Times of London’s Eureka Mag: Hawking says physics enough to explain creation. No god needed. Same as no god?
One finds a funny little juxtaposition in The Times in the UK when paying the small fee to read its Eureka science magazine today. First, it is getting a tremendous reaction, in number of stories if not their heft, in other outlets by reporting the bejeezus out of the part about God in Stephen Hawking’s upcoming book, The Grand Design, co-written by Caltech physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow (pub. date next week). Thanks to the infinite possibilities of M-theory, it appears, the world’s best known physicist declares there is no reason to invoke the almighty in explaining how our universe popped into existence. Wm of Ockham implication: No god, upper case or not. It has to do with top-down back-tracking of the history of the universe, gravity, and with the offshoot of string theory called M-theory (m is for membrane). Of course, little could be more banal than a physicist saying the universe arose with help from no god. But this is Hawking, a secular divinity of sorts, so it gets attention.
First the irony, then the substance. Right there on the table of contents loudly hawking all the reasons this world best known physicist refutes divinity and ramifications therefrom is another story with the deadpan headline: CERN’s search for “God particle’ hit by £215mbudget cuts. So Hawking says there’s evidently no god. But God remains for eternity a top go-to term for souping up a science news headline.
Even after paying the daily pass to The Times, I can’t find the excerpt on line. I don’t have a review copy of the book. Apparently it’s not to go digital for anybody till Sept. 6. For now, the magazine itself provides it to subscribers the pulpy old fashioned way.
Before getting to all the exterior press this peek at the book generated, get a load of what Times reporters wrote to greet it ( They open for me, but I have this one-day cookie in my system that may be the reason why. I hope they do so for the rest of you):
- Hannah Devlin: Hawking: God did not create the Universe ;
- Mark Henderson: A theory of everything but God ;
- Hannah Devlin: Chief Rabbi leads fightback against Stephen Hawking ; That’d be Rabbi Lord Sacks. And he tells Times readers that “Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation…The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the Universe came into being.” So much for the 7 days of Genesis. The story is pretty good all in all, getting into such niceties as the god of the gaps.
- Jonathan Sacks: Even great science tells us nothing about God; This one does a better job explaining why the Bible does not concern itself much with how creation happened.
- Ben Miller: Dial M for Mindblowing ; Nice lede: “…bad news this week for anyone hoping to get their head around string theory: things have moved on. These days there’s an even more complicated bit of jiggery-pokery called M-theory…” Yes, and never mind that M theory was new 15 years ago but not now.
- Ruth Gledhill: Stephen Hawking is the voice of reason on religion;
OTHER MEDIA REACTION:
- Guardian (UK) Adam Gabbatt: Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God ; It includes a public poll, of the usual media form in which science is not necessary to report results. But at last look, 87.5 percent of self-selected pollees agree gravity trumps god; 12.5 percent agree that God thinks Hawking is not necessary. Those results, one thinks, would not be echoed among Americans.
- Telegraph (UK) Laura Roberts: Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe;
- New Scientist – Craig Callendar: Stephen Hawking says there’s no theory of everything ; This is not a direct response to The Times, but to the book. Callendar, a philosopher of physics, asks the germane question – why does Hawking regard the wobbly, still-gestating M-theory hypothesis as enough to confidently explain ultimate mysteries of existence?
- AP : Hawking says God not needed for creation ; A shorty.
- NY Daily News – Michael Sheridan: Stephen Hawking in “The Grand Design’: God did not create the universe ;
- Reuters – Michael Holden: God did not create the universe, says Hawking ;
- BBC – William Crawley: God, Hawking and the Universe ; A religion writer does a little exegesis on media headlines over the news.
- MSNBC CosmicLog – Alan Boyle: Hawking says God’s not needed. So? ; I think Alan has a review copy. He also quotes a line in the book that apparently means something to Brits but not to me. I had to look up the meaning of “blue touch paper.” More important, Boyle dissects several passages of the book, sharing more of its logic than a mere gravity-plus-math-means-no-god summary.
- AFP: God did not create Universe: Hawking ;
Dept. of the Quibblish: Several accounts quote the book as saying discovery of extrasolar planets in 1992 is key to understanding why invocations of godly creation are intellectually empty. Why do Hawking et al say 1992? That was the year of the pulsar planets. Real planets they are, but outlandish. Regular planets, potential analogs to Earth and orbiting other sunlike stars, came to light in 1995. None of the refs I’ve seen explain why pulsar planets are important to the rejection of a necessary god. Things resembling our solar system I can swallow. There are overlaps in the dynamics of the two types but I’m stumped.
- Charlie Petit
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