One of the greatest minds of our time, if not all time, and a universally praised physicist and cosmologist who has gone out of his way time and time again to not offend people of faith. He is oft-cited as mentioning God when talking about the big bang or origins of the universe. However, this is a fallacy, and a weak attempt by theists to hijack someone credible to their pitifully unsubstantiated beliefs.
What if “God” triggered the Big Bang, and all the laws that followed? This contradicts the bible, koran, torah, et cetera, but it still provides enough doubt in the mind of every day people to allow room for the possibility of a creator.
Anyone who doubts that Hawking is an Atheist need only listen to his narration and comments on “Did God Create the Universe“. Hawking is very clear about a number of things.
- There are 3 ingredients needed to make everything: Matter, Energy, and Space
- Quantum physics has been shown to allow for an object (proton) to appear from nothing.
- Like in a black hole where time does not exist, there was no time before time began.
In short, for Hawking, all chains of causation and condition ultimately trace to physical laws and quantum fluctuations, the greatest quantum fluctuation being the big bang itself. And, since time also begins with the big bang, there was no prior time for God to brood over the surface of the deep (as Genesis 1 imagines God doing), or to do anything else for that matter. Hawking is quoted as saying,
You can’t get to a time before the big bang, because there was no, ‘before the big bang’ because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means there is no possibility of a creator, because their is no time for a creator to have existed
Can his view on the existence of a God or Gods be any clearer? I don’t think so, and I’d be grateful if theists stopped quoting him out of context and rely on their own supporters for worthy messages. Oh wait. They can’t because there aren’t any. So, I guess for the rest of time we’re going to be subjected to theistic fallacies like misquoted Hawkings and Einstein, or ideas like “Hitler was an atheist” (hint: he wasn’t).
I don’t profess that science knows everything, but it knows that it doesn’t. To quote myself from yesterday:
Science is disorganised knowledge, ever evolving. Religion is organised ignorance, ever restricting.
Further reading:
11 Comments
I would rate Einstein ahead of Hawking, as far as physicists go. Einstein saw a beginning and end of the tapestry of the Universe, thus a creator. While he did not believe in a personal God, or organized religion, he acknowledged that some being must have created it, it could not have happened by random chance. Kind of pokes a hole in the whole Hawking thing, I think.
The greatest mind on the planet says there’s no God, that’s good enough for me.
Stephen, just because you “rate” Einstein ahead of Hawkins (in what way do you mean “rate”?) doesn’t mean much.
Einstein’s notion of “god” isn’t the same as the religious one. He was insistent that he in fact did NOT believe in God. Einstein has often been misquoted as has Hawking regarding belief. Neither were or or believers.
I think you’re ignoring some facts. Hawkings is probably an agnostic or has his own brand of religion. To study you up on this:
FIRST OF ALL, let’s not forget that he always gets angry when called an atheist. Just because he says a “God isn’t necessary” does not mean that he denies the existance of a God, but rather, that a supreme being is not necessary for his theories.
When asked whether religion and science can coexist, he mentioned:
“…then Newton would not have discovered the law of gravity.” He knew of Newton’s pious views.
“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” ( A Brief History of Time )
“However, if we do discover a complete theory. . . then we would know the mind of God”
“These laws may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to them and does not now intervene in it”
Please study up a little more before throwing claims into the world.
Also, regarding Einstein. Einstein also had his own form of God. He was not an atheist, just didn’t subscribe to a unified religion. Some are abusing the term atheist as someone who can believe in a God without being religious. Atheism is the belief in no God, and nothing existent aside from the carnal.
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CK says:
Atheism is the belief in no God, and nothing existent aside from the carnal.
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You are wrong, atheism is the disbelief in the existence of a god, not the claim that there is no god
You better make some research on the meaning of the words, not in what the majority says…
And by the way, the first people to be claimed as atheists were the christians, the Romans had several gods and the christian had just one and didn’t believed in the gods of the Romans, then the Romans labeled them as atheists
If I may, I’d like to reply to all the previous statements. I am an atheist, and have read all of Einstein’s and Hawking’s writings, and I consider myself very versed on the subjects involved. For scientists, this debate involves inherent vs. religious morality. And it used to be that only philosophy involved itself, science wasn’t there yet.
Einstein was at best a deist, and at least an agnostic atheist. He did not believe in a personal god, and was more akin to the idea that since we simply can’t claim what happened before the big bang, as it’s not worth speculating. He was never concerned with ontological arguments, or how matter was created before the big bang. He never stated once there was an omnipotent, omniscient creator- but thought the universe itself as ‘God’ simply because our consciousness existed, he never ruled it out. He passed away before science was involved with the questions of morality and empathy.
Hawking is a bit different- while he feels very much the same way, he is alive when neuroscience is showing very much much how consciousness and morality are products of the human mind. Sam Harris is incredibly versed on this, and his books are invaluable to anyone involved in this topic. Hawking is an incredibly humble person, and one of my heroes. I very much doubt he would involve himself personally, as CK stated to Hawking “God isn’t necessary”. That is neither a statement for, nor against God. It’s irrelevant to him. And this was the same as Einstein.
It’s impossible to comment on someone like Newton- It was until recently where a rejection of the Church would have you burned at the stake as a which, or heretic. Like Galileo, Newton had no choice, and it is very likely (but not proven) he was not very ‘pious’, and simply conforming. We’ll never know, so it is hypocritical of me to speculate about it, but we can see that as Europe moved toward enlightenment, secularism was probably more widely spread than the accounts that attest it.
I meant ‘Witch’ and ‘attest to it’. I’d make a terrible proof reader. Cheers
There is a god. but maybe not the god that the society believes in it. you know. there certainly is the god.
proof: i cant reveal everything to you but this man is wrong. there do exist the god.in this sense the god is the origin of life. (Deleted Verse). well i cant explain it more to you. believe that i know something far more than this hawking of yours. just remember god do exist. the man was wrong about the string theory. there is no such thing as string theory.it seems after years people are getting to this conclusion anyway. honestly not important to me. he is wrong about a lot of things he says. he has the right to make mistakes and you do have one to not to accept every shit that he says.
I never understood the term agnostic atheism. Agnostics are unsure of the truth. Atheists swear there is no God. Their choice I guess. I don’t see how you can be “both”. Personally if you talk of a guy on a throne I cannot believe this and dismiss it as mythology (however I do not have the answers and can neither prove or disprove this hypothesis), I DO though believe in intelligence behind the Universe it is to precise to be simply an accident. And those doing research will now know weird readings have come to us that “suggest” (again not proven) that there are impressions on the outer edges of the universe suggesting another or other universes pressing against ours. If this is the case the Big Bang Theory which in all truth is the most plausible hypothesis and not fact will fall on its face because if there are other universes (or the multiverse) out there then a single intense explosion creating everything cannot hold up and think for a second “EVERYTHING” we see in the universe came from a point smaller than a pinhead according to conventional science is this anymore sane than saying an intelligent being created the Universe? Not enough answers hence why I am agnostic.