As reported by CNN.com, world religious leaders fired back at Stephen Hawking today. Hawking wrote a book they haven't read but are pretty sure they won't like. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going, wrote the physicist in his upcoming title The Grand Design, provoking a rainbow coalition of godheads to leap to the defensive.
Non-physicist and head of the Church of England, Archbishop Williams corrected Hawking, physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence.
Science is irrelevant to religion, according to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who said Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being. It's hard to argue with that. The rabbi along with many other religious leaders don't care that the universe did not need a God to make it, and seem hurt by the implication their god is a 'god of the gaps' living in the dark corners untouched by the light of science. The details of creation are not important, they seem to say, God isn't necessary to explain life, planets or the universe. Our God is tiny and irrelevant.. a do-nothing, impotent voyeur helplessly watching the universe unfold of its own accord. Take that, Hawking.
2 comments:
Here's why I'm confused about the Archbishop's quote: How is the fact that belief is based on more than just the creation of the universe evidence that physics can't answer the question of creation? I mean, I don't even see how it's an explanation for anything, even a poor one, although he seems to think it is.
If you'll pardon the pun, I don't think they understand the gravity of the situation. Their answers are stock, recycled since the time of Darwin, and uncomprehending. Look at the CNN article.. Hawking: this explains something-from-nothing. Two lines away Clergy: This doesnt explain something-from-nothing.
Provide Hawking has done his homework I think someone's about to get theologically f'd in the a.
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