8 ms·

Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

48 points by jfi 16y ago

patan 16y ago
A perfect title for a post not to be read. If you don't believe in God then for sure that you don't believe that he creates the universe. So nothing fancy here.
shantanubala 16y ago
I find it funny how hands-off the article is. CNN tries too hard not to offend anyone, and unlike most articles, it doesn't actually present its own opinion. Which would be nice to see in everyday reporting, but it seems the risk of offending people is the only way to garner true neutrality.
- sprobertson 16y ago
  This is just my opinion, but I think big news networks should keep their opinions out of their reporting, supplying us with as much factual information as possible (even if some would find those facts offensive). I find this article to be good reporting because it introduces Hawking's controversial opinion and a few opinion-based reactions without muddling them with its own bias.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Only if you ignore their bias towards gaining as many readers as possible, even at the cost of more "meat". That said, I agree, it's not bad. But it is amusing how incredibly non-offensive news networks get when anything religious / anti-religious comes up.
  - mickeyben 16y ago
    I wish I could upvote you twice
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    It's a nice idea, but utterly impossible. There's no way to present information without bias. Your selection of which facts to present (and which to skip) in what order, what people to quote and which statements to use, etc., all contribute bias, sometimes in subtle ways that aren't immediately obvious. So for me, I'd much rather that the writer and editor wear their bias on their sleeves. It saves me the work of having to reverse-engineer it all.
  - gjm11 16y ago
    Unfortunately, "keeping their opinions out" and reporting both sides is no guarantee of avoiding bias. By way of analogy, let's pretend Hawking said something slightly different from what he actually did, something a bit more non-committal like "Formerly, it was widely thought that the existence of the universe and its suitability for life are good reasons to believe in a creator, but in the light of present-day physics I think we must say that these things offer no evidence whatever concerning the existence or not-existence of any sort of god". Now, imagine two possible articles reacting to this: 1. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking's statement. In the interests of balance, also quotes a theologian who claims that the existence and well-suited-to-us-ness of the universe really do demand that there be a creator. 2. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking, as in #1. In the interests of balance, also quotes someone who maintains that present-day science is not neutral on the God question but offers strong evidence for the nonexistence of God. The first would give the impression that the real debate is between those who think modern science gives evidence for God and those who think it's neutral. The second would give the impression that the real debate is between those who think modern science gives evidence against God and those who think it's neutral. Someone puts out a report saying that anthropogenic global warming is going to be twice as bad as currently forecast. Newspaper 1 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from a climate scientist who defends the current consensus figure. Newspaper 2 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from someone who doesn't believe in anthropogenic global warming at all. Someone puts out a report saying that 20% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Newspaper 1 gives this "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and talking to one person who believes Obama is a Muslim and one who doesn't. Newspaper 2 gives it "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and talking to one person who believes it and one who thinks the whole idea is so ridiculous that the report must the the result of push-polling, sampling screwups or something. During the recent US healthcare reform debate, Newspaper 1 reports on the proposals before Congress and provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks those proposals will mean "death panels" and nationial bankruptcy. Newspaper 2 provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks they don't go nearly far enough and what the US needs is a robust single-payer system. Giving equal time to both sides is only unbiased in so far as there's no question what "both sides" are. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window .
revoltingx 16y ago
Heh, it's actually funny because in the bible it states that 'the Word of God holds the universe together'
- pigbucket 16y ago
  That's a good point. Hawking's argument presupposes a purely natural universal gravitation, the problems with which assumption were exposed several years ago by Burdett et al., as reported here: <http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/&#62 http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refu...;
donaq 16y ago
it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not [citation needed]
- trezor 16y ago
  I agree with your point, but this isn't really how you do commenting on HN. I hope that remains true, even with the demise of digg (and therefore, by extension, reddit).
  - donaq 16y ago
    Oh, I've been around long enough to know that HNers don't like that sort of comment. Still, I defy you to come up with a more succinct way to get the point across! Besides, what is life if you don't do something stupid once in a while? :)
hndb 16y ago
So the reason there is a God, is that there must be a reason everything is created. I have tried to find out why that must be so, but have not come up with it. The only reason I could think of why people are saying this is that it might feel better for us humans that there is a reason.
- rooshdi 16y ago
  Ambiguity abets assumptions.
- sesqu 16y ago
  If you assume causality, eventually you reach the problem of Primus Motivator. If the universe expands because of the Big Bang, what caused the Big Bang? What caused that thing to cause it; why did it do it? Causality is such a fundamental concept that it is nearly impossible to consider a universe without a cause. Consequently, some funky research has been done on it in physics, but I haven't read any of it.
  - maushu 16y ago
    One thing most people forget is that we simply don't have much information about the universe. All we know about it is what we can see from our pale blue dot. For all we know the big bang never happened and the reason the galaxies seem to be moving "away" is because we are in a current of moving galaxies. (And the universe is truly infinite not only space but in mass.)
george_george 16y ago
First the existence of aliens and now the existence of God. What totally unscientific speculation is Stephen Hawking going to make next for the media to latch on to?
- Groxx 16y ago
  Read/re-read the article. Or at least the title. He's not speculating that God might exist, he's saying he understands the sentiments that lead people to feel that way, while the book goes on with why he says they're wrong.
  - george_george 16y ago
    >He's not speculating that God might exist... I understand that. I just don't understand why he feels the need to start making these unscientific speculations about whether God does or does exist or whether aliens do or don't exist.
- KoZeN 16y ago
  With the controversy that Britains other leading scientific mind Richard Dawkins generates, Hawking is under increased pressure from journalists to define his stance on some of the more 'media friendly' topics such as aliens, gods, etc. I personally think it's unfortunate that the publicity about his book is almost entirely focused on 'Hawking doesn't believe in god' instead of areas such as his improved thought process on the unified field theory.
- dtf 16y ago
  His PR team have already spun this as Hawking throwing down the gauntlet to religion, gleefully canvassing outrage and outright denial from Rabbis and Bishops. Wiser theologians should take a step back, bring out that age old trick, and inquire "ah... but who created gravity?"
  - samstokes 16y ago
    And who created the creator? The problem with an infinite regress is that it's, um, infinite. It sounds like Hawking is trying to refute the claim that everything that exists must have a creator. That's the claim which allows the snooty "who created gravity" response, and also leads to the self-defeating infinite regress. Whether you believe in a creator or not, you're better off without that argument.
Groxx 16y ago
>And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it. Definitely deserves a "well, duh", but so many people seem averse to this line of thought. I can't count the number of times people have argued in my vicinity for God's existence based on how nicely our planet suits us... while in the same breath demonstrating that they understand nothing about what they're arguing against. That said, the world is trying to kill us. If we didn't fight back with intelligence and reproduction, we'd die off rather quickly. Maybe it's not so suitable for us.
- wintersFright 16y ago
  Douglas Adams: Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.'
- samstokes 16y ago
  The anthropic principle is useful for rationally debunking "... but surely..." arguments, but it's definitely a last resort, because it doesn't tell you anything about how or why. It's a form of proof by reductio ad absurdum. You assume the counterfactual ("what if the universe couldn't support human life?"), derive a contradiction ("the universe can't support human life, yet here we are discussing it"), and conclude the phenomenon you're trying to explain is obviously true ("therefore we shouldn't be surprised that the universe supports human life"). In mathematics, reductio is a valid proof technique, but one of the least interesting, because it doesn't teach you much about the domain, whereas a proof by construction (for example) may suggest related theorems or techniques to explore. You can explain gravity by the anthropic principle (without gravity, we wouldn't have stars or planets, so human life as we know it could never have evolved; yet here we are discussing it), but we much prefer an explanation like "matter curves spacetime so that nearby matter feels an acceleration toward it". It gives us tools to visualise and calculate the phenomenon. It also gives us a narrative, albeit a very limited one (we don't know why matter curves spacetime!), and human understanding is very dependent on narratives.
abless 16y ago
>"The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing," said Denis Alexander. Wrong.
lelele 16y ago
Evolution, that's where many scientists and skeptics fail to address the big question. I can't believe that life evolves, in the sense of growing organs to meet specific needs. Natural selection does not work like that: if you have organs which don't suit you, they atrophy, that's it; if they suit you, those which have them stronger will survive. That's it. You don't grow wings to fly, lungs to breath air, brains to think. OTOH, believing in a creator just moves the issue elsewhere: who created such creator? Is he/she/it alone? I've grown comfortable with not knowing for sure what the heck we are doing here.
- samstokes 16y ago
  The key problem with this line of reasoning is a lack of proportion. Evolution takes place over millions of years. Any intuitions you have are probably wrong on this timescale. Nobody claims that a proto-bird one day woke up in a treetop, thought "oh heck, how am I going to get down?", and sprouted wings. Rather, over millions of generations of proto-birds, random variation and natural selection made winged birds more numerous and successful than wingless birds. The point about evolutionary theory isn't that it explains everything, but that it gives us a framework to produce and evaluate explanations (for, potentially, everything). The general pattern is to imagine a series of incremental changes between generations from (say) no-wings to viable wings, where each change could occur by random genetic variation or mutation, and where in order to be selected for, each change must confer a net reproductive advantage on its generation over the previous. From Wikipedia [1] it looks like we don't have a fully satisfactory evolutionary explanation of flight yet (any more than we have a fully satisfactory evolutionary explanation of True Blood), but there are several theories all of which are more plausible than waking up one day with wings. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight
  - maushu 16y ago
    As a side note, wings worked so well for survival that most current insect species have them.
    - 16y ago
hasenj 16y ago
> any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it. This is circular reasoning. I know it's unpopular to question evolution, and this might lose me all the points I gathered in the past three weeks, but, But this kind of argument assumes that life can and will inevitably evolve spontaneously some where, some how. It's a tautology. Sure, there could be a completely different form of intelligent life, in a completely different kind of environment, but that just means that God can and will create any form of life in any kind of environment. The core question is, can life really evolve spontaneously? I'm sure many will scream "of course yes, duh". Natural selection doesn't explain anything about how something might evolve, it just says: if you can produce many many good options, the best will survive, and therefore you get optimal design. Sure, if there are forces that produce new ideas and things, and you can choose the best every step of the way, you'll get something really good. Like if, say, people submit patches to Linux, and they get reviewed and tested, you'll get something that Linus himself couldn't have come up with on his own. NS is useless if there's nothing that can produce these patches. If you have a really good team of tester and code reviewers, but no one submits any patch (or, no one makes any change), then the software will not evolve on its own. It will not get better just because there are a lot of people to test it. It needs other people to make changes/submit patches. It's the "mutation" part that tries to explain how new things actually get produced, and I find it ridiculous. Not only does it not fly with me conceptually, I'd say - at the risk of being stoned - that there's no real evidence for it. It's usually just a lot of hand waving as if, "of course mutation can produce many useful things for NS to select from, how dare you object to that?". Yes, you can observe variations, and you can observe certain variations being selected. Like skin color, or hair type. This is, however, entirely different from observing useful patches being produced by mutations. All cited instances of observed NS operate on variations that are already there. This is where hand waving about mutations come in. Video games can be designed to use a high resolution or low resolution depending on the system specs. It's therefor not surprising when users on low end machines will "select" the low-resolution configuration. There are options to select from, but these options weren't produced by anything remotely resembling a mutation; it's a built-in option that's already available -- nothing new. No one denies the design; no one, none at all. Neo-Darwinism just says that design can be automated by mutation and natural selection. It is easy to describe how a complex system works once you discover it; but that doesn't make it any less impressive. I'm often impressed by some of my own programs, despite the fact that, not only do I know exactly how they work, but I even built them myself. Usually when you discover the internals of a system, it gets even more impressive.
rvanrooy 16y ago
If evolution is such a obvious theory as to be taken as fact, then why are there no species obviously evolving into another? According to the theory, millions of years ago Chimps evolved into humans. Why then are there no chimps in a stage of evolving that would signify a progression to a different species? They've had millions of years to do so...
- wlievens 16y ago
  How do you know there aren't any?
  - rvanrooy 16y ago
    Surely if they did, they'd be widely referenced and be irrefutable? My point is, evolution is a theory, which cannot be proved even by its most hardened supporters. There is more gray here than you would seem to admit.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  Probably this is just a troll, since these answers are so well known, so I'm not going to bother looking up citations. 1. There are many examples of speciation that are documented in the time we've been watching rigorously. 2. If you think that the theory of evolution says that chimps evolved into humans, than you have no understanding of evolution.
bhiggins 16y ago
I'm guessing Stephen Hawking has now run out of things to say.
_polos_ 16y ago
It should clearly be announced here: Hawking is doing a really bad job to atheists here: he's becoming as anti-scientific as one can get... Science has its very defined principles, as they are: they don't have to contradict all of: philosophy, mathematics, physics, (and so on...). This is a really sad story: he simply seems to be a really sad and angry person (personally, I would be worse, in his actual state...), and this seems to influence all of his excogitations...
patan 16y ago
I propose something interesting. Create a computer program that has some rules so is able to question whether there is God, and whose answer is We are. Then you can refine the program, when then program is very complex, say it satisfies Turing test, we can think about God with the help of this machine. I think people playing the game Life with its evolving capabilities must have been thinking something along these lines.

48 points by jfi 16y ago

patan 16y ago

A perfect title for a post not to be read. If you don't believe in God then for sure that you don't believe that he creates the universe. So nothing fancy here.

shantanubala 16y ago

I find it funny how hands-off the article is. CNN tries too hard not to offend anyone, and unlike most articles, it doesn't actually present its own opinion. Which would be nice to see in everyday reporting, but it seems the risk of offending people is the only way to garner true neutrality.

sprobertson 16y ago
This is just my opinion, but I think big news networks should keep their opinions out of their reporting, supplying us with as much factual information as possible (even if some would find those facts offensive). I find this article to be good reporting because it introduces Hawking's controversial opinion and a few opinion-based reactions without muddling them with its own bias.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Only if you ignore their bias towards gaining as many readers as possible, even at the cost of more "meat". That said, I agree, it's not bad. But it is amusing how incredibly non-offensive news networks get when anything religious / anti-religious comes up.
- mickeyben 16y ago
  I wish I could upvote you twice
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  It's a nice idea, but utterly impossible. There's no way to present information without bias. Your selection of which facts to present (and which to skip) in what order, what people to quote and which statements to use, etc., all contribute bias, sometimes in subtle ways that aren't immediately obvious. So for me, I'd much rather that the writer and editor wear their bias on their sleeves. It saves me the work of having to reverse-engineer it all.
- gjm11 16y ago
  Unfortunately, "keeping their opinions out" and reporting both sides is no guarantee of avoiding bias. By way of analogy, let's pretend Hawking said something slightly different from what he actually did, something a bit more non-committal like "Formerly, it was widely thought that the existence of the universe and its suitability for life are good reasons to believe in a creator, but in the light of present-day physics I think we must say that these things offer no evidence whatever concerning the existence or not-existence of any sort of god". Now, imagine two possible articles reacting to this: 1. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking's statement. In the interests of balance, also quotes a theologian who claims that the existence and well-suited-to-us-ness of the universe really do demand that there be a creator. 2. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking, as in #1. In the interests of balance, also quotes someone who maintains that present-day science is not neutral on the God question but offers strong evidence for the nonexistence of God. The first would give the impression that the real debate is between those who think modern science gives evidence for God and those who think it's neutral. The second would give the impression that the real debate is between those who think modern science gives evidence against God and those who think it's neutral. Someone puts out a report saying that anthropogenic global warming is going to be twice as bad as currently forecast. Newspaper 1 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from a climate scientist who defends the current consensus figure. Newspaper 2 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from someone who doesn't believe in anthropogenic global warming at all. Someone puts out a report saying that 20% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Newspaper 1 gives this "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and talking to one person who believes Obama is a Muslim and one who doesn't. Newspaper 2 gives it "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and talking to one person who believes it and one who thinks the whole idea is so ridiculous that the report must the the result of push-polling, sampling screwups or something. During the recent US healthcare reform debate, Newspaper 1 reports on the proposals before Congress and provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks those proposals will mean "death panels" and nationial bankruptcy. Newspaper 2 provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks they don't go nearly far enough and what the US needs is a robust single-payer system. Giving equal time to both sides is only unbiased in so far as there's no question what "both sides" are. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window .

revoltingx 16y ago

Heh, it's actually funny because in the bible it states that 'the Word of God holds the universe together'

pigbucket 16y ago
That's a good point. Hawking's argument presupposes a purely natural universal gravitation, the problems with which assumption were exposed several years ago by Burdett et al., as reported here: <http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-int,1778/&#62 http://www.theonion.com/articles/evangelical-scientists-refu...;

donaq 16y ago

it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not [citation needed]

trezor 16y ago
I agree with your point, but this isn't really how you do commenting on HN. I hope that remains true, even with the demise of digg (and therefore, by extension, reddit).
- donaq 16y ago
  Oh, I've been around long enough to know that HNers don't like that sort of comment. Still, I defy you to come up with a more succinct way to get the point across! Besides, what is life if you don't do something stupid once in a while? :)

hndb 16y ago

So the reason there is a God, is that there must be a reason everything is created. I have tried to find out why that must be so, but have not come up with it. The only reason I could think of why people are saying this is that it might feel better for us humans that there is a reason.

rooshdi 16y ago
Ambiguity abets assumptions.
sesqu 16y ago
If you assume causality, eventually you reach the problem of Primus Motivator. If the universe expands because of the Big Bang, what caused the Big Bang? What caused that thing to cause it; why did it do it? Causality is such a fundamental concept that it is nearly impossible to consider a universe without a cause. Consequently, some funky research has been done on it in physics, but I haven't read any of it.
- maushu 16y ago
  One thing most people forget is that we simply don't have much information about the universe. All we know about it is what we can see from our pale blue dot. For all we know the big bang never happened and the reason the galaxies seem to be moving "away" is because we are in a current of moving galaxies. (And the universe is truly infinite not only space but in mass.)

george_george 16y ago

First the existence of aliens and now the existence of God. What totally unscientific speculation is Stephen Hawking going to make next for the media to latch on to?

Groxx 16y ago
Read/re-read the article. Or at least the title. He's not speculating that God might exist, he's saying he understands the sentiments that lead people to feel that way, while the book goes on with why he says they're wrong.
- george_george 16y ago
  >He's not speculating that God might exist... I understand that. I just don't understand why he feels the need to start making these unscientific speculations about whether God does or does exist or whether aliens do or don't exist.
KoZeN 16y ago
With the controversy that Britains other leading scientific mind Richard Dawkins generates, Hawking is under increased pressure from journalists to define his stance on some of the more 'media friendly' topics such as aliens, gods, etc. I personally think it's unfortunate that the publicity about his book is almost entirely focused on 'Hawking doesn't believe in god' instead of areas such as his improved thought process on the unified field theory.
dtf 16y ago
His PR team have already spun this as Hawking throwing down the gauntlet to religion, gleefully canvassing outrage and outright denial from Rabbis and Bishops. Wiser theologians should take a step back, bring out that age old trick, and inquire "ah... but who created gravity?"
- samstokes 16y ago
  And who created the creator? The problem with an infinite regress is that it's, um, infinite. It sounds like Hawking is trying to refute the claim that everything that exists must have a creator. That's the claim which allows the snooty "who created gravity" response, and also leads to the self-defeating infinite regress. Whether you believe in a creator or not, you're better off without that argument.

Groxx 16y ago

>And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it. Definitely deserves a "well, duh", but so many people seem averse to this line of thought. I can't count the number of times people have argued in my vicinity for God's existence based on how nicely our planet suits us... while in the same breath demonstrating that they understand nothing about what they're arguing against. That said, the world is trying to kill us. If we didn't fight back with intelligence and reproduction, we'd die off rather quickly. Maybe it's not so suitable for us.

wintersFright 16y ago
Douglas Adams: Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.'
samstokes 16y ago
The anthropic principle is useful for rationally debunking "... but surely..." arguments, but it's definitely a last resort, because it doesn't tell you anything about how or why. It's a form of proof by reductio ad absurdum. You assume the counterfactual ("what if the universe couldn't support human life?"), derive a contradiction ("the universe can't support human life, yet here we are discussing it"), and conclude the phenomenon you're trying to explain is obviously true ("therefore we shouldn't be surprised that the universe supports human life"). In mathematics, reductio is a valid proof technique, but one of the least interesting, because it doesn't teach you much about the domain, whereas a proof by construction (for example) may suggest related theorems or techniques to explore. You can explain gravity by the anthropic principle (without gravity, we wouldn't have stars or planets, so human life as we know it could never have evolved; yet here we are discussing it), but we much prefer an explanation like "matter curves spacetime so that nearby matter feels an acceleration toward it". It gives us tools to visualise and calculate the phenomenon. It also gives us a narrative, albeit a very limited one (we don't know why matter curves spacetime!), and human understanding is very dependent on narratives.

abless 16y ago

>"The 'god' that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing," said Denis Alexander. Wrong.

lelele 16y ago

Evolution, that's where many scientists and skeptics fail to address the big question. I can't believe that life evolves, in the sense of growing organs to meet specific needs. Natural selection does not work like that: if you have organs which don't suit you, they atrophy, that's it; if they suit you, those which have them stronger will survive. That's it. You don't grow wings to fly, lungs to breath air, brains to think. OTOH, believing in a creator just moves the issue elsewhere: who created such creator? Is he/she/it alone? I've grown comfortable with not knowing for sure what the heck we are doing here.

samstokes 16y ago
The key problem with this line of reasoning is a lack of proportion. Evolution takes place over millions of years. Any intuitions you have are probably wrong on this timescale. Nobody claims that a proto-bird one day woke up in a treetop, thought "oh heck, how am I going to get down?", and sprouted wings. Rather, over millions of generations of proto-birds, random variation and natural selection made winged birds more numerous and successful than wingless birds. The point about evolutionary theory isn't that it explains everything, but that it gives us a framework to produce and evaluate explanations (for, potentially, everything). The general pattern is to imagine a series of incremental changes between generations from (say) no-wings to viable wings, where each change could occur by random genetic variation or mutation, and where in order to be selected for, each change must confer a net reproductive advantage on its generation over the previous. From Wikipedia [1] it looks like we don't have a fully satisfactory evolutionary explanation of flight yet (any more than we have a fully satisfactory evolutionary explanation of True Blood), but there are several theories all of which are more plausible than waking up one day with wings. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight
- maushu 16y ago
  As a side note, wings worked so well for survival that most current insect species have them.
  - 16y ago

hasenj 16y ago

> any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it. This is circular reasoning. I know it's unpopular to question evolution, and this might lose me all the points I gathered in the past three weeks, but, But this kind of argument assumes that life can and will inevitably evolve spontaneously some where, some how. It's a tautology. Sure, there could be a completely different form of intelligent life, in a completely different kind of environment, but that just means that God can and will create any form of life in any kind of environment. The core question is, can life really evolve spontaneously? I'm sure many will scream "of course yes, duh". Natural selection doesn't explain anything about how something might evolve, it just says: if you can produce many many good options, the best will survive, and therefore you get optimal design. Sure, if there are forces that produce new ideas and things, and you can choose the best every step of the way, you'll get something really good. Like if, say, people submit patches to Linux, and they get reviewed and tested, you'll get something that Linus himself couldn't have come up with on his own. NS is useless if there's nothing that can produce these patches. If you have a really good team of tester and code reviewers, but no one submits any patch (or, no one makes any change), then the software will not evolve on its own. It will not get better just because there are a lot of people to test it. It needs other people to make changes/submit patches. It's the "mutation" part that tries to explain how new things actually get produced, and I find it ridiculous. Not only does it not fly with me conceptually, I'd say - at the risk of being stoned - that there's no real evidence for it. It's usually just a lot of hand waving as if, "of course mutation can produce many useful things for NS to select from, how dare you object to that?". Yes, you can observe variations, and you can observe certain variations being selected. Like skin color, or hair type. This is, however, entirely different from observing useful patches being produced by mutations. All cited instances of observed NS operate on variations that are already there. This is where hand waving about mutations come in. Video games can be designed to use a high resolution or low resolution depending on the system specs. It's therefor not surprising when users on low end machines will "select" the low-resolution configuration. There are options to select from, but these options weren't produced by anything remotely resembling a mutation; it's a built-in option that's already available -- nothing new. No one denies the design; no one, none at all. Neo-Darwinism just says that design can be automated by mutation and natural selection. It is easy to describe how a complex system works once you discover it; but that doesn't make it any less impressive. I'm often impressed by some of my own programs, despite the fact that, not only do I know exactly how they work, but I even built them myself. Usually when you discover the internals of a system, it gets even more impressive.

rvanrooy 16y ago

If evolution is such a obvious theory as to be taken as fact, then why are there no species obviously evolving into another? According to the theory, millions of years ago Chimps evolved into humans. Why then are there no chimps in a stage of evolving that would signify a progression to a different species? They've had millions of years to do so...

wlievens 16y ago
How do you know there aren't any?
- rvanrooy 16y ago
  Surely if they did, they'd be widely referenced and be irrefutable? My point is, evolution is a theory, which cannot be proved even by its most hardened supporters. There is more gray here than you would seem to admit.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
Probably this is just a troll, since these answers are so well known, so I'm not going to bother looking up citations. 1. There are many examples of speciation that are documented in the time we've been watching rigorously. 2. If you think that the theory of evolution says that chimps evolved into humans, than you have no understanding of evolution.

bhiggins 16y ago

I'm guessing Stephen Hawking has now run out of things to say.

_polos_ 16y ago

It should clearly be announced here: Hawking is doing a really bad job to atheists here: he's becoming as anti-scientific as one can get... Science has its very defined principles, as they are: they don't have to contradict all of: philosophy, mathematics, physics, (and so on...). This is a really sad story: he simply seems to be a really sad and angry person (personally, I would be worse, in his actual state...), and this seems to influence all of his excogitations...

patan 16y ago

I propose something interesting. Create a computer program that has some rules so is able to question whether there is God, and whose answer is We are. Then you can refine the program, when then program is very complex, say it satisfies Turing test, we can think about God with the help of this machine. I think people playing the game Life with its evolving capabilities must have been thinking something along these lines.