Stephen Hawking's - Brief Answers to the Big Questions

JMJ

So Dr. Hawkings is making a bit of a splash from beyond the grave with the publication of his last book.

Here's some quotes and my comments:

"If there were such a God, I would like to ask, however did he think of anything as complicated as M-theory in eleven dimensions," Hawking wrote.

Something interesting about editing, one version of this quote made it sound very proud. In this version what becomes obvious is that Hawking is simply ignorant in this regards. Simply put, M-Theory is an expression of an understanding of reality, but as any model it is not a complete expression.

I was curious as to what M-Theory is ...

M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. It's probably not the question most other people would ask a Supreme Being, but then, Hawking was one of a kind.(C-Net)

So ... moving on.

"There is no God. No one directs the universe," he writes in "Brief Answers to the Big Questions."

This is an assertion - Dr. Hawking's appeared to believe that the constrained theories actually explain the reality. That is a wee bit of a stretch.

"For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God," he adds. "I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature."

I wonder where he learned this? I'm not familiar with God inflicting a 'curse' upon Mankind. Adam is the one who gave us Original Sin.

"There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be wary of answering back until we have developed a bit further."

Is not God a form of intelligent life? What Hawking's denies is that there are other orders of beings that we know of because they have either revealed themselves or being revealed: God, Angels and Demons.

"I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science," Hawking, who died in March, wrote. "If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?"

Well, that is a question - how does something come from nothing in the material world?

In life, Hawking was a vocal champion of the Big Bang theory — the idea that the universe began by exploding suddenly out of an ultradense singularity smaller than an atom.

It is amusing that the Big Bang Theory was the result of the work of a Jesuit searching for the moment of creation (ie something coming from nothing).

To Hawking and many like-minded scientists, the combined laws of gravity, relativity, quantum physics and a few other rules could explain everything that ever happened or ever will happen in our known universe.

Obviously they haven't dealt with Dark Matter fully yet ... and if/when they do ... something else will pop up because the Universe is not as simple as they would like to think it to be!

"If you like, you can say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence,"

How is that a definition of God. It would be a result of God's action not a definition.

"We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe," Hawking concludes the first chapter of his final book, "and for that I am extremely grateful."

Ok - so the Universe has a design. Therefore it must have a Designer. The problem with scientists who specialize themselves into knowing more and more about less and less is that they tend to believe that what little they know explains everything. I would like to know how biology evolved to create various systems that can't evolve. Like eyesight.

"Did God create the quantum laws that allowed the Big Bang to occur?" Hawking wrote. "I have no desire to offend anyone of faith, but I think science has a more compelling explanation than a divine creator."

Well, frankly there are a lot of things that science can't explain and ... frankly science is in large part just theories.

"We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in," Hawking wrote. "For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

Ok so for all their intelligence, I guess they haven't figured out that God is outside of time.

I guess they haven't thought this through very well.

Aside from the Mercy of God, given his background, I don't give much chance for the salvation of Dr. Hawking.

He is most likely in need of prayers.

P^3

Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/health/stephen-hawking-final-book-intl/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/stephen-hawking-claims-no-possibility-god-last-book-ncna921806
https://www.cnet.com/news/there-is-no-god-stephen-hawking-writes-in-final-book/

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Auctorem Fidei

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Morning and Evening and other sundry Prayers

+ JMJ Along the theme of P^3 (Prayer, Penance, Patience), and for my own reference ... here is a collection of Morning and Evening prayers from the Ideal Daily Missal along with some additional prayers. In this crisis of the Church, I do not think it is possible to do too much prayer, penance and have patience. P^3

Tradicat

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