Whatever curious and interesting subject strikes my fancy, be it silly or serious, gets posted for your reading pleasure.

Saturday 1 August 2015

A Pathetic Demise to a Brilliant Career?

(Post originally published September 5, 2003)


 Recently, the famous theoretical physicist Steven Hawking announced he had changed his mind about the existence of God and claims in so many words that He does not exist.

Before I wrote a counterargument to his theory, of course, I would have to read what his theories were in the first place, so I discovered the following Press Release published by Reuters and posted on Yahoo news: 




  “By Michael Holden Michael Holden – Thu Sep 2, 9:08 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"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, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.

(Editing by Steve Addison)”



Obviously, this Press Release was one big pot-boiling promotion tactic to raise awareness of his new book “The Grand Design”. Of course, one should read his book to find out exactly what he says, however the few quotations taken from Hawking displays this book presents seriously flawed ideas.

As you can see from the article above, there is a reason Hawking is called a “theoretical physicist”, he cannot provide proof for his arguments, and uses alternative theories to explain why there need not be a God to set the universe in motion.

I find his statement “because there is a Law of Gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing” a complete paradox. The term “Law” alone suggests a great Mind was at work, an Authority creates a law and sets it in motion. How can there be “Spontaneous Creation”? After all , it is an Action, an action does not come from Nothing. Nothing begets nothing. And even Hawking must use the word “creation”, which means a powerful entity had to devise all the building blocks of the universe.

The fact we can describe or compute everything we have discovered on earth and in the universe using numbers and complicated mathematical equations, including the processes of quantum physics, displays a great Mind set everything into motion. Line up zeros for as many aeons as you can, and you still end up with 0. Take the Binary Code, it will not work without 1 added. What is Zero, and Who is the One? God and His Creation. Without Him, there is nothing, not even a zero.

Hawking previously wrote before his atheistic theory “If we discover a complete theory, (for the existence of the universe) it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God." (I might add, he could read his Bible once in awhile if he really wanted to know.)

He was bound to fail when attempting to find this “complete theory” for no one can discover how God created the universe from Nothing simply by his Omnipotent Will Power: there is obviously no way we can find physical evidence for how this could come about except for “Let there be...” as Genesis displays. Since human reason will never be able to “triumph” as he predicted in this instance, Hawking came up with the alternative, and mind-numbing, paradox: “it is not necessary to believe God set the Big Bang in motion”, i.e. if there is a God, we don't have to believe He did anything, we can just continue to study the origins of the universe, talk about the Big Bang, but bury our heads in the sand and not worry about where , how or why it happened. A real triumph for human reasoning and the scientific process.

It is sad to see a brilliant mind and a lifetime of studying physics end up with this “Blind Man’s Theory”. The simplicity of God's complex creation did not satisfy Hawking, who was more interested in seeing puny human reasoning triumph and decided to play God himself with his intellectual prowess. It is a mistake many men make when they eliminate God from their equations and insert their own flawed reasoning.

***
 
Like my blog, you will LOVE my books!



 



No comments:

Post a Comment