Hawking: “No place for God”

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There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe, Professor Stephen Hawking has said. He had previously argued belief in a creator was not incompatible with science but in a new book, he concludes the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics. The Grand Design, part serialized in the London Times, says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going. Alex Gallafent has more. Download MP3





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MARCO WERMAN: British physicist Stephen Hawking was the subject of some interesting news headlines today. As in, “Hawking says God not necessary for creation.” The headlines were generated by just-published excerpts from a new book. It’s called The Grand Design and was co-authored by Hawking and Caltech scientist Leonard Mlodinow. This “no God necessary” idea is likely to sell a bunch of books. But the theory is much more interesting than that, reports The World’s Alex Gallafent.

ALEX GALLAFENT:  Stephen Hawking has always believed that we live in a universe governed by rational laws. Discovering and understanding those laws, he’s long argued, would give us the tools to confront questions such as, how did the universe begin? Where is it going? And how, or will, it end?

STEPHEN HAWKING:  If we find the answers to these questions we really shall know the mind of God.

GALLAFENT: That’s Hawking’s poetic side. Knowing “The Mind of God” was a construction he used at the very end of his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time. The ambiguity of the phrase made room for God in science. But God’s always been there, says Christopher Potter.

CHRISTOPHER POTTER: God is always popping back into the question because that’s what you’re trying to come up with. A description ultimately that doesn’t include God.

GALLAFENT: Potter is the author of You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe. For him, Stephen Hawking’s new book isn’t so much about getting rid of God as it is about asserting a wholly scientific explanation for the universe. The new theory involves a redefinition of time. We already have a working model for the beginning of the universe, the big bang.

HAWKING: The initial size may have been a millimeter divided by ten billion billion billion, or even smaller.

POTTER: And that takes the universe back to a sort of quantum-sized object, 13.7 billion years ago, to something that was actually pure energy.

GALLAFENT: And so the story of our universe is that incredibly small quantum-sized bit of pure energy evolving into particles and fields and elements and life.

POTTER: But then we have the question of well where did the quantum energy come from? And so we keep trying to tell the story in time.

GALLAFENT:  In other words, what came before the big bang? Stephen Hawking now says that we’re making a mistake by trying to explain things in terms of time because in that earliest quantum state there was no time. Instead, he writes, a process of spontaneous creation derived from the laws of physics is responsible. There is precedent for that kind of idea. Quantum physics describes indeterminate elementary particles that pop in and out of existence at random.

HAWKING: Einstein was very unhappy about this apparent randomness in nature. His views were summed up in his famous phrase “God Does Not Play Dice.” Not only does God definitely play dice but he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.

GALLAFENT: That was Hawking a few years ago. Now he says that idea of spontaneous creation can describe the emergence of the entire universe.

RODNEY HOLDER: To say that the universe spontaneously created itself out of nothing? This seems self contradictory.

GALLAFENT: Rodney Holder is at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University.

HOLDER: When physicists talk in this way they generally mean not nothing but a something, something like a spacetime with quantum fields acting on it, something like that.

GALLAFENT: In his new book Hawking does refer to a something. That’s string theory. Cosmologists’ best attempt so far to unify the elegant spacetime theories of Einstein with the chaotic descriptions of quantum theory. Author Christopher Potter says Hawking uses string theory to reconsider the shape of the big bang, when the universe was that tiny quantum-sized bit of pure energy.

POTTER: In a way what he’s saying is that when the universe is that dense and that much of a quantum object, time has actually become a dimension of space.

GALLAFENT:  So to recap, according to Hawking, the universe doesn’t “begin” as we understand things to “begin.” And there is no time until after the universe has come into being.

POTTER: I mean it’s a sort of mindblowing idea.

GALLAFENT: So if we can imagine the universe beginning outside of time, then the idea of a first cause becomes meaningless. But that doesn’t necessarily do away with God, says Richard Holder in Cambridge. He’s an astrophysicist and an ordained Anglican minister.

RICHARD HOLDER: Theologians don’t really have any particular vested interest in a single moment equals nought when God set it going and then just sat back. No, in Christian theology God is continuously creating at every moment.

GALLAFENT: Indeed, on that account the universe is dependent on the continuing creative action of God moment by moment. And Christian theology has long thought of God as existing outside of human time. But Richard Holder’s broader concern is that Stephen Hawking doesn’t address questions about a meaningful universe.

HOLDER: Why there is something rather than nothing? Why there is a universe at all?

GALLAFENT: Some have suggested that Hawking’s new book forces people to choose between reason and religion. That might be good for book sales in a polarized culture such as ours. But don’t worry. A complete understanding of the universe remains as elusive as ever. Elementary particles come in many flavors. So can reasoned beliefs. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.


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Discussion

19 comments for “Hawking: “No place for God””

  • http://www.sdsustainablefuture.com Michael E. Russell

    Life is the only force in the universe that counters entropy.

  • Grace

    It is interesting how much this has stirred up dialog.
    I always wonder why it is so difficult for otherwise rational people to weigh these ideas.

  • Tom Gonzalez

    Poor Stephen Hawking….can’t see a divine presence anywhere in his universe. They haven’t even figured out the shape of the atom, but already they are ruling God out of the picture. All I can say is L.O.L.

  • http://www.freewebs.com/angelsofhope2008 Dave M.

    Sounds an awful lot like the theory of spontaneous human combustion. If SHC can be proven, I might give this new theory a second thought.

    Interesting to note that he’s been giving up on a lot of his beliefs, lately. He gave up on a unifying theory (even though he used to claim it was within ten years’ reach), too. I suspect he’s just tired of not having answers.

  • Buccaneer

    Oh please. Why does the Universe -need- a purpose? Why invent some sky-fairy to run the thing? It just doesn’t make sense. Oh, and? Life does not “counter” anything, and certainly not entropy; it’s a prety phrase, but an actual understanding of thermodynamics might help you there. Nobody and nothing exists forever. That’s a partial function of entropy.

    No, humans invented gods in their own image to counter fears and explain the (then) unexplainable. There’s never been any, there never will be, and creeds and beliefs are merely whistling in the dark. The Universe is immense, humans are an infintessimal dot on an infantessimal dot. We aren’t at the Universal Apex, nor have we ever been. We aren’t anybody’s ‘creation’ except for natural, uncaring, nonintelligent process. Gods are too small for the actual place we live in; let ‘em go, and let the priests and priestesses get real jobs that actually do something.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    Apropos of the news item captioned “God did not create universe: Hawking “(September 02), this is to submit that given any number of combinations of the basic building blocks of life viz., amino acids, nucleotides, sugar, and phosphate,etc., life has never been created in any of the laboratories the worldover. Science remains clueless about how life first developed on our mother planet and elsewhere in the universe. Life has never resulted from non-life. This is suggestive of the evolution of life having bearing on the existence of some supernatural force, whom we rever as ‘Almighty’ or as ‘God’. Moreover, Hawking wrongly refers to the ‘Big Bang Model’ as the viable explanation for origin of the universe.The said model is highly controversial with number of inconsistencies (the redshift controversy being the most debated controversy) brought to the notice of the scientific community by leading researchers in the field from time to time. It is ironic that the mainstream cosmologists remain indifferent to accepance of cosmological realities despite number of loopholes with the Big Bang Model. I have detailed prominent shortcomings with the said model in my article captioned “Big Bang Model? a Critical Review” publishhed in the April 2010 issue of ‘Journal of Cosmology’ and posted on the internet for the international viewership at the website:
    http://vixra.org/abs/1005.0051

    Ashwini Kumar Lal
    New Delhi

  • http://www.suprarational.org Ron Krumpos

    In “The Grand Design” Stephen Hawking postulates that the M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics…the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate and later abandoned. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theory.

    In my e-book on comparative mysticism is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”

    Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (fx raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    The current controversy regarding Stephen Hawking’s latest book, ‘The Grand Design’ results from the celebrated scientist’s limited vision about ‘origins’ (of life and the universe). Hawking appears to be under false impression that the current knowledge of quantum mechanics and general theory of relativity alone is sufficient to unearth mystery surrounding ‘origin of life’, whereas fact of the matter is that subject of ‘origin of life’is a multi-disciplinary field involving deep understanding of diverse sujects such as genetics, astrobiology, and molecular biology besides astrophysics. Ironically, despite considerable advancement in the above cited fields in recent years, science just remains clueless about origin of life.Readers may like to refer to the review article titled “Origin of Life” published in the peer-reviewed European journal, ‘Astrophysics & Space Science’ (2008, Volume 317, Issue 3-4, pp. 267-278)e-print of which is freely available at the website: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/
    0907/0907.3552.pdf for the current status of scientific research in the inter-disciplinary field of ‘origin of life’.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    Readers may like to browse the following write-up on ‘redshift controversy’ that forms one of the major inconsistencies with the ‘Big Bang Model’.

    A large number of redshift observations remain inexplicable by the Doppler effect till date. Turning blind eyes to the revelations made in this connection in Halton Arp’s 1987 book ‘Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies’ as also in J.V. Narlikar’s detailed 1989 review of ‘Non-cosmological Redshifts’ is nothing but sheer indifference on the part of the mainstream cosmologists to accept the cosmological realities. The Doppler shift is a phenomenon in which the frequency and wavelength of a wave change for an observer moving relative to the source of wave. If a source of light is moving away from an observer, a ‘redshift’ is observed. Conversely, if a source of light is moving toward an observer, a ‘blueshift’ is observed. If the source moves away from the observer with velocity, v (v < c is possible since the space which separates the objects (e.g. a quasar from the Earth) can expand faster than the speed of light.

    Under the cosmological redshift interpretation, galaxies are not receding simply by a physical velocity in the direction away from the observer; instead, the intervening space is expanding, which accounts for large-scale isotropy of the effect demanded by the cosmological principle (Harrison 1981). In the current cosmological model (Gray and Davies 2008), cosmological redshift is described as the observable time-dependent cosmic scale factor (a), governed by the expression, 1+z(cos) =
    a(now)/a(then). Bondi (1947) defined cosmological redshift as the summation of the Doppler shift due to an object’s motion through space, and the global gravitational shift (Einstein effect) due to the difference between the potential energy per unit mass at the source and the observer. Mathematically, cosmological redshift is expressed as z(cos) = z(dop)+ z(grav),
    where 1+ zcos = [(1+v/c)/(1-v/c)]1/2 (1+∆Ф/c2), and ∆Ф is the difference in gravitational potential between the points of emission and reception of a photon, which hints at the Doppler shift not being the correct measure of distance between the source and the observer. For cosmological redshifts of z < 0.1, the effects of spacetime expansion are minimal, and the observed redshifts are determined by peculiar motion of galaxies relative to one another that causes Doppler redshifts and blueshifts (Gray and Davies 2008).

    Some astrophysical observations (Burbidge 1973; Field 1974) have also raised doubts whether the large redshifts (Hubble redshift) related to the distant galaxies are due entirely to cosmological expansion. The strongest argument (Field et al. 1973) in favour of cosmological expansion is that there is no known hypothesis consistent with laws of physics (other than Doppler shift hypothesis) that can explain the observed redshifts. Crawford (1979) provides alternate explanation to the problem – the interaction of photon with curved space-time causes it to lose energy in the form of very low energy secondary photons, giving rise to the phenomenon of redshift. Marmet (1990) too was of the opinion that the cosmic redshifts could be explained without invoking the Doppler interpretation. According to him, photon, in its passage from a distant galaxy to the observer on the earth, loses some of its energy to the intergalactic medium. As such, the greater the depth of the intergalactic medium between a galaxy and the observer, the more its light gets shifted toward the low-energy (red) end of the spectrum (Marmet and Reber 1989). Interactions of photons with atoms in the intergalactic medium always result in the production of secondary photon (bremsstrahlung photon) at longer wavelength (Jauch and Rohrlich 1980).Julia (2009) has attributed cosmological redshift of distant galaxies to the loss of energy of the photon with time through transfer of its energy (heat) to the intergalactic space whereby redshift is shown to increase exponentially with the distance,
    z = e(H/c)d . These ideas suggest that the distant quasars might be much closer than their redshift would indicate if they have an 'intrinsic redshift' due to their being surrounded by a
    'fuzzy' atmosphere containing free electrons and other material. This concentration of electrons produces the unusual redshift as the light travels through it, and loses energy to these electrons by the Compton effect (Grey and Davies 2008).

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    In my opinion, awarding the ’2006 Physics Nobel’ to the advocates of the ‘Big Bang Theory’ has been one of the biggest blunders committed by the Nobel Committee in the light of the prevailing inconsistencies(e.g. the unrersolved redshift controversy that has direct bearing on the expanse and the age of the universe, presence of fully developed mature galaxies with higher metallicity in the very early epoch of the universe, and the presence of superclusters of galaxies interspersed with supervoids in the cosmos) that remain inexplicable by the ‘Big Bang Model’.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    Readers may like to watch the video feature titled
    ‘Big Bang Theory-The ‘biggest’ lie of all? ‘Science’, with NO [Zero, none] ‘scientific evidence’?’ on
    ‘You Tube’ at the website:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2K-YVmuOCY .

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    Notwithstanding the fact that diferent theories under the proposed M-theory in Hawking’s latest book represent different facets of the same underlying theory i.e., ‘Theory of Everything’, its viability as ‘The Grand Design’ providing mathematical formulism for unification of fundamental forces in nature is highly speculative, with very remote possibility of its being verified expermentally. It may not be out of place to mention that the ‘Big Bang Model’ has alredy failed one of the crucial acid test for its survival that relates to detection of remnant of gravity waves from the earliest epoch of the universe. Existence of gravitational – wave background, predicted by Einstein in 1916 in his general theory of relativity, is expected from the violent early moments of the Big Bang much like the cosmic microwave background that fills the sky with radio waves from the early universe. While the microwave background originated 380,000 years after the Big Bang, gravitational – wave background purportedly come directly from events in the first minute after the Big Bang. As per Einstein’s prediction, the cataclysmic Big Bang is believed to have created a flood of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space-time that still fill the universe, albeit at a very feeble strength to be discernible by the conventional astronomical tools, and carry information about the universe as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. Ironically, the much publicized LIGO experiments, undertaken at whopping sum of over $365 million, for probe of remnant of the gravity waves from the earliest epoch of the universe have so far yielded nothing.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    The inflationary concept (in the Inflationary Big Bang Model), supporting a vacuum-dominated universe (arising out of quantum fluctuations) during phase transition in the early history of the universe was evolved by some cosmologists (Guth 1981; Linde 1982) to circumvent problems of ‘flatness’, ‘horizon’ and the ‘primordial magnetic monopole’ associated with the Big Bang model. The hypothetical inflation field giving rise to inflation, however, is very speculative lacking sound scientific explanation.There is no general consensus among cosmologists regarding the timing of the beginning and end of the inflationary epoch. In Linde’s ‘chaotic inflation’, inflation starts at the Planck time ,10 -43 sec when the temperature was 10 32 K, whereas in other models, inflation starts when the temperature falls to the point
    (10 -35 sec after Big Bang when the temperature was ~10 28 K) at which the symmetry of the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is spontaneously broken.

    Element of arbitrariness is also quite prominent in regard to interpretation of the cosmological costant in Einstein’s equations of general relativity. Some cosmologists have related the cosmological cosnstant to the dark energy following observations in 1998 of very distant galaxies that were suggestive of accelerating expannsion of the universe. Ironically, the true nature of the 73% dark energy and 23% dark matter ( as per the latest WMAP intertretations) pervading the universe hitherto remains elusive.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    The concept of ‘conformal cyclic cosmology’ (CCC) floated by the Oxford physicist, Sir Roger Penrose refutes the widely accepted inflationary Big Bang model for the origin of the universe. Recent observation of the circular patterns seen in the WMAP mission data on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) that hints at the space and time not originating at the Big Bang supports Penrose’s concept of CCC. Our universe continually cycles through a series of ‘aeons’, with each ‘big bang’ marking the start of a new ‘aeon’ in the history of the universe . In the light of revelation made in Penrose’s recent paper titled ‘Concentric circles in WMAP data may provide evidence of violent pre-Big-Bang activity’ (http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706), the age of the universe calibrated as 13.75 billion years according to NASA’s latest interpretation of the WMAP data hardly holds any relevance.The CCP concept also debunks the view that the ‘big bang’ created space-time.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    Every variant of cosmological model, be it inflationary or cyclic, predicts possible detection of the primordial gravitational waves created in the immediate aftermath of the cataclysmic Big Bang (the latest in the present universe as per the cyclic model). Futile experiments undertaken by the LIGO (Laser Interferometry Gravitational Wave Observatory) project since 2002, and by the Virgo interferometer since 2007 are suggestive of the fact that we are still far from finding tangible clues regarding the origin of the universe.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    Realization of the supernatural force commanding this universe is very much evident from the knowledge of quantum physics itself. The incidence of electron not collapsing into the nucleus despite the electron gradually losing its energy during its orbit around the nucleus on account of emission of radiation resulting from its motion in the magnetic field, is a glaring example of the presence of the supernatural force at micro level. There is always a minimum energy level for the electron in its orbit around the nucleus beyond which trespassing is not permissible. And then, quantum tunnelling and quantum fluctuations are the other bizarre natural phenomena that appear to be regulated at Almighty’s behest alone.

  • Ashwini Kumar Lal

    I have gone through three books titled, ‘ A Brief History of Time’, ‘The Theory of Everything’, and
    ‘The Grand Design’ – all authored by the celebrated scientist, Stephen Hawking. I find content of all his books to be more or less the same with minor variation here and there. I fail to comprehend why Hawking has been repeating the same thing again and again. Repeated mention of the Big Bang Model as viable explanation for the origin of the universe does not convince intelligent readers about its validity in the light of several unattended inconsistencies with the said model.

  • Douglas

    Still seems to be hawking the theory of evolution. Sure I wear a Swiss watch, and sure I believe that it just assembled itself, and required nobody to make it!

    My car is just fantastic, it made itself, just like yours, and doubtless your PC (like mine) just sprang up from nowhere…

    So where does that get us?

  • goober Mcgilicuty

    Are you kidding me !!!! Egg on face with this ridiculous and unprovable hypothesis. And I love how Hawkings gets all the credit as if the research was done by him, Grasping at straws people.