Stephen Hawking upset a lot of religious folk this week when he declared that God was unnecessary for the creation of the universe. This has been taken by many as a statement that God does not exist.
I was raised in a religious family, but I have never been particularly under the impression that any divinity was required for existence. One can accept that scientific principles rule the physical world and still believe in God. If nothing else, one might believe that the scientific principles which Hawking believes so strongly in were themselves put into place by God.
If you insist that God be scientifically proven, you're going to be disappointed. But it is not in the nature of all things to have scientific proof.
It’s all a little silly because (from what I heard on the radio) Hawking didn’t really state anything that hasn’t been accepted scientific dogma for decades now. I think some of the to-do reflects a lack of understanding of physics and how systems can self-organize. I keep seeing statements like Ray Comfort’s:
“It is embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing. Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn’t nothing, it was something — a very intelligent creative power of some sort.”
But lots of systems can organize themselves into complicated patterns based on a set of rules for interacting with their neighbors and some statistics. No guiding entity is required. The debate is where the rules themselves came from. I haven’t read Hawking’s book so I don’t know if he makes any claims in that regard, but I seriously doubt it.
Did anyone really believe that Stephen Hawking was a religious man? I think people are just being offended to be offended.
I listen once in a while to a not-so-bad religious station that follows the premise the Bible is accurate and one of the major tenets is Intelligent Design. Go figure. By their proof of ID is implied God is the creator. The problem with any argument along this line is, okay, there might be a design and order to the universe, but what proof is there that states God did it? None. It’s a simple case of presenting some kind of fact and saying my worshipful diety was the creator. Sounds like proselytizing to me. And – Stephen Hawking can accept what he wishes as much as you and I. For my own self, that of the Norse religion is far more interesting with Ymir, Authumla, & Yggdrasil.
If Mr. Hawkings did say such an outlandishly narrow-minded statement, I can have only two comments:
i) It is pretty typical of the breathtakingly arrogant intolerance of scientists in the modern world, people the likes of Newton and Einstein would’nt have ever given the time of day.
ii) When Stephen Hawkings dies, I want his gall.
Narrow-minded! Ever tried getting you head around string theory? To call Stephen Hawking narrow minded is the best joke I’ve heard in the last two thousand years, the last one was over a thousand pages long.
It ended with, Revelation 22:20-21 He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come Lord, Jesus.The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen suckers, get it. “I am coming soon.” two thousand years later, coming soon! jeez talk about slow.