Yep. My response exactly. He is an old high school friend. Was pretty smart if I remember correctly, but other than facebook I haven’t talked to him since graduation.
I’m beyond baffled at these people, I’m beginning to get louvered.
Not in the context of these discussions, it isn’t. It’s fine to have your own personal definitions for things, but it’s not realistic to expect that any significant number of people are using the word “God” to mean “basic physic principle with no intelligence or personality attached.”. If you’re going to define it so broadly, then of course there’s a God, but you haven’t stated anything meaningful, because you’ve just extended the meaning of the word to cover everything.
If you’re right about these two reasons, that’s pretty intellectually damning, for a scientist. Nobody’s opinion, neither his wife’s nor believers’, should be relevant.
That’s right, TimeWinder…feel the Zen. God covers everything. We are all one. We are all god.
But seriously, I do get Engywook’s point. I think that one of the things Hawkins said was holding him back from declaring there is no God was the idea of there being no ‘beginning’. A ‘beginning’ seemed to affirm god…if the laws of the universe is and always was, then there is no need to place a ‘god’ at the beginning to set things off. I don’t think Engywook is saying that ‘god is everything’ I think Engywook is saying that the ‘beginning’ is God. (I mean, for the sake of argument…I don’t mean to actually speak for Engywook)
Umm, I’m nervous because I think I may have just confused myself trying to understand things a smidge over my head. I will link to an article* that I read that is helping me to understand better.
*link goes to christian website. I am not endorsing any christianity ideas or religious ideas, just trying to make a point.
But I’d like to see a cite for the original claim. My understanding was that Hawking used “God” in a metaphorical sense, more akin to Pantheism than anything else.
It sounds like you’ve got Engywook’s point, but not TimeWinder’s.
The thing with “uncaused cause” is, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that god is whatever the uncaused cause is, even if that is a law of gravity. Then say that god is sentient, omnibenevolent, omniscient etc.
It’s like the classic “god is love” analogy, and then saying “Do you not believe that love exists?”.
It’s not true to say that Hawking has actually proved there’s a god by finding a first cause. As that first cause has none of the properties usually ascribed to god, he has removed a key gap in which some believe god is necessary.
The coverage of this has been appallingly bad. All the headlines I’ve seen, including this thread’s, have misstated Hawking’s positions, relative to his quotes in the stories.
As far as I can see from the quotes (old and new), Hawking never said there was a Creator God, nor has he now said there isn’t. Nor has he really reversed his prior position.
My understanding is that he had previously said a CG was not incompatible with leading physics theories; now he’s said a CG is not required. Those are very different, and far less audacious, statements than have been attributed to him in headlines.
In this article, (titled ‘Disinformation’, ha) the quote is **“God didn’t create the universe - it was actually a result of the inevitable laws of physics” **
It is sketchy as hell, how they come up with that quote. You can see that his new book is not quoted directly to get that quote.
Again, my bad: I copied the headline from a news article and should really have put it in speech marks.
I’m aware that they’ve misstated his position here, and also taken the opportunity to misstate what he’s said in the past.
All of which obscures the point that Hawking and the chap who co-wrote the book are apparently trying to make. It seems they believe they’re on to something with philosophical implications, but I’m not getting a very clear picture from the news reports.
Actually there is an option that always gets left out of these discussions. That option is that whatever came before this universe was not causal. There may be no first cause.
We know the laws of physics go back to the Big Bang. We have no clue what happened before that and we have no reason to assume that the Big Bang was caused because we have no reason to assume that whatever (if anything) existed before the Big Bang followed causal rules.
Got a cite? It’s been a while since I read it, but as I recall all his most expansive references were open to interpretations (of the word “God”) akin to those used by Einstein, which Hawking himself later explained,
More direct references to a Creator God in A Brief History of Time (as found online) said things like,
and,
“One could imagine” and “we could suppose” are hardly clear statements of necessity.
Fair enough; I remember coming away with an impression of a stronger stance - but it’s a long time since I read it (how old is it now? 15 years or so?). That’s a* long* way from his current position as recently reported, though.
I really should pick up his latest book.
I’m sure I remember him saying that God was necessary in that book. Memory can play tricks, I guess. I recall a section where he discusses how scientists have no answer to the “why” of the Big Bang and that God was the only explanation they had (in absence of an actual explanation). You’ve made me want to go read the book again, now!
