Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe | Hacker News Reader

Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

bbc.co.uk

14 pointsjacquesm22 comments

>he concludes the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics

The laws of Physics then, how were they created.

Seriously with all respect to Hawkings great achievements in Physics/Cosmology this is not a question that can be answered by Physics.

When we talk about creation within our universe we're always talking about transformative action on existing matter/energy never on ex nihilo creation (I don't consider particle-antip pairs, like in Hawking radiation to be ex nihilo). There is no example in science of creation from nothing except the supposed big bang (for which there are many dissenting and conflicting theories, some of which - brane theory say - are quite handy looking).

The final quote is weak, "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going", and doesn't address the question.

It's not necessary that there was a watch factory that created my watch but it's as close to certain as one can get that that is how it was created.

Aside: I wonder, quite cynically, if Hawking has done his time, made his [massive] contribution and now is clawing for attention. Certainly these 2 last stories - God and aliens - appear to be rather out on a limb.

I don't consider particle-antip pairs, like in Hawking radiation to be ex nihilo

That's an odd thing to say. What do you think creates them? And more to the point what evidence do you have for this.

They're fluctuations in the vacuum in a naive sense but in Quantum Field Theory (QFT) I recall we considered the vacuum to be basically a soup of particle-antip pairs; in Bekstein-Hawking radiation one considers either that the antip falls in from the area of the event horizon or that the particle tunnels out from inside the horizon - I can't really do the full evidence bit, that's just standard physics though.

Indeed, I'm rather out of the loop now, but I don't think there's experimental evidence to support Hawking radiation yet and that there's an alteration that is more predictive in some way.

In ex nihilo creation the vacuum itself (I know!) is being created, the space into which the stuff sits, the energy in fields pervading the space, the unseen dimensions (total dimensions is 10 in superstring theory, 11 in brane, IIRC) and, along with that vacuum, time is created too.

Indeed taking a standard physics approach it's hard to see how you can model change before time exists as something that doesn't exist can't change and if time isn't changing then within our physics nothing else is. Creation of the human-perceived time dimension seems to require another time like dimension if it's to be modelled in some type of meta-physics (by which I don't mean the philosophical discipline).

First off "standard physics" is wrong. Newtonian physics if full of holes, but so is QM at the edges. However, in QM you really have to take that approach that energy is only conserved on average otherwise things like quantum tunneling don't work or require time travel etc. From what I can tell, conservation of energy for large system is simply the most probable event, but it’s not the only option.

Secondly the only meaningful way to talk about this stuff is with math or data. When the experimental data fits the calculations you have a working theory, but you can't intuit this stuff. Talking about a "ocean of virtual particles" sounds right but it's not accurate.

I'm aware that the Standard Model is provably not accurate in many instances (that's not what I meant by "standard" and I certainly didn't mean Newtonian as I thought was plain from the context; perhaps something like exoteric is closer to my intended meaning). I don't think I attempted to pass of anything Newtonian as current thinking, indeed I thought my slightly hand-wavy dealing of QFT made it clear that I understood how such things that give rise to Heisenberg's UP allow tunnelling phenomena.

>Secondly the only meaningful way to talk about this stuff is with math or data.

I've been out of theoretical physics for some time, in any case I don't suppose that I'm going to give a treatise on Hawking radiation in a HN post (even if I could). Indeed, as I thought - and have now checked there is a variation of the theory for quantum gravity that seems to have more predictive power, but that doesn't mean that Hawking radiation is not a working theory. That would be like saying Newtonian mechanics is not a working theory - it works as a non-relativistic approximation. Just as general relativity is considered a low energy approximation of an unknown gravitational QFT.

>Talking about a "ocean of virtual particles" sounds right but it's not accurate.

I subscribe to physical laws and unfalsified theories being the best description of reality and not being reality themselves. As such, in the context, it made sense to me to consider the vacuum as particle-antip pairs as it aids ready understanding of the assumed mechanisms taking place in Bekenstein-Hawking radition.

Malcolm Browne, "New Directions in Physics" (as quoted on Wikipedia) >"According to quantum theory, the vacuum contains neither matter nor energy, but it does contain fluctuations, transitions between something and nothing in which potential existence can be transformed into real existence by the addition of energy.(Energy and matter are equivalent, since all matter ultimately consists of packets of energy.) Thus, the vacuum's totally empty space is actually a seething turmoil of creation and annihilation, which to the ordinary world appears calm because the scale of fluctuations in the vacuum is tiny and the fluctuations tend to cancel each other out."

Anyhow, these esoteric details aside I'm at a loss to see where this is relevant to the matter at hand?

Refactor: remove God references, rename entity-that-created-law-of-Physics to God.

It's always amusing to see physicists, no matter how bright, step into metaphysics without the slightest idea of what they're doing, or even that they're doing it.

The universe does not necessarily exist. Something or someone had to create it from nothing at some point (which we can call the beginning of time).

Even the concept of time is a function of a changing material universe (time is a measure of change).

Aristotle figured all this out about 3000 years ago. Even though his physics was crude, I wonder why people ignore his metaphysics? I suppose simply through ignorance and neglect, and lack of modern attention to the topic.

My brother has started an Institute for the Study of Nature (http://isnature.org) to address exactly these issues, and has found some very encouraging support among modern scientists, fairly thinly scattered about various fields.

http://isnature.org/about.htm is a good summary of this new exploration.

(He also started it after becoming disillusioned with the intelligent design movement, which has become both a-scientific and anti-philosophical. Or, at least, that's my weak understanding of what he's told me.)

"The universe does not necessarily exist. Something or someone had to create it from nothing at some point (which we can call the beginning of time)."

Not necessarily. The universe could have been existing "forever". If something created it, who created the creator? if this creator is "special" why not the universe?

Now you are using the "uncreated creator" argument of Aristotle, who proved that there must be, at the back of all creation, one unmoved mover, one uncreated creator, etc.

He didn't "prove", it's just an argument. The "all things have a mover" doesn't have to apply to the universe. (If it was proven then there would be no atheists right?). Also the "unmoved mover" could be the universe itself, why not?

I can perfectly imagine the universe being forever the same as a creator being forever (if anything the first is easier since we have no evidence of the latter).

Yes, if everyone thought very carefully and honestly about the contingency of material beings and what that implies about the existence of the universe, they'd all be at least theists. ;-)

Summary of the article:

The Universe could have been created without God therefore the Universe was created without God.

Not sure how much of the bad argument is the BBC's fault.

5 hours ago (3 hours before jacquesm), I submitted the same story with a slightly different title (and with a clean URL)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1655658

An example of A/B testing on hacker news submission titles! Or perhaps just having a more recognized username?

Yours was probably just submitted at an unfortunate time with little user activity from the Americas.

Yes thats true, but I think it does highlight an issue with submitting 'dirty urls' (I realise this is a strong term)

Based on what has just happened, I could look for a submission that is doing ok and resubmit it with a different title when the Americas wakes up. Of course I'm not saying that is what happened its just a possibility.

Would make for a lot of duplicated stories.

There's not a lot you can realistically do about it in an automated way.

I saw on this page a link to another story titled "Hawking warns over alien beings" and it made me wonder... do most people that don't believe that God created the universe believe in aliens? And if not, why?

There are people for whom aliens fill the same "unknowable higher power" role that deities typically fill. But these people usually also believe that aliens have played some active role in life on Earth.

Hawking, on the other hand, believes that intelligent life could exist somewhere else -- that terrestrial life isn't that special. That's not quite the same thing as "believing in" aliens. It's like the difference between "believing God exists" and "believing God could exist".

Is there any way to show that aliens haven't played an active role in life on Earth though? We consider terra-forming (there was a story about Darwin doing something akin to it on Ascension Is. IIRC) as a natural way we could extend our reach to other planets. If there is intelligent alien life, or was, could it not have terraformed our planet.

> Interesting parallels to various theologies and running start theories go here <.

I don't think that question can be answered. First you would have to define what you mean by "believe that God created the universe" and then "what you mean by believe in aliens".

In addition, I don't see how the two belies are orthogonal.

"Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8642558.stm

(Also from his new book)

And yet nothing changes.

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