Spontaneous creation

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design)

Several problems:

1. How do scientific laws "create" material objects? Such as subatomic and atomic particles. Not to mention spacetime itself. These are what the universe consists of, after all.

   I can see how scientific laws describe and explain patterns in nature. I can see how scientific laws make accurate predictions about the course of certain natural phenomena. But how do scientific laws have the ability or power to create or cause material objects to come into existence? How does a scientific law like "F=ma" have the ability to make a car materialize out of thin air? How does the law of gravity have the ability to make the universe come into existence? To kick off the big bang?

2. Minimally laws describe natural phenomena. As such, what is the law of gravity without the existence of gravity? If the law of gravity exists, then presumably gravity exists too. If gravity exists, then it seems Hawking is arguing gravity is what's created the universe. If so, that would still leave unexplained what created gravity. As well as how gravity could exist before the universe exists.
3. However, if it's possible for the law of gravity to exist without the existence of gravity, then where does the law of gravity exist if the universe doesn't exist? Is the law of gravity a free-floating Platonic ideal? Would the law of gravity need to inhere in some mind?
4. What does Hawking mean by "nothing"? Does he mean what most people mean when they say "nothing" (a)? Or does he mean what physicists like Lawrence Krauss mean when they say "nothing", i.e., some primordial soup consisting of quantum fluctuations (b)?

   a. If the former, then Hawking would be arguing something (the universe) came from literal nothing. How can something come from literally nothing on Hawking's beliefs? (Despite the fact that the law of gravity isn't "nothing". Rather it's "something".)

   b. If the latter, then quantum fluctuations are clearly not "nothing" in the normal sense of "nothing". Rather quantum fluctuations are "something". If something (quantum fluctuations) created something else (the universe), then that only pushes the question back a step: where do these quantum fluctuations come from?

5. Hawking notes the universe created itself. Spontaneous creation. That's illogical. A flat-out self-contradiction. If something doesn't exist yet, then how can it create itself?

   Suppose I have a dog. A friend asks where I got my dog. I reply, my dog created itself, before it ever existed. It just popped itself into existence! How so? By its own sheer willpower? Even though the dog didn't exist to have a will in the first place. All this makes no sense.

   This is true for any created object. Such as the universe which Hawking admits is a created object. Otherwise Hawking might have followed early 20th century physicists who argue the universe is eternal. It has always existed. It simply is.

6. If the universe "spontaneously" created itself from the law of gravity, then doesn't that suggest the law of gravity isn't so much a "law" as it is something less than a law? I mean, wouldn't that be like saying 1 + 1 = 2, but sometimes spontaneous things happen, and 1 + 1 = 3.14 or 6.022 x 10²³?

   How would Hawking square this "spontaneous creation" (which suggests chance or randomness) with his uniformitarianism regarding scientific laws as well as the fact that he believes the universe is a closed system?

   Keep in mind Hawking subscribes to M-theory rather than (say) quantum gravity.

7. Hawking notes it's "not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going". However why assume God is in conflict with a scientific law like gravity?

   Suppose a scientific law did have creative powers - or at least have causal powers. Suppose the same scientific law caused the universe to exist. Suppose God exists too. As such, God could have used the scientific law to cause or create the universe. God and a scientific law with causal or creative powers aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

   Indeed, if God exists, the God of the Bible, then God would been the one in whom the laws of nature originate in the first place.

John Lennox on Stephen Hawking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If4XisIJNA4

Stephen Hawking

So Stephen Hawking has died. My poorly organized or scattered initial thoughts:

1. Hawking lived far longer than most people with ALS live. (So much so that some people have been so incredulous they've speculated the real Hawking died in the early 1980s and was replaced by a double!) Median survival is 3-5 years, but Hawking was diagnosed with ALS at age 21 and died at age 76.

   Given his original poor prognosis, I wonder if in his quietest moments Hawking ever thought he needed to get right with his Maker. After it turned out he was living longer than most with ALS, I wonder if Hawking in his solitude ever considered this might be something of a mercy.

   More likely he simply chalked it up to sheer dumb luck that he was living longer than the vast majority with ALS. If so, then perhaps Richard Dawkins put it best:

   In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

2. Physicists can correct me if I'm mistaken, but my understanding is as follows:

   a. Hawking's main scientific contributions involve black holes (e.g. black hole theory) and quantum effects associated with black holes ("black holes ain't so black", as Hawking has put it). I believe he did other work including work attempting to unify quantum theory and gravitation, and his search for a unified theory was at the core of what he most hoped for, though I think most of this was in concert with colleagues like Roger Penrose. I think this is more or less the extent of Hawking's major scientific contributions.

   b. As such, I think Hawking's public reputation as "the next Einstein" is overstated. I suspect it's largely due to images of an intelligent scientist trapped in a wheelchair. As if beholding a pure mind almost but not quite unbound from its physical shackles. So physically fragile, yet mentally intact. It almost seems like the opposite of dementia. To my knowledge, his mind never significantly waned, even as his body deteriorated. The lights are on upstairs, though the house has broken down into a dilapidated dump.

   c. I've heard and read many physicists say Hawking did fine and respectable work with black holes, but they have likewise said Hawking was far from the likes of Einstein or Feynman. Einstein made "miracle" contributions which revolutionized physics and, indeed, how we now think about the world. Feynman had huge and varied interests, and, reflecting this, he made a wide-range of contributions to multiple areas in physics and even other sciences (e.g. he once made a minor but not insignificant contribution to biology, he helped kickstart the field of nanotechnology, he did interesting work in computer science when his son Carl Feynman decided to become a computer scientist and he started taking an interest in his son's work). Had Feynman been born a generation or two earlier, his contributions might have been more astounding than they were, but by his day there wasn't as much earth-shattering physics to uncover, not in comparison to those of earlier generations including Einstein. And, of course, Feynman always had that very unique if askew way of looking at physics that most other bright fellow physicists couldn't quite see or follow - often to the consternation of Murray Gell-Mann, among others.

   d. If we judge Hawking alongside colleagues of his generation like Martin Rees and Roger Penrose, my impression is Hawking is at best on par with Rees, but considerably inferior to Penrose (though Penrose is about a decade older than Hawking). No doubt Hawking was intelligent, but I don't think he towered above the rest of his colleagues like the public tends to think. At most, Hawking hovered a few inches above his colleagues. He was no giant.

3. After the publication of his A Brief History in Time, which made him a wealthy and famous man, Hawking mainly became a populizer of theoretical physics and cosmology to laypeople.

   Hawking is likewise known for working his atheism into his popular books, at least among Christians. Sure, he's not as militant as other atheists (e.g. Dawkins), but it's fairly clear where Hawking's sympathies lie. His atheism was somewhat muted or hidden in A Brief History of Time, but it became more obvious later in life. For instance, I think the conclusion of Hawking's A Brief History of Time sets up human intellectual autonomy against God:

   However, if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.

   The Grand Design attempts to eliminate the need for God. Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have written in the book:

   It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.

   In fact, much of the book asks questions better suited for philosophers and theologians to address, even (ironically) as the book pronounces the death of philosophy. Perhaps Hawking should've heeded Feynman's words:

   I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy - and when he talks about a non-scientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.

4. I found Hawking's end of the world predictions amusing whenever they would come out in the media. By turns he feared global overpopulation would lead to an inhospitable planet for humans as well as famines and starvations and the like, A.I. would rise up against their human creators and destroy the human race, hostile intelligent extraterrestrials would invade and subjugate humanity, and so forth. Hawking may have been an intelligent man, but he wasn't a very original thinker, at least not when it came to apocalyptic scenarios! These might as well have been taken from the latest scifi or disaster flick.

   Still, because Hawking feared the end of humanity, and because he has said he was always inspired by "the stars", Hawking would often argue for space exploration and off-world colonization. (I guess Elon Musk is attempting to make that happen now.) I suppose Hawking believes humanity is in a precarious situation if all we have is this little rock orbiting an insignificant star to fall back on. However, as an atheist physicist and cosmologist, he surely must've realized at some point that even if humanity could somehow settle the entire universe (or multiverse), humanity will end with the end of the universe itself. It's like we live in a colossal bubble, but there's nothing outside this bubble, and if this bubble bursts or collapses, then it takes everything inside of it with it. If this life, universe, and everything is all there is - if the cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be - then there's no escape from it. There's no hope beyond it. And death is inevitable for everyone and everything. Maybe Hawking was hoping for an oasis in the desert or a restaurant at the end of the universe. If so, that kind of hope is like hoping for pie in the sky, by and by.

5. As far as his personal life, Hawking's first wife was the devout Christian Jane Wilde. Jane knew him before he was diagnosed with ALS. She married him and stuck by his side as he deteriorated. She helped him as he completed his PhD (and she herself is no ignoramus as she later completed her PhD in medieval languages at the University of London). She was his wife, the mother of his children, and more. I haven't seen the movie, but apparently their romance is portrayed in the film The Theory of Everything. Yet Hawking eventually left Jane to marry his nurse. (I'm pretty sure that's not in the movie.) [I spoke too soon! This isn't correct. See the combox below. And thanks, JeremiahZ.]

   Jane once said about Hawking when they were still married:

   I pronounce my view that there are different ways of approaching [religion], and the mathematical way is only one way, and he just smiles.

   And Hawking once said to her:

   There is no room for God in my universe.

6. On the one hand, it's quite a feat Hawking was able to remain relatively optimistic for so long despite his physical condition. As Hawking has said:

   If you are disabled physically, you cannot afford to be disabled psychologically.

   On the other hand, although it's evident Hawking's daughter Lucy adores her father, she has said the following about her father (Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind, p 147):

   I think a lot of people don't realise just how stubborn he is. Once he gets an idea in his head, he will follow it through no matter what the consequences are. He doesn't let a thing drop...He will do what he wants to do at any cost to anybody else.

   Perhaps this is "the ultimate triumph" of Hawking's life.

7. By contrast, the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell had a more modest and constrained view of science and scientists:

   Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent it must have been created.

   I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable.

Crippled delusions of grandeur

http://godawa.com/movieblog/oscar-watch-•-theory-everything-unintentional-tragedy-crippled-atheist-mind/

Behind every great man is a great woman

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/stephen-hawkings-first-wife-jane-wilde-prayed-god-he-would-live-he-mocked-her-faith-1484522

Atheism is a fairytale for people afraid of the light

"Statements by scientists are not always statements of science," said Prof Lennox. "Stephen Hawking said, "religion is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark". I said, "atheism is a fairy story for people afraid of the light". 

"Neither of those statements proves anything at all. They're all reversible. What lies behind all these delusion claims is the Freudian idea of wish fulfilment [that we believe what we hope to be true.] This works brilliantly providing there is no god. But if there is a god, then atheism is wish fulfilment." 

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/ten.quick.responses.to.atheist.claims/41439.htm

Steven Hawking’s Moral Black Hole

http://on.wsj.com/18wwR3I

Assistant books editor Sohrab Ahmari on Stephen Hawking’s decision to join the academic boycott of an Israeli conference.



Photos: Getty Images

Rees on Hawking

From Sir Martin Rees:

Stephen Hawking is a remarkable person whom I've know [sic] for 40 years and for that reason any oracular statement he makes gets exaggerated publicity. I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don't think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic [of God].

Not-so Grand Design update

Just a quick note to say I've updated a past post with a couple of articles critical or at least not entirely supportive of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design (e.g. David Tyler's post).

Please feel free to add any other useful ones I've missed.

Not-so Grand Design roundup

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design has been receiving some serious criticism. Here's a list which recaps what we've posted or referenced here, I think. Please feel free to add any I've missed in the combox.

• See this post from James Anderson.
  
• See this article from Edgar Andrews.
  
• See this post from Stephen Barr.
  
• See this article from William Lane Craig. Scroll down to Craig's critique of Quantum Gravity models of the universe. It was written years before The Grand Design, but much of it is still relevant.
  
• See this Q&A from William Lane Craig.
  
• See this Q&A from William Lane Craig as well.
  
• See this article from Paul Davies.
  
• See this article from Bruce L. Gordon.
  
• See this post and this post too from Steve Hays.
  
• See this article (PDF) from Paul Helm, which isn't about Hawking's latest book but what he says is relevant.
  
• See this video and this article from John Lennox.
  
• See this clip from Alister McGrath and Roger Penrose.
  
• See this post from J.P. Moreland.
  
• See this article from Roger Penrose.
  
• See this video from David Robertson. HT: Peter Pike.
  
• See this article from Michael Turner.
  
• See this post from scientist David Tyler.
  
• See this post from Bill Vallicella.
  
• See this post from Peter Woit.
  
• Finally, although out of alphabetical order, see this comment from the Universe.
  

Beyond the Big Bang

William Lane Craig critiques the various models of the universe in his paper "Beyond the Big Bang." Although it was written years before The Grand Design, some of Craig's criticisms are still relevant to the Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mladinow book. For example, check out the Quantum Gravity Models of the universe section.

It might also be valuable to witness physicists criticize other models of the universe (e.g. the Hawking-Penrose Singularity Theorems against the Oscillating Models of the universe).

Gordon on Hawking

Bruce L. Gordon reviews The Grand Design.

HT: Clive Hayden.

McGrath and Penrose on Hawking

William Dembski posts a video clip of Alister McGrath and Roger Penrose critiquing Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mladinow's The Grand Design.

"Stephen Hawking and God: A Response"

John Lennox comments on Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mladinow's The Grand Design.

Andrews reviews The Grand Design

Tim Challies posts Edgar Andrews' review of The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mladinow.

Hawking and Mlodinow’s Grand Design

William Lane Craig responds to claims made by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mladinow in their recently released book, The Grand Design.

Is Hawking's disability germane?

I ran across a Christian blogger who made the following observations:

Stephen Hawking has written a new book, The Grand Design, in which he makes statements about God, or at least asserts that God is not necessary to explain the universe.

This isn’t a post about that. James Anderson wrote a helpful reply if you are interested in exploring that issue further.

No, this is a lament: There are ‘Christians’ who seem to think Dr. Hawking’s disability is worth mentioning in their usually-inadequate defense of God or the Bible. And by ‘mentioning’ I mean they use it in ways to make fun of or defame Dr. Hawking.

There were enough negative references to his disability on Twitter that a Washington Post blogger wrote a column on it.

I was hoping this was an over-statement – how could anyone be so rude? Or childish? Or uninformed? Unfortunately, after I read the comments attached to a couple of major newspaper articles, I saw the same thing as that Post blogger. It wasn’t many, but enough to be discouraging.

I expect this new book from Dr. Hawking will be an item for a while. So, even if it is only a few who conduct themselves badly in public, let’s help people in our churches understand two things:

Stephen Hawking is not an idiot; Christians (and everyone else) look foolish when calling him that. He may be an opportunist – there is a reason he writes ‘popular’ works rather than limiting his writings to peer-reviewed journals and seminars – but he is no ‘idiot’ in the sense that most people mean.
Dr. Hawking’s disability is no indicator of his standing before God. God is completely free to do whatever he wants to with his creation, including creating geniuses to live with significant disabilities who will deny him.

http://theworksofgod.com/2010/09/09/making-fun-of-disability-makes-much-of-christ-in-what-ways/

I’d just say the following:

i) I agree with him entirely that we shouldn’t make fun of Hawking’s disability. Or make fun of Hawking via his disability. Lev 19:14 comes to mind.

ii) I also agree with him that we shouldn’t call Hawking an “idiot.” He’s clearly very bright.

That said, I’d say a few things:

i) Hawking’s disability isn’t necessarily irrelevant to the quality of his latest book. At this stage of his degenerative illness, I seriously doubt that he’s physically capable of writing (or even dictating) long supporting arguments for his position. So all we’re likely to get from him are witty, zippy, quotable, epigrammatic one-liners.

ii) Indeed, there’s a reason he coauthored the book in the first place. He isn’t up to writing a book by himself, even a book for popular consumption.

iii) On a related note, even if he were in perfect health for his age, he may well be past his prime as a theoretical physicist.

iv) Apropos (ii)-(iii), I remember atheists gleefully discounting Antony Flew as a senile old man because he coauthored his final book.

iv) Although Hawking’s not an “idiot,” he is a “fool” in the Biblical sense of the word.

The cosmic toymaker

To judge by some of the reviews, Stephen Hawking has evidently given up his quest for the Theory of Everything.

A scientist is in a situation like those SF scenarios where we come into possession of advanced technology. The challenge is whether we, with our primitive technological understanding, or unevolved brains, can figure out more advanced technology.

There are variants on this scenario. The technology may be more advanced because it comes from the future. Or it may be more advanced because it comes from a superior alien civilization.

There are variants on that scenario as well. The alien technology may be more advanced because the alien civilization is further along the historical continuum, but someday we will catch up. Or it may be more advanced because the aliens are smarter than we are.

If the aliens are smarter than we are, then their technology may defy our best efforts to understand it. We can never reason at their level. So the design will remain opaque to human understanding. Or perhaps we can learn a few things from studying the advanced technology–which will jump-start our own technology–but other things forever elude our grasp.

In another variant, the technology may defeat our efforts to figure it out, not so much because the alien engineers are intellectually superior, but because their type of intelligence is simply incommensurable with ours. How they perceive the world, process information, &c.–is so different from ourselves that we have no common referent point. We can’t tell what problem they were trying to solve. We just don’t think like they do.

This scenario often takes the form of an alien cockpit. After scientists figure out how to get inside the spacecraft–or the craft obliges them–they poke around the cockpit, trying to figure out if they can operate the control panel. Is there something analogous to human experience, some common denominator, some Rosetta Stone, which will enable them to decrypt the system?

Of course, this scene tends to be a bit of a letdown since the cockpit was designed, not by superior aliens, but human beings pretending to be aliens. The cockpit suffers from the limited imagination of the screenwriter and FX dept., as well as the demands of a satisfying plot.

To what extent is our universe comprehensible? Is God like a toymaker who comes down to the level of the child? Who designs a toy that we can take apart, put back together, or recombine–in ways we can fully master and exhaust?

Or is God like a toymaker who designs a user-friendly toy that a child can play with, even though the underlying technology remains unintelligible to a child?

"Hawking Gives Up"

Peter Woit comments on Stephen Hawking's recent remarks.

Credit where credit is due

The universe comments on Stephen Hawking.