Hawking still making news.. haunting creationism.

[Dell]

Looks like Steven Hawking's last book "Brief Answers to Big Questions," is gaining some media attention of late.

He writes about the existence of God...

Black holes, like the universe before the Big Bang, condense into a singularity. In this ultra-packed point of mass, gravity is so strong that it distorts time as well as light and space. Simply put, in the depths of a black hole, time does not exist.

Because the universe also began as a singularity, time itself could not have existed before the Big Bang. Hawking's answer, then, to what happened before the Big Bang is, "there was no time before the Big Bang."

"We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in," Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Er, a transcendent deity is beyond time so that's not a good argument. But physicists are not theologians. (One can be both, but that's rarer these days.)

 

[Shad]

Er, a transcendent deity is beyond time so that's not a good argument

This is not a good argument either as it merely uses "magic" to avoid issues.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

This is not a good argument either as it merely uses "magic" to avoid issues.

No, it's just logical. That deity is transcendent of the physical universe is a very old teaching and those wanting to argue against it are going to have find a better argument.

 

[Shad]

No, it's just logical. That deity is transcendent of the physical universe is a very old teaching and those wanting to argue against it are going to have find a better argument.

Without time things are static ergo not logical at all.

Sure it is an old teaching. One which predates modern physics and has no answer to beside repeating the claim.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Without time things are static ergo not logical at all.

Sure it is an old teaching. One which predates modern physics and has no answer to beside repeating the claim.

That doesn't disprove God, especially not God in Hinduism, for example.

 

[Shad]

That doesn't disprove God, especially not God in Hinduism, for example.

It just renders one argument for God as moot along with the claimed "attribute"

Could you be specific about what you are referring to about God in Hinduism? I know very little about Hinduism itself. Thanks

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

It just renders one argument for God as moot along with the claimed "attribute"

Could you be specific about what you are referring to about God in Hinduism? I know very little about Hinduism itself. Thanks

Basically Brahman, the ultimate reality underlying all that exists or God, goes through different phases over eons throughout all eternity. The universe is repeatedly manifested and unmanifested. The manifested or created universe that we are existing physically in now is the phase of Brahman while it has differentiated itself. Other ways of looking at it metaphorically are that Brahman has veiled itself or created an illusion of separation and that this is a sort of grand play for Braham to know itself. But when Brahman is in its unmanifested/created state, it is viewed as static and unchanging -there is no time. That unmanifest state (as it was "before" the Big Bang) is the true state of Brahman unhidden by Maya (illusion if seperation).

Brahman - Wikipedia

So you saying that without time, everything is static somehow disproves God, that is incorrect.

 

[Sunstone]

Hawking's argument, if true, reduces god -- any god -- to an unnecessary hypothesis.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Time as we know it in this universe would of course only exist in this universe. Should there be other universes, it seems to stand that time in some form of measurement would also exist.
For someone who took great stretches of creative liberty in trying to explain aliens and then explaining even his approach was limited, he seems to have a rather anthropocentric approach to this (which he also had in his warning that aliens may come to plunder and colonize).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Hawking's argument, if true, reduces god -- any god -- to an unnecessary hypothesis.

What makes me hesitant to say it's correct is the simple fact we have no idea what, if anything, is beyond this universe. Myself, I tend to lean towards the thinking we used to think there was one planet, one solar system, and one galaxy, but we know today those are all wrong so should we stop at the assumption there is one universe?

 

[Sunstone]

What makes me hesitant to say it's correct is the simple fact we have no idea what, if anything, is beyond this universe. Myself, I tend to lean towards the thinking we used to think there was one planet, one solar system, and one galaxy, but we know today those are all wrong so should we stop at the assumption there is one universe?

Even if there is more than one universe. Even if there is a god or gods, Hawking's idea, if true, would reduce the notion of a god or gods as creators to an unnecessary hypothesis.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Even if there is more than one universe. Even if there is a god or gods, Hawking's idea, if true, would reduce the notion of a god or gods as creators to an unnecessary hypothesis.

Ugh. Now I'm stuck trying to recall what Hawking was discussing when he said science has made god unnecessary. Which even without this newer idea from Hawking (assuming he was discussing something else in what I'm trying to recall), we know so much about the natural world now that a creator god of sorts is pretty much just not needed to explain the universe - atomic and chemical reactions especially are known for doing strange things.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Looks like Steven Hawking's last book "Brief Answers to Big Questions," is gaining some media attention of late.

He writes about the existence of God...

Black holes, like the universe before the Big Bang, condense into a singularity. In this ultra-packed point of mass, gravity is so strong that it distorts time as well as light and space. Simply put, in the depths of a black hole, time does not exist.

Because the universe also began as a singularity, time itself could not have existed before the Big Bang. Hawking's answer, then, to what happened before the Big Bang is, "there was no time before the Big Bang."

"We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in," Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

It might be true that in the depths of a black hole there is no time, be we exist in time, alongside many black holes.
So clearely the lack of ime in one space does not affect time in another.
The same would be true in a multiverse. Time might start for an individual universe with a big bang, but there is no reson to believe that all universes started in that same moment/ event.
I do not think that we yet understand the full implications of time except perhaps in the limited field of our own universe.

 

[Native]

"We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in," Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

This is just modern speculative nonsense. Ancient Myths of Creation speaks of an eternal stage of creation in where everything is eternally formed, dissolved and re-formed.

 

[Woberts]

This is just modern speculative nonsense. Ancient Myths of Creation speaks of an eternal stage of creation in where everything is eternally formed, dissolved and re-formed.

Emphasis mine.

 

[leroy]

This is not a good argument either as it merely uses "magic" to avoid issues.

Well to say that the universe came from nothing is worst than magic.

 

[Native]

Emphasis mine.

Meaning what?

 

[Woberts]

Well to say that the universe came from nothing is worst than magic.

Not if there is evidence supporting it.

 

[leroy]

Hawking's argument, if true, reduces god -- any god -- to an unnecessary hypothesis.

I'll say that his answer gives comfort to theist.

If the alternative to a God that created the universe is "nothing" created the universe. One can confidently say that believing in God is the most readreason position