Hawking ditches God (The atheist delusion)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 08, 2010, 21:23 (5189 days ago) @ BBella

BBella, referring to various Hawking quotes supplied by Matt, quite rightly points out that she had long ago mooted the idea of a universe without beginning and without end, that simply IS and always has been.-Put in these bald terms, the theory is not exactly new, but you should indeed have your back patted, and I'm proud that AgnosticWeb is the vehicle that has carried your message to the ends of the earth ... or at least to the happy few that occasionally log on!-I've just checked my own edition of Brief History (1988) ... (if only to show you all that I've got one!) ... and am surprised to see (p. 50) that Hawking and Penrose actually "proved" the big bang singularity in 1970, but then Hawking changed his mind: "It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe ... as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account." -And yet a couple of months ago, we were talking as if the big bang was still the "in" theory, and we were treated to learned discourses on how nothing can go bang. However, we still have to face the fact that none of these theories or networks of theories tell us anything except what might possibly have happened (or not happened), and of course they shed no light on the origin of life or consciousness. Matt's brilliantly chosen quotes (thank you) give us a clear summary of "the quantum theory of gravity" full of conditional clauses. As BBella says, it's all "if". The M-theory/network seems to be no different. However, let's just consider Matt's final quote from Brief History: -"But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?" -One might argue that the universe IS the creator. The question then would be whether it has awareness of itself and of what it is doing. Is it just a vast mass of matter and energy ... with life and consciousness emerging as the product of an astonishing series of accidents ... or does it have an intelligence of its own (which some would call God)? BBella, you are our prophetess. Perhaps you can remind us of your theory of intelligence and its relationship to matter and energy.