Stephen Hawking’s flawed view of the Big Picture

[Velleity]

[read slowly] You don't say?

[IM2]

MSP,

I'll let you tell me the names of the civilizations that survived and prospered using your brand of economic literacy.

I'll make it easy for you.

Just name one.  Name one civilization that survived and prospered using your brand of economic literacy.  You always show your "knowledge" of history so this should be easy for you.

If you can't do that, then you must be pulling that economic horseshit out of your pompous ass.

We do know that THIS civilization faced a economic crash because of your type of ecomonic literacy. In short, your shit don't work.

[Velleity]

MSP,

We do know that THIS civilization faced a economic crash because of your type of ecomonic literacy. In short, your shit don't work.

He's being ridiculous, as usual.

What he's really saying is that he hates me and he will lash out at me and insult me in any way he possibly can. Gee, I'm really crushed. 

[IM2]

vel,

MSP needs to look into the mirror, examine himself and stop supporting the same people who put his black ass on the back of the bus when he was younger.

[Velleity]

vel,

MSP needs to look into the mirror, examine himself and stop supporting the same people who put his black ass on the back of the bus when he was younger.

I think he might need to be saved by Jaccko and the robot. Better them than me.

[IM2]

I think he might need to be saved by Jaccko and the robot. Better them than me.

Jaccko may try, but the robot will probably give up.

[makesenseplease]

vel,

MSP needs to look into the mirror, examine himself and stop supporting the same people who put his black ass on the back of the bus when he was younger.

It's sad that you would post crap like this, IM2.

Had you actually sat st the back of the bus instead of reading about it, you would know exactly which party put me there.

Had you actually experienced real racism, you would know what we see today bears no resemblence at all to what racism really is.

No matter what you read in books, the real racists of the south were democrats and nothing anyone can say will ever change that fact.

I know, I was there.

By the way, neither you nor anyone else has heard me endorse either party.

Sure, the dems signed the civil rights bill, but that was only because johnson needed us to die in Viet Nam.

Get a clue.

[Velleity]

No matter what you read in books, the real racists of the south were democrats and nothing anyone can say will ever change that fact.

If you knew anything and had any sense you would realize that the Dixiecrats became present day Republicans precisely because they lost the war against civil rights for blacks. 

No matter what you read in "conservative" talking points, none of your identification with the aggressor will ever change that fact.

[Mornac]

Stephen Hawking: The Spiritually Blind International Killjoy

July-August 2011

 This past May celebrity physicist Stephen Hawking, easily recognizable with his wheelchair and high-tech voice-communication device, made media waves in an ever-so-brief interview with London’s Guardian newspaper. In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religion, Britain’s most eminent scientist proclaimed that Heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. When asked about a recent hospitalization and whether there is anything he fears about death, Hawking took the opportunity to let fly a little atheist ideology mixed with a dash of I’m-a-brilliant-scientist arrogance: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” There you have it, folks — misguided metaphor of the month: The human brain is a computer. Never mind neuroscience. Hawking speaks. Eyebrows go up.

Hawking’s rejection of God and religion has intensified, or at least become more outspoken, in recent years. In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, which sold a reported nine million copies and propelled the physicist to instant stardom, Hawking describes what it would mean for scientists to develop a “theory of everything” — a set of equations that describes every particle and force in the entire universe. “It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God,” he wrote. Twenty-three years later, he has pushed God out of the picture.

Hawking’s latest comments go beyond even those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserts that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. All you need is Stephen Hawking. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including Britain’s chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an “elementary fallacy” of logic. “There is a difference between science and religion,” the chief rabbi explained in the pages The Times of London (Sept. 2, 2010). “Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being.” Lord Sacks also pointed out that the hostility between religion and science is one of “the curses of our age” and warned it would be equally damaging to both. “But there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science.”

NOR readers are no strangers to discussions on faith and reason, with concepts like Pascal’s Wager (that a rational person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain and nothing to lose), and the tendency for atheistic scientists to mislabel their own “faith” theories as scientific facts. But this time around, Hawking’s heavenly pronouncement is so absurd — and so clear too — that he’s been skewered from every angle. “Hawking is an inspiration, demonstrating how one can overcome severe physical handicaps in order to rain on EVERYONE ELSE’S parade,” quips Danny Tyree, writing in The Jersey Journal (May 18). Tyree likens the aging Hawking to an over-enthusiastic Grinch who not only wants to steal Christmas from us but Easter, baptisms, and weddings as well. After all, “computers” don’t need to form sacramental unions, do they? On Twitter, Hawking was poked by a satirical “news flash” from Ian Speir: “Stephen Hawking admits to being an alchemist; insists gold will create itself from nothing.” Ouch! Those pop-culture lashes must hurt a lifelong academic.

One wonders if the village atheists might soon start wishing for Hawking’s computer parts to fail, for fear that he’ll alienate the common man. Perhaps he’s making the choice between God and no God a little too clear, like a choice between hope and no hope, between joy and no joy. If unappealing scientists set themselves up as international killjoys, mightn’t that highlight the fact that Catholics — and let’s face it, the Church is usually the target — are simply merrier than they (internecine liturgical disputes notwithstanding)? If the world described by atheists is merely full of dumb matter, without the great ideals and strivings of religion, what’s to stop the common man from thinking, “Well, we may as well stick with the Christian traditions that at least offer better parties, feasts, and holidays”? From a superficial point of view, which is the typical domain of the godless, that is still a defeat.

While praying always for the conversion of influential and media-savvy persons in our world, the Catholic in the pew does well to remember our earthly allies, such as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, who with their pithy barbs can rebuke the proud, atheistic scientists of our time often with just a single sentence. Chesterton easily reveals their foolish pride: “It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.” So this is what makes Hawking so peevish! In a world with a creator God, one that is full of nature and super-nature, of spiritual beings and miracles, the scientist is no longer king. In a strictly material world, Hawking is practically the pope; but enter religion and a supernatural realm, and Hawking is just another peon.

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people,” Lewis reminds us in Mere Christianity, “and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” This is precisely the plight of the otherwise intelligent man who suffers from acute spiritual blindness (and perhaps delusions of grandeur on a galactic scale).

A verbal sparring match could extend indefinitely between the likes of Lewis and Hawking, men who have both occupied celebrated chairs at world-class universities, and indeed have breathed the same air at Oxford and Cambridge. We onlookers have time to confidently declare sides. In this debate about God, who would choose Hawking and fellow atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins over Chesterton, Lewis, and Jesus Himself? Blaise Pascal can give the godless a hint about the odds, if they care to hear.

http://www.newoxfordreview.org/note.jsp?did=0711-notes-hawking

[ivanm]

"The human brain is a computer."

This analogy is beyond religious bigots' ability to comprehend.

[johnhp]

This past May celebrity physicist Stephen Hawking, easily recognizable with his wheelchair and high-tech voice-communication device, made media waves in an ever-so-brief interview with London’s Guardian newspaper.

As if, somehow, his disabilities were somehow affectations.

[ivanm]

As if, somehow, his disabilities were somehow affectations.

Wrong.  I think the author is saying that Hawkins' disabilities are indications of the insignificance of human life in this universe. In other words, mortal life is fragile and fleeting to the author's pov.

[Mornac]

Give him a break ivan. Those who suffer from LRD don't have the faculties for that level of literary analysis.

[johnhp]

Wrong.  I think the author is saying that Hawkins' disabilities are indications of the insignificance of human life in this universe. In other words, mortal life is fragile and fleeting to the author's pov.

Drawing attention to his disabilities rather than discussing his ideas is ridiculous.  It is what you attempt when you try to pain others as homosexuals, for instance.  You haven't the ability, and apparently neither does the author of this article, nor again Mornac, to actually discuss the issue.