It’s one of the great unanswered questions in science. What is it about this particular physics geek that prompts mainstream journalists to publish his every insipid pronouncement? Other than the fancy speech box, that is.
It’s one of the great unanswered questions in science. What is it about this particular physics geek that prompts mainstream journalists to publish his every insipid pronouncement? Other than the fancy speech box, that is.
Typically those who deny the existance of a heaven, are really hoping there is in fact no hell…
bob c,
I’d be careful in ascribing too much piety to religious folks. There is no shortage of them who steal and cheat.
Piety, i.e. religious observance, is not the same thing as adhering to the moral code promoted by a religion. In any case, Mike in Calgary was talking about likelihood anyway.
As far as who is trying to bring about “the demise of the ‘advanced’ first world”, it’s most directly a bunch of God fearing types strapping themselves up with bombs and flying planes into things who are leading the way.
Absolutely wrong. There are far, far more communists and sympathizers of communists teaching the young in the West to feel guilty about and even despise the advanced societies in which they live and encouraging them to “make a difference” by “changing society” than there are Muslims strapping on bombs and flying planes into buildings. Furthermore, many Muslims are probably motivated be a desire to drive the West out of Muslim territories rather than actually wanting to destroy Western societies (although, they may not oppose the destruction as a side effect), despite the moronic “they hate us because we’re free” slogan.
Critisize atheists if you like, but I don’t see many of them doing that. They’re into their own nuttiness.
Atheists, like theists, can’t rationally be all lumped together. Most atheists in the industrialized West are not violent bombers, some are, e.g. the Unabomber, Bill Ayers (sorry, I don’t know any Canadian examples off the top of my head).
Of course, without question, the most murderous group people of all are communists, who are officially atheist. The combined depravations of all of the world’s religions aren’t even in the same league as the 100 million or more people murdered by communists.
Some of the silliest people I come across are people who deny Jesus’ very existence (because, apparently, pagan writers gathered together at the same time the Gospel writers did and made up the same accounts of this fellow from Nazareth but I digress…).
I have no doubts that Stephen Hawking is quite intelligent but, as the article states so succinctly:
“The Cult of Hawking is the Cult of the Great Mind in the Useless Body. It is attributable in part to a simple, ghoulish fascination with the man’s physical disability, but more so (and more troublingly) to the unspoken astonishment that a man with such severe bodily impairment can be intelligent. It speaks volumes about our persistent prejudices about disability.”
As much as liberals hate the idea of God/Jesus/religion and disabled people, they will be morbidly fascinated by and cling to someone like Hawking as a poster child of sorts.
Sick, actually.
God doesn’t believe in Stephen Hawking.
time was the last element to pop out of the expanding universe. I came to this conclusion when I fully realized that it can be slowed, stopped, reversed, and done away with.
this is why it appears the universe is 15 billion years old. the light traversed MOST of the distance instantaneously, just like the stars it came from. when time asserted itself things kinda went WHANNGGGGGGG! and learched to its now pace of travel.
it did not take 15 billion years to get here, far far less.
Who arranged it that way? The One and Only Almighty Creator Who has taken inumerable identities since before the days of the caveman.
and another thing, how did Christ show up inside the locked room at pentacost? hint: total mastery of quantum physics (which Mr Hawking made a career out of).
Hawking’s personal religion, quantum physics, is based on a foundation of faith just like any other religion. His argument boils down to that age old “My God is better than your God” refrain we’ve heard so often before. Wars continue to be fought over that silly premise. He should stick to pontificating on subjects where he has a shred of credibility.
I should note that the stuff about religious people being less likely to commit crime is very suspect and likely untrue. It’s actually atheists who are under represented in the prison population.
Personally … I think Hawking memorized a lot of Asimov … probably learned “Understanding Physics” by wrote.
“how did Christ show up inside the locked room at pentacost?”
He didn’t. He showed up in a locked room after His resurrection but before His ascension. Pentecost came after His ascension and was all about the Holy Spirit appearing as tongues of fire and giving Spiritual Gifts to mankind.
libertariansaresmarter,
I should note that the stuff about religious people being less likely to commit crime is very suspect and likely untrue.
Whenever it has been rigorously studied in the US, it has been found that religiously observant people are much less likely to commit crimes.
If you were walking alone down a dark street late at night and you heard a group of young men walking up behind you, would it make you feel less nervous to know that they had just come from a Bible study group? Yeah, I thought so.
One need not be religious to be a good person. However, banishing religion will eliminate the most important source of moral teaching and the primary mechanism for internalizing the understanding of what a “good” person is. Without the reinforcement of religion, eventually individuals will make up their definitions of what being “good” is. Inevitably, selfishness and self-interest will dominate as primary values in society, increased police force will be required to maintain order and all those libertines who call themselves libertarians will find that they live in a savage and very unpleasant world.
Flaggman;
Do you even bother to read what people write or do you just skim things and then go off half cocked. Of course the Torah, the Talmud, the Bible and the Koran say different things. I never said or implied differently. In fact I pointedly said that according to Muslim belief, the Koran represents a rethink by God, suggesting that he got some things wrong when he created the Jewish and Christian faiths and changed what he had to say in his words to Mohammed.
If you don’t believe me, then here, in their own words, is what I just clipped from the internet from a muslim website. Hope it makes it clear for you.
“Muslims believe in One, Unique, Incomparable God and a chain of prophets spreading his word starting with Adam and including Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon, Elias, Jonah, John the Baptist, and Jesus, peace be upon them. But God’s final message to man was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
From another website, “Muslims maintain that previous messages and revelations have been partially changed or corrupted over time,[5] but consider the Qur’an to be both the unaltered and the final revelation from God—Final Testament.”
That doesn’t mean it’s true or that they’re right, but IT IS WHAT THEY THINK. What part of that don’t you understand?
For the last time, I didn’t lump Jews, Christians and Muslims together. I answered a blanket statement from another poster, who did not mention any specific religion, to the effect that to be religious was to be less criminal and violent.
Obviously devout radical muslims proved that statement wrong so I mentioned terrorism committed by devout believers in God. True, I didn’t specify them. I simply didn’t believe that anyone on this board could be so stunned as to not be able to figure that out all on their own. Quite obviously I was mistaken.
bob c the problem you have here is the fact that ‘God’ is not the name of any G(g)od. God is a term that is a description. Jews and Christians worship the God named “I AM”. Muslims worship a God with at least 99 names none of which is I AM.
Smart guys piss me off too.
Guess I’ll have to be content being gorgeous… 🙂
Not sure why everyone brings up Galileo whenever Science and Religion crops up. Mostly because people don’t actually study history and instead remember “elevator pitch” sound bites.
The Church at the time was not anti-science at all, they were the biggest science funders around. Nor were they against scientists studying heliocentrism, as they funded people to study it before, during, and after Galileo. It was a common scientific/philisophical question that was debated hotly.
Galileo wasn’t persicuted because of his scientific stance. He was however persecuted because he was a jerk, and he foolishly bit the hand that fed him (so to speak). His scientific writings were nothing special in those days as others were studying the same things as him, his other writings however made many nasty barbs against the current leader/s of the time. He basically wrote a character that was the Pope, and made him a complete moron. Not a smart move at any time in antiquity. The fact that he simply had house arrest speaks volumes about the mercy of the Pope as having him killed for impertenance would have been par for the course those days.
…libertariansaresnicker, “religious people” can include anyone from hucksters to homosexual pedophiles so please limit your comments about us people of faith to those who try to be true to the teachings of our faith. And it is well known – also well studied – that the average religious person is healthier, happier, more orderly and more generous than the average non-religious person. Another finding I recall is that the percentages of believers vs non-believers is roughly equal at all levels of intelligence and education. The dividing line is between humility and hubris.
This is a case of two simultaneous truths.
Kate has pointed out a truth, and so has Hawking.
Sadistic Eristic;
In the following quote of mine that you refer to, “As far as who is trying to bring about “the demise of the ‘advanced’ first world”, it’s most directly a bunch of God fearing types strapping themselves up with bombs and flying planes into things who are leading the way”, please note that I said “most directly”. I’m quite aware of communists efforts to brainwash our kids, but I see that as indirect. Hope that clears that up.
As far as your statement is concerned, “Furthermore, many Muslims are probably motivated be a desire to drive the West out of Muslim territories rather than actually wanting to destroy Western societies”, that certainly isn’t true of the religiously devout Muslim.
Read up on the “return of the 12th imam”. Simply put, the belief is that he won’t return and the gates to heaven won’t open up until everyone is either Muslim or subjugated by them. These folks have far broader horizons than the Muslim world.
If I may …
Consider how long a million years is .. then consider how long eternity is. Then consider you in heaven for eternity. How much golf can you play … really.
Otherwise hanging out with millions and millions of people from earth who have died and are also mulling around for all eternity looking for something to do. C’mon .. the idea of going to heaven for all eternity is along the lines of Harry Potter thinking.
Then there is the possibility that there actually beings from other planets who .. well should be in heaven too … or is the god only the god of Earth … or it is even possible that there is life only on earth … that is as arrogant as the ancient thinking that earth is the center of the universe and the sun revolves around it.
We cannot prove there is a god, but since no one knows what happens after we die, we can continue to assign him as the custodian of whatever it is we become when we die.
It’s all so speculative that only a blind faith would have one accept a set of beliefs around it.
It is quite childish if you think about it … sort of like being afraid of the dark.
If we want to remain sane and realistic, then at best we should all be agnostic … in that … we just don’t know for sure. To be completely convinced of something that cannot be proved … is … sort of an insanity in itself.
So your awful dystopia is one where people deduce their own value of good, using their (hopefully) rational abilities, instead of taking orders from a book and -gasp*!- are selfish! As in, further their own interests! Sounds good to me. Bring on the godlessness.
While there may be some validity in the idea that religious folks are less criminally oriented, it’s really impossible to rate someone’s religiosity. Atheism is very easy to rate (binary) and the data is firm: there are far less of them in jail than there are of them in society.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
You do all realize that Kate’s just messing with you, right? 😉
bob c,
Communist agitation literature commonly contains a call to smash the existing social order through “direct action” by which is meant physical action instead of legitimate political activity, anything from sign-waving protest marches to property destruction to threats and intimidation to murder. Your point is taken, though.
Certainly religion is used to motivate Muslims to commit acts of violence, but a consistent message from the leaders of various terrorist organizations has been “get off of our land”. As far as wanting to convert the world to Islam at the point of a sword, that is a message that has been around for centuries. Why has it only recently become a problem? Because raising and motivating armies to travel to other parts of the world to conquer and subjugate infidels isn’t so easy. Most Muslims, like most other people, just want to be left alone to live their lives and raise their families, but nobody likes to be occupied by another culture. (I think that is one of the main sources of political tension in much of the Western world right now – the ruling classes of the West have significantly different cultures and goals than the populations over which they rule.)
It is interesting to note that the ruling classes of the West are also using religion to motivate their populations toward conflict through the promotion of the idea of an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the Christian and Muslim worlds. I don’t accept that such a clash is an inevitability. Reduce the West’s foot print, develop domestic energy resources, end idiotic activities like trying to get driver’s licenses for the handful of wealthy Afghani women who want to drive around the few roads in Kabul. Adopt an attitude of “let’s trade, but otherwise we’ll agree to just leave each other alone”. The Arab states will still sell their oil to the West since that is their primary source of revenue, but without the constant irritant of Westerners marching armies around and pinheads demanding that Arabs completely change their cultures to conform to the standards of the Western ruling classes, it will be very difficult for Arab leaders to motivate people to travel to distant locations to blow things up.
It will also help to kill this idea of “multi-culturalism”. If Muslims emigrate, they should expect to have to assimilate. Anyone who is not willing to pledge to let others practice religion as they see fit should excluded from entry into Western countries since such an unwillingness is tantamount to declaring an unwillingness to accept the social contract that allows Western societies to function. Any demand for accommodation of Sharia law or anything like honor killings should be swiftly dealt through criminal prosecution and/or deportation. There is no problem with the Muslim world that can’t be addressed by ignoring political correctness; large scale military should rarely be required. Certainly the current “forever war” of the US in the middle east needs to brought to an end. Nothing is being accomplished by pissing away blood and treasure in Afghanistan trying to build infrastructure in a country which isn’t even a country, just a geographical region.
Sadistic @ 11:54pm One need not be religious to be a good person. However, banishing religion will eliminate the most important source of moral teaching and the primary mechanism for internalizing the understanding of what a “good” person is. Without the reinforcement of religion, eventually individuals will make up their definitions of what being “good” is. Inevitably, selfishness and self-interest will dominate as primary values in society, increased police force will be required to maintain order and all those libertines who call themselves libertarians will find that they live in a savage and very unpleasant world.
Abe @ 9:18pm I do subscribe to Christian philosophy in general because most of it makes sense in a civil society.
Mercules @ 9:43pm If god decides to materialize in front of me and slap me in the face, I’ll be more than happy to admit I’m wrong.
I know the discussion started with Hawking and evolved into pretty well everyone’s version of religiosity. This is the never ending thread and always will be.
The above quotes are the ones I relate to….being the ever loving atheist that I am.
I’m a simple person and I only have the upmost respect for you so committed to your faith, however I just don’t share it.
Sadistic Eristic @10:15,
I agree that quality of presentation is an important factor. I may have not made my point clearly in my first comment, but I think that quality of presentation (and ease of access) are the most important factors in creating understanding for the common man in any advanced topic. I would also agree that subject matter makes an important difference. Cosmology can be much more exciting to the general public than many other scientific topics.
I partially agree with you with regards to Hawking’s fame. His disease has definitely increased his visibility to the public. However, he has made efforts to make his work accessible to the public, so I believe that although he might not be the near pop-culture icon he is today, he would still be known much like Mr. DeGrase Tyson. I disagree that Mr. DeGrasse Tyson is well-known because of his race. Having read some of his works and watched some of his talks, he is most definitely skilled at physics PR. Much like Carl Sagan, he has a certain charisma that sparks interest in people.
libertariansaresmarter,
So your awful dystopia is one where people deduce their own value of good, using their (hopefully) rational abilities, instead of taking orders from a book
You have no understanding of human nature. The judeo-christian value system is a result of thousands of years of accumulated experience, not some arbitrary set of rules, some of which rub you the wrong way. “Deducing” their own value of “good” using their “rational abilities”? Ask a four year old whether or not they want to steal candy from a store and the answer, absent moral teaching from their parents is “of course I want to. Candy tastes good. The store has candy. I want it and so I will take it.” That same attitude will translate directly into adulthood in the absence of moral teaching. An adult who decides to make up their own value system will commit all sorts of acts which are harmful to others without a twinge of conscience since they will have no conscience. Rape is “good”, theft is “good”, having sex with a three year old is “good”, deceit is “good”, murder is “good” – everything is “good” as long as you can escape punishment.
But, you protest, “I would never do any of those things!” Of course you wouldn’t, at least I hope you wouldn’t. And why wouldn’t you? Because you are immersed in a culture and that culture has internalized in you a set of values. Even if you explicitly and consciously reject the religion of that culture, the values of that religion inform the interactions you have with others. Eliminating the institutions that inculcate and reinforce the internalizations of the values of a society will mean that those values will eventually be lost, although it might take a generation or two.
You may think that you are so brilliant, self-aware and insightful that you have deduced your values, but that is only self-deception. If you are like most libertines-who-call-themselves-libertarians, you are really someone who is rebelling against a particular point or two of the judeo-christian value system (the stigmatization of homosexuality and of drug use are common) that restricts some activity in which you want to engage. Don’t kid yourself, you are not insightful, you are emotionally immature. Don’t confuse the two.
and -gasp*!- are selfish! As in, further their own interests!
And if someone you meet decides that furthering their own interest involves beating your head in and stealing your money? How about a less visceral example: a politician decides that their own interest is best served by passing a 95% income tax rate. Would you passively shrug your shoulders and accept the selfishness of the politician?
Don’t confuse the idea of the “enlightened self-interest” of people participating in a free market with the individual selfishness of someone who feels no guilt about harming others.
Sounds good to me.
Only because you haven’t thought out the implications of the beliefs you espouse. The libertine-who-calls-himself-a-libertarian, like most utopians, implicitly assumes that, in their ideal world, everyone else will have the same beliefs and behavioral standards as himself. In a world in which everyone is instructed, either explicitly or implicitly, to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong, a world in which there is no commonly accepted absolute notion of good and evil, there will be a variety of conclusions reached as to what is “good”. Those who decide on brutality will ultimate shape the society. Trust me. You wouldn’t want to live in a world like that. You can get a taste for what that kind of society is like by traveling to any of the many disfunctional countries in the world. Countries that are a mess are usually those countries in which the people in power have decided to adopt their own personal ideas about right and wrong.
While there may be some validity in the idea that religious folks are less criminally oriented, it’s really impossible to rate someone’s religiosity.
Studies of the relationship between religion and crime usually make use of religious observance, frequency of worship service attendance, for example, which is unambiguous and easy to ascertain. It is not possible, of course, to directly determine the sincerity of a person’s espoused religious beliefs, but studies generally don’t try to. They just correlate crime rate with observance.
The results of the studies are just what one would expect: being admonished in a worship service one or more times a week to behave yourself results in a greater likelihood of good behavior.
Atheism is very easy to rate (binary)
It is no more possible to read the thoughts of an atheist than it is to read the thoughts of a theist. Will an avowed atheist start praying when faced with pants-pissing terror? How could you know? Is an avowed atheist really a deeply religious person who is lying to conceal their faith for some reason? Happens all the time in communist countries. Happens sometimes in certain social situations in free countries too.
and the data is firm: there are far less of them in jail than there are of them in society.
Okay, this is just intellectually lazy. First, you claim that the sincerity of a person’s religious faith cannot be known and then you make a strong statement based on being able to definitively determine that sincerity.
Furthermore, lots of complicating factors are involved with prison populations. As I understand it, safety in prison depends on becoming part of a gang. Adopting some of the trappings of a religion in prison could be nothing more than a survival strategy. A jailhouse tattoo of a cross on someone’s neck doesn’t mean anything religiously.
Then there is the cynical “jailhouse conversion” tactic used to try to get leniency from the legal system. Hard to tell who is sincere and who is not.
Another complication is the rate at which criminal conduct is detected and punished. An argument could be made that an atheist with no sense of shame about his conduct would be better at committing crimes without being detected since they would be more at ease lying about their criminal activity.
What I can’t fathom is why some folks will print Hawking’s every word, even when it has nothing to do with his field of expertise.
Nothing he says about Heaven or Hell will change whether or not they exist. Does anyone really think that because Hawking says something is true then it *must* be true?
In the end, this is nothing more than his personal opinion and should be of no greater significance to anyone than if he had said the universe began on a Tuesday.
It was printed because Hawking is well-known. The media loves to write about famous people, especially if they’ve said something potentially controversial. It works too – look at the conversation in these comments that was sparked by this very article.
“Famous person makes controversial statement” is not exactly an uncommon thing to see on any news site. It’s up to us, the readers, to determine if what he’s saying is fact-based and worthwhile to take note of, or just personal opinion.
flaunagirl,
I’m a simple person and I only have the upmost respect for you so committed to your faith, however I just don’t share it.
How do you know what my faith is? 🙂
I don’t believe I have asked anyone to share my faith or lack thereof. I have tried to argue that rejecting religion and eliminating religious instruction will have profoundly negative implications for society and so encouraging the rejection of religion altogether is a bad idea.
Kudos, by the way, for being respectful. It has been my experience that some of the nastiest, most hateful rants on the net come from the animosity of atheists toward religion. Living in a free society means letting other people believe as they wish, so long as they don’t step on other people’s rights. This makes politeness important.
Amos,
His disease has definitely increased his visibility to the public. However, he has made efforts to make his work accessible to the public, so I believe that although he might not be the near pop-culture icon he is today, he would still be known much like Mr. DeGrase Tyson.
Other scientists write books and don’t get on Star Trek and the Simpsons and science channel shows. Consider Benoit Mandelbrot, for instance. Although he is a mathematician, not a scientist, his popularization of fractals has had a big effect in both the physical sciences and in computer science. The concepts behind his work are understandable to a lot of people and lots of people appreciate the esthetics of plots of fractals. Has Benoit Mandelbrot been feted by the entertainment industry? Do media outlets write stories about his religious views? Is his face known to the public? Why not? I would submit that it is because he is a white guy with a French accent and not a guy in a wheelchair. The wheelchair adds an interest angle that gave Hawking magazine covers and interviews that other scientists don’t get.
I disagree that Mr. DeGrasse Tyson is well-known because of his race.
I didn’t say that he was. I said that he was probably given his initial media opportunities because of his race. He acquitted himself well and so further opportunities opened up for him based not on his race, but on the quality of his work. He might be a good example of how affirmative action is supposed to work.
I have seen first-hand how obsessed some people are with the under-representation of women and blacks in science. The lefties, of course, attribute it to discrimination. My experience is that this is bogus. Academia is filled with people who bend over backwards to provide opportunities to women and blacks, even to the point of admitting unqualified or under-qualified people into graduate degree programs.
There are far more plausible explanations. For women, the major factor is probably IQ. Because the IQ distribution for women is narrower than it is for men, fewer women meet the IQ demands of a career in science. Just don’t try to tell that to a female professor from Princeton. Another possibly relevant factor for women is that they have the choice of starting a family as a bailout path when the going gets rough in graduate school. And – dare I say it – women are, on average, more sociable than men and fewer women are interested in locking themselves alone in a lab or the stacks of a research library for a large portion of their lives.
For blacks (in the US), it is probably a combination of a terrible K-12 education (thanks to the Democrats) and the fact that a disproportionate number of blacks are the first generation in their family to attend college. Science is not usually the career choice for first generation college types who are more likely to choose business, law or medicine, i.e. those professions that the general public is more likely to come in contact with. Most everyone routinely deals with doctors. Who in the general public deals with scientists?
he is most definitely skilled at physics PR
Agreed. Not just PR, but presentation to a general audience.
Hawking is unquestionably a brilliant physicist. The warrant of his remarks is that a brilliant physicist sees nothing in physics that suggests the existence of gods. An evolutionary scientist might make the same observation. More broadly, gods-based hypotheses to explain phenomena in the world don’t add much. As my daughter observed when she was 6, it does not add anything to say a god made it because then you have to explain how the god was made. In other words, to say a god did it is to say, don’t ask. This can be a useful heuristic for life–get on with living–but not useful for science. Religion is a set of beliefs and rituals psychologically engineered to optimize living. The scientists don’t seem to get that. We “believe in” things because it is adaptive. Our family “believes in” Santa Claus because it is fun and makes otherwise mid-winter a delight. But we are “Santa Claus agnostic.” We know we cannot logically disprove the existence of Santa Claus, but understand he is a useful outward manifestation of wish projection. But it would be churlish to badger children by proclaiming Santa Claus does not exist. And so Hawkings and his like are narrow-minded and churlish.
“He showed up in a locked room after His resurrection but before His ascension.”
oh. ok, well *around* the time of penatacost(I wasn’t there, but I believe it happened. the fact I have an *explanation* reinforces that belief, but don’t tell any baptists!). point stands, and tq for that correction mr joe.
Who does Hawking think he is? God?
Dr Hawking is without a doubt a first-class scientist.
However, his opinion on whether there is or is not a God, or whether there is or is not a heaven, is no more credible than anyone else’s.
Dr Hawking is without a doubt a first-class scientist.
However, his opinion on whether there is or is not a Santa Claus, or whether there is or is not a Santas Workshop, is no more credible than anyone else’s.
Actually Hawking is more of theorist than a scientist. His theories follow (feed) the scientism religion. However he is not able to over come his own contradictions. He can’t get around scientism’s greatest conundrum Causeless Causation.
Hawking is a perfect example of Stuart Chase’s comment: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”
Sadistic Eristic:
Faith is not synonymous with religion as you know. I was actually paying respect to the more obvious “believers”. I should have said “for you so committed to your version of faith”
I was merely agreeing with a statement of yours and others. and I agree with these ones as well …..
∗ Living in a free society means letting other people believe as they wish, so long as they don’t step on other people’s rights. This makes politeness important.∗
∗It’s all so speculative that only a blind faith would have one accept a set of beliefs around it.∗
I have been uneasy about Hawking ever since I learned about his leftist politics. Scientists with leftist leanings have a proven tendency to put ideology before the facts. The CRU scandal is one instance of this.
Do read Michael Crichton’s brilliant essay on this topic: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122603134258207975.html
“There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a ‘veiled reality’ that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments.”
This quote is from French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d’Espagnat who worked with Nobel laureates Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr. D’Espagnat worked at CERN when it was still in Copenhagen under the direction of Bohr. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin, at the invitation of the legendary physicist John Wheeler.
The thrust of d’Espagnat’s work was on experimental tests of Bell’s theorem. The theorem states that either quantum mechanics is a complete description of the world or that if there is some reality beneath quantum mechanics, it must be nonlocal – that is, things can influence one another instantaneously regardless of how much space stretches between them, violating Einstein’s insistence that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
But what d’Espagnat was really interested in was what all of this meant for discerning the true nature of ultimate reality. D’Espagnat was unafraid to tackle the thorny and profound philosophical questions posed by quantum physics.
Unlike classical physics, d’Espagnat says, quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations.
@SE: you can tell yourself that the present ‘moral’ nature of our society is a result of religious teachings, but it is not so. The Enlightenment is responsible for our current advancement, which shoved aside the mind-crushing nature of the then Christian states. Prior to that “Christian Europe” was basically “Muslim Arabia”. There is no inherent value in something being old.
“Hawking is a perfect example of Stuart Chase’s comment: ‘For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.'”
Sheer nonsense, of course. Beliefs are based on evidence, even if – in the case of religion – it happens to be very bad evidence. The word you’re looking for is “faith” – for those who have faith, no proof is necessary, since faith is, by definition, the exclusion of evidence; even the insistence that something is true despite contrary evidence.
Of course, this means that your attempt at a corollary is also true, though perhaps not in the way you intended; for those who do not have faith, no proof is possible since, by definition, your faith excludes the possibility of proof existing. If proof existed, you would no longer have faith – you would have a belief based on evidence.
Ok Alex. What evidence is there that supports there being -no- God? Hmmn?
Alex will now try to prove a negative. This concludes todays ritual beclownment of Alex.
What evidence is there that supports there being -no- Santa Claus? Hmmn?
If you don’t even know how to ask the right question, you’ll never arrive at a reasonable answer.
I have evidence that Alex is a troll. Shall I send it to Hawking?
I wonder if Hawking’s condition is causing him to lose his mind.
No, you can list off your evidence here. It should be fun watching you try to give evidence for a concept you clearly don’t understand. Let’s see it.
libertariansaresmarter,
you can tell yourself that the present ‘moral’ nature of our society is a result of religious teachings, but it is not so. The Enlightenment is responsible for our current advancement, which shoved aside the mind-crushing nature of the then Christian states.
I do not claim that all moral teaching originated in religion, merely that a religion reinforces and perpetuates a set of values. Whether or not that set of values is desirable is another matter. One need only look at the world as it is to recognize that Western societies have produced the most dynamic and successful societies and that the religions of the West perpetuate the value system that has made that possible.
Your characterization of the enlightenment, though common amongst libertines-who-call-themselves-libertarians, is inaccurate and incomplete. Libertines just love to deny religion, particularly Christianity, credit for anything good. The early enlightenment thinkers were not atheists. Though their faiths varied, they were immersed in Christian societies and the values of those societies shaped their thought processes. Suggesting that the enlightenment was nothing more than the result of some deep thinkers throwing off the shackles of religious intellectual oppression is just plain ignorant.
The intellectualism necessary for the enlightenment was a product of centuries of philosophical thought centered mostly around Catholic theology and practiced by Catholic clergy. Scholasticism was a product of theology. The theology of Protestantism required universal literacy, which dramatically increased the talent pool of potential scholars. The prosperity generated by Protestant notions of economic activity allowed the formation of a leisure class with the time to ponder deeper questions of existence and the relationship of God to man and man to man.
Prior to that “Christian Europe” was basically “Muslim Arabia”.
I presume that you are speaking in analogy as Islam never completely conquered Europe. The Catholic Kings, Fernidad and Isabella drove Muslims out of the Iberian Peninsula around the turn of the sixteenth century. Unfortunately for the Catholic world, they also drove out much of their Jewish community, the source of most of the economic activity in Spain. To make up for the drop in revenue, the Spanish pillaged the New World until there was no more to steal, marking the sharp decline of the Spanish Empire. All this happened before the enlightenment. That’s right, pre-enlightenment Europe developed deep ocean navigation, launched ships, conquered and colonized distant lands.
One of the most important developments in history was the acceptance, across all classes of society, of the idea of the dignity of the individual. This is a value directly related to Christian teachings and had its roots in Judaism. One can argue (and libertines usually do – denying credit to religion again) that the idea of the dignity of the individual did not originate in any of today’s religions and one would probably be correct. There are very, very few new ideas floating around and it is likely that the idea of the dignity of the individual was conceived by multiple people in multiple locations independently, individuals who may have been illiterate or who do not write it down in any form that survives. I’m not claiming that the ideas of Western societies originated in Western religions, however, I am claiming the most valuable ideas have been preserved and spread by Western religion.
Though it took centuries for the idea to catch on, the general acceptance of the idea of the dignity of the individual has had profound implications for Western societies. Once a critical mass of a population accepts the idea, then political plurality becomes inevitable. Once absolute political authority is abolished, increased prosperity follows as the number of economic and political decision-makers increases. It took centuries of conflict, but eventually Europe implemented political plurality, imperfectly even to this day, but still Europe adopted it as a general principle. The Renaissance popularized the study of ancient forms of government which could give political plurality and individual dignity a means of expression.
The Magna Carta predates the enlightenment by centuries. The Renaissance also predates the enlightenment. The intial settling of the New World predated the enlightenment and, in the case of the English, was driven largely by religion. You really should learn something before you start spouting talking points from some libertines-who-call-themselves-libertarians website.
Seriously, dude, it won’t diminish you as an individual to acknowledge the profound importance of Western religion in shaping and even improving the world, although it might cause you to challenge your own beliefs. Over time, the discomfort will inspire you to be a better thinker and maybe even a better person.
There is no inherent value in something being old.
Almost every idea is ancient. Periodically, the bad old ideas are resurrected and promoted by someone, usually someone with no knowledge or understanding of history or of human nature. There is nothing new about a person who grew up free of wont issuing an Eric Cartman-like declaration that “you can’t tell me what to do; I do what I want!” and that’s what the values advocated by libertines-who-call-themselves-libertarians ultimately amount to. That kind of selfish world view is behind much of the world’s suffering. Stalin just did what he wanted. Mao just did what he wanted. Hitler just did what he wanted. That’s right. I just Godwinned this thread. Ha! Take that!
“One of the most important developments in history was the acceptance, across all classes of society, of the idea of the dignity of the individual. This is a value directly related to Christian teachings and had its roots in Judaism.”
This is rather like saying that fire has it’s roots in water 🙂 The whole point of christianity is to convince people that they’re worthless sinners who deserve eternal torture, in order to get them to pay protection money to the church. The idea that this system could have anything to do with teaching about the dignity of the individual is beyond laughable.
Christianity has nothing to do with money.
Awww. Your gullibility is so cute 🙂
Must be a quiet day on SDA for Kate to post this 😉
too bad Mr. Hawkins has had to wait this long to admit there is a God.