Stephen Hawking has announced that that God is no longer necessary in order to start the Big Bang:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/02/stephen-hawking-picks-physics-god-big-bang/
He also is warning us to abandon the earth or face possible extinction:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/02/stephen-hawking-picks-physics-god-big-bang/
The latter, resonates with what the the recent Discovery Channel bomber James Lee was saying. James Lee, influenced by Daniel Quinn's series of books and Al Gore, believed that humanity was "filthy", that the earth would be better off without us, and that we faced extinction if we didn't stop global warming. He believed we needed to stem the population growth by no longer having children:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/02/stephen-hawking-picks-physics-god-big-bang/
Before I go any further, let me be unequivocal in saying that I do NOT for a moment place Mr. Hawking in the same category as Lee in terms of a proclivity towards violence.
But both of these men share dire predictions, building their reasoning upon humanistic, naturalistic presuppositions.
I would actually agree with their conclusions that if the world is merely a product of naturalistic random processes, independent of God, then we are doomed unless we can take extreme actions.
One can be logical but be wrong. Logic is as only as truthful as its presuppositions. Both a young-earth creationist and an evolutionist can look at the same Grand Canyon but logically come to different conclusions based upon different presuppositions. The evolutionist will claim, a lot of time and a little water formed the Canyon. The young-earth creationist will claim that a lot of water (Noah's Flood) and a little time formed it.
Positivism is a philosophy that says that science can NOT say what is ultimately true. It can only correlate observations. In other words, it can only connect the dots.
The task of science is not to find out what nature is, but only what we can say about it.
Science can ask what and how. This line of questioning is authenticated by technology. Science can not answer "why". This is the domain of religion. When one asks "why", one is inherently asking about purpose and purpose is ALWAYS tied to someone's will. "Why" is therefore tied to "who". For the atheist, "who" is us. It is me and you. For the person of faith, this "who" is outside of ourselves. "Who" is God.
It is funny for me to watch atheists and agnostics moralize, asking questions along the lines of, "If there is a God, why does evil exist?" as if they can justify a logical definition of good and evil outside of God's very own existence. If God doesn't exist, why can't I eat pork or abort a baby in the womb? Because YOU say so? Or because the law might say so?
As C.S. Lewis learned when he was an atheist, for him to say the world was broken assumed that he had a reference point (the idea of good). But where did this reference point come from? A fish doesn't complain about being wet. It doesn't even know it is wet because all it has known is water.
"If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?" --Encounter with Light
I greatly respect Mr. Hawking and have learned a lot from him. My respect comes from the fact that he is extremely gifted in his use of logic. But logic alone will cause one to go insane (ala Mr. Lee). As G.K. Chesterton pointed out in his classic book "Orthodoxy", the paranoid person is also logical.
They believe everyone is out to get them. When you tell them that is not true, they say, "Well of course you'd say that. You're out to get me. You would say that." Reasoning can not penetrate such thinking. Logic has limits. Its limits are in the realm of faith.
For more information, check out:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/08/18/129289331/can-science-explain-creation
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/08/27/129471676/my-covenant-with-mystery
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.html
Also, check out my favorite blog 13.7's post on Hawking and God:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/09/08/129736414/hawking-and-god-an-intimate-relationship#more
1 comment:
Your reasoning is sound and very objective, I definitely think you should be out there writing books. Its rare that someone will respect someone else's point of reference instead of passionately battling uphill "for the good of all"
Live long and prosper!
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