.
Robert Pirsig once observed that very few people run around screaming that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Things we are deeply certain about generate very little in the way of zealotry.
This is largely because not only are we very sure of it, there isn't much argument about it. If there was a large community of people in the desert who were absolutely convinced the sun wouldn't rise tomorrow, and thus not concerned about finding shelter from the coming heat, then hell yes, I would be running around screaming that the sun would rise tomorrow to anyone who would listen.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The only reason I posted at all is because I get really tired of the "atheism is a religion/no it's not" argument. It's sophomoric, pedantic, and silly.
What? No, it's actually fundamental to the debate, and it undermines almost everything you said.
The epistemological observation is made that people "believe" a lot more than they "know," and it turns out that in the realm of belief-prompted-actions, atheists and Christians and Buddhists and everyone behave in strikingly similar ways.
Certainly -- except that "no god" is not a belief of any atheist I know. It's merely the default position. Neither knowing or believing has anything to do with it -- it's simply not knowing.
We want other people to believe what we believe.
Again not something I find terribly many atheists have as a goal -- at least, if you are talking about the lack of belief as a belief.
Nor do I necessarily care that other people share most of the things I do believe. I believe I'm a decent programmer, but I really don't care what you think.
The primary goals are much simpler: We want others to stop preaching at us and others, we want public and political debate to be informed by reason and evidence instead of emotional and biblical appeals, and we want people to stop making assumptions about atheists -- in particular, that we're evil, though the assumptions you made about beliefs are annoying also.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
When a scientist reaches for the word "inevitable" - and Hawking is not at all the first major scientist to do this - you have to ask, what place does empirical data have in this theoretical framework. "Inevitability" is not an empirical quality.
"the Big Bang was inevitable due to the law of gravity" (as the article puts it) is not an empirical statement. It's not science.
Nah. Buddhism is pretty realistic.
Switching to modern language, it becomes:
"Everyone craves something. Craving isn't so great after all. You really need to tone down, and no matter how much your instincts throw a tantrum, it is possible."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
moral - a quick read of the bible clearly shows that modern christians get their moral values form the same place as athiests: modern liberal secular values that have been explored since the enlightenment and can be simply expressed as do onto others as you would have done to yourself, or do not directly harm other people.
Well, to say that people, Christian or not, are discovering and holding the same values is a good argument for the existence of objective morality. After all, if such a thing as "objective morality" exists, then wouldn't there be a good chance that even nonbelievers would accept those same principles, even if learned from another source?
To me the better approach is to question the idea of objective morality. Does such a thing really exist outside of ourselves? Most of the guidelines accepted as "moral standards" are simply practical guidelines for living as a social creature. As we are social creatures, we must live in a way that enables us to enjoy the company of others. Is it wrong to kill? Or to steal? The reason these behaviors are unacceptable is because they lead to gain at another's expense. If this kind of behavior were tolerated by the group, the group would tear itself apart with acts of vengeance and greed. There must be order for a social group to work, and that (I contend) is the basis of morality.
Bow-ties are cool.
yo mama's so fat, she exploded and the universe was created.
Here I take the trouble to point out the hypocrisy of the parent, and *I* get marked as a troll, and he gets marked insightful for his insult.
Stay classy.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
who created the 1st.......of anything........
big bang still needs some powerful creation.......though its endless loop......
then who created this endless loop?.....
btw.....we are seeing the galaxy is expanding only.........NOT contracting.....we are just assuming it cannot expand unlimitedly.......single-directional mind....
Atheism is not active disbelief, it is, literally, an absence of theism. More to the point, it is an absence of belief in god(s). All babies are born atheists because they haven't been introduced to the fantasy of gods until later in life.
Really...gravity allows the universe to create itself out of NOTHING. Yes, lets throw out all the other laws as well.
Just to clarify a few points an atheist is someone who doesnt believe in god. Agnostic means that the truth about god is unknown or unknowable. These 2 terms arent mutually exclusive. Just because someone isnt actively anti-religion doesnt make them agnostic.
Now on to my main point. The reason people arent "running around screaming that the sun is going to rise tomorrow" is because theres no-one (or very very very few) that believe it wont. If these people did exist and wanted to take away your rights (in the cases of abortion, contraception, gay marriage, etc.) then you would expect, even need, people to loudly oppose this "cult".
PS. Im one of those off-putting atheist zealots as you call them.
Lee Strobel (former atheist and crime beat journalist) has several great books that take a serious, rational look at whether the evidence stacks up for or against Christianity. I just recently finished The Case for Faith, and he looks at Hawking's arguments. He's got a good methodology: He takes the skeptic's view, and interviews top theologians, philosophers, and scientists. Here's just a few good pieces out of the chapter on miracles and science:
So, it seems to me that atheists are stuck trying to explain away "turtles all the way down" this time. In a nutshell: Thanks to Hawking, we can see gravity either in the old-school attraction-between-masses way, or in the curvature-of-spacetime way. Either way, gravity is built in to the universe. It does not compute that a part of the universe could be its own cause.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~avm1260/atheism/dawn.html
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Hawking might say that god -meaning the biblical bush that a goatkeeper saw, didnt creat the world - and i agree but Hawking himself might destroy it with his astounding backing of CERN's bid to create black holes against Einstein's warnings. In this video you can see the very same Hawking having a laugh at it: 'if im wrong we will become all spaghetti'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WTDnvYqpA
>> religious fundamentalists off-putting
"off-putting"? Really? That's it? I think you are very deliberately blinding yourself to all the harm caused by religion. If you didn't do so, you would understand atheist "extremists" for, to paraphrase, extremism in the defense of rationality is no vice.
Social Credit would solve everything...
The difference is that nobody is going around screaming that the sun ISN'T going to rise tomorrow.
If there were hordes of people asserting that this is the last day the sun ever rose, you can bet that there would be others
attempting to correct their error.
People who are quietly confident that there is no god are faced every day by people who assert that there IS a god, and not only
that, but that THEY KNOW what God wants everybody to do.
In face of that, saying "sorry, but there is no god" is not "atheist extremism" - it's simply a response.
That was my point-- I was refuting the idea that the greatest zealots actually have a seed of doubt that motivates them.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Oh, thank God someone finally came up with the answer!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Understanding gravity and how massive objects behave in peculiar ways is not that hard, and more interestingly, many of those things have been proven experimentally.
Nowadays anybody with moderate curioisity can read enough convincing popular science to understand the general point Dr Hawking is making.
World religions hava a narrative about how all came to be.
Science has a different narrative that requires no deities to arrive to th same end result, all of which is thoroughly studied and documented for anybody to inspect it and falsify it if they possibly can.
In the field of expertise where DR Hawking is moving his discoveries point in a direction of a godless universe. The Pope John Paul II understood this very clearly and when they coincided in a conference of some kind he recriminated the scientist for trying to contradict religious teachings.
He is not interested in understanding it, he just wants to show it's no different than the religion he believes in.
If you look through his posts, he has a derisive tone about science and generally he's just trolling for religion.
And yet you've been hoodwinked by the "debate" to believe the literal creationist nonsense regarding schools represents the mainstream view.
Oh, the irony.
"In my opinion, all this jawing about religion in virtually any context is a waste of air, and worse has a divisive, and poisonous effect on our society."
No. It's the "us vs. them" mentality that is fostered that is poisonous, it is the continuous circling of the wagons and preaching to the choir that is poisonous, it's the impact of the internet that allows sociopathy, arrogance, wrong headedness, bigotry only to breed and not be curtailed though what used to be normal, everyday interactions that is poisonous.
It's been the same way with politics. Rational debate over politics (and over what the meaning of scientific discoveries / philosophy) has always been useful. It's when you get arrogant enough to believe you know everything and insular enough to believe you are always in the right that it becomes poisonous.
God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History
by Stephen Hawking
Some astrophysicists from reasons.org (with an old-earth creationist view) discuss the Hawking announcement in a recent podcast: Science News Flash
There is more than sufficient evidence about God in this world. You probably don't see it because you don't want to and spend most of your time on the things you like doing a lot (be that games, TV, sex, drinking, or any good ol' doing nothing, etc.) and do not want to be disturbed out of your comfort zone.
What any of us believes (doesn't matter how "rational" or "logical" it seems) will not change the way things are. The fact that I believe that God exists or not will not make Him any more real or not... but, of course, it will determine where I will spend eternity, even if I don't think it will. Most people really think and WANT that there is no God so they don't have to change anything in their lives... so that they can have all the sex they want however they want it, waste time/money on useless stuff, drink like there is no tomorrow, etc. just do what they want without limits. Having a God that demands that you are just person, that love others, that really really try to make the live of others around you a great life, is hard and most just don't wish that to be the case.
I wish only to encourage that any of you that is soooo keen on the fact that there is no God, to spend just a little bit of time looking/reading a little bit about Him.
-There are a bunch of places where scientific evidence about a bunch of biblical facts is presented (of course, there are many interested parties that make sure none on those news make it to major news networks...).
-Instead of spending a bunch of time on Youtube watching funny videos or what not, I would suggest maybe searching for things like: Eucharistic Miracles. (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbg_dhI4XCs).
-Why don't you stop at a church and have a chat with a priest and listen for a bit (after all, if you are so strong in your believes, it won't really hurt you, right?)
Anyway, please give it a try... after all, if I am right, you have EVERYTHING to lose, while if you are right, I have NOTHING to lose... I will just die and that's it. So if there is a potential loser on this situation, is you.
I don't have an account on this place (that's why I didn't sign in), but if anyone wants to send a reply, please feel free to write at: eucharistic.soldier@gmail.com
God bless you all.
Yes, and I suppose firefighters are just anti-fire zealots. You see, the religious are causing active harm. They are persecuting minorities, they are advocating praying away our problems, they are causing psychological damage to children scaring them with stories of hellfire and punishment. These fools refuse to take any long term threat seriously because "God will save us" is a reasonable notion to them so they have no reason to plan ahead.
When the theists only had sharp sticks and rocks to use to murder in the name of their various gods they were much less of a threat. However, now we have nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and a very real ability to end all human life on earth. These irrational and delusional beliefs should have been challenged long before now, but now they must be challenged before they wind up destroying us all.But hey, I'm certain Iran will be more than happy to play nice with nuclear weapons...
Religious moderates are paving the road to ruin that the religious zealots will drag us all down.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Things we are deeply certain about generate very little in the way of zealotry
This might be true in the case of atheism if there wasn't a vast majority of people totally certain about the exact opposite, to the point where it interferes in the rationally thinking person's daily life. Until that is no longer the case, I hope people continue being as strong and vocal supporters of atheism as they can personally afford.
And the differences are meaningful, and often important, but rarely worth the vitriol and venom that goes into articulating them.
Belief in a magical man in the sky, whatever flavor and variation that belief comes in, is one difference worth a great deal of vitriol and venom from atheists. This is especially clear given how actions by believers in support of their religion, often to the intentional detriment of non-believers, negatively affect people around the world physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And before the obvious rebuttal, no amount of good done by religious people absolves the institution of the ills done in its name.
Brilliantly put.
Bookmarked, and thank you.
Carlin summarized this awhile back:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o
Hawking saying we could know the mind of God is just another example of the foolishness of man. The mind of God is so far above us that it is ludicrous to say we could ever know it. Man's capacity for foolishness never fails to amaze me.
I must say Hawking intentionally or not has generated a boatload of publicity for his book with this controversy. The debate will continue forever but til then he and his publisher are the real winners here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem with science is scientists. Too many have the notion that if you can't measure something, then it doesn't exist. But they readily admit their math does not even add up and they can't predict the weather more than seven days in advance. Schrodinger came up with a cat experiment to show the limitations of quantum theory, but some respected scientists will tell you that a cat can be both dead and alive simultaneously. Now nothing exists until you measure it is the mantra. At the same time every possibility exists somewhere. This latter is, of course, their mathematical answer to free will. If there is no God, then genocide is a viable and acceptable option for curing global warming and suspected other ills. Genetic engineering for creating a species that can traverse the galactic voids and avoid impending annihilation would be the most logical course of action. A God that predetermined everything must be as large as the universe, which is equivalent to saying that God is the universe. A God that can allow free will and structure amid chaos must be a God that can laugh and cry. If there exists no God, there exists no greater purpose for all of this; and all of this sound and fury signifies nothing. Proving there can be no God cannot stop humans from wanting there to be one – or for keeping our control freak government from trying to create one.
In my opinion, people really need to stop thinking that science and religion are polar opposites, in trith I think there are more similarities than differences. For example, the Bi Bang Theory (not the show) was created and propsed by Georges Lematire, a respected phycisit AND a Roman Catholic preist. Sir Isac Newton and Leonardo Div Vinci were christian, as was Darwin (I found that one hard to believe at first), Albert Einstien was Jewish and help little respect for athiests who attempted to use him to disprove God, and even Stpehen Hawking ins't an athiest, infact he gets quite mad when he is refered to as one, at the very most he is agnostic. Stephen Hawking never said God doesn't exist, he only said that it was NOT NESECCARY to invoke Him when the universe was created. From my interpretation, he is saying these new discoveries MAY show God didn't create the universe, but he still thinks that it is possible.
For me, science shows that God exists more than it does not. It justs puts Gods work into formula's and laws. When I listen to my Physics teacher I can easily see that the world is to convieniant to have appeared out of just pure laws, and even so, how would these laws have been put into motion. Science may never prove God exists (though it often helps), but I know fpr sre that it will never prove he doesn't exist becuase there are so many variables and unknowns, on top of the fact that he opperates outside our realm of thinking.
This is just my opinion of course.
And guests being listed as Anonymous cowards seems kinda harsh to me.