There can be no question that Stephen Hawking is a brilliant scientist.<\/p>\n
But he is a lousy philosopher, and an even worse theologian.<\/p>\n
If ever it was in question, Hawking\u2019s speech at Caltech last week established beyond doubt that the world-renowned physicist suffers from Amateur Philosopher Syndrome (APS).<\/p>\n
Scientists, particularly popular scientists, like Hawking, are especially prone to APS. All such scientists see the world, not so much scientifically, <\/i>as scientistically.\u00a0 <\/i>That is, they assume that there is but one legitimate tongue in which to speak of reality: the language of science.\u00a0 All others are dismissed.<\/p>\n
Three aspects of Hawking\u2019s lecture reveal his to be a classic textbook case of APS.<\/p>\n
First, while referring to this as a \u201cglorious time\u201d in which we have succeeded in coming \u201cthis close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe,\u201d Hawking referred to human beings as but \u201cmere<\/i> collections of fundamental particles of nature\u201d (emphasis added)[.]<\/p>\n
Second, as The Daily Mail reported on Thursday, Hawking mocked \u201cthe religious position\u201d on the origins of the universe by likening it to \u201cthe myth of an African tribe whose God vomited the Sun, Moon, and stars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, Hawking assured his audience that, thanks to \u201cgeneral relativity\u201d and \u201cquantum theory,\u201d we can now account for the origins of the universe without any appeals to God at all: our universe, like one foamy bubble among countless others, might just be one of an infinite number of other universes.<\/p>\n
To the first point, the question must be posed: From whence springs the assumption that we are \u201cmere<\/i>\u201d combinations of physical particles?\u00a0 There are at least two problems with a scientist using the word \u201cmere.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first is that \u201cmere\u201d is an evaluative, not a descriptive, a philosophical, not a scientific, term.\u00a0 As Hawking uses it, is likely intended as a meta<\/i>physical\u2014not a physical<\/i>\u2014word. It suggests insignificance<\/i>.\u00a0 But, scientifically speaking, it is as inappropriate to speak of the significance or insignificance of the world as it is to speak of its beauty and ugliness, or its sweetness and bitterness.\u00a0 These are not attributes of the universe; they are attributes of our minds<\/i> that we project <\/i>onto the world.<\/p>\n
The second problem is that \u201cmere\u201d is exhaustive.\u00a0 To say that X is \u201cmerely\u201d this or that is to say that it is only <\/i>this or that.\u00a0 Science\u2014real science, not philosophical or ideological dogma masquerading as science\u2014can\u2019t speak to ultimate questions.\u00a0 That\u2019s the job of philosophy and theology.\u00a0 Science can determine that we are bundles of material particles, but it most definitely cannot determine whether we are merely this.<\/p>\n
What stuns most of all is just how illiterate in the philosophical and theological traditions of Western civilization Hawking appears.\u00a0 For millennia, Jews and (later) Christians have found the idea of God \u201cvomiting\u201d the universe to be just as primitive, just as crass, as it strikes Hawking as being.\u00a0 The reason for this is not hard to grasp: if God puked up the universe, then He didn\u2019t create <\/i>it.\u00a0 Rather, the world would then flow out of God, or from some pre-existing stuff.<\/p>\n
Jews are unique in world history in being the first to affirm the existence of one supreme God who created <\/i>the world out of nothing. <\/i><\/p>\n
This is crucial, for it is this belief that the world is distinct from, yet created in the image of, an all-good and all-wise being from which the scientific enterprise was born.\u00a0 As long as the world is thought of as a distinct creation of God, it is assumed to be both rational and good, i.e. a proper object of study.<\/p>\n
In short, neither science nor the scientist Stephen Hawking ever would have arisen had it not been for this conception of divine creation that Hawking ridicules without having grasped.<\/p>\n
There is one last point that bears mentioning.<\/p>\n
The notion of a sea of \u201cuniverses\u201d that Hawking invokes is both logically troublesome and theologically irrelevant.\u00a0\u00a0 The word \u201cuniverse\u201d is a synonym for \u201ceverything.\u201d\u00a0 So, claiming that there is an infinite number of \u201cuniverses\u201d makes about as much sense as claiming that there is an infinite number of \u201ceverythings.\u201d<\/p>\n
But even if there is some sense to be had from the idea of multiple universes, and even if these universes have always existed, this doesn\u2019t for a moment circumvent the fundamental question: Why is there something rather than nothing?\u00a0 This <\/i>is what we want to know when we ask about the beginning of the universe.<\/p>\n
And, contrary to Hawking, explaining the existence of a universe by referring back, and only back, to the universe itself is like accounting for one\u2019s own existence by looking no further than oneself.<\/p>\n
The verdict: Hawking hasn\u2019t come close to showing that we can dispense with the God hypothesis in explaining the presence of the universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There can be no question that Stephen Hawking is a brilliant scientist. But he is a lousy philosopher, and an even worse theologian. If ever it was in question, Hawking\u2019s speech at Caltech last week established beyond doubt that the world-renowned physicist suffers from Amateur Philosopher Syndrome (APS). Scientists, particularly popular scientists, like Hawking, are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n