Guardian Poll: Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe?
The Guardian has a poll on at the moment asking:
Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe?
The results so far are:
81.3% Yes. I believe in gravity, not divinity
18.8% No. God: Hawking ‘not necessary’
Go on hop over and boost the “Hawking not necessary” vote.
Tags: Christianity, Media
September 2nd, 2010 at 11:52 am
So is Stephen Hawkings stating that physics is the biology of G*d, so to speak therefore he acknowledges the existence of G*d.
September 2nd, 2010 at 11:53 am
Yeah in one sense it’s as if he’s proclaiming the laws of physics to be god….
September 2nd, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Sometimes it seems that they are trying to convince themselves that there is no G*d more than other people that in itself could be considered a quantity of faith.
September 2nd, 2010 at 2:08 pm
The Guardian has created an either/or situation which doesn’t exist.
Professor Stephen Hawking said God is ‘not necessary’ to explain the universe and the Big Bang. This is not the same as saying God doesn’t exist. The two statements are in completely different realms. We can measure physical events, but we can’t measure God. No natural process can be taken as proof for either the existence or non-existence of God.
The Guardian then offers two options that don’t marry up with Stephen Hawking’s original statement.
1. Yes. I believe in gravity, not divinity
2. No. God: Hawking ‘not necessary’
Firstly, no one “believes” in gravity, any more than you “believe” in the speed of sound or evolution. These are evidence-based, not beliefs.
Choosing the second option suggests if choose God you can’t also choose gravity, when of course, you can have both.
September 2nd, 2010 at 2:55 pm
@Sophie – Ah that’s a good point
September 3rd, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Well said Sophie, it is rather a silly poll. Professor Hawking seems to describe a mechanism whereby the universe could have begun spontaneously without an external influence. Would he mention ‘God’ after the quote mining of ‘A Brief History of Time’?
I remember an evening in the 1070s when a young researcher tried to explain to me something of her research on string theory (gosh, I went to exciting parties). At least it taught me that my background in physics and maths wouldn’t let me cope with it, let alone the M theory leading to the conclusions in the book.
How many of the respondents answered from any position of understanding, I wonder?
September 3rd, 2010 at 12:59 pm
1970s, excuse the typo, I’m not quite so old.
September 4th, 2010 at 9:33 am
I have a great respect for Stephen Hawkins and he may well be right in saying that the Universe was created by physics but then, who created
physics ?
September 4th, 2010 at 10:40 am
It would be rather flippant to answer that physics was created by the human race, admittedly a rather clever subset of it, in an effort to understand the behaviour of the universe.
If we wonder why space, mass and energy react as it they do, perhaps it’s just their nature. If I examine a diamond, I expect it to be hard simply because carbon atoms arranged in that way produce a very strong lattice. That’s an intrinsic property of that kind of matter. That’s what carbon atoms do if subjected to the right conditions.
Do we have to propose some sort of supernatural legislator dictating the behaviour of fundamental particles that would otherwise not know how to behave?
September 6th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
I understand that the Guardian poll was intended to capture the opinions of the Guardian readership. But this Echurch Christian Blog has directed Christians to visit the Guardian site for the express purpose of distorting the poll results. Can you not see that this is unethical? By corrupting the poll results you have demonstrated that Christians will cheat to get what they want. In your imaginations, your god may forgive you, but I don’t.
September 6th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
@ Peter: How extraordinarily pompous! The poll itself was a joke – or didn’t you notice that? The way it was phrased might have been a bit of a hint…