Hawking Says: There is NO God

I think Dawkins hacked into his little box. That, or he's having a crisis. It happens, but it doesn't sound typical of Hawking's previous stuff.

This reminds me in undergrad there was some rabid atheist sneaking around campus writing, "God is dead!" and then sighned it "Nietsche". It was often hidden by a rolled down map (do they even still use those?)

A teacher would come in at the start of class and raise the map to write on the board and the writing would appear. Many of them seemed irked. Some laughed. One guy stared at it briefly looking puzzled and then under it wrote, "Nietsche is dead!" and signed it, "God".

It's great PR for the new book. Now people who normally wouldn't read a physics book will grab it up so they can read it for themselves or burn it or whatever. Great sales promotion.

The first article I read about it yesterday claimed that Hawkin merely stated that there is no reason for there to be a God, which is slightly but significantly different than there being no God. Of course, I can't find that article anymore to cite it. *sigh*

Diana Hignutt said:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...Has-Stephen-Hawking-ended-the-God-debate.html

No. God.

Physics does the trick.

I thought he was smart enough not to make such ridiculous statements. I stand corrected.

At the very least, he's a bit premature...

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Well, Hawking's coauthor (of Hawking and Ellis fame...as in The Large-Scale Structure of Space Time, Cambridge 1973 IIRC) Ellis, won the Templeton prize in 2004 for being the most spiritual person in the world in 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Prize

Wow. Way to go out on a limb, Stephen.

It sounds like Stephan is drowning in a bit of self pity, first claiming we all need to leave the earth, and now denouncing God as an equation. The guy has a tough life, and I guess I don't blame him if that amazing mind starts to ask where the justice in his incarceration to a withering shell of a body is just.

At some point we all blame God or wonder where he/she is when things go bad.

WendyNYC said:

I would be more surprised if he thought God existed. I don't see how this has much to do with his disability.

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Seriously. Why do atheists always get psychoanalyzed like that? If I start speculating as to what trauma in someone's life made someone decide to believe in supernatural beings, believers get awfully offended.

GeorgeK said:

I think Dawkins hacked into his little box. That, or he's having a crisis. It happens, but it doesn't sound typical of Hawking's previous stuff.

This reminds me in undergrad there was some rabid atheist sneaking around campus writing, "God is dead!" and then sighned it "Nietsche". It was often hidden by a rolled down map (do they even still use those?)

A teacher would come in at the start of class and raise the map to write on the board and the writing would appear. Many of them seemed irked. Some laughed. One guy stared at it briefly looking puzzled and then under it wrote, "Nietsche is dead!" and signed it, "God".

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This must be related to that other amazing story, something that happened to me personally about 20 times when I was in school. There was a certain rabid atheist (rabid so-to-speak) professor who would start his rabid lecture by saying "If there is a God? How can I deny him and not be struck down?" Well, sure enough, every single time he said that, A United States Marine Corporal (or a corporial? United States Sergeant, he may have gotten promoted) would run into the class room and punch the rabid athiest in the face, thus striking him down. The rabid athiest was mystified every single time and made pathetic atheistic attempts at having the United States Marine apprehended. But the United States Marine always vanished into thin air, which the rabid atheiest could not understand.
I think everybody learned an important lesson every single one of the twenty times that happened.

Don Allen said:

It sounds like Stephan is drowning in a bit of self pity....

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...because you disagree?

Neither statement is all that earthshattering.

We should leave the planet or risk species extinction from a meteor strike. That's simple common sense.

As far as God, many scientists are atheists or agnostics. So?

Diana Hignutt said:

He mentioned "Knowing the mind of God" at the end of A Brief History of Time. Which, of course, could have simply been a metaphor, but many people took it as an indication of faith.

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Would appear those many were wrong.

Maxx said:

This must be related to that other amazing story, something that happened to me personally about 20 times when I was in school. There was a certain rabid atheist (rabid so-to-speak) professor who would start his rabid lecture by saying "If there is a God? How can I deny him and not be struck down?" Well, sure enough, every single time he said that, A United States Marine Corporal (or a corporial? United States Sergeant, he may have gotten promoted) would run into the class room and punch the rabid athiest in the face, thus striking him down. The rabid athiest was mystified every single time and made pathetic atheistic attempts at having the United States Marine apprehended. But the United States Marine always vanished into thin air, which the rabid atheiest could not understand.
I think everybody learned an important lesson every single one of the twenty times that happened.

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So what you're saying is that this Marine corporal/sergeant is God since he struck the guy down?

Personally, I don't see that as a lesson. I see it as a set-up/routine and a fairly hokey one at that.

Diana Hignutt said:

That's odd, because I have absolutely been psychoanalyzed on these very boards by several AW atheists for my non-atheistic beliefs. At length. In fact, we locked a major project of mine here, partly for this reason.

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There's a difference between "I think you're wrong and your beliefs are irrational" and "You must believe that because your life sucks," or (the more common version tossed at atheists) "You once prayed for something and God didn't give it to you and that's why you're an atheist."

In this case, we have people implying that Hawking is a bitter cripple blaming God for his condition.

Diana Hignutt said:

Or, God forbid (hehe), he changed his mind.

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You and I will probably never know.

Don Allen said:

It sounds like Stephan is drowning in a bit of self pity, first claiming we all need to leave the earth, and now denouncing God as an equation. The guy has a tough life, and I guess I don't blame him if that amazing mind starts to ask where the justice in his incarceration to a withering shell of a body is just.

At some point we all blame God or wonder where he/she is when things go bad.

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Except, that's not what he's doing. He's saying he doesn't exist. I tend to agree with Amadan that imposing one's own perception of Hawking's motives (and in a slightly condescending way) doesn't much further the discussion. An atheist could easily say, were it the case: "Well, of course the poor little chap believes in God, who else does he have to blame for his condition?"

Of course, I won't be reading the book myself: my lack of believe doesn't come from an equation or some clever man's argument God doesn't exist. Plenty of people smarter than me believe he does.

Diana Hignutt said:

That's odd, because I have absolutely been psychoanalyzed on these very boards by several AW atheists for my non-atheistic beliefs. At length. In fact, we locked a major project of mine here, partly for this reason.

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I guess as long as there are always exactly two equal and opposite sides to every eternally fixed but endlessly debatable point of possible immovable disagreement, we will always have to be careful to psychoanalyze everyone equally.

MarkEsq said:

Except, that's not what he's doing. He's saying he doesn't exist. I tend to agree with Amadan that imposing one's own perception of Hawking's motives (and in a slightly condescending way) doesn't much further the discussion. An atheist could easily say, were it the case: "Well, of course the poor little chap believes in God, who else does he have to blame for his condition?"

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Hawkings old buddy Ellis got a huge prize (larger than the Nobel) in 2004 for inventing a cosmos (not ours actually) where Major Cosmic Gods (MCG) might exist. Hawking might be legitimately a bit annoyed about that, since the "Invent a Spurious Cosmos that might have a Real God and win a big prize" really does not seem to be a fair way of making use of the work Hawking and Ellis did together.

DeleyanLee said:

So what you're saying is that this Marine corporal/sergeant is God since he struck the guy down?

Personally, I don't see that as a lesson. I see it as a set-up/routine and a fairly hokey one at that.

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How do you explain the fact that the United States Marine vanished into thin air? Bases were searched all over the world and not one United States Marine was found missing. There's a lesson there.