 |
|
|
|
September 3rd, 2010
11:25 AM ET
Religious leaders hit back at Hawking on Godless creationReligious leaders in Britain on Friday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe. In his new book "The Grand Design," Britain's most famous scientist says that given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published in The Times of London. "Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he wrote. "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going."
« Previous entry'My own Dad tried to kill me' survivor credits God
|
  About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
|
|
|
Hawking's findings is like saying the computer works because there is a thing called code 🙂 ..but who wrote the code?
No, it's more analogous to saying that it doesn't take someone pulling your finger to make you fart. All the necessary elements were already rotting in your bowels and it was going to happen anyway. Your spouse will probably back me up on this, right?
@NL
peace friend !!!!
not sure why my recent posted message still shows "Your comment is awaiting moderation" for several hours. I thought I have freedom of speech here 🙂
The moderators use to either delete or allow a flagged posting. Lately, the flagged comments are just left flagged.
I know some of you are going to start pointing out all the old testament horrors of God..but don't you understand that God came in the form of the man Jesus to save , and do away with thse things so they never happen again? Do you really understand what you read in the old testament, and why certain of things happened? I doubt it.
I would compare it to some here trying to understand Hawkings writings, when they have no understanding of his subject matter, on that level.
This is not about religion anyway, its about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Who has the true God? Look and see if any of the other so called Gods ever laid claim and did (eyewitness accounts) what Jesus Christ did, and you'll have your answer.
Besides, seeing how you don't believe in God, then how can you believe in Satan? You can't. Too bad you can't see that the one who operates in the "invisble" capacitiy, is the author of alot of the turmoil in the world today.He is the evil.
But, no, its easier to blame God for everything, or just discount him entirely.
Another thing, why is it that everything wrong about the world, famine, sickness, etc,, is again blamed on God> We live in a world where there are bacteria's, disease, genetic infliction, and so on. Science can prove that one But, yet I hear alot of athiest say, Why don't your God do this and that, or why is he letting this happen and so on?
Nobody wants to look at the infallibilty of mankind, how much of this have we brought on ourselves? Technology certainly has had negative effects on life, from the fumes from the buses we ride and cars we drive (air pollution) , too many examples to give.
Frankly, I don't care if my belief in God rocks your boat or not, no more then I care if the top Scientist in the world says God don't exist and did not ceate the universe. I know what I believe is true because I have personally expierienced in my relationship with God, and not just from the bible. Anyone can read the bible, including the devil, that proves nothing.
Live and let live. Our choices will all effect us in the end, like it or not. God is not someone I embrace for any reason other then I desire in my heart to be a child of his, via the methods by which he stated I would do if I wanted that.
If I die and there is nothing, thats ok too.
Does anyone consider the fact that the things that were said in the old testament, were fulfilled in the new testament? How is that possible since nobody had a device that could know those things, lest they came from God?
@FYI
You asked, "Does anyone consider the fact that the things that were said in the old testament, were fulfilled in the new testament? How is that possible since nobody had a device that could know those things, lest they came from God?"
First, good to see you posting comments!
Now – The old testament preceded the new? Yes?
All the prophecies written in the old were known by the gospel writers. Yes?
The gospels were written to prove Jesus was the Messiah, and to commence the Christian religion.
One of the gospels (Mathew) even said the following:
All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”
I think the gospel writers, knowing the old testament prophecies , made sure Jesus fulfilled them. Wink, wink.
There were prophecies concerning the Messiah, that Jesus did not fulfill. That was why the Jews reject Jesus as being the Messiah. The Christians say Jesus will fulfill those things, when he comes for the second time.
The Jews response is that, the real Messiah will not need a second trip.
John,
Let me get this straight; your solution to the spontaneous generation of the universe is to spontaneously create a sentient being before the universe who could then spontaneously create the universe? Rube Goldberg would be proud!
Not just a sentient being, but an unique, unborn, all powerful, most advanced being or thing imaginable... From nothing, but always having been... Yet, male (with no female counterpart?) and completely Obsessed with our species and particularly our mating habits. Rube couldn't even begin to imagine something that convoluted.
@NL
That is such a totally awesome point!!!!
I love that post. THANK YOU!!!
NL must stand for Not Losing. 😀
@NL
Can we enroll Reality in a course on how to actually post intelligently with you as the instructor please?
Just grinnin'
@Kate
Reality already knows how to post intelligently. No classes needed. Just restraint. 😛
@Fast Eddie
No, he knows how to cut and paste from websites ... I'd really prefer to find out what he thinks, not what someone else tells him to think ... he's a fundamentalist paster 🙂
Just pokin'
@Kate
Reality doesn't copy-and-paste ALL the time. I've seen some actual typed responses here and there....
(did you notice I said "copy" and not "cut"? You can't "cut" from a web-page unless you have the necessary control over it.)
And good morning to you! 😛
Just driftin' and helloin'
@Fast Eddie
Oh, I've seen a few lines of original post from him here and there too – I even asked him how he can continue to disbelieve in the existence of God when such postings of his were living proof that miracles do occur!
He never did reply to that one 😛
And good morning to you – and you're a nit-picker! Fine, copy-and-paste 😛
Just laughin' my behind off
@Kate
So it's raining behinds at your house? LOL
I like your kate-sayin blogspot. I forgot to mention that when you first told us about it.
My security setting do not allow java, so I am unable to do much more than read your posts there.
Your latest is another good one – my comments would be horribly serious though.
Probably just as well....*sigh*
buttocks!
@Fast Eddie
I thought I'd added in the fallback for non-scriptabled people on the comments system ... I'll check it out and see what I borked.
Blogspot takes some bootstrapping to add the Intense Debate system to, I might just shunt it across to a system I'm more familiar with.
Just geekin'
Didn't Louis Pasteur disprove Spontaneous generation? Now we have Spontaneous Creation? These are claims that the Pope needs to make, not Hawkings. Is he now switching teams?? Creationist theorists backed science into a corner recently by pointing out that scientists were in fact myth making by purporting that the universe was created out of nothing. At least Creationists believe something or someone is doing the work. Now Science is stating "something from nothing". This is what Aristotle believed. It took 2,000 years to fix that one. Now this! Maybe Hawkins, Moses, and Houdini can do their magic in Vegas. What Hawkings is talking about is a miracle, I mean magic, I am so confused...
Yeah, the stories in the King James bible is much less confusing. Much more believable. LOL
Science takes the magic out of things. Once a supernatural event is explained, it isn't supernatural anymore.
Science will use the scientific method to examine whatever theories arise. They won't be miraculous anymore.
The religious of the times, fought, tortured and killed to defend their beliefs. Their beliefs turned out to be wrong. The earth is not the center of the universe. The earth is not flat.
I personally believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created everything. Is my belief on a par with the Creationists'?
Try spontaneous combustion as more analogous to what Hawking is talking about.
@NL
Remember I'm "special" . Explain that for me, please...
David Johnson-
John was talking biology with spontaneous generation, but I said spontaneous combustion was a better analogy where all of the necessary conditions are already present and an outside "flame" is not needed to spark a fuel. Hawking was saying that gravity itself will eventually force the forming of the universe and I thought that was kinda like how the gases from grain in a silo have a nasty habit of chemically igniting themselves.
@NL
Got it. Thanks man.
No one can prove god does not exist. No one can prove there are not fairies living in my left shoe. A negative cannot be proven. We do discount things as not being so, based on a preponderance of the evidence and common sense. I believe and say, there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or god. The evidence for each of these, is nonexistent. The evidence against is legion.
Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
If I say to you, I have fairies living in my left shoe. It is not upon you to prove I don't. Since I am making the claim, it is up to me to supply you with evidence. If I have no evidence, or if my evidence is weak, you are entitled to ignore my claim and assume there are no fairies in my shoe.
You are claiming there is a god. It is your burden to prove it is so. Cheers!
There's been a few of you that have insisted that "we" prove there is a God. How bout this... YOU prove there is no God. Just because Mr. Hawking is a briliant scientist and created this theory... doesn't exactly prove anything. How many great and briliant men/women in history have been right 100% of the time?
Let's hear it... I want PROOF that there is no God.
Here's a great quote from Gregory Koukl:
"Since science, by its very nature, is never capable of proving the non-existence of anything, one can never accurately claim that science has proven God doesn't exist. That's a misuse of the discipline. Such a claim would require omniscience. The only way one can say a thing does not exist is not by using the inductive method, but by using a deductive method, by showing that there's something about the concept itself that is contradictory."
Do you see how silly your approach is now? No human can prove one way or the other if there is a God or not.
No one can prove god does not exist. No one can prove there are not fairies living in my left shoe. A negative cannot be proven. We do discount things as not being so, based on a preponderance of the evidence and common sense. I believe and say, there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or god. The evidence for each of these, is nonexistent. The evidence against is legion.
Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
If I say to you, I have fairies living in my left shoe. It is not upon you to prove I don't. Since I am making the claim, it is up to me to supply you with evidence. If I have no evidence, or if my evidence is weak, you are ent itled to ignore my claim and assume there are no fairies in my shoe.
You are claiming there is a god. It is your burden to prove it is so. Cheers!
Nobody has to prove anything to anyone. God, even if some think of him as a religion-fiction, for others it is most comforting to believe in him. Neither are we living in the dark ages, where faith is imposed, nor are we very advanced in science to be able to say God is a fiction of our imagination. We are still discovering our origins, beginnings and the reasons for which we exist. Something happened, and existence is a FACT. How, who, when and for what reason... that is what we are trying to find out. If we say there is no God, then we abandon all hopes. On the other hand if we say God is the reason behind this, then the answer is very simple, he wanted it to happen so it happened. However, if God did indeed create us, he is also responsible for creating our intelligence, thirst for exploring, imagining, philosophizing, our natural curiosity and questioning of everything. So if he's God, he must have known what he was getting himself into by creating us this way. If he truly exists, I'm sure this is the way he wanted us to be and no other. We are evolving through trial and error. If God exists, then good for him, but we inevitably have to debate his existence until the day we know for sure, and since we debate Gods existence, we also look for alternative answers and sources of creation. Time will sort this debate out, until then, I think you should believe whatever makes you feel comfortable.
@Scott
Seems to me that atheists here and in the larger world have pretty much proven their point "by showing that there's something about the concept itself that is contradictory."
god was created so that a few could dominate and suppress vast numbers for their own power and/or gain.
I don't think so. I think god was invented because people were afraid of death and they couldn't explain the things they saw around them. It comforted them to have a snuggly god to curl up against.
But, men figured out how to use the gods for evil. Then your domination and control was born. Cheers!
"There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works." Stephen Hawking
And God's answer to Mr. Hawking...Psalm 53:1 – The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Psalm 10:4 The wicked, through the pride of his countenace, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts. May God Bless Mr. Hawking and hopefully he'll come from under his "pride of life {1 John 2:16}" and seek God's wisdom and not his own.
I think Jesus also said "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes," or maybe that was from The Godfather. One or the other.
All the laws of Physics are not sufficient to explain everything regarding life, because there is a system which is controlled by some kind of energy, which can't explain due to lack of our knowledge. We are busy with religious Guru. I want to introduce a subject "Spiritual Science" under which we can do research for the "micro energy". You can see micro energy like a SOUL, ATMA or as you think. I think combination of positive and negative energy creates a type of micro energy which is control our Physical body. Some combination of energy makes a life and unbalanced energy makes a death which is controlled by nature and you can believe in nature.
There is absolutely no evidence for the soul. No one has seen it. No one has weighed it. The soul does not exist. When you your brain dies, so do you. All that you are is gone. You won't be seeing Aunt Betty or Uncle Bob. You will be too busy being dead. Sorry dude. We don't need another religion. My micowave does not have a soul either.
Boy, they really come out of the woodwork don't they? Sheesh!
What happens to the soul when a person gets brain damage, or lies in a coma? There is no evidence for a soul, but there is evidence that whatever you think is your soul is just a function of your brain. It can be altered by influencing the brain, and it is gone forever once the brain is dead. That's what we know for sure.
Most people are frightened of dying, and believing in god or any other superstition, is just one way of easing one's fear. I have often wondered whether the greater the fear , the more extreme the religion.
Actually, I was thinking of the same exact idea a few days ago, the principle of mass/matter conservation is wrong. No matter how you put it, it is WRONG. The proof: The existence of the universe! Very well, some of you may say, God created it. No matter what God is, energy, spirit, or an unknown form of existence... he still came into existence himself, even if through absurd he created himself, he still created himself from nothing... the statements: "so that what exists now has always existed, since no new matter can come into existence where there was none before" or "Nothing comes from nothing" are WRONG! Even space, which is emptiness, needed to be created. Because, and I know this is very hard for the human mind to comprehend, space is something, space is existence! I'm talking here about non-existence. When we think of an empty space, we imagine a big black spot, when we imagine non-existence we still imagine a big black spot, but they are not the same. even if space is empty, you can still wander around it and explore it, travel from point A to B, try doing that in non-existence! In conclusion, matter and consequently energy CAN come into existence from nothing. What we don't know YET, are the steps to creation, the first spark. How did non-existence come into existence? We haven't began our science journey yet, we are too primitive in matter of science, it will take us an indefinite amount of time to say that we started walking on the path of science, for we are still merely learning the basics.
@Shootme
And... At some time in our future, science will (most likely) provide the answers we seek.
Peace....
@peace2all
u wont understand it..good night 🙂
@Prodip
Well, o.k... fair enough. I am a fairly learned and scholarly fellow.... but it is a bit late, and hey... you have been smokin' something that is allowing you to understand this cosmological model.
Maybe tomorrow, we can go back at it and..... you can humor me, and give it a shot...?
Peace... and good night to you.... 🙂
Good choice to not debate with Peace2all.
He would eat you alive. Cheers!
@peace2all
validating in the sense that he is saying gravity can create and annhilate the universe automatically ..the same thing has been mentioned by krishna in Bhagwad Gita ("By its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again").
The rule is gravity.
@Prodip
You just reiterated the basics from your first post. Again, you are taking religious writings from hinduism and using that as = to Hawking (actually) somehow 'validating' god. Just because it is written in mythical language somewhere, does not mean he is validating it (god) as a fact.
Again..... nonsense.
Peace to you.....
Professor Hawking is validating the presence of God. In Bhagwad Gita (Bible equivalent for Hindus ) krishna (the supreme consciousnes who descended on earth as human) said billions of universes are present in his body, and also provided all answer to the science.
"This material nature is working under My direction, O son of Kunti, and it is producing all moving and unmoving beings. By its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again" –krishna in bhagwad Gita
"The whole cosmic order is under Me. By My will it is manifested again and again, and by My will it is annihilated at the end." –krishna in bhagwad Gita
@Prodip
O.K... It's tooooo late buddy to be slingin' that kind of nonsense. Did I miss something...? Where is Hawking validating the presence of god...?
Just because you switched religious models..... from christain(which most have been using here) to hindu, does not = or equate to Professor Hawking validating *any* god...
Peace.....
do not want to argue with u..u won't understand it 🙂 peace ..lol
There are people I know that pray everyday and struggles in life and others I know that does not give a rat's ass about religion gets all the blessings in life; their businesses flourished, nice homes and everything they touch just simply turns to gold.
The good thing is that they (the prosperous ones) do contribute to society and donates money to needy causes such as victims of earthquake, floods etc..., but for some reason they refused to give their money to churches.
There is a God, but God ain't helping me.
You said, "The good thing is that they (the prosperous ones) do contribute to society and donates money to needy causes such as victims of earthquake, floods etc..., but for some reason they refused to give their money to churches"
I have a decent job, probably in the upper middle class. I do not give a single dime to any church or religious organization. Exception to this is the Salvation Army. I think they do good work.
I also give to the local food bank.
So although I am a godless atheist, I love my fellow man.
David Johnson, Don't pat yourself on your back too hard there David-might dislocate your shoulder...
BTW, not just Christians. Every religion that teaches a creator god(s) creates this paradox.
Christians almost unanimously claim that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Now this creates a contradiction. An omniscient entity would have no desires, therefore no reason to create the universe....
.....Thus, the existence of the universe PROVES the non-existence of god.