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Or, Why the Followers of Stephen Hawking are Kinda Stupid
Okay, no offense here, but yeah I know Hawking is a brilliant mathematician. And a pretty decent scientist. However, I thought I'd put this out there because every time I hear some news reporter or other scientist gush about how he's a "genius" I feel the need to visibly cringe. From what little I've read from him, I can't outright dismiss him as an idiot. While some of his assumptions are highly theoretical, it seems like he did the real work. As long as he stays out of theology, I'm like whatever, he's an okay guy. He seems to have come up with a great deal of things about quantum mechanics, and whatever it's not my business. Besides which, criticizing the handicapped is bad form. He's done a ton of work, and deserves everything.
However, I have nothing but contempt for some of the people who hang onto his coattails. Let's examine The Whole Shebang by Timothy Ferris. We have a book jacket that uses terms like "world-acclaimed author", "master analogist", and "visionary" to describe him (wow, ego much?), as he goes into the Big Bang, not for his own sake but to push anti-theological rhetoric. The afterward, he expends 10 whole pages talking about how "this is how the universe works, and we've proved everything, and God is silent blah blah blah." Has it ever occurred to you, that maybe the reason God appears silent to you, is because you have nothing to say? I kid you not, 2/3 of his book was about "as Hawking observed, as Einstein saw" taking their words in some cases out of context. He even begins each chapter with quotes.
Quote:
28When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; 29for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
You cannot write a book if you do not understand the subject matter on a personal level. Otherwise, you are doing what many students writing essays have done, compiling together diverse sources to try to get them to say whatever it is you want them to say, and hiding behind their opinions. This isn't reason, and it isn't science. It's effectively just parroting back ideas. If you want to convince me of anything, it needs to come from you. This is the meaning of the above passage, and is how you use a quote, to reinforce an idea you already hold, not to do the thinking for you.
Here's what comes from me. I have encountered God. Both as a force (the universe and existence), and as the personal God. I have encountered God from talking to people. I believe God only talks to people in fact who are likely to build his kingdom, as ignores those who have no use for him. I believe this, because this has been my experience, that those who have no interest in God don't find him. Because of this, I will make no effort to convince you that God exists. Either God has interest in you and (being that God is woven into the universe) will find you, or the two of you will leave each other alone.
I will instead talk about the anti-intellectualism (ironic, isn't it? But some branches of science strongly discourage free thought) and conformity on a massive scale of some of these Big Bang quantum theorists. Their seeming inability to believe that other people can hold the Big Bang as true, and still believe in God.
Quote:
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Let's return to our friend Timothy Ferris. I have seen people on here, and elsewhere, like him, so he's our everyman in terms of orthodoxy. Ferris spends a good deal with his head out in space, talking about discoveries of the Hubble, talking about the Big Bang. Here's the problem with this idiot. At least two people that he holds up as spokespeople, would have nothing to do with him if they were alive today. He goes on and on about Einstein's theories, but doesn't know the first thing of the man. He wasn't an atheist. He was a pantheist, he believed the universe was God. He famously said "God does not play dice with the universe" and also said "In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."
Now let's talk about the second one. The founder of the Big Big theory. Georges Lemaitre, Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest. He studied the universe, but at the time the universe was thought to be infinite in the scientific community. He wrote a paper that showed the universe was expanding, and given this, he basically used logic and observation to rewind the universe back to the moment of creation.
Love. If you have no connection to people, you don't understand anything. If you push a theory which alienates people... I don't care if you believe in God or not, but deciding arbitrarily that only atheists can agree with you, is stupid and a surefire way to disappear into obscurity. And guess what? Hawking, who at least tries to make his theories accessible to the general public, is at least known. This blowhard, I have never heard of. I bet none of you have either.
Look, the point is this. Not "we should believe in God" or "we shouldn't believe in God." The point is, seeing Creation and Big Bang as mutually exclusive theories is completely stupid. There is, and there should be, a way to make the Big Bang theory accessible to various religions, and a way to make religious ideas accessible without people having to believe in God.
There is no reason Christians, Hindus, whatever cannot be scientists. Any more than religious people would have to be scientifically stupid.
And religious people can be scientists, many are. So your point is incorrect. What you cannot do is insert the supernatural into science as that makes it unfasable. Hawking stated that there is no need for a god for the creation of the universe. How does that make him an idiot other than he does not share your exact belief. He did not say there was no god just that a way without him can explain the creation of the universe. You want science to be opened minded to your belief but if they do not accept it without evidence they are an idiot. Cone back when you have matched half of his accomplisheds. Ferris if I am not mistaken is a writer of science. You do not approve of his dust jacket so he is too an idiot.
And religious people can be scientists, many are. So your point is incorrect. What you cannot do is insert the supernatural into science as that makes it unfasable.
OK...my response to that would be to point out the huge assumptions that "scientists" make every day regarding evolution, abiogenesis, and the origins of the universe. They have no way to falsify them...but they claim them as fact.
I think we can leave the personality cults to the religious. Actual science and actual scientists do not "follow" names like Einstein and Hawking. They follow the data and the Theories and the discoveries. Who actually made the discoveries or formed and validated the Theory is irrelevant, it is the content that matters.
And while Religious Creationism and the "Big Bang"..... as it was ineptly named..... may not be mutually exclusive as the OP points out, by the lights of science one is a well substantiated position, and the other is not. There simply is no argument, evidence, data or reasoning on offer.... much less so by our OP here..... to suggest that the origin of the universe in it's present form has anything whatsoever to do with an intentional and/or intelligent agency.
So a long but empty diatribe on how the two positions are not mutually exclusive is simply a red herring distraction to the fact that the religious position on the subject is unsubstantiated fantasy and no more.
Badlander, I'm talking about the disproportionate amount that think that if you make any work that proves God, you need to lose your credentials as a scientist.
You didn't read. I left Hawking alone, his theology doesn't bother me, because he writes from his own experiences. It is one thing to arrive on atheism on your own. I don't like ppl who gush over Hawking, but I have more of a beef with ppl who turn atheism into an orthodoxy where ppl who can still see God in the vastness of the universe are obviously damaged somehow (this would be Ferris, and those like him, who aren't true scientists).
Ferris on the other hand, is a science writer, not a real scientist. From what I can see, he makes his money being a leech on real scientists. As for producing something of value, I invented my own religion. I'm less organized than him in terms of writing, but seeing as he pretty much has nothing authentic to say, I'd say my 108 pages trumps his 300+ that he got not by actually living but copying people he doesn't understand and staring at a telescope.
The point is that Ferris obviously hired someone to write his book jacket. I wrote my own book, did my own illustrations, and the jacket? It was about the topic, not how I'm a genius.
Let's talk about something. Growing up, my grasp of science and math was okay. Until my high school teacher taught me to get ulcers from it. I can still do math, but I loathe math problems on a page. But over the years I learned something interesting. While doing math problems freaks me out, I can do applied math well. That is, while a math problem is a phobia, I use math when helping with stage construction for a play or doing simple carpentry, I use it to solve various problems, and I use it for game programming. The way to test whether my skills work is to apply them. So this Ferris guy, has his theory helped him build a rocket? Solve any of the world's problems? Has he done anything with it? Or is it simply an untested theory that he uses sophistry to persuade people that he's proved? There is no good reason why a person can't believe in God and the Big Bang (watch the video, they're essentially the same deal), and he spends much of his time arguing about how God is silent. Who is he really trying to convince?
Stephen Hawking on the other hand, doesn't need to convince anyone. He is not teaching someone else's theory, he has his own. Which is why I left him alone. Atheist or not, better to be a scientist than a "science writer" who can't construct his own ideas, without using other people's work and fawning over them. A writer must trust themselves.
It was kinda a diatribe, huh? But anyway, the theory of a Creator can be revised to make it fit with scientific theory. And yeah, alot of the other stuff is right. The personal god isn't verifiable, although I've managed to personally verify it (as in, I can prove it to myself but not to you because it's all existential philosophy). Right about name-dropping. Creation is a substantiated position, if (and only if) one acceppts as I do, that these two theories are actually variations on the same concept. If we are toaccept that when God created "light" what we are describing is actually the long chain of events that split a singularity into all matter and energy, then science has already proven that. The only non-given in that case is the presence or absence of a creator, which is a separate issue. As in, god made Light (the Big Bang) or the Big Bang happened, but it's time to sto thinking of this as a disproof to God, because it simply isn't.
Last edited by bulmabriefs144; 09-18-2015 at 07:51 AM..
OK...my response to that would be to point out the huge assumptions that "scientists" make every day regarding evolution, abiogenesis, and the origins of the universe. They have no way to falsify them...but they claim them as fact.
Evolution is most definitely falsifiable. Can't you think of a potential observation that would falsify evolution? I can. Can you think of an observation that would falsify, for instance ID? I can't.
Evolution is most definitely falsifiable. Can't you think of a potential observation that would falsify evolution? I can. Can you think of an observation that would falsify, for instance ID? I can't.
What examples would you suggest we look at to falsify evolution?
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