Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

[IndianaGreen]

Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

• Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims
• Professor had previously referred to 'mind of God'

Adam Gabbatt The Guardian, Thursday 2 September 2010

God did not create the universe, the man who is arguably Britain's most famous living scientist says in a forthcoming book.

In the new work, 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.

In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is "not necessary".

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 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.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator

[David Zephyr]

1. Thanks for this fascinating article and link!

K&R.

[skids]

2. Must be why the Flying Spaghetti Monster just floats there. n/t

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Why didn't a big bang happen last month, or last year, who put

the limits on the big bang meter, who in their right mind could believe that everything came out of nothing? Mysterious indeed.

[rurallib]

5. who knows if this is the first and only big bang

this could be the trillionth iteration

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. Or it is a figment of your imagination, a mean trick played upon the

world by those who misinterpreted what they see through their tiny little eyepieces or radio telescopes.

[Occulus]

18. They depend on math.

Once true, always true. No god or spiritual force required or desired.

[Orrex]

19. So you're putting your intuitive guesswork up against hard data and observation?

I'll take the verifiable data, thanks.

You refer condescendingly to their "tiny little eyepieces or radio telescopes." I'm curious to learn what advanced, universe-spanning device has given you a superior sperspective.

[Orrex]

20. Sperspective?

sWhoops.

[14thColony]

12. It's entirely possible they did

Spawning new universes each time. Perhaps hundreds in the time it's taken me to type this. According to one hypothesis big bangs are merely the other side of black holes (so-called white holes). But since a universe can't be created in a universe, it's unlikely we'll see another big bang create our own universe since our own universe is already here.

[Trajan]

4. William Lane Craig is gonna be mighty upset ....

Yet, even as a lay person, I am of the mind that the universe was never 'created' per se, and has always existed in some form, even prior to the BBE ...

[gtar100]

6. Well there you go! The word is in.

Finally we can put that question behind us.

[chollybocker]

7. But... what if Mr. Hawking IS God.

Then he's just pulling our legs.

;)

[Davis_X_Machina]

8. It doesn't matter whether you believe in God...

...so long as he-she-it believes in you.

Graffiti from 1980's theology department bathroom:

Kung: "Gott Existiert?"
"Ach, sowieso -- Kung existiert." Gott

[Festivito]

9. And, from where came the law of gravity, Mr. Hawking?

The big bong?

Just because you discover and earlier egg, it does not mean there is no even earlier chicken yet to be found.

Hopefully the book will do a better job of explaining than some article about it.

[no limit]

11. What makes you think the earlier chicken is God?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

13. Red beans and rice is more apt to be God around these parts. n'/t

[Festivito]

15. Who said it was, 'cept you.

There could be a long string of such revelations describing everything we know before the end comes clear, if it ever does.

[mike r]

14. Mlodinow has an interesting bio:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~len/bio.html

In 1981 I received my Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley. My advisor was Eyvind Wichmann, who worked on axiomatic quantum field theory... In 1985 I was bitten by the Hollywood bug and moved back to Los Angeles with $6000, a screenplay in my pocket, and no job. I managed to sell my first script six months later. At the time I had $110 left in the bank. Over the next several years I wrote for television series such as: Hunter, MacGyver, Star Trek: the Next Generation, and the comedy series Night Court, as well as for many others...

[RagAss]

16. I knew it.....It was Joe Pesci all along.

[mike r]

17. What Hawking actually says (book excerpt on WSJ)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html

SEPTEMBER 4, 2010
Why God Did Not Create the Universe
There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required
By STEPHEN HAWKING And LEONARD MLODINOW

...Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that the universe is not just a conglomeration of objects each going its own way. Everything in the universe follows laws, without exception. Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not "arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature." Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was "created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition." The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.

...The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints, not just on our environment, but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves. The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of human life, but also the characteristics of our entire universe — and its laws. They appear to have a design that is both tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. The tale of how the primordial universe of hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium evolved to a universe harboring at least one world with intelligent life like us is a tale of many chapters... By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner... Also, most of the fundamental constants appearing in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life... If one assumes that a few hundred million years in stable orbit is necessary for planetary life to evolve, the number of space dimensions is also fixed by our existence. That is because, according to the laws of gravity, it is only in three dimensions that stable elliptical orbits are possible...

The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way. Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design."

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat — now the entire observable universe — is just one of many. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.