Stephen Hawking has a new book coming out (The Grand Design, with Leonard Mlodinow). Among other things, he points out that modern physics has progressed to the point where we don’t need to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe. This is not exactly a hot flash — I remember writing an essay making the same point for a philosophy class my sophomore year in college — but it makes news because it’s Hawking who says it. And that’s absolutely fine — Hawking has a track record of making substantial intellectual contributions, there’s every reason to listen to him more than random undergraduates waxing profound.
This issue is, of course, totally up my alley, and I should certainly blog about it. But I can’t, because I’m on hiatus! (Right?) So, as an experiment, I made a video of myself talking rather than simply typing my words into the computer. Radical! Not sure the amount of information conveyed is anywhere near as large in this format, and obviously I didn’t sweat the production values. I fear that some subtleties of the argument may be lost. But if we’re lucky, other people elsewhere on the internet will also talk about these questions, and we’ll get it all sorted out.
Let me know if the Grand Video Experiment is worth repeating and improving, or whether it’s just a waste of time.
Something that I should have said, but didn’t: there doesn’t need to be some sophisticated modern-physics answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The universe can simply exist, end of story. But it’s still fun to think carefully about all the possibilities, existence and non-existence both included.
Sean, am I boring you with the question I keep trying to get answered? I’d at least like to have an explanation of why it isn’t relevant to the quest for a Theory of Everything. I am persistent but isn’t that supposed to be a virtue within the search for knowledge?
Gordon, you want to take a stab at whether physics comprehensively and exhaustively knows at least one object in the universe? Of maybe you’ll tell us how a Theory of Everything could withstand an answer of either “no” or “we don’t know”? Not to mention how physics can, then, dispose of questions about proposals outside of the natural universe. I doubt you’re a physicist or even a scientist but, go on, take your shot.
There is nothing outside of the natural universe. You can doubt all you like. I don’t know if you are boring Sean, but you sure are boring me. Is knowing something to, like 16 or so decimal places good enough for you? I am finished posting. You are an annoying troll with no conception of the scientific method.
I didn’t ask Sean about anything outside of the physical universe because as a physicist I wouldn’t expect him to have any professional competence to answer questions on that subject.
My question was entirely about the subject matter of physics and entirely relevant to a ToE. It was on topic and appropriate. It wasn’t even impertinent in an ironic sense.
You can doubt all you like. Gordon
I think this is, beyond doubt, the most ironic thing ever said to me by a new atheist.
Possibly the most ironic thing ever said on a blog.
I don’t think there’s much else to say here. Though I’ll check later to see if anyone wants to continue. I hope someone has found something useful in what I said about these points.
It seems Stephen Hawking’s new postulation that the universe creates itself argues for the existence of god. If the classical debate still holds true, the universe is that which is preceded by nothing; it is the prime mover. Hence god is the universe. The ancients have been correct all along.
Yeah, I said maybe something like this in #13, but I want the hypothesis that good students/teachers saying namaste to each other are one up on the universe to being God, but this is probably a projection of my insecurities.
I think Penrose’s needle at big bang or earlier was too improbable for our scholars or even Carl Sagan’s library in Dragons of Eden, something bigger…
I should have spelled Ginott in #13
Geoff, I’d have thought it’s possible that the universe might be a part of God, just as what we might take as a “personal God” might be that part of God that we could relate to, the impersonal God being unavailable to our experience. Though neither of those ideas could possibly be reduced down to where they could fit into science, there are ideas too big to fit into its net as well as others they can’t catch with it.
Scientists should stick to producing physical verification for their theories, none of which seem able to produce a total system anymore than mathematics or logic seem to. If we don’t end up killing ourselves with science, technology and commerce I think this quest for complete systems will be looked back at as one of the quaint follies of our age.
I really wish a real physicist would have the guts to answer that question honestly. I think pretending it hasn’t been raised several times speaks volumes but an unambiguous statement might get me to stop pointing it out. Though I doubt it would be helpful to materialist fundamentalism.
Sean,
It’s all great but I advise to invest in a lav mic or something. You sound echoey like you’re in a parallel universe brother. Big fan and thanks.
i didn’t watch the video because i don’t want to watch any more videos than i already am forced to.
I wonder if Sean ever read Feynman’s cargo cult science speech?
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are
the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about
that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other
scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after
that.
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science,
but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool
the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. I am not trying to
tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your
girlfriend, or something like that, when you’re not trying to be
a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We’ll
leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I’m talking about
a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending
over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to
have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as
scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.
So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere
where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have
described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain
your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on,
to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.”
Too bad the guy who inherited Feynman’s seat doesn’t have this kind of integrity. Sean, you really should do some soul searching and see if you can find it.
Myrtle Parker, what Richard Lewontin said about the dangers of overselling science in this review has always stuck with me.
http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20files/Lewontin_Review.htm
And it’s not just science, overselling, making unsupportable claims is a widespread problem. Perhaps that’s due to the desire to gain attention and funding, but it’s not healthy and it will come back to cause problems.
My Gawd, are you still drivelling on and on? There must be some religio-psychic blogs to
infest somewhere.
Are you still reading?
If Sean Carroll and Stephen Hawking hadn’t entered into an area where, obviously, real science couldn’t take them, I’d never have posted the first comment here. Before, I’d only occasionally lurked here to read about a scientific controversy that was a little bit interesting. If you, James and a few others hadn’t brought up practically the entire, intellectually baseless program of the new atheism I would have probably stopped at the first two comments. I’ll leave it to others who might read this without a controlling bias to judge if what I’ve said is unhinged or irrational. I know it seems odd that someone is so persistent in these arguments but I really have put a lot of work into understanding the issues and it surprises me when it become clear that most of the dedicated antagonists really haven’t done that.
I generally write about politics, how progressives can advance our agenda in the United States, this fad has been a hindrance and a distraction from far more important issues but one I had to think through, which I’d suggest to anyone interested in it. Unfortunately, thinking about it more since Hawking’s PR stunt has taken time from that effort due to a number of people in the left wanting to insert this form of bigotry into the platform. I wish that all of the effort of some rather smart people in this ridiculous fad, which is based in an ignorance of the diversity of religious belief and practice and the arrogance of a the unfounded faith of scientism, would have been better spent on reality. You know, things like saving the biosphere and establishing a just political and economic system.
Though what I’ve learned about the general lack of consideration to the intellectual foundations of science by even some quite sophisticated scientists has taught me a lot about just how little any of us can actually know in depth about any issue, even about those things we have concentrated on. Life is not a matter of rigorous application of scientific principles, not even for the most pretentiously fundamentalist of pop materialists. All of us constantly proceeds without that level of consideration of evidence. Some of us are honest about that, others aren’t.
The issue that came together here, that the scientific face of the new atheism largely seems to want to junk the requirement of evidence in science as they proudly proclaim that as the proof that science is supreme, has had some interesting implications that I hope to follow through after the election.
I read what you say, but it doesn’t make much sense. As Samuel Johnson said in a similar instance, “Sir, I have found you an argument, but I am not obliged to bring you understanding”. Of course, atheism (the “New” stuff is redundant) values evidence. That is the main reason it rejects a god—there is no evidence—-don’t you get it? How many times does it have to be said.? Hawking’s thoughts here are speculation, but speculation based on theories that provide cogent explanations for reality, not tribal myths. …..like arguing with a brick….Saying we (I) havent thought about things or read or researched things is ludicrous. Some things, like homeopathy, astrology, psychic phenomena, iridology, reflexology, etc require only cursory glances. Any more is evidence of mental illness. Religion requires more scrutiny simply because it infests so many more minds with its viral meme.
You’ll have t0 excuse me if I don’t consider you to be an impartial reader who doesn’t begin with a controlling bias.
While you’ve been doing whatever it is you have, I’ve been looking more at that issue of Jefferson’s alleged deism. Considering what he said to John Adams about his agreement with Joseph Priestley’s theological writings, I looked at those. I’d think they would pretty much refute the nonsense that Jefferson was a deist. Certainly, Priestley, one of the greatest of the early chemists, was definitely not one.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bQ-Ca3cNFdoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
It’s too bad that more science folk don’t take looking at the actual historical record and what people actually said as seriously as they do garbage like Dawkins and Harris on things like that, since they have an obvious controlling bias that gets in the way of the truth. I was sorry to run across something that shows that even Lawrence Krauss does that. I used to have more respect for him than I do after finding his recommendation to rely on unreliable second and third hand sources. But taking short cuts is just another necessity when one doesn’t have time to look at even the available evidence. This is especially true of things one has strong opinions about. In the case of even as fine a scientist as Krauss, who should know better, that leads us to accept mere prejudice in place of evidence.
Read some more of the correspondence between Jefferson and John Adams. …google it. Or read
Harris and Dawkins and Hitchens for direct quotes. BTW Hitchens has written a book about Jefferson–worth reading so you can learn something about his religious non-beliefs.
lol of course I have a bias, as do Dawkins and Harris. That bias is to evaluate garbage and reject it along with the whole farrago of supernatural tripe.
And apparently, as they do, you reject both physical evidence in science and the complete documentary record in matters outside of science.
Other than presenting a few possible ways of thinking about the dimensions of a possible God, I don’t think I’ve presented any of my opinions about anything supernatural, except to point out that science wasn’t invented to deal with anything other than evidence of the physical world and that it can’t be used for anything else. Or do you also reject that, the rock bottom requirement of science?
For all anyone here knows, I could be a pretty conventional agnostic.
If I have time this weekend I’m going to have to see if anyone has written about the underlying metaphysical basis of ideological materialism. I hadn’t really thought about it before looking at this rash of popular scientism which is based, rather obviously, about assumptions that have no evidentiary basis and so would almost certainly have to be metaphysical in nature. Horgan talks about an age of ironic science but I think it’s really more an age of ironic scientism, there still being a lot of scientists who haven’t junked the requirement of evidence out of their professional interest and a faith in materialist fundamentalism.
I did warn you last week that I’ve got a lot of free time on Fridays.
I am anxious to see the doctrine of one god commenced in our state. But the population of my neighborhood is too slender, and is too much divided into other sects to maintain any one preacher well. I must therefore be contented to be an Unitarian by myself, altho I know there are many around me who would become so, if once they could hear the questions fairly stated. Thomas Jefferson,
http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaead/published/uva-sc/viu01679.document
I know that someone who hasn’t bothered to read more on these subjects than what they’ll find in new atheist erudition, such as that is, would gleefully believe that they understood Priestley’s ideas about the soul to be identical with materialism, but reading him more, as I’m in the process of doing, doesn’t lead there. I read it and think it has more in common with Sri Aurobindo’s ideas than it does Hume. I believe that Priestley wasn’t a fan of Hume.
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_philosophy/v015/15.4popkin.pdf
Though I haven’t read it yet, I’m wondering what this will reveal about Jefferson’s opinion of Hume.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1922407
He clearly didn’t think he was authoritatively infallible in the way so many of the pop materialists of today do
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=673&chapter=159422&layout=html&Itemid=27
If anyone thinks this is getting ugly I’ll consider letting him go.
“Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.” Jefferson
There are too numerous to quote. Jefferson’s views depend on whether they are in private correspondence or for public consumption. Most point to his being a deist, but Hitchens etc think possibly atheist. Certainly Thomas Paine was. But all this is irrelevant. Science has progressed since
Priestley and is making religion more and more irrelevant. Also, it is safer now in countries other than say, Iran or the USA to disbelieve religious dogma. As an exercise, try explaining religious beliefs to aliens who have just landed 🙂 Freud’s essay, “The Future of an Illusion” is worth reading, as is “The Portable Atheist”, which has wonderful essays and quotes (John Stewart Mills’ , Bertrand Russell , Ibn Warraq, John Stuart Mill, Freud, Stenger, etc etc—basically a candle in the dark…
There is really no point in my posting any more, since it seems to provoke mcCarthy’s incoherent logorrhea.
p.s. Your lurking status was much appreciated 🙂
Gordon, you clearly aren’t very familiar with Jefferson or the topic of the internal criticism of Christianity, or the slightly external one from those who hold Jesus in high esteem:
No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances towards rational Christianity. When we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have unlearned everything which has been taught since His day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines He inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily His disciples; and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from His lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr. Drake, has been a common one. The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its Founder an impostor. Had there never been a commentator, there never would have been an infidel…. I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kNIcAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210#v=onepage&q&f=false
You are familiar with the well known story of how Jefferson produced his own personal version of the gospels, keeping the teachings while cutting out the stuff that offended his 18th century rationalist mind. He seems to have had quite a deep regard for the teachings of Jesus.
I believe the book of Channing he might be referring to later in that passage is Unitarian Christianity:
http://www.historytools.org/sources/channing-unitarianism.pdf
Freud. I’m sorry, I’d thought you were one of the “only evidence” men. I didn’t realize you were a devotee of pseudoscience.
Thomas Paine, well, of course you can find people who were less religious than Jefferson was. The only reason I was dealing with Jefferson was that you seemed to think I was required to take him as an authority on the subject. I look at his slave holding and figure he’s no one I’d think had any special authority on religious morality. I’m pretty sure you could comb through my entire online archive and not find much more than one critical mention of him in something I wrote a long time ago under my old pseudonym. While Paine was in many ways morally superior to Jefferson, I don’t think he’s superior to John Woolman.
Hmm an expert generator of oxymorons apparently–“rational Christianity”, “religious morality”.