Stephen Hawking: Big Bang an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics

[|iR|Focalor]

Science has revealed nothing in comparison  to what is self-evident.

Consider this: Science IS that which is self-evident.

Apparently your definition of "self-evident" is biased. It is completely self-evident that helium weighs less than oxygen. It is completely self-evident that helium has a different density than oxygen. It is completely self-evident that the reason why someones voice would change from exhaling helium would be because of the different properties the helium contains which makes the vocal folds vibrate at quicker speeds. All scientific discoveries and technological advancements have always been completely self-evident to those who observed their functioning through intelligent research.

Science can't research or observe in regards to the existence of any deity, ghost, or spirit. (Although science has disproved and does disprove some claims that some religions make, but that is another topic.) This can have a few different explanations.

1. There is no god or gods, thus there is nothing to research and observe.

2. We do not yet possess the combination of to-be-discovered technologies in order to successfully research and observe God, but one day we will.

3. We will never be able to possess the combination of to-be-discovered technologies in order to successfully research and observe God because the elements necessary to do so do not and/or can not exist on this planet or universe or state of consciousness.

As I stated in #3, perhaps there is an alternate state of consciousness than can never be attained by any means found in the natural universe. Herein lies the area where religion finds itself. Religion claims to know that which by means of research and observation can never become self-evident.

Given that science has concrete and true laws about how things function and interact within our atmosphere, it can disprove stories of magic and miracles which religions believe to be true without any visible evidence of these things ever having taken place at all. Given that, I see no reason why science should waste it's time any further trying to disprove anything more about religion that makes claims which go against any of the established laws of physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, etc etc etc etc etc.

SO....

I'm not a fucking scientist and I can figure this out. Why in the hell are people like Stephen Hawking wasting their precious time mentioning something as ludicrous as the name of God when modern aircraft engineers are level-headed enough to disregard thoughts of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer when designing jets?

[yahoo]

Science can't research or observe in regards to the existence of any deity, ghost, or spirit. (Although science has disproved and does disprove some claims that some religions make, but that is another topic.) This can have a few different explanations.

Actually there were some reearch regarding paranormals- eg. ghost and all had been explained by science. Yet still there are still a lot of people who who wont accept the findings and continue to believe in such. I do think that people just need to be assured that there is such thing as after-life and things wont end with death.
Prolly man just can't accept the fact that sooner or later things will end.

[Sgt. Dick]

Stephen Hawking: Big Bang - sounds like he got his chair to close to the staircase.

[ReCycled]

And the beat goes on....

London, England (CNN) -- Religious leaders in Britain on Friday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe.

But the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, told the Times that "physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."
He added: "Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence."

Williams' comments were supported by leaders from across the religious spectrum in Britain. Writing in the Times, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being."

The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, added: "I would totally endorse what the Chief Rabbi said so eloquently about the relationship between religion and science."

Ibrahim Mogra, an imam and committee chairman at the Muslim Council of Britain, was also quoted by the Times as saying: "If we look at the Universe and all that has been created, it indicates that somebody has been here to bring it into existence. That somebody is the almighty conqueror."

Hawking was also accused of "missing the point" by colleagues at the University of Cambridge in England.

"The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing," said Denis Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

"Hawking's god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge.

"Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative," he added.

Fraser Watts, an Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science, said that it's not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God.

"A creator God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe, and ... it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not. That view is not undermined by what Hawking has said."

So kind of in a nutshell, belief that there is a God and he is responsible for everything, is a given and you can take it from there Poor befuddled Mr Hawking had to invent some kind of scenario to cover the "gap" that occured sometime around the first few nanoseconds of the universe.

link: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/03/hawking.god.universe.criticisms/index.html?hpt=T2

[QwazyWabbit]

Given that science has concrete and true laws about how things function and interact within our atmosphere, it can disprove stories of magic and miracles which religions believe to be true without any visible evidence of these things ever having taken place at all. Given that, I see no reason why science should waste it's time any further trying to disprove anything more about religion that makes claims which go against any of the established laws of physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, etc etc etc etc etc.

SO....

I'm not a fucking scientist and I can figure this out. Why in the hell are people like Stephen Hawking wasting their precious time mentioning something as ludicrous as the name of God when modern aircraft engineers are level-headed enough to disregard thoughts of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer when designing jets?

It's not so much a waste of time as it is an affirmation of something that was "self-evident" when the big bang was first postulated but science was unwilling to affirm. They wimped out. Man always needs a prime mover, the cause of all actions. It's innate in our brains because we are temporal and we see cause-and-effect every day, therefore there must be a primary cause of the universe. This is the self-evidence that people like reaper can't let go of. Science wimped out by saying the prime cause of the big bang was unknowable, leaving room for religion and God in the "gaps". Hawking is correcting that mindset by saying the fundamental causality is chaos itself.

[Arm0r]

 'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

Very VERY interesting discussion, watched the whole thing and wanted to watch more at the end....this led to me watching 4 hours worth of this kind of stuff    thanks for the spark Quadz, absolutely fascinating.

[Chocobo Joe]

Geez, another link to that Lawrence Krauss speech? I've watched that video about three times already...

[quadz]

Geez, another link to that Lawrence Krauss speech? I've watched that video about three times already...

So have I, man.  So have i.

[reaper]

They wimped out. Man always needs a prime mover, the cause of all actions. It's innate in our brains because we are temporal and we see cause-and-effect every day, therefore there must be a primary cause of the universe. This is the self-evidence that people like reaper can't let go of. Science wimped out by saying the prime cause of the big bang was unknowable, leaving room for religion and God in the "gaps". Hawking is correcting that mindset by saying the fundamental causality is chaos itself.

That's not why I consider some type of god a strong possiblity.  Well..in a way it is, but the big bang theory (or any cause of the big bang) has little to do with why I believe it's a good possiblity there is a god.  Something must always exist, because if there was truly nothing, as we generally think of it, nothing can come from it.  I have no problem with something always existing, because that's the only possibility.  But yes I find it quite convenient that "nothing" forms into exactly what I would formulate given the choice.

edit:  also I'd like to add that if a cause was explained, and a more complete explanation was formed, elaborating on all the relationships between the forces, and all the calculations match up (in other words we can predict practically everything) - I still would not be sold

[|iR|Focalor]

Maybe the "nothing" you're trying to refer to never existed. If it's easy to believe that an invisible man who has always existed waved his arms and made the universe, it should be easier to believe that REAL ELEMENTS which we can physically observe have always existed and reacted with each other under specific circumstances to create life on earth.

[reaper]

That would be an accident.

[quadz]

Something must always exist, because if there was truly nothing, as we generally think of it, nothing can come from it.  I have no problem with something always existing, because that's the only possibility.

Is it not incumbent upon us to be careful when making statements like, "that's the only possibility", when such statements are based primarily on intuition, rather than on a theoretical grounding?

I'm about half way through the Stephen Hawking / Leonard Mlodinow book referenced in the subject of this thread.  So far it has succeeded in reacquainting me with the baffling degree to which quantum mechanics defies intuition.

(As much as I can be so-acquainted, understanding the ideas as I do only verbally, rather than mathematically.)



Nonetheless, it has apparently been understood for decades that quantum mechanics disallows a true vacuum.

I.e., our mammalian concept of 'nothing' is an illusion.

But yes I find it quite convenient that "nothing" forms into exactly what I would formulate given the choice.

What do you mean?  What exactly would you formulate?  Would people still have to struggle to take shits?  Would kids and infants still die of cancer?  Would you forumlate all of the blind paths of the evolutionary process, that have left 99% of every species that ever existed, extinct?  Would you formulate the same evolutionary process which has arrived at an 'eye' along multiple separate paths, and left the octopus eye without a blind spot, while the nerve fibers in our vertibrate eye pass in front of the retina, yielding a blind spot around which our own brains must compensate?

Did I mention the innocent children?

What 'exactly' would you formulate, given the choice?

How about your top ten, five, or even foremost two things you would improve about our mammalian existence, "given the choice"?





(Don't even tell me you can't think of TWO improvements in the past 14 billion years, or you are BANT.  )

[|iR|Focalor]

But yes I find it quite convenient that "nothing" forms into exactly what I would formulate given the choice.

What do you mean?  What exactly would you formulate?  Would people still have to struggle to take shits?  Would kids and infants still die of cancer?  Would you forumlate all of the blind paths of the evolutionary process, that have left 99% of every species that ever existed, extinct?  Would you formulate the same evolutionary process which has arrived at an 'eye' along multiple separate paths, and left the octopus eye without a blind spot, while the nerve fibers in our vertibrate eye pass in front of the retina, yielding a blind spot around which our own brains must compensate?

Did I mention the innocent children?

What 'exactly' would you formulate, given the choice?

How about your top ten, five, or even foremost two things you would improve about our mammalian existence, "given the choice"?





(Don't even tell me you can't think of TWO improvements in the past 14 billion years, or you are BANT.  )

Religion and science will never come to an understanding. They apparently attempt to negate each other. Religion can claim that the origins of life on earth cannot be attributed to mere "chance" because of how perfectly it all functions, and therefore MUST have been designed to do so. Yet when science points out just how imperfect the system really is, religion reaches into it's magic bag and pulls out their philosophy of "to live is to suffer", which is to say that it was quite obviously designed with flaws included for a holy purpose. That's one thing I'll never be able to wrap my head around WHY someone could allow themselves to believe that. Most of these religious texts claims that the afterlife of the believer will be a life without want, without suffering, with many rewards. That doesn't make any sense. How could imperfections and suffering through that which is "unholy" on earth lead to "holiness" in the afterlife? Why would there no longer be a need for suffering and pain as a means of purification? Why would heaven be automatically holy, and earth can only be made holy by eventual destruction with fire? Why does God feel the need to send his son as a (non)sacrifice (he lost nothing)? I suppose God really does move in mysterious ways. Or maybe he's just a sadist.

great pointless graphs!

Apparently, it's all part of God's plan!

Oh, religion.  Is there anything you can't do?

 

[reaper]

How about your top ten, five, or even foremost two things you would improve about our mammalian existence, "given the choice"?





(Don't even tell me you can't think of TWO improvements in the past 14 billion years, or you are BANT.   )

Does this mean I can't quote Mother Teresa and 2PAC without being banned?  That seems kind of messed up .

Am I allowed to explain the harmony of life, and all things, as well as compare the differences between other possible worlds?


 

Religion and science will never come to an understanding. They apparently attempt to negate each other. Religion can claim that the origins of life on earth cannot be attributed to mere "chance" because of how perfectly it all functions, and therefore MUST have been designed to do so. Yet when science points out just how imperfect the system really is, religion reaches into it's magic bag and pulls out their philosophy of "to live is to suffer", which is to say that it was quite obviously designed with flaws included for a holy purpose. That's one thing I'll never be able to wrap my head around WHY someone could allow themselves to believe that. Most of these religious texts claims that the afterlife of the believer will be a life without want, without suffering, with many rewards. That doesn't make any sense. How could imperfections and suffering through that which is "unholy" on earth lead to "holiness" in the afterlife? Why would there no longer be a need for suffering and pain as a means of purification? Why would heaven be automatically holy, and earth can only be made holy by eventual destruction with fire? Why does God feel the need to send his son as a (non)sacrifice (he lost nothing)? I suppose God really does move in mysterious ways. Or maybe he's just a sadist.

I imagine "scientists" wouldn't want to get into these lines of questioning, because you enter religions realm.  I'm sure preachers would have plenty to say about his.

[quadz]

Does this mean I can't quote Mother Teresa and 2PAC without being banned?  That seems kind of messed up .

Am I allowed to explain the harmony of life, and all things, as well as compare the differences between other possible worlds?

You can't think of TWO ways to improve on what evolution has produced?