Hawking ditches God (The atheist delusion)

by David Turell , Thursday, September 09, 2010, 02:10 (5189 days ago) @ dhw


> "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?-You know my answer. The universe is intelligent. But I wonder about the Hawking quote above. If the universe is expanding from a central point, however it started: Bang, quantum fluctuation, etc., then our space-time is expanding like a big balloon into whatever IS NOT out there, i.e., nothing. Space time is flat, according to the latest findings. However if we try to reach an edge we will simply curve back on ourselves within our universe. We can 'see' out to the area of 300,000 years after the Big Bang (if I may use that term advisedly). At that 'place' we pick up the background radiation from the 'Bang'. How do we make that measurement if there is no 'edge"? And finally, from Leibnitz, 'why is there anything?', and Hawking can't answer that any more than I can. And finally Hawking (Cambridge) and Lenox (Oxford) violently disagree. One vocal mathematician, like one snowflake, doesn't make a comfirmative snowstorm.