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Why God Did Not Create the Universe

35 points by jedwhite 16y ago

shawndumas 16y ago
Valid arguments cannot contain in their conclusions any term (or grammatical mood) that is not present in their premises. In other words: All valid arguments are made up of one or more syllogisms, which, in turn, are made of three parts: the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion. . Example: o Major premise: All men are mortal. o Minor premise: Socrates is a man. o Conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Each of the three distinct parts contain terms, "men", "mortal", and "Socrates". "Mortal" is the major term and "Socrates" is the minor term. The premises also must have one term in common with each other, which is known as the middle term; in this example, "man". If a term is found in the conclusion that is not present in either premises than the argument is invalid. . Example: o Major premise: All men are mortal. o Minor premise: Socrates is a man. o Conclusion: Socrates is a Conservative. . Furthermore, any argument that excludes 'god' in its premises cannot validly contain 'god' in its conclusion.
DotSauce 16y ago
It's rather ridiculous to me how they can shut-down the notion of the "coincidences" that make Earth so extremely unique to support life. The precise placement of the moon, the composition of our core to generate perfect magnetic fields, etc. the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing Really? I'm having as hard a time believing in that as many of you might have believing in creation. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. Sounds like God to me.
- jedwhite 16y ago
  The reasoning takes some thought to work through, but is fairly straightforward. The key is the concept of multiple universes, and how it changes the game by making a strong anthropic principle a weak one. "The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints, not just on our environment, but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves." It's understandable that we see "The Mind of God" in those laws. It give us comfort to put a label on them and see something other than quantum randomness in it all.
- beej71 16y ago
  What are the odds that those coincidences all lined up, and, given the number of planets in the Universe, how many of them are like ours? (Drake, of course.) Given the sheer size of the Universe, I'm personally not too surprised, but that's just gut-feeling.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  > It's rather ridiculous to me how they can shut-down the notion of the "coincidences" that make Earth so extremely unique to support life. You mean to "support life as we know it". It's perfectly possible that under different laws of physics, life would still exist, that is to say, reproducible organisms could still exist but under a totally different form. Under the laws of physics of our universe, life exist as it is because this how the laws allow it to exist.
- TNO 16y ago
  " The precise placement of the moon, the composition of our core to generate perfect magnetic fields, etc." How precise are you defining these to be? The Moon's distance from earth increases yearly for example. The magnetic field fluctuates over time, possibly causing havoc to migrating animals. This argument seems like a confusion of cause and effect. My circular bowl was designed perfectly for my circular water to sit within...
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    Well, consider all of the potential places the Moon could have ended up; space is big. And then consider that not only the placement of the moon was necessary, but also the unique physical composition of the Earth and its atmosphere, the Earth's distance from the Sun and other celestial bodies, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc., and all of the potential states that could have been selected but were not hospitable to life, and you will see why some people find it so unlikely that there was no organizing force in the creation of our world.
    - vorg 16y ago
      What is it about the placement of the moon that makes earth so extremely unique as to support life. Does it merely deflect asteroids to provide more stability for evolving species? And how intelligent must life be to be considered the "Destined Entity" of the Anthropic Principle? Were dinosaurs not self-aware enough? The moon's placement is also such that it's the same size as the sun when viewed from the earth, making total solar eclipses more stunning, and intelligent life viewing them may become a more inquisitive species, and maybe more likely to innovate Agriculture, and so sit around in cities considering philosophical questions. But is this the only Destined Entity? Just as today's humans consider cats and apes to be not self-aware enough to be Destined Entities, maybe some future specimens of humans will consider today's humans in the same way. Or maybe humans today will create some future planet-wide automated intelligence that becomes self-aware, and be the Destined Entity, and the Anthropic Principle will really be the Robotic Principle. But just as today's humans are the result of thousands of trial-and-error experiments of evolution, an automated intelligence has more likelihood of becoming self-aware if there are many separate instances of it. If it's planet-wide, then different vastly separated planets are needed. So perhaps a moon for the earth increases the ease with which humans can adapt to space colonization, then Mars providing the next challenge, then terraforming Venus, more difficult, until humans blast off into other solar systems, eventually colonizing the galaxy. And one day, one of those planet-wide automated networks on one of the colonized planets will become self-aware enough to be considered the Destined Entity the Universe came into existence for. Such a self-aware automated intelligence will reminisce with itself that the moon "Luna" of old "Earth" had the correct placement not only to deflect asteroids, but also to display solar eclipses with a spectacular corona, and provide a baby step for space colonization by humans.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  If you believe in something as magic as a God, why can't you believe in spontaneous creation? I mean that is much less far out than the existence of a God who have always been there.
- gmlk 16y ago
  The problem I see is the simple fact that one can't ever do an actual experiment that demonstrates the existence of multiple universes… Here we have left empirical science and moved on to "anything can happen" speculative fiction, where authority counts as sufficient evidence, and the lack of observations maybe explained away. Any hypotheses which does not differentiate between "ordering" and "organization" is not actually a science, it's a cargo cult.
jedwhite 16y ago
Just having a chuckle over the fact that I posted two stories - this one an excerpt from an important new book by Stephen Hawking on the sound scientific explanation for the making of our world. And the other about someone I know and like getting kicked off a plane. And it's the story about getting kicked off the plane that gets all the upvotes. [edit post downvote. I found this genuinely surprising. This Hawking piece (the full title was "Stephen Hawking on God, Science and the Origins of the Universe") is a beautifully simple explanation of a profound and complex topic. Based on Einstein's dictum that if you can't explain something simply then you don't really understand it, its simplicity was an achievement.]
- jedwhite 16y ago
  There is a lot of activity on social media about this Stephen Hawking piece though: http://www.tribevibe.com/track/link/?url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html http://www.tribevibe.com/track/link/?url=http://online.wsj.c... The book is called The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.
- daz 16y ago
  What is that line about small minds talk about people, medium minds events, and great minds ideas? Normally HN seems to be about ideas. But everyone loves a little drama.
all 16y ago
I fail to see how his reasoning abrogates the notion of God and would appreciate any light anyone cares to shed. Anyone know of any recorded universes sprouting out of nothing? Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator? It just doesn't follow for me.
- danielford 16y ago
  I'm also confused by this article. It looks like the last three paragraphs are the ones that support the title, but there's no explanation of why Hawking thinks the last three paragraphs are true. It asserts that universes can occur spontaneously out of nothing, and that the multiverse exists, without providing evidence for either proposition. If it's just the way the universe works, I'm okay with that. But I'd at least like to know why the author thinks it's just the way the universe works.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    The trouble with science is that the further we go, the more you need before you can understand the next step. It's my understanding that the science and math behind this is so complex that you'd need a decade or two of study just for the basics. The alternative is to just not write the article, and that's not a good way to get young people interested enough to go through decades of study. Science in popular media is about recruiting the next generation of scientists, even if that goal isn't explicit.
    - danielford 16y ago
      I'm reaching the point in my intellectual development where arguments from authority are less and less useful. I think a lot of people on hacker news are in a similar position. I need more from an article than, "Distinguished scientist believes X", especially in cases when distinguished scientists start going outside of their field and attempt to deal with philosophical questions. If it involves a bunch of complicated math and physics, then at least show me the crap I can't understand. If I have time I'll work on it, and if not at least I have a better idea of how someone got from point A to B.
abdulhaq 16y ago
When we draw a circle it has no beginning and no end, but there is most certainly a creator of it.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I love Hawking, but I have to play apologist here (and I am not a religious person) I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there is a God. Sure, you can assume all sorts of attributes about a God that don't make sense or are silly -- big old guy with beard in the sky. But the idea that there is some greater intelligence out there with some sort of interest in mankind? It's just impossible to know, one way or another. Now some will tell you that because it is impossible to know, there must be a god. I.e, that we can put whatever thing we like under the category "god" -- one story is as good as another. Actually, this "creative story-telling for stuff we don't know" is a critical part of being a human, even being a scientist. As long as the stories don't contradict observable reality. So that's okay, up to a point. Some will tell you that because we don't know, there must not be a God. If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. Or put better: why add terms to an equation where no extra terms are needed? You see this in Hawking's essay -- once we figured out the theory, didn't need a God anymore. The problem here is that this smacks of the caveman, when told about airplanes, said that the other person was either a fantastical liar or crazy. In his mind he is being uber-rational. From our point of view he's being childish and silly. Certainly things exist that we have not experienced. We do not know everything, and many things we think we know we are mistaken about. This is the way it has always been. It is part of being our species at this point in time. So we're left not-knowing. And that bugs folks. I had a good friend that was an atheist tell me last week that sure, he didn't know, but he felt like he had to take sides. He felt like certain Christians he knew were somehow harming rationality, and it was up to him to sort of balance the scales. Many other people are profoundly disturbed by not-knowing and go the other way. As for me? I've decided that while I cannot accept your story about an angry guy in the sky, the idea of not-knowing -- and the greater idea of our relationship to not-knowing, our relationship to the unknown, is a critical part of being alive. I choose to call that Great Unknown God, simply because, well, that's the traditional name for powers that are outside of our scope of knowledge. This allows me to enjoy both the work of the scientist and the priest.
- alexandros 16y ago
  What Hawking said is not that god does not exist, but that god is not required for the universe to exist. Subtle but important.
yanowitz 16y ago
Robert Sawyer wrote a great book on this subject, Calculating God. He has a way of writing about science and philosophy that's incredibly engaging and accessible because it's in the form of fiction. It's one of the few scifi books I can recommend to people who normally don't like scifi (Ender's Game is another). I don't want to give any spoilers but it takes up the various issues raised by the Hawking article and in this discussion.
gmlk 16y ago
When people use the word "god" it's meaning is often implicitly assumed, rarely identified, almost never defined in a testable way. How do you recognize a deity? Which observable, ideally measurable, features should one be looking for? The concept of god used to be simple: Anything more powerful then me is a god. A very simple test and the existence of gods is obvious. Then we started to add more and more and also expect more and more from our gods. Currently we seem to expect them to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-whatever… which is really pushing it beyond even internal consistency, let alone observable reality. I wonder what would (in the 21ste century) be considered evidence of a "god"? Would we classify an actual existing Zeus as "god" or just as a member of a more powerful intelligent species? Would we apply the term "god" to the god of the Hebrews? Or would we rather consider it to be a very advanced alien? Imagine this speculative scenario: Next week a very powerful non-human entity will manifest itself on earth. It will claim that it is the representative of the creator of the universe and that has seen how the creator made life on earth. What could it present as evidence which would convince you that what it was saying is actually true? What evidence would convince you that it's not just a delusional alien with more scientific and technological knowledge and very advanced technology?
Nitramp 16y ago
The article is weak, there is no real reasoning to follow. This is at best a teaser at his book, for a real discussion we'd have to get and read that. But even beyond that, I heavily disagree with the whole discussion. If I haven't missed some important new advance, the whole parallel universes theory and much of the theories of what happened before or during the beginning of the Universe are not really science. Most of it is based on some speculative interpretation of the mathematical formulas of quantum physics and/or string theory. But there is no reason those formulas have to be an accurate description of the physical laws in those boundary conditions, where they are known to break hard. So basically they make assertions based on a mathematical theory (which is not bad per se), but those assertions cannot be falsified, as they all operate outside the boundaries of the Universe itself. Non-falsifiable theories are just not science. The same goes for the strong anthropic principle. This is again making statements that are inherently not testable. That might be philosophical speculation, but it's not hard science. This is particularly strange as Hawking uses those borderline scientific theories to discount a religious speculation; but both theories are non-falsifiable by definition, so what's the point? I'm not religious, but I don't see the big difference between two non-falsifiable cosmologies there.
emit_time_n3rgy 16y ago
I'm conflicted after reading the comments and the article. On the one hand I hate wasting time dissecting the article but I like the HN discussion and I feel the need to express myself about the article and some of the comments. I admire those willing to pursue big ideas, mysteries, etc but this article...let's just say I'm glad I don't pay for the WSJ. I read the whole article but I read less than half of the article before checking who wrote it and was surprised. I thought it was written by someone who was not in a 'science' field. (clipped from article) "Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test,in other words, modern science." (Whose "we"?) "Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that..." (Why are "we" being told what Einstein meant?) "..latest advances in cosmology explain why.." (I thought science explained how?) "Many improbable occurrences conspired to create.." (why the choice of such terms?) "We need liquid water to exist, and if the Earth were too close (to the sun), it would all boil off; if it were too far, it would freeze." (who is his audience?) "The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned." (more odd terminology..laws form? And luck forms laws? I understand his meaning, but perplexed by the choice of words to convey a non-Creator position) "..the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing." (so, "laws that allow" existed before "nothing"?) "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." (spontaneity occurs when life exists..how can anything spontaneous occur prior to existence? And spontaneous creation is the reason why we exist? Again, what happened to how? Back to the drawing board as far as articulating to John Q Public, no?) In regards to comments: + I like this question: "Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator?" + "..the notion of a creator is a proxy for our lack of knowledge rather than a positive demonstrable." It's interesting to think about what the notion of a Creator could be from someone who thinks there is no Creator?" A "no-Creator-notion" :) Basing a conversation on that notion limits the conversation...even sucks the life out it. + People saying proof of God tells me that both those who think there is a God and those who do not think there is a God can provide an identity for God and therefore know when particular information becomes proof...this to me seems like pre-knowledge of God claimed by those claiming there is no God (?). Proof..what is it good for? A court of law comes to mind; a dispute; something is at stake in a court dispute and an outcome will occur when "proof" sides with the victor...or does the victor side with proof (?). How do we identify proof? Proof is conjured up to confront someone...a set of criteria is demanded (how limiting or fair is the criteria?). + "small minds talk about people, medium minds events, and great minds ideas" (society needs people dealing with all of these issues...a collective perspective..but yes, if persons are mono-manic about one of those issues, watch out) Sorry if many of you think I've posted excess.

35 points by jedwhite 16y ago

Valid arguments cannot contain in their conclusions any term (or grammatical mood) that is not present in their premises. In other words: All valid arguments are made up of one or more syllogisms, which, in turn, are made of three parts: the major premise, the minor premise and the conclusion. . Example: o Major premise: All men are mortal. o Minor premise: Socrates is a man. o Conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Each of the three distinct parts contain terms, "men", "mortal", and "Socrates". "Mortal" is the major term and "Socrates" is the minor term. The premises also must have one term in common with each other, which is known as the middle term; in this example, "man". If a term is found in the conclusion that is not present in either premises than the argument is invalid. . Example: o Major premise: All men are mortal. o Minor premise: Socrates is a man. o Conclusion: Socrates is a Conservative. . Furthermore, any argument that excludes 'god' in its premises cannot validly contain 'god' in its conclusion.

DotSauce 16y ago

It's rather ridiculous to me how they can shut-down the notion of the "coincidences" that make Earth so extremely unique to support life. The precise placement of the moon, the composition of our core to generate perfect magnetic fields, etc. the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing Really? I'm having as hard a time believing in that as many of you might have believing in creation. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. Sounds like God to me.

jedwhite 16y ago
The reasoning takes some thought to work through, but is fairly straightforward. The key is the concept of multiple universes, and how it changes the game by making a strong anthropic principle a weak one. "The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints, not just on our environment, but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves." It's understandable that we see "The Mind of God" in those laws. It give us comfort to put a label on them and see something other than quantum randomness in it all.
beej71 16y ago
What are the odds that those coincidences all lined up, and, given the number of planets in the Universe, how many of them are like ours? (Drake, of course.) Given the sheer size of the Universe, I'm personally not too surprised, but that's just gut-feeling.
patrickaljord 16y ago
> It's rather ridiculous to me how they can shut-down the notion of the "coincidences" that make Earth so extremely unique to support life. You mean to "support life as we know it". It's perfectly possible that under different laws of physics, life would still exist, that is to say, reproducible organisms could still exist but under a totally different form. Under the laws of physics of our universe, life exist as it is because this how the laws allow it to exist.
TNO 16y ago
" The precise placement of the moon, the composition of our core to generate perfect magnetic fields, etc." How precise are you defining these to be? The Moon's distance from earth increases yearly for example. The magnetic field fluctuates over time, possibly causing havoc to migrating animals. This argument seems like a confusion of cause and effect. My circular bowl was designed perfectly for my circular water to sit within...
- cookiecaper 16y ago
  Well, consider all of the potential places the Moon could have ended up; space is big. And then consider that not only the placement of the moon was necessary, but also the unique physical composition of the Earth and its atmosphere, the Earth's distance from the Sun and other celestial bodies, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc., and all of the potential states that could have been selected but were not hospitable to life, and you will see why some people find it so unlikely that there was no organizing force in the creation of our world.
  - vorg 16y ago
    What is it about the placement of the moon that makes earth so extremely unique as to support life. Does it merely deflect asteroids to provide more stability for evolving species? And how intelligent must life be to be considered the "Destined Entity" of the Anthropic Principle? Were dinosaurs not self-aware enough? The moon's placement is also such that it's the same size as the sun when viewed from the earth, making total solar eclipses more stunning, and intelligent life viewing them may become a more inquisitive species, and maybe more likely to innovate Agriculture, and so sit around in cities considering philosophical questions. But is this the only Destined Entity? Just as today's humans consider cats and apes to be not self-aware enough to be Destined Entities, maybe some future specimens of humans will consider today's humans in the same way. Or maybe humans today will create some future planet-wide automated intelligence that becomes self-aware, and be the Destined Entity, and the Anthropic Principle will really be the Robotic Principle. But just as today's humans are the result of thousands of trial-and-error experiments of evolution, an automated intelligence has more likelihood of becoming self-aware if there are many separate instances of it. If it's planet-wide, then different vastly separated planets are needed. So perhaps a moon for the earth increases the ease with which humans can adapt to space colonization, then Mars providing the next challenge, then terraforming Venus, more difficult, until humans blast off into other solar systems, eventually colonizing the galaxy. And one day, one of those planet-wide automated networks on one of the colonized planets will become self-aware enough to be considered the Destined Entity the Universe came into existence for. Such a self-aware automated intelligence will reminisce with itself that the moon "Luna" of old "Earth" had the correct placement not only to deflect asteroids, but also to display solar eclipses with a spectacular corona, and provide a baby step for space colonization by humans.
ThomPete 16y ago
If you believe in something as magic as a God, why can't you believe in spontaneous creation? I mean that is much less far out than the existence of a God who have always been there.
gmlk 16y ago
The problem I see is the simple fact that one can't ever do an actual experiment that demonstrates the existence of multiple universes… Here we have left empirical science and moved on to "anything can happen" speculative fiction, where authority counts as sufficient evidence, and the lack of observations maybe explained away. Any hypotheses which does not differentiate between "ordering" and "organization" is not actually a science, it's a cargo cult.

jedwhite 16y ago

Just having a chuckle over the fact that I posted two stories - this one an excerpt from an important new book by Stephen Hawking on the sound scientific explanation for the making of our world. And the other about someone I know and like getting kicked off a plane. And it's the story about getting kicked off the plane that gets all the upvotes. [edit post downvote. I found this genuinely surprising. This Hawking piece (the full title was "Stephen Hawking on God, Science and the Origins of the Universe") is a beautifully simple explanation of a profound and complex topic. Based on Einstein's dictum that if you can't explain something simply then you don't really understand it, its simplicity was an achievement.]

jedwhite 16y ago
There is a lot of activity on social media about this Stephen Hawking piece though: http://www.tribevibe.com/track/link/?url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html http://www.tribevibe.com/track/link/?url=http://online.wsj.c... The book is called The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.
daz 16y ago
What is that line about small minds talk about people, medium minds events, and great minds ideas? Normally HN seems to be about ideas. But everyone loves a little drama.

all 16y ago

I fail to see how his reasoning abrogates the notion of God and would appreciate any light anyone cares to shed. Anyone know of any recorded universes sprouting out of nothing? Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator? It just doesn't follow for me.

danielford 16y ago
I'm also confused by this article. It looks like the last three paragraphs are the ones that support the title, but there's no explanation of why Hawking thinks the last three paragraphs are true. It asserts that universes can occur spontaneously out of nothing, and that the multiverse exists, without providing evidence for either proposition. If it's just the way the universe works, I'm okay with that. But I'd at least like to know why the author thinks it's just the way the universe works.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  The trouble with science is that the further we go, the more you need before you can understand the next step. It's my understanding that the science and math behind this is so complex that you'd need a decade or two of study just for the basics. The alternative is to just not write the article, and that's not a good way to get young people interested enough to go through decades of study. Science in popular media is about recruiting the next generation of scientists, even if that goal isn't explicit.
  - danielford 16y ago
    I'm reaching the point in my intellectual development where arguments from authority are less and less useful. I think a lot of people on hacker news are in a similar position. I need more from an article than, "Distinguished scientist believes X", especially in cases when distinguished scientists start going outside of their field and attempt to deal with philosophical questions. If it involves a bunch of complicated math and physics, then at least show me the crap I can't understand. If I have time I'll work on it, and if not at least I have a better idea of how someone got from point A to B.

abdulhaq 16y ago

When we draw a circle it has no beginning and no end, but there is most certainly a creator of it.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I love Hawking, but I have to play apologist here (and I am not a religious person) I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there is a God. Sure, you can assume all sorts of attributes about a God that don't make sense or are silly -- big old guy with beard in the sky. But the idea that there is some greater intelligence out there with some sort of interest in mankind? It's just impossible to know, one way or another. Now some will tell you that because it is impossible to know, there must be a god. I.e, that we can put whatever thing we like under the category "god" -- one story is as good as another. Actually, this "creative story-telling for stuff we don't know" is a critical part of being a human, even being a scientist. As long as the stories don't contradict observable reality. So that's okay, up to a point. Some will tell you that because we don't know, there must not be a God. If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. Or put better: why add terms to an equation where no extra terms are needed? You see this in Hawking's essay -- once we figured out the theory, didn't need a God anymore. The problem here is that this smacks of the caveman, when told about airplanes, said that the other person was either a fantastical liar or crazy. In his mind he is being uber-rational. From our point of view he's being childish and silly. Certainly things exist that we have not experienced. We do not know everything, and many things we think we know we are mistaken about. This is the way it has always been. It is part of being our species at this point in time. So we're left not-knowing. And that bugs folks. I had a good friend that was an atheist tell me last week that sure, he didn't know, but he felt like he had to take sides. He felt like certain Christians he knew were somehow harming rationality, and it was up to him to sort of balance the scales. Many other people are profoundly disturbed by not-knowing and go the other way. As for me? I've decided that while I cannot accept your story about an angry guy in the sky, the idea of not-knowing -- and the greater idea of our relationship to not-knowing, our relationship to the unknown, is a critical part of being alive. I choose to call that Great Unknown God, simply because, well, that's the traditional name for powers that are outside of our scope of knowledge. This allows me to enjoy both the work of the scientist and the priest.

alexandros 16y ago
What Hawking said is not that god does not exist, but that god is not required for the universe to exist. Subtle but important.

yanowitz 16y ago

Robert Sawyer wrote a great book on this subject, Calculating God. He has a way of writing about science and philosophy that's incredibly engaging and accessible because it's in the form of fiction. It's one of the few scifi books I can recommend to people who normally don't like scifi (Ender's Game is another). I don't want to give any spoilers but it takes up the various issues raised by the Hawking article and in this discussion.

gmlk 16y ago

When people use the word "god" it's meaning is often implicitly assumed, rarely identified, almost never defined in a testable way. How do you recognize a deity? Which observable, ideally measurable, features should one be looking for? The concept of god used to be simple: Anything more powerful then me is a god. A very simple test and the existence of gods is obvious. Then we started to add more and more and also expect more and more from our gods. Currently we seem to expect them to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-whatever… which is really pushing it beyond even internal consistency, let alone observable reality. I wonder what would (in the 21ste century) be considered evidence of a "god"? Would we classify an actual existing Zeus as "god" or just as a member of a more powerful intelligent species? Would we apply the term "god" to the god of the Hebrews? Or would we rather consider it to be a very advanced alien? Imagine this speculative scenario: Next week a very powerful non-human entity will manifest itself on earth. It will claim that it is the representative of the creator of the universe and that has seen how the creator made life on earth. What could it present as evidence which would convince you that what it was saying is actually true? What evidence would convince you that it's not just a delusional alien with more scientific and technological knowledge and very advanced technology?

Nitramp 16y ago

The article is weak, there is no real reasoning to follow. This is at best a teaser at his book, for a real discussion we'd have to get and read that. But even beyond that, I heavily disagree with the whole discussion. If I haven't missed some important new advance, the whole parallel universes theory and much of the theories of what happened before or during the beginning of the Universe are not really science. Most of it is based on some speculative interpretation of the mathematical formulas of quantum physics and/or string theory. But there is no reason those formulas have to be an accurate description of the physical laws in those boundary conditions, where they are known to break hard. So basically they make assertions based on a mathematical theory (which is not bad per se), but those assertions cannot be falsified, as they all operate outside the boundaries of the Universe itself. Non-falsifiable theories are just not science. The same goes for the strong anthropic principle. This is again making statements that are inherently not testable. That might be philosophical speculation, but it's not hard science. This is particularly strange as Hawking uses those borderline scientific theories to discount a religious speculation; but both theories are non-falsifiable by definition, so what's the point? I'm not religious, but I don't see the big difference between two non-falsifiable cosmologies there.

emit_time_n3rgy 16y ago

I'm conflicted after reading the comments and the article. On the one hand I hate wasting time dissecting the article but I like the HN discussion and I feel the need to express myself about the article and some of the comments. I admire those willing to pursue big ideas, mysteries, etc but this article...let's just say I'm glad I don't pay for the WSJ. I read the whole article but I read less than half of the article before checking who wrote it and was surprised. I thought it was written by someone who was not in a 'science' field. (clipped from article) "Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test,in other words, modern science." (Whose "we"?) "Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that..." (Why are "we" being told what Einstein meant?) "..latest advances in cosmology explain why.." (I thought science explained how?) "Many improbable occurrences conspired to create.." (why the choice of such terms?) "We need liquid water to exist, and if the Earth were too close (to the sun), it would all boil off; if it were too far, it would freeze." (who is his audience?) "The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned." (more odd terminology..laws form? And luck forms laws? I understand his meaning, but perplexed by the choice of words to convey a non-Creator position) "..the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing." (so, "laws that allow" existed before "nothing"?) "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." (spontaneity occurs when life exists..how can anything spontaneous occur prior to existence? And spontaneous creation is the reason why we exist? Again, what happened to how? Back to the drawing board as far as articulating to John Q Public, no?) In regards to comments: + I like this question: "Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator?" + "..the notion of a creator is a proxy for our lack of knowledge rather than a positive demonstrable." It's interesting to think about what the notion of a Creator could be from someone who thinks there is no Creator?" A "no-Creator-notion" :) Basing a conversation on that notion limits the conversation...even sucks the life out it. + People saying proof of God tells me that both those who think there is a God and those who do not think there is a God can provide an identity for God and therefore know when particular information becomes proof...this to me seems like pre-knowledge of God claimed by those claiming there is no God (?). Proof..what is it good for? A court of law comes to mind; a dispute; something is at stake in a court dispute and an outcome will occur when "proof" sides with the victor...or does the victor side with proof (?). How do we identify proof? Proof is conjured up to confront someone...a set of criteria is demanded (how limiting or fair is the criteria?). + "small minds talk about people, medium minds events, and great minds ideas" (society needs people dealing with all of these issues...a collective perspective..but yes, if persons are mono-manic about one of those issues, watch out) Sorry if many of you think I've posted excess.