Hawking - Spontaneous Creation

[August]

Stephen Hawking is taking on God in a TV series, saying that there is no need for God, since spontaneous creation accounts for how the universe came into existence.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/steph ... ies-53293/

Right off the bat, there is a fundamental error in his reasoning. If there was nothing to start with, where did the laws of nature that he appeals to come from? According to his reasoning, the laws had to exist logically prior to the existence of the universe, which is simply impossible.

I suppose one will have to watch the program to get the full extent of his argument, but from this story it seems to be a lot of hand-waving and just so stories.

[MarcusOfLycia]

If things can spontaneously come into existence without any sort of cause, how can we trust scientific theory? Isn't it a sort of assumed fact that things -don't- spontaneously pop in and out of existence?

[DannyM]

And If something could come out of nothing at the beginning of the universe, then something could come out of nothing now. If cows need no necessary or sufficient conditions to spontaneously appear out of nothing, then why couldn't a cow just appear in your front room right now? .

[Gman]

Right off the bat, there is a fundamental error in his reasoning. If there was nothing to start with, where did the laws of nature that he appeals to come from? According to his reasoning, the laws had to exist logically prior to the existence of the universe, which is simply impossible.

I suppose one will have to watch the program to get the full extent of his argument, but from this story it seems to be a lot of hand-waving and just so stories.

Hawking's atheistic religion is no different than any other belief system out there. His religion requires miracles too.. In fact his miracles are even more preposterous and require more faith than any I have ever seen.

Well if he wants to gamble with his life and say that there is no god, I guess that is his prerogative.

[narnia4]

I don't have much interest in Hawking to be honest, I've already read several people tear apart his recent book and even I can pick apart some of the base assumptions here. So much of it sounds like wild speculation with no backing that he touts as fact, honestly. My concern is that there are "the weak" out there that will buy into everything he says simply because of his reputation, unfortunately that's a larger number of people than you would hope.

Hopefully the program represents multiple points of view.

But yeah, anyone who thinks about it even a little bit should notice the glaring hole in his logic. The universe came to exist because of scientific laws, that's his grand explanation? Sheeeesh.

[neo-x]

In "a brief history of time" he wrote something like this...If there was just gravity present, the entire universe would arise out of it.

I was like

[August]

It is clear that there still is no explanation for how the universe started that does not require something prior to it coming in to existence. To even suggest that it "just happened" is laughable, and this type of Dawkinsian philosophy will taint Hawking's legacy.

This also leaves atheism in a conundrum. If they want to appeal to the fact that something as complex as the universe can spontaneously appear, then one of their arguments, the "Who created God?" argument, can be answered in the same way..God spontaneously appeared. As to why Occam's Razor does not apply, and why God is needed, refer to the order established by the Laws of Nature, or are we to believe that the immutable, objective and non-physical laws spontaneously appeared as well, and universally apply to the physical, spontaneously. This sounds an awful lot like the stupid Dawkins "it was all just dumb luck and chance" argument.

I would be embarrassed to even propose arguments like this in public, yet here we have people taking it all serious and making TV shows about it.

[PaulSacramento]

Since nature shows us that NOTHING can spontaneous be created ( we don';t have any evidence of that in the natural world), then what Hawkings is suggesting is a "miracle".
And if we are to believe in miracles, then...

[DannyM]

It is clear that there still is no explanation for how the universe started that does not require something prior to it coming in to existence. To even suggest that it "just happened" is laughable, and this type of Dawkinsian philosophy will taint Hawking's legacy.

This also leaves atheism in a conundrum. If they want to appeal to the fact that something as complex as the universe can spontaneously appear, then one of their arguments, the "Who created God?" argument, can be answered in the same way..God spontaneously appeared. As to why Occam's Razor does not apply, and why God is needed, refer to the order established by the Laws of Nature, or are we to believe that the immutable, objective and non-physical laws spontaneously appeared as well, and universally apply to the physical, spontaneously. This sounds an awful lot like the stupid Dawkins "it was all just dumb luck and chance" argument.

I would be embarrassed to even propose arguments like this in public, yet here we have people taking it all serious and making TV shows about it.

Sometimes one is just compelled to say Hear Hear

[Murray]

Are you referring to the "did god create the universe" discovery special that is premiring tonight or sometime close to now. I was actually hopeing that was a un-bais look at the question but I guess if hawkins plays a large part in it , it will just be another bash christian seminar.

[August]

Are you referring to the "did god create the universe" discovery special that is premiring tonight or sometime close to now. I was actually hopeing that was a un-bais look at the question but I guess if hawkins plays a large part in it , it will just be another bash christian seminar.

It is in the article linked above. The show is called "Curiosity".

[Murray]

^

That's good news, perhaps I still can enjoy that "did god create the universe" show then

[1over137]

In "a brief history of time" he wrote something like this...If there was just gravity present, the entire universe would arise out of it.

Where in the book was it written? I am curious what exactly he wrote.

[1over137]

Scientists should be more careful in using the word 'nothing'. They instead should use the word 'vacuum'. So, given the physical laws, the universe could poped out of vacuum. But vacuum is not nothing. And still there is a question about the origin of the physical laws. Well, one can state that they were, are, and will be. But then atheism is also a faith.

[SnowDrops]

Yup, I agree - the only suitable definition for true nothing I have found is "what rocks dream of". So when someone starts talking about nothing, I would ask them if this definition is fitting.