Hawking ditches God (The atheist delusion)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 07, 2010, 11:59 (5191 days ago) @ George Jelliss

Many thanks to George for the references to various websites and blogs (especially the excellent Hastings Humanists) concerning this, the latest science sensation. The reviews that I've read have been mixed, and if the interview with Mlodinow is anything to go by, I'm not surprised. No-one quite seems to know what M-theory is all about, or indeed whether it is a theory or a "network of theories". Amid various coulds and cans, we are told:-"You can't ask which of the theories in the network is more "real"." 
"The universe has many histories and not one."
"The vagueness of the past is the vagueness of things unmeasured in the past."-Is this science or mysticism? 
 
At the end of the interview Mlodinow is asked whether the grand design is unknowable.-MLODINOW: No, we believe that humans CAN understand it. That's the great triumph and the great miracle of the universe.-The fact that we exist and that we have powers of understanding is indeed a great triumph and a great miracle. Can M-theory tell us whether the triumph and miracle are the product of blind chance or of a "grand designer"? The argument that once we know how it all happened (which we don't), a designer becomes unnecessary will only convince those who are prepared to believe that the grand design unconsciously designed itself. One faith in place of another. I'm getting more and more solidly stuck on my fence.-I'm also grateful to George for giving us his views on the Krauss talk. Apparently it implies that the universe is finite, and is only infinite in the sense that it goes on expanding. May I, as a non-scientist, ask two silly questions: 1) what does it expand into? 2) If the universe appears to be finite, is there any way in which we can possibly know what lies beyond its boundaries?