To be honest, I had developed a schedule of sorts for my blog. I had intended to introduce, and comment on, a series of items that interest me within the topics of Life / Religion / Politics / Science / and Philosophy in some sort of loosely structured but coherent order. But I am already violating that schedule. I had also intended to blog about relevant topics of the day as they came up in news sources and general conversations with family and friends.
But as I write, things occur to me that I feel like ought to be addressed, and they would eventually come up anyway, so why not just deal with them now while they are staring me in the face? Today is such a day.
A couple of days ago I mentioned Dr. Stephen Hawking and his latest book The Grand Design. Dr. Hawking is a fascinating individual to me and he is a brilliant Physicist. But I find his Theology to be greatly lacking. In his second latest work he mentions some poignant questions that he himself acknowledges as deserving an answer. I referenced some of those questions in my previous post. Specifically:
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
“Why do we exist?”
“Why this particular set of law and not some other?”
From this point he goes on to say:
“Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is a God who chose to create the universe that way. It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. In this view it is accepted that some entity exists that needs no creator, and that entity is called God. We claim, however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and with-out invoking any divine beings.”
(The Grand Design, pg. 164 – 165) Dr. Hawking has spent a great deal of his works defining physical interactions based upon known laws and today’s understanding of their relationships with each other. In The Grand Design, Dr. Hawking brilliantly ties a number of current scientific theory together to explain how something could literally come from nothing. He does acknowledge that deist need only stop with whatever deity created the universe, but he wants to claim that the universe came from nothing on its own. If it is fair for Dr. Hawking to ask the question “Who or what created God?” then I believe it only fair to ask “Who or what created nothingness?”
Before I get to that, allow me to point out that Dr. Hawking bases his work upon a vast amount of theory. A lot of it is also hypothesis and conjecture. I reject the definition of a principle, law, or doctrine as synonyms for theory. A theory is just that, a theory. It is not a principle, law, or doctrine. It is not proven, and within its own definition it is recognized to be “commonly regarded as correct” but is in no way, shape, or form, known to be correct. It is not proven, it is not necessarily repeatable, and it is not established as truth.
Dr. Hawking has to rest his theory (and theories) on many assumptions that we are only just beginning to explore and know little to nothing about. Such theories as String Theory, The Big Bang, and Quantum Physics. All of these Sciences are just what they claim to be, theories. They are not concrete truths, rather they are a set of beliefs accepted on current observations (the keyword here is current – they are actually in flux as we learn new things each day). Dr. Hawking accepts these things (as do many, many Scientists) based upon (dare I say it?) faith. Literally a belief not based upon a proof. He has no evidence to establish these things as true. He accepts them based upon faith and is tainted by his own World View.
Indeed, within String Theory itself is the notion that there are a seemingly infinite numbers of possibilities (and occurrences of) physical laws and physical universes. A totally unproven and unobserved phenomenon. Given the current definition of String Theory and its principles, I fail to see how Dr. Hawking could not conceive of a scenario where the physical interactions of the universe actually created (or produced) god (a deity) that then used supernatural capabilities to recreate the process into what is observed today.
Dr. Hawking does a brilliant job of determining (mathematically) that something did indeed come from nothing as long as that nothing originally existed as both Matter and Anti-Matter (literally a positive – +1 and a negative – -1, which add up to zero, that then exploded into their respective parts.
However his zero, which is absolutely nothing (a void), only exits with the realm of something – matter and anti-matter).
One might beg the question as to where that nothingness came from. Consider the fact that nothing (the vast emptiness of space), the void as it were, is actually as much a part of the physical universe as all of the real matter we can touch, taste, smell, feel, and experience. We know it is cold, and yet it can be hot. Light may travel in it and through it. It allows gravity to work (to be true to its nature). The emptiness of space is actually a part of the physical.
So where did the void come from? Dr. Hawking simply accepts this on faith. Exactly the same way I accept God on faith. Dr. Hawking can no more explain the void and its apparent existence, than I can explain God. It is based upon faith. His faith just happens to be different than mine.
Isn’t it funny though that I don’t need to prove the existence of God. But Dr. Hawking feels compelled to prove the non-existence of God. In my world view the void is explained by creation. God is not a physical being. God created the physical, void included. Dr. Hawking, for all his science and mathematics has yet to explain where the Zero, the nothingness came from to begin with and why there is so much of it out there.
To get something from nothing, you have to have nothing to begin with. There has to be the spark of (in Dr. Hawking’s parlance) matter and anti-matter to create the -1 and the 1.
Perhaps the something and the nothing (all the physical) came from another, as yet, unknown source. The Spiritual. The something that exists outside of the physical.
And isn’t it interesting that Dr. Hawking will acknowledge an almost infinite number (for all practicable purposes what we would perceive as infinite) of different scenarios of physical laws and physical universes, except for one occurrence and one occurrence only. The existence of a God. I am to accept that there may be billions upon billions of different quantum harmonics all over the physical creation, creating a plethora of different possibilities, but I am not to accept that even one of those could have a God.
Find the void, and then step out of it, out of the physical, and into the other side, and there you will find God.