2 God or the laws of nature? - God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway? by John Lennox - #quantumvacuumenulla #laleggedinaturaeilnulla #bootstrap #laleggecomeagente #analogiadelmotore #lequattrocausediaristotele
conclusions of The Grand Design is: “Because there is a law of gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing.”Read more at location 290
The first question to ask is: what does Hawking mean when he uses the word “nothing” in the statement “the universe can and will create itself out of nothing”? Note the assumption in the first part of that statement: “Because there is a law of gravity…” Hawking assumes, therefore, that a law of gravity exists.Read more at location 296
Indeed, one might add for good measure the fact that when physicists talk about “nothing”, they often appear to mean a quantum vacuum, which is manifestly not nothing. In fact, Hawking is surely alluding to this when he writes: “We are a product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.”Read more at location 303
If we say “X creates Y”, we presuppose the existence of X in the first place in order to bring Y into existence.Read more at location 313
therefore, we say “X creates X”, we imply that we are presupposing the existence of XRead more at location 314
To presuppose the existence of the universe to account for its own existence sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland, not science.Read more at location 316
He says the universe comes from a nothing that turns out to be a something (self-contradiction number one), and then he says the universe creates itself (self-contradiction number two).Read more at location 318
His notion that a law of nature (gravity) explains the existence of the universe is also self-contradictory, since a law of nature, by definition, surely depends for its own existence on the prior existence of the nature it purports to describe.Read more at location 320
Hawking is echoing the language of Oxford chemist Peter Atkins (also a well-known atheist), who believes that “space-time generates its own dust in the process of its own self-assembly”.23 Atkins dubs this the “Cosmic Bootstrap”Read more at location 324
a person lifting himself by pulling on his own bootlaces.Read more at location 327
“Between the hypothesis of God and the hypothesis of a cosmic bootstrap, there is no competition. We were always right to think that persons, or universes, who seek to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps are forever doomed to failure.”Read more at location 330
it is important to point out that they are not statements of science, and any statement, whether made by a scientist or not, should be open to logical analysis.Read more at location 335
Hawking points out that there was originally no clear distinction in Greek thought between human laws and the laws of nature;Read more at location 342
idea that inanimate objects possessed minds and intentionality was espoused by Aristotle,Read more at location 344
Hawking reminds us that it was Descartes (1596–1650) who first formulated the concept of the laws of nature in our contemporary sense.Read more at location 345
rule that is based upon an observed regularity and provides predictionsRead more at location 347
A familiar example of such a law is “the sun rises in the east”. It is based on an observed regularity,Read more at location 349
we have observed the sun to rise a thousand times in the past does not prove that it will rise again tomorrow. We have to add something like, “all things being equal”, “provided the sun does not explode”, etc.Read more at location 353
In other words, it is not enough to state Newton’s laws on their own. We need additionally to specify at least the range of conditions under which they are valid.Read more at location 358
Hawking suggests that the traditional answer to the first question, given by the great pioneers of science like Galileo, Kepler, Descartes and Newton, is that the laws are the work of God. Hawking adds: “However, this is no more than a definition of God as the embodiment of the laws of nature.Read more at location 365
another.”27 However, the God in whom Galileo, Kepler, Descartes and Newton believed wasRead more at location 368
the intelligent Creator and upholder of the universe, who is a person and not a set of abstract laws.Read more at location 370
Talking about M-theory (his chosen candidate for a final unifying theory of physics), Hawking writes: “M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law.”Read more at location 384
Hawking ascribes creative power to physical law; but physical law is not an agent. Hawking is making a classic category mistake by confusing two entirely different kinds of entity: physical law and personal agency.Read more at location 389
Suppose, to make matters clearer, we replace the universe by a jet engine and then are asked to explain it. Shall we account for it by mentioning the personal agency of its inventor, Sir Frank Whittle? Or shall we follow Hawking: dismiss personal agency, and explain the jet engine by saying that it arose naturally from physical law?Read more at location 392
It is self-evident that we need both levels of explanation in order to give a complete description. It is also obvious that the scientific explanation neither conflicts nor competes with the agent explanation: they complement one another.Read more at location 396
Sir Isaac Newton, a previous holder of the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge, did not make Hawking’s category mistake when he discovered his law of gravitation. Newton did not say: “Now that I have the law of gravity, I don’t need God.” What he did was to write Principia Mathematica, the most famous book in the history of science, expressing the hope that it would “persuade the thinking man” to believe in God.Read more at location 401
The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but not how it came to exist in the first place.Read more at location 405
Aristotle thought a great deal about these issues. He spoke about four different “causes”Read more at location 409
Next there is the efficient cause – Sir Frank Whittle himself, who did the work.Read more at location 412
Fourthly, and last in the list, there is the final cause – the ultimate purpose for which the jet engine was conceived and built:Read more at location 412
Science, according to many scientists, concentrates essentially on material causation. It asks the “how” questions:Read more at location 414
But it does not ask the “why” question of purpose: why was the jet engine built?Read more at location 416
Whittle does not appear in the scientific account. To quote Laplace, the scientific account has “no need of that hypothesis”.29 Clearly, however, it would be ridiculous to deduce from this that Whittle did not exist. He is the answer to the question: why does the jet engine exist in the first place?Read more at location 417
they claim that God is unnecessary, or doesn’t exist. They fail to see that their science does not answer the question as to why something exists rather than nothing, for the simple reason that their science cannot answer that question.Read more at location 422
Much as I find it hard to believe, Hawking seems to wish to reduce all explanation to formal causes only. He claims that all that is necessary to create the universe is the law of gravity.Read more at location 431
to say that a theory or physical laws could bring the universe (or anything at all, for that matter) into existence is to misunderstand what theory and laws are.Read more at location 434
the theories and laws cannot even cause anything, let alone create it.Read more at location 436
Physical laws cannot create anything. They are a description of what normally happens under certain given conditions.Read more at location 445
Similarly Newton’s law of gravitation does not create gravity or the matter on which gravity acts.Read more at location 447
Another example of this basic misunderstanding of the nature of law is given by well-known physicist Paul Davies:Read more at location 455
for me it is much more inspiring to believe that a set of mathematical laws can be so clever as to bring all these things into being.”Read more at location 457
C. S. Lewis grasped this issue, with characteristic clarity. Of the laws of nature he writes: They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event – if only it can be induced to happen – must conform,Read more at location 463
If Hawking were not as dismissive of philosophy he might have come across the Wittgenstein statement that the “deception of modernism” is the idea that the laws of nature explain the world to us, when all they do is describe structural regularities.Read more at location 481
Richard Feynman, a Nobel Laureate in physics, takes the matter further: The fact that there are rules at all to be checked is a kind of miracle; that it is possible to find a rule, like the inverse square law of gravitation, is some sort of miracle.Read more at location 483
The very fact that those laws can be mathematically formulated was for Einstein a constant source of amazementRead more at location 488
Allan Sandage, widely regarded as the father of modern astronomy, discoverer of quasars, and winner of the Crafoord Prize (astronomy’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), is in no doubt about his answer: “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existenceRead more at location 498
Big Bang theory, because, even if the non-believers don’t like it, the Big Bang resonates powerfully with the biblical narrative of creation. That is why, before theRead more at location 503
Note: BIG BANG
