Stephen Hawking: God NOT Needed For Creation

But, there is a universe with observers in it.

I explained this. And may I point out that your own claims about misconceptions are just rationalisations.

The evidence for a creator is that the universe exists. Hawking points out that if the universe was created, it required the creator to choose a set of very exact preconditions, which implies that the choice wasn't really a choice. As you also point out, this only bumps the creator up the ladder.

I stated that this doesn't do away with God, and you appear to agree with this view. And, I am not referring to a God with any nature (as described by various religions), but rather "whatever got things started". Since I can't claim that there was no creator, and neither can you or anyone else. I can however claim that there is little or no evidence that the creator of the universe, or the "original thinker" who decided the universe should create itself, did any more than allow it to be created, say.

I'm not confusing a religious deity with the God Hawking claims was not actively involved in fine-tuning the creation event. If they weren't active that still leaves room for a passive God, who may be observing the universe from somewhere--let's say it's the 5th dimension--but isn't otherwise interfering with it or the affairs of men.

 

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You could hardly have chosen a worse example Neverfly.

Criminal Psychology has very little scientific basis.
Most of it is personal conjecture, or unscientific analysis of interviews of criminals.
Not much money is invested in it.
It is actually a bit woo woo.

I get your general point.
Yes science is wonderful, I agree.
It's a wonder of nature both that the world has rules, and that we are here to understand them.

(You can safely agree with that.
I haven't mentioned a creator.)

 

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Ummm... I'm the one making rationalizations when you are the one claiming that your existence is evidence that there is a God?

Does my existence provide evidence that there is a Pink Invisible Unicorn creator?

Or a Jolly Green Giant Creator?

Or Space Aliens that created us?

Do you not see the major inconsistency there?


At most, you can claim that your existence suggests the possibility of a designer or creator. However, it is not strong evidence for one. Evolution and emergence explains our existence with better accuracy and simpler terms that don't require divine substance.

Possibly. I would need to research a bit more on that topic before I could say if it was actually a good example or if you're right and it was a terrible one.

But you say you got the point I was reaching for...

 

Well, I think you're just paraphrasing me with this.

Who said anything about "divine substance". What's that?

 

there are signs and proof of evolution there is no signs or proof of god..

if the universe created you and god created the universe who created god? he HAD to come from someone

 

I don't know. Why did they bother to create the universe?
Or rather, why let the universe create itself? Why let it evolve intelligence?
Why do intelligent observers want to know?
Why is our existence not certain, according to Hawking, by which he means it has a low probability per Hubble volume?

 

Because readers will not find what they are being led to believe they will find. For the reasons I explained in my previous post. He has nothing new, M-brane theory is just a hypothesis. If it was supported by evidence it would still not rule out God. Etc. IOW it is trickery. Perhaps not his, but someone's in the production of this book and its marketing.

No problem, I do this myself on occasion.

Nor do I. My primary complaint was about the argument being put out by him, not with him having an opinion. As I said, I focused on that, until someone else, not you, responded to me as if I was ad homming. So I looked at it and then decided that the phenomenon smelled bad. How much is Hawking and how much is other people involved in marketing the book I don't know.

The reason I said I did not care, which was accurate, was because your reponse to me, which I now understand was aimed more generally, implied or stated really that the issue was me disliking him having an opinion. I know there are public figures who are atheists and agnostics and I know there are public figures who are theists. When they state their opinions it really has little effect. If they make a poor case, as I think was being made here, and as I think Billy Graham makes all the time, this can bug me. (my issues with each of their cases are different, but that's not relevent)

AGain, it was the argument not being sound.

OH, we sure don't. We don't know why it arises. We do not know what is conscious and what is not conscious. We do not know if the complexity of an organism or matter, really leads to it or not.

All I claimed was that M-theory would not explain it. Theists are not remotely alone in finding consciousness perplexing. If you have an explanation of consciousness and how it arises in matter, let us know. I am pretty sure you would have a Nobel prize if you can demonstrate this in the lab. You would need to demonstrate specifically what is going on in the matter itself that allows for this phenomenon where we know it does - humans animals - and then demonstrate either that some form of this phenomenon is present throughout matter, given the roots of conscousness, or why it is not present, given its roots, in all matter but only in special cases.

For example, you would be able to weigh in with some finality on whether plants have some form of conscious awareness, given what causes consciousness.

This was not a ploy on my part. I was reacting to a claim originally by Hawking, that we would have a TofE with M-theory.

Saying that we will have a complete theory of everything sometime in the future if we can demonstrate that hypothesis X is true

pretty much begs for criticism.

There's no need to use the pejorative 'ploy' or assume that only what you call believers are the ones who think consciousness is a knotty problem.

 

till you find you are looking in the wrong places.

Gaia..but then thats not final..its just a theory..

 

Here's what the economist's reviewer thought of Hawking's new book...

I like, of course, that this review makes some of the same points I have made in the thread....

(note also the bolded portion below, which is Hawkings sense of what is really going on in the universe. I am quite sure there is nothing remotely like consensus within the physics community on these points.)

 

Notice how, many posters to this thread seem to be happy to accept it's about selling books, or it's about denying the existence of a creator.

Hawking has published a stack of books over the last 30 or so years. Perhaps he is capitalising on the lay interest in such questions as "Why does the universe exist"? "Why does it have three dimensions?" "What does AdS/CFT correspondence mean?"
"Why do complex numbers seem to be the rule rather than the exception, and how do integers and natural numbers exist in that case?"

 

I never thought or asserted that 'it's about selling books.' there are a number of confused assumptions in that interpretation....

1) Confusion 1: if you have one motivation you cannot have others. IOW I am sure most people assume, like I do, that he is interested in the subject of the book. This doesn't rule out other motivations.
2) the issue was never 'did he write the book for money'. The issue was did he add comments, make hasty claims, present a weak argument, release this to the press in order to make more money and in a way that misrepresents the strength of his arguments. Also possible, as I pointed out a number of times, was that the publishing house was responsible.
3) I don't know about other people, but I never assumed the book was only about God issues. In fact I assumed this was only a small portion of the book.
4) the core issue brought up for me in a thread called

is, well, that issue: is his argument sound. Not complex numbers or any other things brought up in his book. If that is an issue that interests you, you might find people willing to go into that in a thread where it was on topic.

Given what the topic of the thread is, most of my posting has been about whether the argument he makes makes sense.

 

A creator that is not falsifiable is, by definition, supernatural or divine.

"I don't know" is not the best follow up for wild speculation...

Nor is asking "why," when you were asked about your assertions.

Let me try a "why:" Why assume as an axiom that there IS a 'why?'

Asking 'why' suggests that there is a purpose, design or intelligent plan. The existence of any of that has yet to be established.

How can one look in any place for the supposed unfalsifiable or unobservable?
When asked why God cannot be demonstrated through observation, believers claim he is Outside of Observation.
Then they say you need to observe in the right places. Is it not clear that is just justification for a totally unfounded belief?

The ONLY rationale for your belief is the concept that it cannot be observed at all. That strikes me as exceptionally absurd.

Gaia is not a Theory. It's not even a hypothesis. It's a fairy tale.

Ok, I can agree that this is a valid point.

Really? Hmmm... I hear this said quite often. But I do not see it as being anything more than an attempt to make consciousness sound like something ethereal or mystic.

We DO Know what is conscious and what is not. We DO know if the complexity of matter leads to it or not.
I would argue that only an individual ignorant about brain structure, chemistry, function and responsiveness would claim that any of that is unknown. As they assume that if they personally don't know- then no one does.
That's quite fallacious. We cannot say that we understand the full complexity of the human brain 100%. But we cannot say that about a LOT of things we know a great deal about. The brain is, after-all, highly complex. But the fact that consciousness is the physical state of complexity, that it is no more divine than the Cause and Effect of a billiard table (Only far more involved and complex), and this is well established by simple Alteration to ANY Brain... a person would be very hard pressed to support the claim that we don't know this stuff.

It's a bit like the 10% myth. "We only use ten percent of our brains." The misleading statement implies that 90% of the brain is left unused and perhaps is what gets used for psychic ability etc... The problem is that we use 100% of our brains. ALL of it. Every last bit. Nothing gets unused.
It's simply that we don't use 100% of the brain all at the same time. We only use what percentage we need. Just as we don't use 100% of our muscles all at the same time. We use only what we need. But we DO use all of our muscles at one time or another.

Wow, Doreen- I'm surprised at you.

Consciousness and awareness IS demonstrated in labs regularly. It is not Nobel Prize material...
It's been well established for several decades.

If you are uncertain as to whether or not plants are conscious-- Allow me to answer you: They are not.

Consciousness is a Higher Effect of cause than Programming. Programming is a higher effect cause than Reaction. It's all very well established business.

I think that YOU PERSONALLY do not have a great deal of experience in the consciousness debate and you must have been assuming that there is some confusion simply because there are a lot of people that are not Neurologists who express confusion over it.
But to those educated in the field, it's not mysterious.

Perhaps YOU did not mean it as a ploy, but it IS one of the older and well known ploys of creationists- Just like the ten percent myth I described above is a ploy often used by mystics trying to support their claims of psychic ability, telekinesis and so on. You probably used it unwittingly, not realizing (I had to be educated about the ten percent myth as I had heard it a lot growing up and simply accepted it as true until someone more knowledgeable than I corrected me once when I used it in an argument.)

 

I don't think I said anything about it being ethereal or mystic. We just don't know why some matter is conscious, how it arises and if it is limited to only some matter, what is it about that matter that gives rise to consciousness.

No, we do not. We have opinions, but we do not know. In fact it is only fairly recently that scientists allowed themselves to weigh in on animals.

No we don't. How do we test plants to see if they are conscious? Even if they did not signal each other or communicate from one portion of the plant to another, we would still have problems? How do we know that all consciousness is connected to behavior (like ours)?

I would argue that only an individual ignorant about brain structure, chemistry, function and responsiveness would claim that any of that is unknown. As they assume that if they personally don't know- then no one does.

You're off on some tangent here. I could say your ideas are like some idea and then say that idea is ridiculous, but let's stick please to what we are actually saying.

Wow, Doreen- I'm surprised at you.

Find me scientific research that states this is the case. I want to know the testing protocols for consciousness.

Ad hom...

Fuck you Neverfly.

Read this post and the post you are responding to. This is sloppy and ad hom.

I'll ignore you from here on out. I see nothing in the above vague descriptions that shows me you are as well read in neuroscience or consciousness literature as I am.

And here you essentially admit it. You are responding to other people and other arguments.

I'm going to put you on ignore for a while.

 

This is like saying we have opinions about Evolution but we do not KNOW.
We have opinions about quantum mechanics but don't really know anything. We have opinions about fluid dynamics but don't know anything.
C'mon...
Doreen, we do. Maybe you don't- doesn't mean that no one does.

As for the rest of your points... well let's focus on this first:

It is not ad hominem to suggest that you do not know about something...

This follows your incorrect claim of an ad hom simply because you got overly sensitive at the suggestion that you do not have enough knowledge on a particular topic?

WOW. That's what's known as completely over-reacting. I suggest that you step away from the computer for a while and calm down. Then reassess yourself when you're thinking more clearly and less emotionally.

...OR... you can just hide. Not very commendable but hey- your choices are your own.

But your juvenile outburst and rather uncalled for reaction cost you what respect I used to have for you as a poster. If this is the kind of behavior you exhibit when someone suggests that you need more knowledge to assert your claims then it's clear you will need to ignore a lot of people.

Then there is no sense to bowing to your demands is there?

 

Ok. Suppose I have a pet hamster, and I claim it's a divine creature. Is this falsifiable?
Or suppose I claim the entire universe is divine, can this be falsified? Is the universe falsifiable?

Really? I have to ask then: why not?

Do you mean, why assume that we can ask questions? Why did I just ask a question?

That looks like hyperbolic BS that you just made up.

 

And all that looks like hyperbolic rhetoric that YOU just made up.

Arfa Brane, simply put: God is not falsifiable-- AGAIN: This is well established and agreed upon by believers too. Are you going to claim otherwise NOW< just to support your argument?
Is a Chocolate flavored cheez-whiz gobbling space dragon falsifiable? That is the obvious flaw in believing in the unfalsifiable- ANY Absurd claim that cannot be falsified can be rationalized as 'true' just because it cannot be proven false (Or true, for that matter). This is a glaring fallacy.
There is no evidence of Divine Intervention. No evidence of intelligent design.

Harder still, for the believer, is that observational evidence suggests strongly that a divine being is highly improbable.

You can play word games, if you like, simply because you are trying hard to support a belief. But the ONLY way you can support that belief is with word games, justification and rationalization. I would prefer that you realized that. But I can talk myself blue trying to convince you... I won't. Because the nature of justification prohibits you.

I made a 'speech' up above and finished it off with the problem of God getting Bumped up the ladder of falsifiability. It's gotten so far up that ladder now, that any description of God given in the Bible becomes extremely inaccurate. So now, the UNIVERSE IS GOD? Where does the bumping end?

You addressed NONE of that. You only seem to address that which you think you can distort into casting doubt on certain statements.

Do you think I am a fool and I cannot see that you are doing that? If so, can you prove me wrong and address each point I made above and clearly demonstrate greivious errors on my part?

I'm certain that we both are fully aware that you cannot. So give up on the word games, too- I'm not fool enough to buy into it.

 

So my pet hamster is divine because I say so and nobody can falsify this? The evidence for the existence of God isn't that the universe exists, it's the existence of non-falsifiable statements?

If I say that you are God, then you can falsify this by simply claiming that you aren't?
Or because you can't falsify it, therefore my claim stands, and you are?

It all sounds so easy; somehow it seems like it's too easy to make an unfalsifiable statement about God, don't you think?

 

really??? fascinating.

i'm epileptic and have had dozens of neurologists, mostly affiliated with universities because i refuse to deal with private practice hacks (i.e. capitalists masquerading as "doctors") in the u.s., and not a ONE knows what consciousness is. neither do any philosophers with whom i'm familiar. nor neuroscientists.

so tell me, genius, what precisely is consciousness?

 

Everyone thinks they are David Hume these days.