Live-Blogging Curiosity, Hawking, and God

Tonight’s the premiere of Curiosity on the Discovery Channel, featuring Stephen Hawking talking about cosmology and God, followed by the “Curiosity Conversation” panel that I’m on along with David Gregory, Paul Davies, and John Haught. Hawking’s hour-long show is scheduled for 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific, and will then repeat 3 hours later (11E/8P). Our half-hour panel discussion follows immediately afterward — you do the arithmetic.

There’s a lot to say about these shows, and in particular there’s a huge amount that we didn’t have time to say during the panel. So as I sit in front of the TV, I’ll be live-blogging along by adding updates to this post. This will be the early show, so the fun will happen 8pm-9:30pm Eastern. Hey, Nathan Fillion live-tweets during Castle, so why not me? There is also a chat going on at the Discovery site.

The main attraction of Hawking’s program is not that he has disproven the existence of God. Certainly I don’t think he’s going to be changing the minds of many religious believers. His argument is essentially that the universe is self-contained, and doesn’t really have “room” for God (nor any need to invoke a creator). It’s very easy to wriggle free of that conclusion, if you are inclined not to accept it.

But “changing people’s minds” isn’t the only reason to talk about something, even about controversial issues. Religion, like sex and death, is one of those topics where it’s very difficult to simply have a dispassionate discussion without making people uncomfortable. It can happen within a group of similarly-minded people, of course, but once a wider range of views gets involved, it’s hard to maintain comity. (Comedy, on the other hand, is pretty easy.) I don’t mean everyone has to agree — just the opposite. We should be able to talk about things we completely disagree on, while still maintaining level heads.

That’s why I think this episode of Curiosity is potentially important. It’s a forthright statement of a view that doesn’t often get aired in American media. Even if nobody’s mind is changed, simply talking rationally about this issues would be a step forward.

Pre-show update: I should note ahead of time that I was not wearing a tie. Haught, Davies, and Gregory were all wearing ties. But Hawking wasn’t. Maybe atheists don’t wear ties? (Although I’m pretty sure Jesus never wore a tie, either.)

Start: We begin with a disclaimer! These are Stephen Hawking’s opinions, not those of Discovery. 🙂

4 minutes: I hope the analogy here is clear. “People who believe God made the universe are kind of like the Vikings shouting at the Sun to stop a solar eclipse.”

8 minutes: Snark aside, the message here is a fundamental one. Nature obeys laws! Something that’s certainly not a priori obvious or necessary, but a really profound truth.

14 minutes: I wasn’t able to find an independent confirmation of this story about Pope John XXI condemning the idea of “laws of nature.” (It’s true that he did die when the roof collapsed.) Presumably this refers to the Condemnations of 1277.

20 minutes: The universe is a big, messy, complicated, and occasionally quite intricate place. On the face of it, the idea that it’s all the working-out of some impersonal patterns of matter and energy, rather than being constructed by some kind of conscious intelligence, is pretty remarkable. (But true nonetheless.)

27 minutes: Hey, a tiny ad for Discovery Retreats!

28 minutes: Hawking says Einstein might be the greatest scientist ever. He has long favored Einstein over Newton, I’m not sure why. Hawking appeared on an episode of Star Trek: TNG, where he was a hologram playing poker with Einstein, Newton, and Data. He actually wrote the script, and Newton doesn’t come off well.

36 minutes: Ah, negative energy. Depends on what you mean by “energy,” but this isn’t the venue to get overly technical, obviously. Roughly, matter has positive energy and gravity has negative energy. That’s hopefully enough to help people swallow the crucial point: you can make a universe for nothing. There isn’t some fixed resource, out of which we can make a universe or two, before we hit Peak Universe. There can be an infinite number of universes.

41 minutes: People on Twitter are asking why Hawking doesn’t have a British accent. He easily could, of course; voice-synthesis technology has come quite a way since he first got the system. But he’s said that he now identifies with that voice he got years ago, and doesn’t want to change it; it’s identified with him.

47 minutes: Okay, here’s the payoff. He’s saying that generally we’re used to effects being caused by pre-existing events. (The first step toward a cosmological argument for God’s existence.) You might think that a chain of causation takes you back to the Big Bang, which then requires God as a cause. But no! The Big Bang can just … be.

50 minutes: The point of the black hole discussion is to get to the idea of a singularity, a conjectural point of infinite curvature and density. The Big Bang, in classical general relativity, is also a singular moment. But classical GR isn’t right. We need quantum gravity. Hawking believes that quantum gravity smooths the singularity and explains how there was no pre-existing time. (At least in the TV show, unlike A Brief History, he doesn’t start talking about “imaginary time.”)

56 minutes: Ultimately Hawking’s argument against God is pretty simplistic. He assumes that if God created the Big Bang, God must have existed before the Big Bang, but there was no “before the Big Bang,” QED. It’s easy enough to simply assert that God doesn’t exist “within time” (if that means anything). It would have been better (IMHO) to emphasize that modern cosmology has many good ideas about how the universe could have come to be, so there’s no need to rely on a divine creator.

58 minutes: Final thought from SWH: no life after death! Enjoy it while you’re around, folks. An important message.

Panel discussion starts: Forgot to mention that Paul Davies has shaved off his moustache. Disconcerting.

4 minutes: Also disconcerting: watching myself on TV. Hate it. But I persevere for the greater good.

5 minutes: Here’s Michio Kaku, not saying very much.

7 minutes: Jennifer Wiseman and I were actually grad students together! She’s good people, even if we disagree about the whole God thing.

9 minutes: I come out in favor of basing purpose and meaning on reality. But I’m pretty sure a longer remark was cut off there. Arrrrgh! Nothing nefarious, we intentionally recorded a bit more than they had time to show. But enormously frustrating that there was so little time.

13 minutes: Not sure why we kept talking about the multiverse. Hawking didn’t bring it up, did he?

17 minutes: I thought a lot of what Haught said was not even really trying to argue in favor of God’s existence, but simply expressing a desire that he exist. “God is the grounding of hope” isn’t evidence for God’s existence.

22 minutes: Haven’t said anything completely silly yet, so that’s good. But so little time…

27 minutes: Always time for more Michio!

30 minutes: Arrrrgh again, this time for real: in the live conversation, I had the last word and it was a pretty good one. In the televised program, not so much. Had to end wishy-washy.

Thanks for tuning in. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have the time for a real conversation? But big ups to Discovery for hosting the panel at all — it’s a rare event on TV.

265 Comments

265 thoughts on “Live-Blogging Curiosity, Hawking, and God”

  1. nature definitely depends on random variables, w/o an astroid randomly crashing into our planet and wiping out the dinos, mammals would have never inherited the world and humans wouldn’t exist

  2. Pingback: The SAC Blog » Blog Archive » Curiosity on Discovery: Did God Create the Universe? w/ Stephen Hawking

  3. @Anon, I’m not defending Hawkins theories… I’m not a physicist. I am arguing against people who dismiss any evidence from science that goes against their religious views. They find something that a theory can’t explain and instead of working to try to find that answer, they just fall back to “God did it.” It’s a shame. Even if Hawkins isn’t right about his theory, his point that you don’t need a supernatural being to explain nature comes across pretty well.

    … and, unfortunately, the ad for next week’s show makes it pretty unlikely that I”ll be watching this show much in the future.

  4. “There is still some degree of faith in science, it’s been wrong before.”
    Even when it’s wrong, it still still has the best explanation, given all the available evidence.
    And who figures out that it’s wrong? Scientists.
    How do they figure out that it’s wrong? By discovering new evidence.
    What happens when they know it’s wrong? Old theories are replaced with updated, more accurate theories that best explain that new evidence, as well as ALL the old evidence.
    No faith anywhere.

  5. @mxh

    Yes Black holes irradiate and eventually die but hawking also proved it takesup to many times the universe’s current age for this to happen and what happens then? what if matter continues to enter the black hole and increase its gravitational field and mass? is there a point in the mass of a black hole where even the X-rays and other small bits of matter that decay cannot escape? If there is then eventually this would create a situation where a black hole can explode. at what point this critical mass is if it exists would help us greatly understand the phenomena of black holes and the big bang

  6. Guardian.co.uk has a statement from Hawkins himself saying that “it would be an ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God” based on if scientist developed a theory of everything. Why is he trying to disprove a God that does not exist if he wants to know the mind of God. Why does anyone try to disprove anything that they do not believe in. Is it not a waste of your own time and effort if you don’t believe in it anyway. I do believe in science and it’s actual evidence. But when it comes from theory, that is all it is Theory…

  7. @mxh: “I am arguing against people who dismiss any evidence from science that goes against their religious views….”

    Then that would preclude me – which you would have realized if you’d actually bothered to fully read my first comment and think about it for more than 2 secs.

    “Even if Hawkins isn’t right about his theory, his point that you don’t need a supernatural being to explain nature comes across pretty well.”

    I disagree. “You don’t need a supernatural being to explain nature” is *not* the same thing as “Science has proven that God does not exist.” I think that both Hawking and Discover miss the mark by presenting it like this.

  8. <3 Rob

    You have to have faith! To believe that there's dark matter, you have to believe the guy before you is right about his facts!

    There's large gaps in explaining things on both the micro and macroscale. If you think of ideas and sciences as sheets of cloth in a blanket idea to explain everything, you have to have faith that they are strong enough, if even there, when you sew your science between them to make your quilt. Sometimes those bits of cloth are great cloth, firm and perfect for the square they're in…sometimes they fray, or the piece goes missing, so you have to find another chunk…And sometimes you don't know until you hold up the whole thing it's falling apart.

    I feel that those in both the religious and science communities, there are people willing to leave squares that are falling apart, fraying, or even missing and unwilling to look into the other (ideas) chunks of cloth that will work far better because it disagrees with their personal idea of what the blanket out to look like. (Hawking likes to use analogies, so can I!) Both sides of the argument are guilty, and I feel that the absolute discarding of anything beyond what we can 'see for ourselves' is very similar. In order to deliberately discard ideas is, in itself, an act of faith.. (or maybe anti-faith…Like the hill and the hole, eh? ~^_^~)

  9. @ Boleria, from what I understand, at the rate the Universe is expanding, gravity can’t bring everything in the universe together. I don’t think Hawking radiation (yikes! I’ve gotta get to sleep, I’ve spelled his name wrong like twenty times so far) is x-rays and “bits of matter that decay” escaping. I think it has to do with spontaneous creation of particles and antiparticles near the black hole. I’ll have to look it up.

  10. @DiscoveryChannel, we don’t want your one-sided biased opinions. Keep them to yourselves and stop trying to brainwash the World with your nonsense!

  11. OK, Anon, you got me. Reading your first post makes more sense (sorry, I was on a roll with the responses). I’m only against people assuming that God exists because science can’t explain everything. I haven’t studied cosmology and can’t really comment too much on who’s theory on the origin of the Universe is more correct (all I know is that they’re all based on some evidence, so they’re all more correct than “God did it”).

  12. “You have to have faith! To believe that there’s dark matter, you have to believe the guy before you is right about his facts! ”

    But I’m not going to believe him just because he says so. He has to be able to demonstrate how he has come to that conclusion. And then other experts in his field have to review his data, and reach the same conclusions. Only then will I start to think he might be on to something. No faith.

  13. Anyway, tis late in the far east coast of Canada…Thanks, folks for the discussion but the bed beckons…

    I hope those thinkers and movers out there reading keep pushing us to ask questions! Your work helps make the future look brighter …for all of us! ~^_^~

  14. Anon #79

    “You don’t need a supernatural being to explain nature” is *not* the same thing as “Science has proven that God does not exist.” I think that both Hawking and Discover miss the mark by presenting it like this.

    So what would this god that is not needed to explain nature actually do? How is a god that doesn’t intervene in nature distinguishable from no god?

  15. Huh, I didn’t know that Hawking had wrote the script to that seen in Star Trek. That’s slightly surprising especially given that Hawking turns out to win at the end which makes it seem a lot more self-aggrandizing but still highly amusing. (And I suppose when you’ve accomplished that much it is ok to portray yourself as winning a card game against Einstein and Newton).

  16. Cherie #78

    Guardian.co.uk has a statement from Hawkins himself saying that “it would be an ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God” based on if scientist developed a theory of everything. Why is he trying to disprove a God that does not exist if he wants to know the mind of God. Why does anyone try to disprove anything that they do not believe in. Is it not a waste of your own time and effort if you don’t believe in it anyway.

    The “mind of God” phrase from Hawking has been misinterpreted for decades now. AFAIK he mentioned it in ’88 in A Brief History of Time first, if not before. It’s not a new statement, and if you read the book, it’s clear that it’s an allusion of Einstein’s own mentions of “god”, which is not a personal god.

    The god that he’s disproving is one that meddles with nature in any way, such a personal god that cares for us and listens to prayers, and makes miracles. Even one that doesn’t do that, but jump-started evolution would fall in that category.

    I do believe in science and it’s actual evidence. But when it comes from theory, that is all it is Theory…

    Then you should read more science and inform yourself what “theory” in science actually means.

  17. I feel sorry for Stephen Hawking. He’s just relying on his unproven assumption that the Viking Wolf-god was not really eating the sun. How sad for him to have no hope that yelling at it will bring the sun back. I will pray for him that he might gain some wisdom.

  18. Paul Davies made a comment concerning where the laws of nature came from. He also mentioned the internal order of the universe. These are important things to consider because they point to the existence of Mind. In other words highly ordered entities suppose the existence of an intelligent being.

    One aspect that was not brought up was the nature of time. It would seem that Dr. Hawking is assuming that there is only one type of time. In other words we may grant that time is gradient meaning that there are areas of the universe that contain a higher ‘density’ of space/time than others. However, we have not proven, I don’t think, that there is only one type of time. There are different types of matter and energy. Why should we assume there is only one type of time?
    Looking at the quantum side of things we see particles violating times’ arrow, no?

    The time that we normally perceive is thru the lens of events. Past the event horizon, we must either say there is no time or there is a different type of time at work here.

    Is it possible that there are two types of time, one where events occur and another where the present laws of nature exist; i.e., a present time?

    Just thinking out loud.

    Kind Regards…

  19. if you are talking about the Miller-Urey experiment then i suggest you do realise that was a joke of an experiment right? Of course under the right (extreme) conditions we are able to generate the most basic of amino acids in the d-form which is practically useless for human existence.

    David, first of all, the Miller-Urey experiment was most certain NOT a “joke” experiment. You are parroting a standard creationist falsehood here.

    Secondly, you do realize that the Miller-Urey experiment was only the first of a LONG SERIES OF REPEAT EXPERIMENTS under a VERY WIDE RANGE OF STARTING CONDITIONS, which, as a whole, readily demonstrated that basic amino acids are easily spontaneously produced under a WIDE VARIETY of abiotic conditions, in both the d and l forms. And these amino acids have been shown to spontaneously link up into short polypeptides in those same (wide) sets of conditions as well.

    Hell, we even know that a variety of amino acids form spontaneously, and exist, in space.

    Spent 5 years at the bench, i kept wondering why we couldnt create amino acids ourselves. Very frustrating . . . considering nature is alleged to have done this spontaneously

    Whut? Organic chemistry has developed many different ways of producing all the amino acids, from a variety of starting materials.

    Anyone who has done more than a year or two of basic organic chemistry labwork should know this. That you apparently do not makes me seriously doubt the veracity of your “5 years at the bench”. What kind of bench???

  20. Cherie, there are a lot of issues with what you are saying. First, please understand that the word “theory” doesn’t to scientists mean what you think it means. It isn’t a guess. “Theory” has a variety of meanings but the most relevant one in scientific contexts is a well-established hypothesis with broad explanatory power. Thus for example, when scientists are talking about the “atomic theory” they don’t mean a vague guess that matter is composed of atoms. (Insert obvious “I’ve Got a Theory” jokes here.)

    Your statement about Hawking talking about “God” seems to confuse different meanings of the term. It seems pretty clear that Hawking is talking metaphorically when he talks about the mind of God.

    Finally, regarding your question if it is a waste of effort to try to “disprove” things one doesn’t believe in- scientists are interested in finding out about the world around us. So scientists examine hypotheses and ideas. If an idea is popular, it isn’t a waste of time to try to examine it to see if it holds any water. And if the idea doesn’t hold water, it makes sense to let people know. I don’t know about you, but if I had a deeply incorrect viewpoint on something, I’d like people who know better to tell me otherwise. Moreover, if we all try to share data and arguments as much as possible, that makes us all more likely to be correct. The path is long, and we shall never reach complete certainty, but we do edge closer and closer to truth and understanding. That is why Hawking cares.

  21. Hawking is trying to make us believe that God cannot exist because the universe created itself.

    Even if it is possible for matter or energy to create itself in our universe, and I’m not sure that it is, I still don’t buy this explanation.

    -David

  22. “You don’t need a supernatural being to explain nature” is *not* the same thing as “Science has proven that God does not exist.” I think that both Hawking and Discover miss the mark by presenting it like this.

    Science does not “prove” that God does not exist. What science has done is repeatedly demonstrate that God is not necessary in order to explain X, for a continuous series of X’s, on a steady, stepwise regression all the way back to the singularity of the Big Bang itself.

  23. And I suppose when you’ve accomplished that much it is ok to portray yourself as winning a card game against Einstein and Newton

    Considering that they were playing a 20th Century version of the card game with 20th Century rules, it would have been unrealistic for anyone other than Hawking to have won!

  24. In the show, there is a statement that all galaxies had red shift, and so all galaxies are traveling away as the universe expands from earth’s vantage point. That indicates to me that earth must be somewhat in the center of creation. That is interesting to me.

    Also, from my way of understanding from what Dr. Hawking said was that God could not have created the universe because time and space did not exist before creation. I believe that from my reading of the bible, in Isaiah 42:5 it says, “Thus says God the Lord, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, Who gives breath to the people on it, And spirit to those who walk on it;”. He was there, not Dr. Hawking.

    I also have no problem believing that God who created the earth and the universe, existed before time and space. He created space and he created time, like an artist paints a picture. He is infinite, almighty and omniscent. I pray that you all that hold the view that God was unnecessary and therefore not there, that you all come to a saving knowledge of Jesus before its too late. We have such a short life span, and you should enjoy life, but the life hereafter is a lot longer.

  25. “There is still some degree of faith in science, it’s been wrong before.”

    Shara, (and any others who have been making similar arguments) you are fundamentally mistaking scientists with science. Scientists have been wrong before. Scientists do indeed have faith, and non-scientists do indeed often take the word of scientists, on faith. That’s because both scientists and non-scientists are human beings are faith is an integral part of human psychology. But when anyone, scientist or not, takes anything at all on faith without evidence, they are not doing science.

    Science is an ongoing process that progressively moves from wrong to ever less wrong, from partly right to ever more close to completely right. It is inherently self-correcting, and is fundamentally, the antithesis of faith.

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