Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has created quite a stir of late in his most recent book, The Grand Design, in which he argues that the Big Bang, which created the universe as we know it (at least according to scientists), did not require divine help.
In fact, the book sets out to contradict Issac Newton, the deeply religious founder of modern physics, who believed that God created the universe. Hawking's latest work also contradicts his earlier book, A Brief History of Time, in which Hawking seems to accept that there could have been some divine intervention involved in the creation of the universe.
However, for Hawking, recent scientific advances since this book (especially the discovery of other planets/solar systems) have helped dispel the notion that we humans, and even our solar system itself, is anything special. Instead, as scientists make more and more discoveries, we continually seem to become more and more a cosmic accident.
In his new book, Hawking explains his belief that the law of gravity is what can spur spontaneous creation, thus the Big Bang, and therefore everything that exists today.
Obviously, such statements will get some people riled up at the mere thought of them. However, the good thing about living in a democratic society is that, for the most part, free inquiry, and free choice, are both equally valued, which means that we can investigate what we want and believe what we want without risk of persecution, unlike in the past.
So what do you think? Did God create the universe? Did the cosmos create itself? Is there even a God at all? Drop a comment (you don't have to be a member) and make your opinion heard!
For more info:
The Guardian
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Comments
Hawkins is an idiot. GIve him 3 years and he'll contradict this theory.
If there is no God, how do you explain USA Today's report on medical finding that people who were prayed for (and didn"t know it) fared better than those in the same medical state who were not prayed for.
You sir, are the idiot. Why don't you try to contribute something to the advancement of the human race that could compare to Hawking's work. Oh right, you probably can't nor do you probably care. Only a fool would call a brilliant man a idiot.
There obviously is no God and anybody who thinks otherwise is simply in denial. I don't know what that person is talking about people who were prayed for fared better. Studies have proven that people who were prayed for actually fare WORSE because they think they don't have to recover naturally.
He may contradict it because of further advances made in science, but calling the person who has made some of the biggest developments in theoretical physics an idiot is idiotic in itself
Moors law states that technology will either double in power, half in size, or half in prize every 18 months, which means in the world of science, the amount that new ideas will be found is colossal now anyway!
This book doesn't contradict, merely finalises his stance, in a brief history of time, he said that there MIGHT be a god... now he's saying there isn't... that's not contradiction...
He may contradict it because of further advances made in science, but calling the person who has made some of the biggest developments in theoretical physics an idiot is idiotic in itself
Moors law states that technology will either double in power, half in size, or half in prize every 18 months, which means in the world of science, the amount that new ideas will be found is colossal now anyway!
This book doesn't contradict, merely finalises his stance, in a brief history of time, he said that there MIGHT be a god... now he's saying there isn't... that's not contradiction...
Dr William Lane Craig responds to Stephen Hawking:
http://www.rfmedia.org/blog/index.php?id=100
It is interesting to look and realize how our belief systems can affect our thought. Even a young child who has been told by another that there is no Santa Claus, will become angry and willing to fight to defend their belief that there is indeed a Santa Claus. This behavior also applies to the belief that there is a God, which is something learned, taught in churches. When we stand up for what we believe in, we may not want to stand to tall. We could be wrong, or we may get shot. Best advise is to remain open-minded.
Well there is a creator. The infinite thought of creation and in this thought includes free will. What's faster than the speed of light? I believe it is is THOUGHT. Maybe our minds our more powerful than we can even began to realize. Could it be true; Hey... It's just a thought.
haha, nice joke ;)
what you want is neotic sciences... or to read the lost symbol by dan brown... but probably neotic science (the theory that thoughts can interact with the environment around it) :)
... might have more luck if you looked up "Noetic" instead of neotic. Just a thought ;-)
Maybe all of creation is just a dream in an infinite mind, and was never 'created' physically at all.
Maybe my mind created this discussion to air the underlying differences between the world view that all was brought into being by some greater entity, vs the emerging science of how we create the world ourselves.
Maybe I needed a God to blame it all on at first, but grew up enough to start taking responsibility for the world I've created myself.
Who invented the car? There must be somebody right!
How the car made of? Mostly, from the metal.
Can metals become the car without human involved? Of course No.
Do you need physic and math when you design a car? The answer is yes.
Can a car moves from point A to point B without human involve?
This is the same thing the universe. Look at our solar system.
Why the sun not moving and spin around by itseft?
Why earth spin around itseft constanously?
Why earth circle around the sun constanously?
Who created it? There must somebody created it. That person is a genius and very smart in physic and math.
I completely agree with you!!! Can we say there is no wind just because we don't see it? The ultimate evidence of existence of the CREATOR is the creation itself. We see his footsteps everywhere whether we see it or not.!! There is a huge gap between science and religion, because of people started mis-using both!! If Science say that the religion completely based on faith not by evidence, then who saw the Big-bang theory?? How come all these scientists trying to convince them and others that there was a big-bang theory and spending millions to prove what they belive!!
Nothing can exists on its own , there must be a starting point for everything...that is GOD himself!!
Well, the sun IS moving actually, being sucked into a black hole in the middle of our milky way
The earth spins around itself constantly because of a collision with a planet called Thea billions of years ago, which incidently created the moon
The earth circles the sun due to gravity, and gravitational orbits, with electromagnetic repulsion
A big bang created it...
And if you're looking for a creator, who created the creator, and who created them? and them?
like the famous saying who will guard the guards...
God is love. Gravity is attraction. Gravity is love. God is gravity. God created the universe.
Anonymous you are an idiot who can't spell let alone understand an intelligent thought.
For everything that exist there is a purpose, for every purpose a thought, for every thought intelligence set in potion by a creator; who the creator is will always be a debatable topic with each of us to accept or reject God as self quintessential creator of an orderly universe. To reject God's creativeness is to accept that all existence occurred without thought or purpose and in essence is only a mirage. For me, I look at my Wife, My children and grand children and believe me; they are no mirage.
Albert Allen
Albert, while I love your view on all of reality not being a mirage, as that's what I also think, I also think that it was pure luck we got here, many events that should have ended our planet kept it going.
Also the orderly universe is not strictly true, while is was for the first moment ever in time, as hawking said in his first book, the disorder of the universe is increasing, the thermodynamical arrow of time...
and there might not be a purpose, as if every thought was set into us by a creator, why should we doubt him? why should he not reveal himself to us, instead of letting us go down a wrong path and never come back... doesn't he love us? if so, why does he condone us to an eternity in hell by letting us believe the more rational opinion!
At first, there was a god for everything. A thunder, the Earth and of course the Sungod in the daylight sky. Somewhere along the way, these supernatural things transformed. They became real, physical events, subject to causality and laws. And the gods diminished in power and numbers. The last god, has to be a one-for-all kinda god. But wait. Does he make the rain? Or the earth it poures onto? Or is he the star that we call sun? These things happen without his permission. Why couldn't a universe too...?
will definitely read his new book
Did God create the universe? No
Did the cosmos create itself? Yes
Is there even a God at all? No
I don't need Stephen Hawking to tell me these things, but I do apprieciate him using his popularity and fame (if you can call it that) to advance secular humanist ideals.
God has been dead for a long time. Long live human kind.
You are lost!. God exist and yes He created the universe. I agree what Hawking said about gravity = power of God.
Gravity = the power of god? Gravity = the force generated when particles of mass 0 and spin two are swapped between bodies! I'm 13 and I know that!
Stay lost. Millions of people have been praying for peace for hundreds of years. Either God is not home, or he is not listening. Then, of course, maybe he does not exist at all.
If there is a god that created it all, I suspect he/she is nothing like any of the supposed gods humans have come to worship over the last few thousand years. That being said, it is probably also safe to say that this individual does not care who we are or whether we are in worship or not. So let's drop religion and all the harmful division it brings us and stick to the science and see where that takes us.
Honestly, there is no one person that has the answer. There is no God greater than the opinoin of man, himself. Balance is what it is all about. There are no right or wrong answers. Perhaps, God was inspired by the thought of man to create all creatures great and small. Perhaps, the uinverse had a big random bang that began life in many universes.
The one thing I know to be true is that no matter what you believe, this universe is amazing and awsome.
Hawking's statements are not news to many in the world. It is a shame that the world is still controlled by religious people and their closed minds. Religion is the bane of modern society, yet many people are afraid to expess their views because of the impact it will have on their social and economic future. As the human race evolves further, belief in religion will slowly diminish and fade away. It is actually sad to see so many people waste their limited time on this earth wrapped up in stoneage thinking. Life is awesome...religion not. Evolve!
Why must their be a starting point?
The universe is expanding, so it's assumed there's a starting point, or else it would be growing and shrinking randomly, or somehow we'd be so repulsive everything fled in fear of us :)
Only a fool would deny the existence of God when all the evidence is before our eyes.
and what evidence is that then? After 13 years of first hand experience and reading a brief history of time, I'm quite sure that there is no hard evidence...
Are you blinded by a belief?
Oh please, of course, there is no God. If a person gets well, then they get well (with or without praying). It's no surprise to most that the most God*fearing* individuals live in the southern US. They need faith since brainpower was not awarded to their masses and most are republicans (there's more proof).
we can't compare universe with God, because universes created created in billions of years ago,
where as god created by humans only in few hundred years ago. where was god before humans
do you think god is only for humans, what about other species.there is no miracle in the universe
everything based on science and discovery.from 1st century to 21st century concept of god is same
but in science there is a vast development.
The very use of the word 'God' can play with one's mind since most of have have preconceived notions.
Now, think of the creation of the universe without using the God... what can you see? Tremendous power was needed for the creation. So indeed there was some power which made these things like the Big Bang happen, but we don't have to call it 'God'.
If that power was available and working then, where is it now? Power is energy, and energy can't be destroyed or created... so it's somewhere around us. And we're only trying to harness that energy to make it for us, just about the same way we've designed the car to work with gasoline.
the energy we are using, regardless of the form it takes (ie petrol, wind, heat, motion) has simply been changing states from whatever it started out as at time=0. as i understand it, the universe has been expanding since then, and its expanded quite a bit. all of this energy has been spread throughout the cosmos, or rather it has formed large clumps that we refer to as galaxies, which are made of a motley combination of matter and energy (which as it turns out are interchangeable). so this energy is indeed somewhere around us. in fact, we are made up of an insignificantly small proportion. the rest is simply spread very thinly throughtout the rest of 'space'
While I may not know where everything in the universe came from, I do know that I want to read this book when it comes out.
OK, not only is this a variation of moors law, of course he'll keep contradicting himself, science is advancing so fast, new theories are being summarised, but in this circumstance he isn't contradicting himself! In a brief history of time, he mentioned the possibility of divine intervention, but he also mentioned that it could happen on it's own! He's now confirming an idea that he made before!
But there was also exceptional amounts of power before the universe started, probably (just hazarding a guess here) the singularity that was before the big bang had unfathomly high amounts of gravity, which could have created the big bang
Think of some other things to prove that god doesn't exist... number one... you... as said by comedian dara o'brian "This is the same man who made mountain tops and sunsets, what sort of shit day was he having when he made you"
Two... As hawking shows... the universe could have created itself
Three... God would have tried to make it apparent that he is real, why bother testing our faith in him, when he could easily destroy us
Four... say there are aliens... god would have to be god to those aliens as well, which sounds plausible, until you remember all of the bible/torah/quran has been written on earth, and Jesus showed up here too!
And lastly, if you don't like the ideas in this book... don't read it...
The universe is imperfect, we live is a godless universe, atomistic and without any divine intervention, but I am not atheist nor agnostic. I consider myself totally atheist to a creator of the universe or multiverse in which we live, however I consider myself a theist about God or an entity that is out of the universe is not the creator of it and has nothing to do with the cosmos, not interacts directly with the cosmos and is free of all constraints and unaffected, beyond space and time, omnipotent and omniscient in that I can believe.
But his own decision theistic, agnostic or atheist.
But I consider myself a practical atheist, as I have no news of an entity beyond the universe, I can only have faith, but not a faith or religious legacy, but by the feeling of being protected, I am consoled by the truth, therefore I am theist in this regard. Greetings
We are all made from the same material as stars. The same material the universe, and life is made of. Hawkins may be right scientifically, but,......there is still the supernatural element, and i'm not talking about God.
Well, I once met a person whose view, though contradicts mine, I consider rational. He believe that the universe did not creat itself. There must be a CREATOR. WHOEVER or WHATEVER created the universe, is WHO or WHAT he call GOD. He does not believe in any of the world religions, because, as he claimed, the God they portray is not the CREATOR! One fact we normally ignore, and I do not know why, is that at any point in time there is a limitation to what can be scientifically proven. There was a time when atoms did not exist to the best knowledge of the people living in that epoch. Now we know such belief was wrong. There was a time when we did not know that there are planets and galaxies out there. There was a time when we did not know that the earth has a core. It was not that there was no science then. But that the level of scientific advancement was not sophisticated enough to prove that; atoms do exist; there are planets and galaxies; or that the earth has a core . Would it then be rational to just assume something does not exist simply because now we can not prove its existence scientifically? Why, instead, can't we attribute our failure to prove the existence of God scientifically to the deficiency of the tools of science we have today? That one day science will develop the necessary tools to carry such experiments, is where I stand. Today, our knowledge of the universe is highly insignificant compared to what we do not know. Why then are we in a hurry to conclude that there is no God, when we have so much of this universe left for us to learn? It is like concluding that a certain boy is not the son of a certain man, without knowing if the man has sons or not or how many sons such man has! Such approach can hardly be called scientific. But the irony of it is that we still address the people, who uses such incomplete knowledge of the universe to disprove God's existence, as scientists.
You morons.
who created 'god'? himself?
look at your life and just maybe there is an incident that will make you think about GOD.
Whether people agree or disagree you presented your facts professionally and that is good. Thanks for the read, Jean.
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