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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.'"
Humans evolve. Humans create self replicating robots. Humans go away. Some robots say they were built. Other robots rebut 'But who built the builders?' No one, they were not built.
Or to put it another way, what if a self-aware cartoon character asks 'Who drew the drawers?' No one, they were not drawn.
Point is, what applies for one level doesn't necessarily apply for the one above it.
"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...
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.
Reason would only take you so far anyway. Instead of answering "why" once or twice, science enables mankind to answer it to 5 or 6 levels of depth. That level of knowledge has given most of us life (multiplying the carrying capacity of the planet by orders of magnitude) and allowed us to live better and longer lives, too. But there are no ultimate explanations. Any chain of logic (or causality) must either extend forever and ever, or stop at something that just "is," and both options are nonsensical. (This is equally true whether or not any of the links in the chain are God).
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