Renowned Cosmologist Draws Sold-Out Crowd (Stephen Hawking)

The Daily Californian ^ | March 14, 2007 | Andrea Lu

[dayglored]

Last night, nearly 3,000 people received a mini lesson on the origin of the universe from perhaps the world’s most famous cosmologist, Stephen Hawking.

Hawking spoke to a packed audience in Zellerbach Hall about how Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and quantum theory explained the creation of the universe.

...

His lecture, which touched upon subjects such as black holes and spacetime, was peppered with quips that drew laughs from the audience.

“If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was, what happened before the beginning,” Hawking said. “What was God doing before He made the world?"

...

[dayglored]

Hawking is a brilliant scientist. He expounded on how science is ever better able to explain the events that followed the Big Bang (how the universe was created).

Yet his comments about "what God was doing before He made the world", while humorous, point to the fact that the closer our scientists get to a description of the Big Bang, the closer they come to concluding that God did it.

IMO, a clear demonstration that advancing scientific understanding of the universe, and belief in the existence of God as the Creator of the Universe, are not only compatible, BUT VERY LIKELY THE SAME THING.

As one trained in Physics, and who has an unshakable belief in God as the Creator, I find Hawking's comments quite interesting and pleasing. Of course, your mileage may vary, depending on your own beliefs...

[DalcoTX]

Why did the headline, to me, read cosmetologist?

[dayglored]

> Why did the headline, to me, read cosmetologist?

I think that's a different kind of "Big Bang"...

[DalcoTX]

Lol!!! I am sure I don't know what you are talking about. However...you must agree that the words are awfully close.

[Coyoteman]

Fon Creation Story

In the beginning there was nothing but Nzame. This god is really three: Nzame, Mebere, and Nkwa. It was the Nzame part of the god that created the universe and the earth, and brought life to it. While the three parts of Nzame were admiring this creation, it was decided to create a ruler for the earth. So was created the elephant, the leopard, and the monkey, but it was decided that something better had to be created. Between the three of them they made a new creature in their image, and called him Fam (power), and told him to rule the earth. Before long, Fam grew arrogant, he mistreated the animals and stopped worshipping Nzame. Nzame, angered, brought forth thunder and lightning and destroyed everything that was, except Fam, who had been promised immortality. Nzame, in his three aspects, decided to renew the earth and try again. He applied a new layer of earth to the planet, and a tree grew upon it. The tree dropped seeds which grew into more trees. Leaves that dropped from them into the water became fish, those that dropped on land became animals. The old parched earth still lies below this new one, and if one digs deep enough it can be found in the form of coal. Nzame made a new man, one who would know death, and called him Sekume. Sekume fashioned a woman, Mbongwe, from a tree. These people were made with both Gnoul (body) and Nissim (soul). Nissim gives life to Gnoul. When Gnoul dies, Nissim lives on. They produced many children and prospered.

http://www.gateway-africa.com/stories/"

[Polak z Polski]

You know, in every science, the more those that are learned study their fields, the more their findings support the Bible, rather than detracting from it. This comes as a suprise to some.

[dayglored]

> Lol!!! I am sure I don't know what you are talking about. However...you must agree that the words are awfully close.

Agreed... What I was referring to was, I had a close friend years ago who was a cosmetologist, and she was also one of the more "cosmic" people I've ever known (into horoscopes, crystals, cosmic vibrations, etc.). Her views on the Big Bang were a riot.

[FastCoyote]

I'm trained as a mechanical engineer, into thermodynamics. If you know your thermo, you have to understand that the laws do not in anyway preclude the existence of God, as many claim. As you get into quantum uncertainty, it becomes even more difficult to not believe in a God. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but it is certainly a far cry from the academic atheism taught in college.

[ASA Vet]

Makes as much sense as any of the other creation stories man has created.

[Coyoteman]

You know, in every science, the more those that are learned study their fields, the more their findings support the Bible, rather than detracting from it. This comes as a suprise to some.

Well, that's not the case for the global flood story.

Geologists gave up on that idea about 30 years before Darwin's monumental publication.

[DalcoTX]

Freaking hilarious. I have a few friends that are enlightened as such. I appreciate the reply.

[dayglored]

> Makes as much sense as any of the other creation stories man has created.

I rather like the way the Big Bang is developing as a Creation Story. It has wonder and charm, power and glory, and points back to an unknowable "creation moment". Backed by Science, yet not in conflict with faith (of a certain kind, of course).

Suits me fine, anyway.

[dayglored]

> I'm trained as a mechanical engineer, into thermodynamics. If you know your thermo, you have to understand that the laws do not in anyway preclude the existence of God, as many claim. As you get into quantum uncertainty, it becomes even more difficult to not believe in a God. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but it is certainly a far cry from the academic atheism taught in college.

I'm about 30 years past my college thermo, but I agree with you that the more one studies science, the more one is presented with the notion of God. It's only a question of what one chooses to believe.

You can choose either one without the other, but for me, the combination is unbeatable.

[mlo]

"...the closer our scientists get to a description of the Big Bang, the closer they come to concluding that God did it."

Uh, no. They don't. And Hawking doesn't conclude that God did it. He's just using colorful language.

[Lucas McCain]

"Lol!!! I am sure I don't know what you are talking about. However...you must agree that the words are awfully close."

They are close because they come from the same Greek word: kosmos, which refers to order, or an orderly arrangement. Cosmology has to do with the orderly arrangement of the universe and cosmotology has to do with the orderly arrangement of the face.

[dayglored]

> "In the beginning there was nothing but Nzame. This god is really three: Nzame, Mebere, and Nkwa. It was the Nzame part of the god that created the universe and the earth, and brought life to it..."

I was going to say, one advantage of the scientific Big Bang creation story over the various religious ones, is that the names of the players are more familiar and easier to pronounce. Then I remembered we're talking all those subatomic particles, various quarks, bosons, and whatnot, so maybe our scientific names aren't much better than Nzame, Mebere, and Nkwa.

OTOH, the fact that the scientific story hangs together with some really fine mathematics is something none of the religious stories can claim.

[Right in Wisconsin]

Do we not now have better research technology? I would think if it was given over a hundred years ago it is a cold case, not an unproven case.

[dayglored]

> Uh, no. They don't. And Hawking doesn't conclude that God did it. He's just using colorful language.

Agreed, and that conclusion wouldn't belong in a scientific lecture, either. I only said that his use of that question about God indicates that a synthesis of scientific explanation for post-Big Bang events, with a belief in God as the pre-Big Bang mover, is something that human scientists should ponder.

Large and difficult philosophical issues are often addressed initially with light-hearted humor. I believe that at age 65, Hawking has come to the realization that talking about God and science in the same lecture, even in the same paragraph, is entirely acceptable, and I think he does a service to his listeners by challenging them to think about God even as they think about the science of the beginning of the universe.

[Gene Eric]

>> Yet his comments about "what God was doing before He made the world",

The remark is a conundrum and, if not deliberately farcical, insulting.

[ASA Vet]

“If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was, what happened before the beginning,” Hawking said. “What was God doing before He made the world?"

Some of the comments on this thread indicate Dr. Hawking should have put the < /s > tag after that "quip."

[dayglored]

>> "...the closer our scientists get to a description of the Big Bang, the closer they come to concluding that God did it."

> Uh, no. They don't. And Hawking doesn't conclude that God did it. He's just using colorful language.

Perhaps my statement would have been more clear like this:

"...the closer our scientists get to a description of the Big Bang, the closer they come to realizing that our science stops at the Big Bang, and that on the other side lies belief. Atheists will conclude that the Big Bang happened spontaneously and without precursor; those who believe in God will find that science does not conflict with their belief."

Hence, because science cannot reach to the "time before" the Big Bang, scientists will be free to conclude that only a supernatural cause fits the description. I personally believe that a majority of them will eventually do so, as soon as it is "allowable" without being censured. Hawking does a good service by opening up the discussion, even if he does so with tongue in cheek.

[Elyse]

Why did the headline, to me, read cosmetologist?

I saw the same thing! My first thought was that Mary Kay must be giving away a pink cadillac as a door prize or something and then I saw Stephen Hawking's name and realized my error.

[dayglored]

>> Yet his comments about "what God was doing before He made the world",

> The remark is a conundrum and, if not deliberately farcical, insulting.

I don't think he was being either farcical or insulting. I think he was using an unanswerable conundrum as a way of challenging his listeners to expand their thinking.

[Al Simmons]

...Supreme executive power, derived by a mandate from the masses, not from some - farcical aquatic ceremony!!!

[MHGinTN]

Only a supremely arrogant man, or a fool, would look into a region that can have only a faith-based reading (that which preceeded the advent of our spacetime universe) and conclude an explanation other than a statement of faith. Stephen shows his brilliance in choosing a faith-based assertion.

[dayglored]

> Some of the comments on this thread indicate Dr. Hawking should have put the < /s > tag after that "quip."

Well of COURSE he was being, if not sarcastic, then challenging. What credible cosmologist or astrophysicist dares speculate about the events (if such a word could apply) that preceded the Big Bang? Naturally, none -- since science can't go there. The mathematics does not allow it.

What then to do? Hawking's quip points out that a belief in God grants one the ability to not only ask the unanswerable question "What came before?", but to propose an answer, albeit an unscientific one.

The fact that the answer ("God") is essentially untestable and unfalsifiable makes it unacceptable science. But that's the point. Science stops at the Big Bang like a fly against a brick wall. If one chooses to do so, one can then consider the possibility that God is on the "other side" of that wall (yes I realize that metaphor is untenable).

Given the opportunity, I would ask Hawking whether he personally believes in God as a Prime Mover. If you know of any statement of his on that topic, I'd be appreciative of a link.

[ASA Vet]

Maybe two < /s >^'s were needed.

[dayglored]

> Only a supremely arrogant man, or a fool, would look into a region that can have only a faith-based reading (that which preceeded the advent of our spacetime universe) and conclude an explanation other than a statement of faith. Stephen shows his brilliance in choosing a faith-based assertion.

Thank you, you have not only "gotten" it, but you stated my own reaction precisely, and more eloquently than I did.

[MHGinTN]

Well thank you, but I happen to have also had limited correspondence with Stephen (through the library staff), mundane as it is in total. His mind follows the complexities of the universe, but he is a man of limited common sense, liberal in the main ... perhaps I should say an idealist in the main, though not too hopeful of the human species.

[dayglored]

> Maybe two < /s >'s were needed.

Perhaps.

Consider these quotes from Hawking:

What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

[Note that he's addressing the Big Bang (the beginning of the universe) and later, but not anything "prior", since science doesn't go there. Hence his question about what God was doing "before" can only be seen as an statement that if there was anything "before", it had to be supernatural.]

So Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

These don't sound like the statements of an atheist. They sound like the statements of a scientist who is comfortable with the idea that we can't know everything strictly through natural means. Whether Hawking himself personally believes in a Prime Mover or not is unknown to me; but that's only incidental to the point that he leaves that to each person. He does not say, "Thus there is no God." That was my point -- that even the most advanced science does not preclude the existence of, nor a belief in, a Prime Mover.

[Gene Eric]

I think you're being generous. Here's a portion of the article:

------
“If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was, what happened before the beginning,” Hawking said. “What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing hell for people who asked such questions?”

According to Hawking, the origin of the universe can be depicted as bubbles in a steam in boiling water.
------

There are a number of implied preconditions in the "God" paragraph that rely on the natural thought process of accepting sequential time based events as factual constructs of our reality and likewise the ultimate reality of all things including God's place in time. It's a silly paragraph and the 'hell' reference is curious. The article reports that Hawking is apparently committed to the idea of the ultimate beginning, or as stated, an 'origin'. If he does in fact believe there was a 'beginning', then there can be no God unless God created Godself from nothing.

I have no idea what Hawking's views are regarding God. I'm making comments on the article in isolation of anything else. Furthermore, I mean not to challenge your point of view on the subject in general.

[dayglored]

> There are a number of implied preconditions in the "God" paragraph that rely on the natural thought process of accepting sequential time based events as factual constructs of our reality and likewise the ultimate reality of all things including God's place in time. It's a silly paragraph and the 'hell' reference is curious...

I interpreted the "hell" reference as a way of suggesting that while God might encourage us to develop science as a tool to understanding "our side" of time/space, that crossing the boundary was getting into "Godspace" as it were -- a realm where our mathematics fail, where our comprehension fails, where we must not go. Of course, that's to be taken as a challenge by any scientist...

> The article reports that Hawking is apparently committed to the idea of the ultimate beginning, or as stated, an 'origin'. If he does in fact believe there was a 'beginning', then there can be no God unless God created Godself from nothing.

Or, perhaps, that the very nature of "existence" as we conceive it does not apply to God. We anthropomorphize God at our peril.

> I have no idea what Hawking's views are regarding God. I'm making comments on the article in isolation of anything else. Furthermore, I mean not to challenge your point of view on the subject in general.

Oh, you're welcome to challenge my point of view, so long as you don't restrict my ability to hold it and defend it, or change it if it suits me. Challenge is what makes us stronger and smarter, and as it happens, it was through challenge that I came to my belief in God.

[hosepipe]

[... If one believed that the universe had a beginning, the obvious question was, what happened before the beginning,” Hawking said. “What was God doing before He made the world?" ..]

The question is.. the beginning of WHAT?..
Are there multi-verses and multi-dimensions?..
If you cannot see the entire system what are we trying determine the beginning of?..
The beginning of a part of the system may be the result of something else..

Maybe, determining the beginning of something is so easy a Cosmologist can do it..
Generating bodacious grants and research graft..

[D-fendr]

In addition to 'what was before..?" science cannot answer the "why is there anything at all?" question.

Hawkins is not a philosopher of science. He is not a metascientist. And therefore cannot see past his, and sciences, limited sphere of knowing.

Science is the firmest set of what we can know of reality, but it is still a subset of what we can know and do know.

[spinestein]

[Last night, nearly 3,000 people received a mini lesson on the origin of the universe from perhaps the world’s most famous cosmologist, Stephen Hawking.

Hawking spoke to a packed audience in Zellerbach Hall about how Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity and quantum theory explained the creation of the universe.

The event was also simultaneously broadcast to a sold-out Wheeler Auditorium, as well as Webcast live. .....

His appearance was one of the most popular events ever hosted at Zellerbach, with one of the fastest ticket sales and a 400-name waiting list.]



Times have changed. In 1986 my high school physics teacher told the class that he was going to see some scientist in a wheelchair give a lecture at Fermilab on the topic of black holes and that anyone who wanted to come along was welcome. A few of us went to the free event and I remember the auditorium, with room for perhaps 400 people, still had many empty seats when two men unceremoniously carried Hawking down the steps between them by his knees and armpits and tossed him into his wheelchair (I presume they didn't have handicapped access back then).

He began speaking in long, drawn out croaks for minutes at a time, while an assistant translated for the audience and drew illustrations on a blackboard. I didn't understand a word of it (even after the translation) but a lot of the Fermilab scientists around us were all muttering to themselves and to each other and nodding or shaking their heads and gesticulating the entire time the lecture was going on, and couldn't even wait until Hawking was done with his talk to begin discussing it. They seemed to be enjoying what they were hearing, but we high school students were lost beyond hope in trying to figure out what we were supposed to be learning.

Now I'm glad that I took the opportunity to see Mr. Hawking speak before he was really famous, but at the time I didn't truly appreciate it.

[Verax]

For God to be "God", he must by definition, exist outside the laws of our Universe. So the fact that God is scientifically untestable is PROOF of his existence, not doubt.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Yet his comments about "what God was doing before He made the world", while humorous, point to the fact that the closer our scientists get to a description of the Big Bang, the closer they come to concluding that God did it.

You're reading something into Hawking's statement that isn't there. Cosmology in it's present state does not provide any testable or verifiable means of "concluding that God did it" - this statement has nothing to do with modern-day cosmology or science.

[lawdude]

I too have a BS-Physics. I have always believed in God and see no conflict between science and theology. Ahhh, there is a slight conflict. Belief in God is a consensus. Science is fact. That is why algore is so full of BS. He has them backwards.

[DaveLoneRanger]

Tidbit of news about Stephen Hawking (I didn't realize his disease had progressed so far until I saw the photo) and questions on the origin of the universe.

[reagan_fanatic]

A thought-provoking man of amazing brilliance and humor. It will be a sad day when his time comes to pass on. God's gain, our loss.

[Elsie]

Renowned Cosmologist Draws Sold-Out Crowd

 

Sold OUT???

 

 

How much was CHARGED???

 

 

I hope not $55!!!!

---

---

---

Stephen W. Hawking

Tue, Mar 13, 7:30pm	Sold Out *

* Sold Out — please contact our Ticket Office at 510.642.9988 for availability.

Or be added to our Notification List.

Just announced! Live Video Simulcast added in Wheeler Auditorium. Details.

Venue: Zellerbach Hall A

Price: $15/$20/$25

 

Born exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at

Cambridge University Stephen W. Hawking is widely considered to be the greatest scientific

thinker since Newton and Einstein. In a talk aimed at the general public, Professor Hawking

discusses theories on the Origin of the Universe. He explains how time can have a beginning

and the progress made by cosmologists in an area that has traditionally belonged to theologists

and philosophers.

[Elsie]

Geologists gave up on that idea about 30 years before Darwin's monumental publication.

 

This guy did too......

---

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

"By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proven to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many fake religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight with me. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel sure of this, for I can remember often and often inventing day-dreams of old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts being discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the most striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct."

( Charles Darwin in his Autobiography of Charles Darwin, Dover Publications, 1992, p. 62. )

---

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

"I think that generally (& more & more as I grow older), but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind."

( Quoted from Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991, p. 636. )

---

 

 

 

 

 

NIV 1 Timothy 1:20-21

 20.  Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge,
 21.  which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.   Grace be with you.

---

 

NIV Proverbs 4:13
   Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.

 

NIV Hebrews 3:6
   But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.

 

NIV Hebrews 3:14
   We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.

 

NIV Hebrews 6:11
   We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure.

 

 

NIV Hebrews 12:3
   Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

 

 

NIV 2 Timothy 2:11-13
 11.  Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him;
 12.  if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us;
 13.  if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

 

NIV 2 Peter 2:20-21
 20.  If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.
 21.  It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.

 

 

 

NIV 2 John 1:8
  Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.

 

NIV Jude 1:21
   Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

 

NIV Revelation 2:25
   Only hold on to what you have until I come.

 

NIV Revelation 3:11
   I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown.

[Elsie]

OOoops!

The $55 comment belongs in ANOTHER thread!

[editor-surveyor]

"IMO, a clear demonstration that advancing scientific understanding of the universe, and belief in the existence of God as the Creator of the Universe, are not only compatible, BUT VERY LIKELY THE SAME THING."

Yes, in fact if you make two changes to Hawking's cosmos it matches Genesis quite well:

1. Make it a bounded universe (and thus by equal distribution of gravitation, spherical).

2. Place earth at the center, as God most certainly would have.

These two changes to a universe that expanded from a singularity give us D. Russell Humphreys' well thought out model, which allows distant bodies to be truly distant while still having a six day creation as measured at the center, through the gravitational dilation of time of Einstein's General Relativity.

When you get your science right, it never disagrees with God's word.

[editor-surveyor]

"Makes as much sense as any of the other creation stories man has created."

That's because man created it. - We prefer the one that God gave us, because its true, unlike the aforementioned bovine excrement.

[agent_delta]

Why would he speak at a conference about hair?

huhh?

[JRios1968]

[gondramB]

>>I'm trained as a mechanical engineer, into thermodynamics. If you know your thermo, you have to understand that the laws do not in anyway preclude the existence of God, as many claim.<<

Hmm
I almost never hear scientists claim that. I hear a lot of them saying they don't believe in God but not that he could not exist.

[editor-surveyor]

"I don't think he was being either farcical or insulting. I think he was using an unanswerable conundrum as a way of challenging his listeners to expand their thinking."

One thing that has to be recognized about Hawking, is that all he can do for himself is think. He's not hung up on his sex life, his tennis serve, high-powered sports cars, or the latest gourmet kitchen design. We should pray for him, and not attach evil connotations to things he says.

[Tax-chick]

When you get your science right, it never disagrees with God's word.

Bump that!