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More than a decade ago, British physicist Stephen Hawking said there was a 50-50 chance that a unified "theory of everything" would be discovered in 20 years' time. Now Hawking thinks the theory has been found.
In "The Grand Design," he and co-author Leonard Mlodinow explain why a concept called M-theory offers the only path they can see to understanding the universe's grand design. Hawking got a lot of click traffic earlier this week for his observation that God wasn't needed to explain the origin of the universe. But his claim that "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find" could be, if anything, more scientifically controversial.
"Stephen often overstates the case, and that's fine," said Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University who's coming out with his own book about the ultimate questions of physics next year. "That's by virtue of the fact that it's hard for him to go into detail because of his medical condition. Because of that, he makes brief, blunt statements. It's almost like the Bible. Whenever he says anything, people jump on it."
M-theory is a key jumping-off point for "The Grand Design." The string theorists who came up with the term have never agreed on exactly what the "M" stands for, although the words "membrane," "matrix," "mystery" and "magic" have all been floated as possibilities. My favorite explanation is that M-theory is the "mother of all theories."
Pulling strings
String theory suggests that the fundamental constituents of reality are not pointlike particles (such as the concepts we have for protons, neutrons and electrons) but are more like tiny strings vibrating at different "frequencies." Such ideas can be used to make linkages between gravity and the other fundamental forces in physics, but only if you build 10 dimensions into the picture.
Theorists found that five different strains of string theory explained how the universe worked, from five seemingly irreconcilable perspectives. But if you added one more dimension to the picture, effectively turning the dimensional dial up to 11, everything made sense. The five perspectives could be seen merely as different ways of expressing the same super-theory. That's what's known as M-theory.
Hawking and Mlodinow may make it sound as if M-theory has to be the theory of everything, but Krauss says it's too early to declare "M-Mission Accomplished." One big issue is that M-theory makes more than one prediction about the nature of the universe. In fact, the number of predictions it makes is somewhere around 10 to the 500th power. That's a 1 followed by 500 zeroes.
"On the surface, that sounds like a bad thing," Krauss said. He has observed that this kind of string theory isn't so much a theory of everything as it is a theory of anything (or a theory of nothing). But most scientists have come around to the view that the multiplicity of M-theory's predictions is actually a virtue. Seen from this perspective, it may be that anything is possible when it comes to creating universes. We just happen to be in a universe where all the lottery numbers have added up to win what astrobiologist Paul Davies calls the "cosmic jackpot."
"Interestingly enough, what people are hanging onto is the lack of ability to make predictions," Krauss said. "It turns a wart into a beauty mark."
What Krauss finds exciting is that there could be ways to verify that something can come from nothing -- which is the point behind Hawking's claim that God isn't necessary to explain the universe's creation.
Physicists have noted that the positive energy contained in particles and the negative energy represented by gravitational attraction appear to balance out precisely. "Empirically, we can actually have evidence that the universe came from nothing. One of the key things is that the total energy of the universe is zero, which is only possible if the universe came from nothing. It could have been otherwise. It could have been not zero," Krauss said.
The concept of a zero-energy universe and getting something from nothing may sound crazy, but this article from Mercury magazine and this video of one of Krauss' lectures, both titled "A Universe From Nothing," show that the ideas has been percolating among scientists for years. Such ideas are central to "The Grand Design," as well as to the book that Krauss is currently in the midst of writing.
"This is very premature, because we still don't know what M-theory is," Krauss told me. "The interesting question for me, ultimately, more than this metaphysics, is whether we'll be able to empirically answer these questions. Science has gotten to the point where there's the hope that we'll be able to turn some of this metaphysics into physics."
Judith Croasdell
Physicists Leonard Mlodinow and Stephen Hawking work together in Hawking's office in Cambridge, England.
Mlodinow agrees with Krauss that M-theory still has miles to go, but he says it may be as close as science can get to the fabled theory of everything. The Caltech physicist has collaborated with Hawking for years -- not only on "The Grand Design," but also on "A Briefer History of Time," a streamlined version of Hawking's classic work. Mlodinow has also done science writing as a solo act, as the author of "Feynman's Rainbow" and "The Drunkard's Walk."
During a telephone interview, Mlodinow told me that "The Grand Design" was truly a joint effort, in which he and Hawking traded, debated and restated each other's prose. "Everything was pretty much passed back and forth, so actually it would be hard to identify which one of us wrote what," he said. "In fact, at times where I've tried, I've gone back to my computer to see -- and sometimes I'm wrong."
Thus, Mlodinow is as good a source as Hawking for insights into the meaning of "The Grand Design." Here's an edited transcript of our Q&A:
Cosmic Log: In the past, Stephen has talked about the quest for a theory of everything. The book makes it sound as if it's not so much one theory of everything, but a series of theories for different model-based views of reality. Do you get a sense that it's going to be possible to come up with one unified theory of physics?
Leonard Mlodinow: Well, the book is about why the laws of nature are what they are, and where the universe came from. We do say in the book that we believe the unified theory is M-theory. So we not only believe that it's possible, but we believe that it's here.
Q: But M-theory is an array of different perspectives on reality, and one of the things about that approach is that one model works for one scale, or one sphere of physics, and perhaps another theory -- I don't know whether you'd call it a subtheory, or another perspective -- works for a different one.
A: M-theory is the most general quantum theory that would include gravity, using the constraints that we feel need to be employed -- for example, that it's finite and would make reasonable predictions. Whether it's a single theory or a network of theories is not yet known. I think Stephen feels that there's a good chance it's a network of theories, which is what we see today. Where they overlap, they agree. In other areas where they don't overlap, they make their own predictions. Stephen believes that's OK, and we shouldn't be disappointed if the final theory is a network of theories. According to model-dependent realism, all that is OK. It's just the way reality is. You can't ask which of the theories in that network is more "real."
Q: Do you have a slightly different point of view? Because it sounds as if you're presenting Stephen's view as distinct from your own.
A: No, I agree with Stephen. We debated this idea of model-dependent realism over quite a period of time. I'm saying that just because I'm assuming you were interested in Stephen's opinion more than mine. But I'm happy to jump in as well.
Q: In the latter part of the book, there's some discussion about how God does or does not play a role in the big questions about the universe....
A: Well, people have always wondered about the big questions: Where did the universe come from? Why is nature the way it is? At first we had mythology to answer that question. I suppose people just made up stories, and they became the myths. Or they evolved. Later we had the religions that we have today, and philosophy grew up. People used applied reason, intuition and some small amount of observation as well -- and came up with their own concepts on the answers to these questions.
Bantam Books
"The Grand Design" delves into subjects ranging from M-theory to God's role.
A few hundred years ago we developed this thing called the scientific method, where we come up with theories phrased in mathematics, and we require that they not only describe what we're looking to describe but also make further predictions that can be tested. Then we do experiments, and if we find that the predictions are not right, if they're not verified, then we alter or discard the theory.
In the book, we argue that this is a better method. It's led to the modern society that we have today -- to vaccinations, computers, electricity, television, telephones, everything else. When you understand nature to that extent, you can apply it. Since you really understand what's going on, you can create all this technology, which you don't create based on mythology, philosophy and religious explanations.
As far as God goes, we describe our theory of where the universe came from, and why the laws of nature are as they are. And we show that with this theory, there's no need for a God to create the universe or to create the laws of physics as they are. All of this can come purely from physics, from science, from nature.
Q: There's always a question about "what happened before the big bang," or about the nature of time. Stephen dealt with that in "A Brief History of Time," and you helped with that vision through your work on "A Briefer History of Time." How does this book advance the ball?
A: One of Stephen's big ideas in this book is called "top-down cosmology." It's the idea that we should trace the history of the universe from the present time backwards -- and that the universe has many histories because it's a quantum system. In "normal" physics, we work in a laboratory and we do experiments. We set up the experiment in an initial state, then we let it go for a while, then we do measurements on its final state -- and we check predictions. The theory tells us how the initial state should develop, and then we make predictions about the final state.
We can't do that with the universe as a whole. We don't set up the initial state. We don't have a laboratory where we can control what's going on. We can't repeat the experiment and take the data. Also, the universe -- since we believe in quantum theory now -- is a quantum system.
In normal cosmology, people start with the initial state as if it were a laboratory -- which it's not -- and they use classical ideas, meaning that there's one history of the universe which they trace forward. Stephen believes that we should start from our observations now, because that's all we can do, and trace it backwards, taking into account the fact that the universe has many histories and not just one.
Q: Right, there's a discussion in the book about how the past is as much affected by quantum mechanics as the future is. So there's uncertainty about the past -- which is counterintuitive. That must be a hard sell with normal people who say, well, I remember specifically what I had for dinner yesterday. We know for sure what happened in the past because of things ranging from human memory to the fossil record to the process of baryogenesis at the beginnings of the universe. So how can you say that there's a factor of uncertainty about past events?
A: Well, if you happened to have experienced all possible aspects of the universe for all of time, there would not be uncertainty. Quantum theory doesn't say that if you ate an egg, you might not have eaten the egg. Let's get that straight. What quantum theory says is that in between the times when we observe and measure, and interact in that way, these properties that we talk about have no meaning.
For instance, in classical theory, if you push a billiard ball down the table, and if no one is interacting with it or measuring it, it still has one path with a well-defined position at every time. Those properties exist. In quantum theory, if you push it and then no one interacts with it, you cannot in general say that it has a particular position and velocity at any time. In classical theory, we say that it has those properties, and when we measure it, we're just reading off those properties. In quantum theory, it's not correct to say that a measurement is merely reading off those properties. Rather, it doesn't have those properties when we don't measure it.
Now, if you had an egg yesterday, you interacted with the egg, and there's an egg there. When we look at the universe today, with top-down cosmology, we don't allow for the possibility that the moon is made of green cheese -- because we already know that the moon isn't made of green cheese. We put in all the data of all our observations, and that prunes down the number of different histories that have to be taken into account. But where observations haven't been made, we don't.
So the vagueness of the past is the vagueness of things unmeasured in the past.
Q: Does that imply then that there will be no way to answer that classic question, "What happened before the big bang"? Because the uncertainty goes to an indeterminately high level?
A: No, it's not that. As you go backward in time, quantum theory, combined with general relativity, tells you that if you go back early enough in the universe, time ceases to have the meaning that we assign to it today. It ceases to act as we know it. So it's not a well-posed question to say, "What happened at the beginning of time?" -- because time doesn't go back to the beginning.
According to general relativity, time and space exist under certain conditions. Quantum theory tells you that there are always fluctuations in empty space, and if you make the universe small enough, the fluctuations are great enough that the matter is squashed down enough that this affects the character of space and time itself. Time doesn't exist at that point. So the question doesn't make any sense.
Q: I know we're coming to end of our time -- speaking of that -- but do you hold out hope that humans will at some point understand the totality of the grand design? Or is the grand design something that our brains aren't just big enough to hold? Or is it something that is unknowable, because that's just the nature of the universe?
A: No, we believe that humans can understand it. That's the great triumph and the great miracle of the universe.
More about Stephen Hawking and the cosmos:
- Hawking says God's not needed. So?
- Video: NBC News' Brian Williams on "The Grand Design"
- Do we need to get off Earth by 2110?
- Hawking goes zero-G: 'Space, here I come'
- Aliens may pose risk to Earth, Hawking says
- Up close with Dr. Hawking
- Interactive: Beyond the Big Bang
- Interactive: The Symphony of Everything
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Leave a Comment:
Lets see, in the beginning there was nothing, time didn't exist and no gravity because there was nothing to be pulled by gravity.
So everything was set in motion by ...... and what we call matter came from ...... Creation ?
When contemplating the origin of existence, it should be refreshing to acknowledge from time to time the contradiction that 1) you can't get something from nothing and 2) it must have come from nothing or how would it be here?
Just a fine, fluid awareness of the limits of our intellect.
Something that kind of throws a monkey wrench into this whole religion thing is it's lack of believability. God would probably be pretty technically advanced and probably would have a good understanding of human nature. Why would God go to a bunch of basically hunter/gatherers wandering around in the desert with no writin language and smelled bad when he could have chosen one of the advanced civilizations of the time to spread his word and commandments? Seems odd also that he didn't get one of his angels to do a printout that could be passed down thru time as proof. I am sure someone is going to say well what of the 10 commandments? Interesting how convienient it is that the tablets were destroyed.
RunstheBitterroot- First, almost EVERYTHING that old has been destroyed. We could eliminate a whole bunch of accepted history by that standard. Second, they did have a written language at that time. Not sure where you are getting your facts from, but they are inaccurate. Third, those desert wanderers were the beginning of one of the most wide-spread belief systems on the planet. So if God did speak to them, he apparently did know what He was doing! I welcome valid criticisms to my faith. I just seldom hear any.
Daylight2000, Seriously...! Like you I believe in a God - but unlike you the God I imagine is a big as geological spans of time! As big as time spans nearing the infinite as seen from are very limited perspective and moment of existence. Time enough for shifting continents and evolution and second and third generation suns (we are all made of star dust). You somehow reduce the miraculous down to the mundane while all along it is the mundane crawling like a snail across the ages that is the miracle. God made the universe to work along certain physical laws that your prayer, bias, lack of imagination and religiosity will never reverse or break! And as to "repeatability" and Evolution - you and I and all the scientist don't have the privilege of watching the proverbial culture dish for millions and millions of years. I know your type - for you God is a small town god, he bowls, hunts and goes fishing, he is a Republican and he can be reduced down to a manual book (Bible). Funny, a Scottish theologian determined through the limited filter of his time that the Earth was a mere 6,000 thousand years of age and funnier still that people like you are still wearing his sun glasses.
The Landscape of Nothingness: That would be MYSTICISM. Everything boils down to what one understands God to be and what, if any, is one's relationship to that God. There is a God, and that God is No-Thing that is a thing.
Stop trying to be funny, Krauss. You'll never be a funny stand-up comedian.
Krausses video is AWESOME !
Daylight2000: You are obviously a reasonably intelligent person, but you've made yourself a Christian Apologist here. Your attempts to make sense of the magical nonsense in the ancient texts of the Old testament are clever, but easily debunkable.
There are SO many out-of-sequence errors, logical paradoxes, irreconcilable statements and outright contradictions in the "Holy" Bible as to render the entire text utterly meaningless. That you and so many others NEED to make sense of it is not something I condemn; it's the human instinct to understand, to grow and evolve. But your faith (as it were) is quite misplaced. No genuine answer to any question regarding the nature or origin of life, not to mention the entire universe and it's functionality has EVER been answered by any religion, ever EVER EVER. Did I say EVER? Any factual answer must withstand serious scrutiny and be in concert with all related known facts - and contradicted by NONE of them. That absolute condition is currently satisfied by such areas of study as biological evolutionary theory, regardless of how many Christian, Jewish and Muslim zealots attack it. The physical laws governing the formation and behavior of our universe are similarly in agreement. What your model lacks is the ability to be tested; but the few aspects of it that have direct bearing on known existing facts are in DIRECT CONTRADICTION with those known facts. In other words, your position has been demonstrated as innaccurate long ago. That is, you are wrong - flat out incorrect. You are attempting to use doubletalk and clever verbal skills to make apparent sense out of nonsense. Nothing you can say refutes that.
"There are SO many out-of-sequence errors, logical paradoxes, irreconcilable statements and outright contradictions in the "Holy" Bible as to render the entire text utterly meaningless."
Can you be more specific by selecting one (or two) errors, contradictions, etc. from the Bible?
"Any factual answer must withstand serious scrutiny and be in concert with all related known facts - and contradicted by NONE of them. That absolute condition is currently satisfied by such areas of study as biological evolutionary theory, regardless of how many Christian, Jewish and Muslim zealots attack it. The physical laws governing the formation and behavior of our universe are similarly in agreement"
Eh um, by that standard, most scientific theories can't stand on two legs. You forget that the Big Bang and Macro-evolution are theories only - not fact! I see you worship science and interpret hypotheses as facts.
I've got some theoretical swamp land to sell to people like you.
This this is great, but unless someone figures out how to control gravity directly then It's just mindless dribble. If they do I just hope they control it something like a Class C amplifier (Fast than light space travel).
God was the big bang-- suicide. This explains the "tendency towards complexity" that is observed in galactic formation and evolution-- We ARE God trying to put himself back together like a big Hegelian Humpty Dumpty. Think about it-- what else could possibly challenge an omnipotent being? It had to be boring with nothing to actually challenge "him." But then-- aha! Is it possible to destroy myself? he pondered. Is it possible? And KAFOOMSH! Big Bang and the Universe. This is not my theory, by the way. I cannot and will not take credit. Check it out: it's called God's Debris and you can get it free as a PDF. Just type in "God's Debris" in your handy Google browser and presto. It's a fast read and its fascinating as hell... Written by the same gent as what wrote the Dilbert comic series. He's a smarter guy than I would have given him credit for, before reading this little gem.
Also, to Daylight: Evolution is observable. Swine Flu? Hello-- that was two distinct, disparate flu viruses that merged into one nasty little bug. Also, ever seen a Dachshund? Fat little sausage looking dogs? Or how about chihuahuas? Yeah... those animals evolved from Wolves. And that was done, by man, in just a little over 20,000 years. Now lets expand that same dynamic, that same selective breeding process, and place it on a time line that's MILLIONS or BILLIONS of years long... Bada-bing-- evolution proven. As to your truly startling comment that the Earth is somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old... ahem... ever visit the grand canyon? Ever read a book on geology? You can literally SEE eons of time expressed in rock. It wasn't all just lumped together in a few thousand years, that's completely asinine in the face of what we know about geologic processes. Not to mention fossils-- we know and can measure how long it takes for living material (bone) to fossilize and the conditions needed to do that and yep, you guessed it, we find those fossils all over in bedrock that we can date, again using observable geologic processes, to millions of years ago.
Finally, in closing, a statement about the nature of God. IF God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, as the christian faith and many others assert, Then he is by that nature INFINITE. If God is infinite, then there are infinite ways to reach God. Any attempt to say that "Mine is the Way" automatically preempts God's Infinity and devalues it to something lesser, something not God. This is the essential fallacy of religious ding-bats everywhere. They say, this is the only way to reach God (Jesus, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Mithras, etc) and try to put this infinite being into a tiny box and exclude all other interpretations of that infinite being, making him (that's right, you can do it!) NO LONGER INFINITE and therefore, no longer God. This is a great argument to use when pesky Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses come to your door--I've never met one yet who can reconcile their view of God as an infinite all-powerful being with the fact that they're simultaneously denying that same fact. Religion is just a way of explaining the unknown, of coming to grips with the forces in our lives that are not understood. Science is just as applicable as any other method-- they may not call it a search for God, they may call it a search for "M-Theory" or the "Theory of Everything" or the Prime Mover, or whatever, but its still the same search for the same age old question: where did we come from?
Great article Alan. Keep it up.
Genetic Drifter:
It's funny that you call those who believe in God and the "story" of Creation loons and bash us for blindly putting our faith and belief into religion when you are doing the same thing with this type of science. First off, why is it that only Christians get persecuted for believing in "fair tales" as HamletOgaard put it when it comes to science vs. faith? What about Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc? They all have their beliefs in deities and origin of the world, why just pick on Christians? Secondly, what places science above religion: the fact that man (I use the term loosely) can prove it using scientific and mathematic 'proofs'? As is evidenced by the world we live in and the nature of academia, human-kind is flawed. No one is perfect and very rarely do we get things right the first time; it takes constant trials and revisions before we get something "perfected". That being said, you are putting your faith into science just as we Christians (or any other religion) put our faith in the Gospel. Hawkings' theories are just that: theories. While there may be some evidence for them, which would be what led to him forming his theories in the first place, they cannot be proven to hold true 100% of the time. Theories, machines, and anything else in this world is only as good as the people who create them. Therefore, since human-kind is flawed our creations are flawed. The faith you have in science is just as shaky as the faith I have in my God when it comes to physical proof. If you're interested, refer to Rob Bell's analogy of faith to a trampoline in his book Velvet Elvis, he puts that last idea into words better than I can. Claiming to be a person who apparently reads a lot (or at least more than us stupid Christians), I would hope you would add this book to your list.
Lastly, I just want to say that I do agree with part of your statement. There are people out there who allow their faith to blind them and cause them to judge and hate anything that may challenge their faith and shake up the world they know. Do not let the few speak for the many though. It is only human nature and it goes both ways as your statement proves. What you said in your post only proves to me that you are just as ignorant as they are and like them, you are simply spreading contempt for religion, specifically Christianity.
P.S. for your information, I am quite well read and enjoy reading books of all kinds from scientific (I actually plan on buying this book) to religious (of all kinds). My perception of the information I have read from these books just happens to solidify my faith and belief in one God who created the Heavens and the Earth and who sent His only son to die for our sins.
I like when people say that we put "faith" in science. Could you please explain how we put faith in science by using evidence rather than just saying that humans are flawed? Also could you define faith? because faith can mean so many different things to so many different people. I have read Robert Bell's idea about faith being a trampoline but this only says that when a piece of your faith is clearly wrong, that doesn't destroy the whole idea. I agree, to a point. This does not cover the scientific method and how it is used to remove human flaws. So lastly could you use your evidence to describe how the scientific method (uniform definition) is in fact faith based? Thank You
I propose that the M in M-theory stand for "Marshall" as in Marshall Guitar Amplifiers...string theory is all about vibrating strings and it all never clicked until they turned up the number of dimensions to 11...and as we all know Marshall Amps can be TURNED UP to 11!!! Well played, Universe...Rock On!
In the end, it will likely be said that we may have reached another "milestone" in our understanding, but that's why they are called "milestones". There are always more ahead.
Good for the thinkers out there; they are doing the work the Creator intended them to do, and as we get into what me may see today as the "nitty-gritty" of things, we will find even more things that will mystify us and beg investigation, and then we will still be no further in consclusively denying the Supreme Being's hand.
Keep working, but don't get a swelled head....
Theoretical Physicist are brilliant but you mention about anthropic principle they seem to melt.
I believe anthropic principle is the final answer = dependent origination = duality
Eventually, the M theory will require an observer to appreciate. Without the observer
The whole thing in the universe or multiverse is meaningless.
Is the Grand Designer within our grasp? Sure He is. He has been all along and long before Einstein or anyone else.
The notion that God and science are mutually exclusive is an argument not so much based on matters of faith or atheism but an unbending even brittle orthodoxy proposed by some in either or camp. In affect, some atheist have made their "non-belief" a religion - and some who are religious have made their faith a science. There is not one tenant, paradigm or law of physics currently accepted that likewise excludes or disproves God. Simply, stated, God if he truly exists may have created science and the physical world. Many scientist are not atheist and likewise many people of faith see God in science and in the machinery of the physical universe!
Let me be honest here. First, let me say I am a Christian and I do believe in God. Let me also say Steven Hawking is an extremely intelligent individual who could out-think everyone who has posted a response put together. Having said that, it does not mean that he cannot miss the boat here, or that I'm wrong because I cannot match his IQ.
Science and religion have two things in common: 1) they are both supposed to be a search for truth, and 2) they both are usually clouded by our own presuppositions.
Hawking looks at his theory and says "God isn't necessary." But there are several flaws:
1) He undoubtedly includes dark energy and dark matter into the equation- two theories put forth because we cannot account for proper mass or acceleration in the universe. This means that God is not necessary only AFTER we use several theories to fix our numbers.
2) I actually root for him to be right. Scripture teaches that God made the universe from NOTHING. Hawking actually confirms the truthfulness of scripture on this point.
3) Hawking also assists in dispelling the age old question of "Where did God come from then?" While Christians explain that he is eternal, this theory actually helps prove it. Essentially, time is tied directly into the fabric of the universe, from now all the way back to the Big Bang, where it essentially initiates. If there is a Creator who existed and caused existence, this shows that He would be timeless, since chronology istelf is part of the universe and did not exist "before'- which isn't even the right word for it.
4) Hawking demonstrates that the universe could have happened from nothing as a zero-sum system. This doesn't explain why it did. It is not reasonable to believe that, it I built a huge container enveloping a vacuum that, given enough time, a miniature universe would spontaneously form within it. So it can happen within the laws of physics, but still simply would not happen. Stephen simply explains HOW God did it.
5) Perhaps my understanding is wrong, but the way I read it, essentially he believes the energy of gravity negates the energy existing in the form of matter. (I know this is overly-simplified). I guess its hard for me to buy this as subtraction. It seems to me it should be matter plus gravity, not matter minus gravity. But if one of you can clear this point up for me, it would be appreciated.
I do believe that God has given man the ability to solve almost any challenge we face. Undoubtedly we will continue to gain greater understanding of the universe and we examine it. But uncovering how the universe was formed doesn't eliminate God- it just explains HOW he did it.
Question? Before anything there must have been absolutely nothing. Not even a container for the nothng so, who or what created God or where did he come from? He hasn't always been there. Everything has a beginning.
Stop with the religious garbage, it has no place here and the question of whether god exists is as meaningless as what came before the universe. If you believe in god, go hang out at religious sites and leave science to people that are capable of logical thought.
Perhaps everything is self creating. This includes the Universe and God.
But if the universe created itself, and space created itself, and time created itself, and matter created itself, and stars created themselves, and planets created themselves, and life created itself, and consciousness created itself, and reason created itself, what would god do?
Truly, religion is the monster in humanity's closet, still lurking in the shadows from a time before science, reason and progress; always biding its time to burst its chains and drag us back into the abyss of superstition and dogma. The Christian God (for example) and its Bible have been used to justify the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, genocide and apartheid. Many of those spewing hatred and threatening violence at Muslims today will claim with a straight face they are doing so in the name of Christ.
Someday humanity will emerge from its intellectual infancy, take responsibility for itself in the here/now and face the universe without a crutch. In doing so, we hopefully also can discard the mind-boggling arrogance that maintains we are at the center of the universe, and that the supreme force that made everything created us in its image (that's really kind of a cute presumption, in an intellectually childish way).
"The Christian God (for example) and its Bible have been used to justify the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, genocide and apartheid. Many of those spewing hatred and threatening violence at Muslims today will claim with a straight face they are doing so in the name of Christ."
None of these events that you mention were justified by the teachings of Christ. Rather, humans justified these actions, not God. You fail to mention that Muslims also committed atrocious acts during the Crusades when they took control of the Holy Land (now Israel). Yes, the Inquisition was a sad chapter of the Catholic Church, clearly wrong and a poor reflection of Christianity. However, when folks lump dark chapters of human history together and blame Christianity, they reflect not only personal bias, but also lack of historic perspective and the facts.
I do not believe science is the answer to problems in society. It will not solve the root of the problems - sorry to pop your sophistic bubble. Of course, religion is not the answer, too. Religion is man's efforts trying to better himself/herself into a higher state of existence (mind, spirit, body) in context of a superior being (god or gods), or man's efforts to reach God or gods by doing good works. In any case, human religion fails utterly in man's efforts to become acceptable to his/her God or gods.
Most readers here have pre-conceived ideas about Christianity and do not understand the gravity of the real issues: we were created by God who delights in justice, righteousness, truth, wholesomeness, purity, genuineness, grace, freedom, faithfulness, authenticity, and a loving relationship garnished by our praise and worship of Him. Because of our sinful nature – manifested by the fact that no human being, except one, have ever kept the complete commandments of God mentioned in the Bible (example: the Ten Commandments) – God will judge according to His standard. In fact, the Mosaic Law already condemned those who were under the Law.
When a person decides to shoplift at a retail store, the act of shoplifting is condemned because of the existence of the law, not because the thief thought it was wrong to steal (obviously, the thief doesn’t). In general, the purpose of the law is to point out our sinful nature and to define what is right; we tend to sin and break the “law” so to speak. In that sense, we are slaves to the law and what we earn as a result of our sinfulness under the law is very serious. Jesus, however, not only fulfilled the law by keeping it, but also willingly paid for the penalty of our sins under the law that will result when God judges our sins. What we earn as a result of our sins is death! See Romans 6:16-23. God judges sin because of His character, and the standard He uses is His perfect nature.
God has “overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now He commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to Him. For He has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man He has appointed, and He proved to everyone who this is by raising Him from the dead.”
Christianity is a love relationship, a courtship, a pre-nuptial before the wedding, with the true Creator of heaven and Earth. It is also a religion -yes - but far different in theology, anthropology, hamartiology, and soteriology, than the man-centered religions of this world.
All of this is very simple.... "God" is man-made !!!!
Well put, combos9.
I believe what science is lacking here is a language to express the Grand Design. Our languages and mathematics depend upon time. This "beginning at nothing" and "quantum mechanics smashing particles until time doesn't exist" means there is no language at the beginning either, no way to express this "something from nothing."
Many comments here (most often the God-Creation adherents) hint at this lack of language when they say science is just talking mumbo-jumbo in circles. There is truth in this. But I do believe it is because our languages do not accommodate this "something from nothing" scenario. In our experience (upon which our languages and mathematics are built) it is, indeed, impossible for something to come from nothing. It's a paradox, just as going back in time and killing your father is a paradox -- impossible within the parameters in which we exist.
Think of "watermelons." Now ponder our language: do watermelons "exist" before they are named? Of course a big, round, green thing exists -- but i'ts something vague and with as many conceptions of it as their are people. But the true, agreed-upon concept comes into sharp focus when we say "watermelon." In essence, the watermelon does not exist to us until we identify it, and more importantly experience it. Because even the name "watermelon" means nothing to someone who has never seen one.
And therein lies the problem: we will never experience this "something from nothing," and thus we cannot label it, agree upon it, let alone describe it with a language that is built upon observation and experience.
And what is this but faith? Which, to me, is a very solid, logical, and intellectually sound concept given that we have no observational data to "prove" God exists. In fact, people who express their faith in God seem to understand this "language" problem very well, and live happy, fulfilling lives despite the lack of "evidence." Scientists do not seem so happy to me.
Great comment pointing out the difficulty in describing things we have never seen with language. I also think that we humans may not be equipped to 'see' or even be able to accurately imagine pure nothingness. It's an interesting mind experiment imagining sheer nothingness. The mind recoils from it and attempts to fill it with - something, anything. I'm reminded of the place in the OT when Moses asked to see God and God replied that no man may look upon God lest he die. But he did place Moses in the cleft of a rock and pass by so that Moses could see his 'hind-parts.' Is God so 'real', so utterly full of Beingness, that our limited beingness would actually vaporize in his unshielded presence? And is complete Nothingness, also of such a nature that we might die or have our being sucked away in it's presence?
We perceive things that exist because they 'stand out' against the background of other things. Nothingness cannot be perceived because it has no outline, it has no shape, color, size, volume or any other property. It does not 'stand out' against anything. It is the absence of anything. So trying to describe 'something from nothing' becomes very difficult because our Universe is made up entirely of 'somethings'. We don't experience 'nothing' so our language is devoid of ways to describe or understand it. It's like the concept of 'zero,' which is a relatively recent invention. It is so abstract that the idea of it's usefulness eluded the mathematically inclined for millennia. Now we can't live without it, but our ancestors did for a long time.
It may require a kind of 'faith' to accept the concept of nothingness as more than just a word. Seems almost an oxymoron, believing that the idea of 'nothingness' holds more substance than 'nothingness' itself.
As one who has faith in God I can say that it requires an ability to coexist with ambiguity and uncertainty and the inherent limits to human knowledge and understanding, where it comes to understanding God and his nature. On the other hand, trying to understand, and to push those limits is the most interesting and exciting journey of all.
A: No, we believe that humans can understand it. That's the great triumph and the great miracle of the universe.
Interesting use of the word MIRACLE here.....
I would take Hawking's views on religion with a grain of salt, because people's need to believe in or deny the existence of God PRECEDES their entry into science. For example, Charles Darwin's atheism was simply a way of being loyal to his atheist father, who never made the observations that generated Darwin's theory of evolution. As one commenter said, atheism is just as much a matter of faith as belief in God. And much less comforting.
Big deal, so we may be close to grasping the "Grand Design". Fat lot of good that does us. We can't even get idiots to not drive while distracted.