Anyone interested in the latest pronouncements of Stephen Hawking on God should heed the observations of Martin Rees (now Lord Rees), one of the world’s leading astrophysicists, the Astronomer Royal, and the outgoing head of the Royal Society (one of the world’s oldest scientific societies). It includes this severe but accurate judgment:
Stephen Hawking is a remarkable person whom I’ve know for 40 years and for that reason any oracular statement he makes gets exaggerated publicity. I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don’t think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic.
September 28th, 2010 | 11:49 am
Oh, this is too good to pass on. If one is going to choose between the words of someone who actually has a history of knowing what he is talking about, in this case Hawking, or someone who knows nothing of what he is talking about, like a Theologian, who are you going to pick?
September 28th, 2010 | 11:59 am
I think you’re missing the point there. Stephen Hawking is a scientist, not a theologian. When he speaks about things which he knows and understands, like science, he shows a great deal of insight. When he speaks about religion, he speaks mostly nonsense.
September 28th, 2010 | 12:12 pm
If the subject is theological, Chuck, it’s the theologian who “has a history of knowing what he is talking about,” and Hawking who evinces no signs of knowing anything germane.
Hawking is an able physicist and formidable rapper (cf. “A Brief History of Rhyme”). If the topic is cosmic inflation or capping MIT fools, he’s earned our deference; not otherwise.
September 28th, 2010 | 12:37 pm
Chuck
As a mathematician and cosmologist, Lord Rees has a history of knowing what he is talking about, largely because hs confines his public pronouncements to matters within his specialty.
Would you seriously prefer Hawking’s opinion to that of a Professor of Divinity, on the priority of Matthew, or the authorship of the Pastorals? Theologians, too, have their specialty
September 28th, 2010 | 1:12 pm
Dear Chuck,
Hawking has a mixed history: He has a history of “knowing what he is talking about” when he has talked about physics. He has a history of not “knowing what he is talking about” when he has talked about philosophy and theology.
And who is this capitalized “Theologian” you refer to? Martin Rees, an astrophysicist and cosmologist? Me, a particle physicist?
You seem to have the view that a man who knows what he is talking about in science is ipso facto an expert in every field. To state the idea is to see its absurdity.
September 28th, 2010 | 2:32 pm
Having just read Hawking’s new book I can say this: On the first page the bold statement is made that “Philosophy is Dead!” And then Hawking and his co-author go on to write a book on philosophy. It’s not science because it doesn’t posit a testable hypothesis. There’s no way to devise an experiment to prove his claims and no way to falsify what he says – the sine qua non of the Scientific Method since at least Karl Popper.
The book is worth reading, but it’s basically a magazine article padded-out to book length. It is best seen as a review of current thinking but I predict that it will have a short shelf-life as data from the Large Hadron Collider begins to emerge.
September 28th, 2010 | 4:57 pm
Here’s an interesting question: How many First Thoughts readers have opened this page in the quiet of their study, only to die of a heart attack after some obnoxious stranger screams “Congratulations. You’ve won!” out of the blue?
September 28th, 2010 | 5:26 pm
Martin, someone I know personally though slightly, has his own shortcomings. He recently referred to the Oxburgh Report as the most extensive review of Global Warming/Climate Change science to date. The problem is that the report itself states the science was NOT considered, only the issues of propriety raised by “Climategate.”
September 28th, 2010 | 6:30 pm
Hawkings demonstrates, in fact, why Socrates concluded that he really was the wisest man in the world.
September 28th, 2010 | 9:50 pm
Hawking doesn’t need to be theologian to make the simple remark that we no longer need to invoke God to explain the existence of our universe. He’s completely qualified to say that science alone is adequate for the task. Many people are upset because they misinterpreted Hawking’s remark to think he’s attempting to disprove the existence of God, but that’s not what he said. Science only deals with our physical world. Anything that’s supposed to exist in the metaphysical / imaginary / spiritual realm is irrelevant to science.
September 28th, 2010 | 10:02 pm
Potkas7, you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about. The M-Theory is no different from the Big Bang theory. Any theoretical model based on mathematics can be used to make testable predictions, which means it’s inevitably falsifiable.
September 28th, 2010 | 11:16 pm
What’s rather amusing, about Hawking’s latest statements, is they’ve been refuted, 2,500 years ago, by Parminedes, who argued, that nothing can come from nothing. Hawking somehow believes that the universe can create itself. but if there was nothing, we cannot get a something from that!
September 29th, 2010 | 10:10 am
Dear Jake Max,
The tone of your remarks suggests to me that you imagine yourself much more scientifically knowledgeable than the people who post here, probably because we are in your eyes mere “theologians”, who by definition are scientific ignoramuses.
Unfortunately for you, however, it also seems that you really are quite unfamiliar with the relevant branches of physics, as appears from your response to potkas7. I actually do theoretical research in particle physics and cosmology; so I will now set you straight about something.
You say to potkas7 that “Any theoretical model based on mathematics can be used to make testable predictions, which means it’s inevitably falsifiable.” Only someone who understands very little about the current situation in particle physics and cosmology could say such a ridiculous thing. One could have a mathematical model of what goes on inside the Schwarzschild radius of a black hole,. but such a model is not testable in practice.
It is a fact that no one in the particle physics community has at the moment even the faintest idea how M theory can be tested, not just now, but in the future. It may turn out to be testable, but that is far from certain, and in fact, a large portion of the physics community doubts it quite strongly. That is why there have been few faculty hires in that area in physics departments in recent years. It is expected by many physicists that M-theory/superstring theory will be seen more as a branch of pure mathematics than as physics in the years to come. Of course, we may get lucky and find a way to test it; but no one is holding his breath.
Consider even a much simpler theoretical idea: “grand unification”, one of my areas of expertise. (I wrote the article on Grand Unified Theories for the Encyclopedia of Physics.) Most of the phenomena predicted by grand unified theories lie far beyond the range that is accessible to man-made experiments. There are a few things we MIGHT be fortunate enough to see experimentally (proton decay, particles called “gauginos” at the LHC) that could allow us to test grand unified theories, but it is more than merely possible, in the view of experts, that we shall NOT see these particular things. So the likelihood is high that grand unified theories will remain untestable (neither falsifiable nor conformable), despite the fact that most theorists think the basic idea is correct. I do not say this with any satisfaction. Quite the reverse, since it is a field I have done much of my research in.
Your comment that “Hawking doesn’t need to be theologian to make the simple remark that we no longer need to invoke God to explain the existence of our universe”, is equally unthinking. The question whether we need to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe is a philosophical question, not a physics question. Hawking himself said as much in his earlier book “A Brief History of Time”. So Hawking may not have to be a theologian to make his “simple statement”, but he needs to be a philosopher or at least aware of philosophical ideas and arguments. And that is precisely Martin Rees’s point.
Atheists, no matter how uninformed about science they may actually be, have an annoying habit of descending upon religious websites to bring scientific enlightenment to the ignorant backwoodsmen they imagine to be there. Very frequently, these Prometheuses simply embarrass themselves by finding out, too late, that they are actually speaking to people who know far more about science
than they do.
September 29th, 2010 | 10:46 am
Bret, back when the world was considered flat (and yes, I’m quite aware that was before Christianity) there was the question, “Is there an edge, or does it go on forever?” Only once the assumption of a flat Earth was thrown out was the true answer discernible – “Neither.”
Now, the question of “the origin of the Universe” is, as Dr. Barr points out, well outside human experience. Why should we expect human intuition to be any kind of reliable guide? It’s been regularly and spectacularly wrong before (e.g. geocentrism, continental drift, evolution, relativity, quantum mechanics).
The best answer we could have right now is “I dunno.” Hawking is quite correct that some models don’t need a God, and so assertions that God is the only possibility are wrong. That doesn’t disprove God, only the assertion of necessity.
I strongly suspect that, if and when somebody has the right insight to make sense of cosmological origins, it will be just as big a counterintuitive surprise as the other examples I listed above.
September 29th, 2010 | 3:06 pm
@Steven M. Barr
As I was scrolling down to the bottom of the comments to respond to Jake Max I came upon your reply to his snarky remarks. Thank-you, I couldn’t have said it better.
September 30th, 2010 | 2:26 am
Ray Ingles: It’s not a matter of “human intuition”, as you put it. It’s a matter of basic logic. If Hawking is asserting that the universe can “create itself ”, sorry, but this is a completely nonsensical statement.
Nothing can create itself. we know this on an a priori basis. for something to be able to create itself, would mean that it would have to exist prior to itself! Obviously, this makes no sense whatsoever. This is different than saying God is necessary, or not necesary for the universe to exist.
September 30th, 2010 | 10:45 am
“Create itself” is indeed impossible, based not on outside assumptions, philosophical constructs, or religious beliefs, but on the meanings of the words “create” and “itself.”
Only by tweaking the meanings of either or both of the words could it possibly be brought into the realm of coherence, but then it wouldn’t be the same idea anymore.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact