Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

By +Frank B.
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Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

• Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims

• Professor had previously referred to 'mind of God'

God did not create the universe, the man who is arguably Britain's most famous living scientist says in a forthcoming book.

In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.

In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is "not necessary".

The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "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."

In the forthcoming book, published on 9 September, Hawking says that M-theory, a form of string theory, will achieve this goal: "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he theorises.

"The fact that we human beings – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph."

Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, he said: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."

Hawking resigned as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University last year after 30 years in the position.

Source: The Guardian

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Hollow.Droid

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"If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."

Didn't a theorist once say that the human mind will never be able to understand the complexity of how we were created? I'm sure I read that somewhere at neowin.

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DrunkenBeard

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"? Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims"

Claims? It's a pretty well accepted conclusion.

On what grounds ? I'm yet to find any serious document that explains the origins of the universe in a scientifically rigorous way, so I'm very eager to read on this M-theory.

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~Johnny

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Such a question doesn't exist because it doesn't apply to God. It's simply beyond what we know.

That's how I see it anyway.

Either way - there's always going to be something that is beyond our understanding. What ever came first - how can something come from nothing? Which I'm sure also goes against the First Law of Thermodyanmics. And saying it's just "there" doesn't really explain anything - it's doubtful we'll ever understand it.

Grand Master

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Such a question doesn't exist because it doesn't apply to God. It's simply beyond what we know.

That's how I see it anyway.

There is no god. The concept of deities was what humans came up with to explain the unexplainable. That's all there is to it.

It's time to drop a concept which dates back to the stone age and move on.

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Motoko.

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There is no god. The concept of deities was what humans came up with to explain the unexplainable. That's all there is to it.

It's time to drop a concept which dates back to the stone age and move on.

That's the kind of attitude that promotes extremism when you think about it. I could tell you that being an atheist is barbaric, see what I did there?

over debating only hurts it never helps, so why not be tolerant and respectful of what others believe in.

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sudo

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There is no god.

And you know this... how exactly?

The concept of deities was what humans came up with to explain the unexplainable. That's all there is to it.

And science explains everything now?

It's time to drop a concept which dates back to the stone age and move on.

By this reasoning, any concepts dating back to the stone age should be dropped?

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wellofsouls

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Posted

Such a question doesn't exist because it doesn't apply to God. It's simply beyond what we know.

That's how I see it anyway.

and the question of "what created physics" doesn't exist because it doesn't apply to physics neither...

or you can say, physics IS God :D

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