Hawking ditches God (The atheist delusion)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 15, 2010, 12:45 (4969 days ago) @ BBella

I wrote: "One might argue that the universe IS the creator."-BBELLA: At the time I read that sentence, it communicated to me in that moment [...] a still snapshot of the universe and said to me, look at this picture, who could argue this is the creator?-Thank you for explaining the statements I had previously found difficult to follow. If I've understood the rest of your post, the implication is that the universe is a continuous process of creation, which makes it at one and the same time both a creative force and the product of its own creation. You link this to Hawking's hypothesis, according to which the universe may have had no beginning but simply IS, and I think it also has a great deal in common with process theology, though Hawking says it would make God unnecessary (come back, Frank, and tell him where to go). -BBELLA: "Maybe it is just simpler, for language sake, to throw in the towel and call all that IS ... God." -If by throwing in the towel we could also throw out all the trappings with which the different religions envelop their gods, we could probably come to some sort of consensus. But the word has far too many associations. You're right, though, we do need a term for all that IS. Perhaps we should simply call it Nature. (Not an original idea, I know, but is there anything original to be said on this subject?) Whether Nature is a conscious or unconscious force would be left open to discussion, but at least we'd have a term that all of us could use as a common, neutral starting point.