Hawking and the theory of everything

[Thats my opinion]

Stephen Hawking embodies probably the most respected scientific-philosophical perspective of anyone alive. Despite his ravaged body, his mind has never stopped generating approaches to the greatest of all Mysteries, which is “a theory of everything.” He has been claimed by both theists and atheists as representing their quite divergent positions. He deliberately comes down in neither camp. That probably means he is on to something.

While never claiming any particular religious conviction, Hawking continually uses the word GOD, which stands for one of his core affirmations. As far back as 1988 he posited that to come up with a theory explaining everything is to “know the mind of God.” God is not just a throwaway clever word. He defined God as “the embodiment of all the laws of physics,” This comes very close to the increasingly popular “process theology” which is now near the center of America’s great seminaries.

Science begins with questions, and hopes to discover clues to ways of approaching the thus far unanswerable. Religion seeks to hear those same clues. One cannot find in Hawking absolutist positions even on God’s existence or non-existence. Fundamentalists in both theistic and atheistic camps, who make claims to the contrary, are simply parading their arrogance. Hawking looks at the universe and suggests that there are ultimate questions that at this point can neither rule God in or rule God out. Not a bad way to approach the great Mystery which lies at the heart of everything.

[Angry Dragon]

1. 'Religion seeks to hear those same clues' ......... bull

religion thinks they have the answers

I can prove there are forces at work in this universe
If you want to call that god, that is fine by me
However if you want to claim that god is a feeling thinking being that loves you then it is up to you to prove that .................

[tama]

3. Following that logic

what more proof do you need that there are feeling thinking loving forces at work in this universe, beyond simple experience of those forces?

Or have you never felt, thought, loved and felt loved?

It may be you belief - dunno and and not claiming it is - that those forces are limited e.g. just to beings with neural systems, or otherwise limited. But if you make such claim, according to standards you expect from others, it is up to you to prove that.

As for me, for example I sometimes feel that trees love me. I give positive attention to a tree, and I sense something change in this body, a flush of calm good feeling which words can't fully describe. This is just how I experience, and I do not seek to explain or prove this experience (though I'm open to speculation about possible scientific explanations), or expect others to experience similarly - or differently. I can now only share this experience verbally with you, and you are free to interpret it as you will.

For me such experience is just as simple as proof that such forces are at work in this universe as mothers caress or smile from a stranger. And beyond that, a simple reminder that I don't know the limits of those forces. If I can physically, bodily experience receiving love from a tree, why should I presume that I cannot receive love from this planet or from universe as whole?

[LAGC]

5. I suspect what you experienced was a biochemical change in your own body.

By allowing yourself to feel love toward the tree, the change in hormones affected your own perceptions of it.

The tree didn't change or do anything at all. You did, of your own volition.

Edit to add: I think its really the same effect when people pray or meditate. They alter their own state of mind, then THINK they perceive something outside of them that really isn't there, which only reinforces their erroneous belief that something supernatural is involved.

[tama]

8. In terms of physics

more like electro-magnetic. My body-feel is not particle like, but more like field and vibration, without clear boundaries. If these metaphors make any sense.

[Thats my opinion]

11. Some years back a wag wrote:

We need to stop saying ,"for he's a jolly good fellow" and start saying, "for he has jolly good glandular secretions."

Love, truth, compassion, joy, beauty, worth are realities in my life--and my guess in your life too.

[Thats my opinion]

12. Process theology says that

God is not only the forces at work in the universe, but the energy purpose and meaning which impels those forces. It is the drive behind evolution. It is the elan vital of Bergson.

[longship]

2. Hawking believes in Einstein's god

Or Spinoza's god. None of them believed in anything like a personal god. Einstein even explicitly said so.

This is about as close to atheism as one can get without actually saying you don't believe in god.

Theists should take no comfort in Hawking or Einstein using the word "god". They certainly don't mean what the theists promote as their meaning. One might as well exchange "nature" for "god" and be done with it.

[tama]

4. Spinoza's god

maybe impersonal totality, but as such it encompasses also personal aspects of totality. And impersonal does not equal unloving or unfeeling, that sounds anthopocentric or personcentric projection limiting capacity to feel to personhood. Granting that all linguistic expressions in human language are anthropocentric projections to begin with.

Spinoza's philosophy has been called philosophy of joy. Not a philosophy of set of mathematical equations incapable of sensing and feeling - by which I'm not suggesting you are suggesting such idea or philosophy.

[trotsky]

6. Hawking isn't an absolutist?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1387478/Stephen-Hawking-Heaven-fairy-story-people-afraid-dark.html

Seems that you'd desperately like him to be in YOUR "camp," but he clearly isn't.

[edhopper]

7. from my reading of Hawking

I see him as type of atheistic for whom God or any Deity or supernatural force just doesn't have any room in the Universe to exist. Many atheists look at the reasons people believe in God and then consider if they are valid. For Hawking I think the questions about God are irrelevant because in physics there is simply no need to put God into the equation.
It is like Dentists thinking about the Tooth Fairy when filling a cavity.

BTW, This sounds pretty absoluteist to me:

God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.

Hawking says in his book "The Grand Design" that, given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he writes in the excerpt.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going," he writes.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-02/world/hawking.god.universe_1_universe-abrahamic-faiths-divine-creator?_s=PM:WORLD

[Warren Stupidity]

10. Yes. That last book withdrew his prior

Stated position.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. I can't go along with this part

He defined God as “the embodiment of all the laws of physics,” This comes very close to the increasingly popular “process theology” which is now near the center of America’s great seminaries.

First, process theology is very definitely a minority opinion among Christian and Jewish theologians. Second, saying that God is “the embodiment of all the laws of physics” is to limit God. The universal consensus among theologians is that if you attempt to limit God in any way, you are, by definition, doing it wrong. God set up the laws of physics, God does not embody them. (A bit from Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe just popped into my mind. The Lord Chancellor sings, "The law is the true embodiment of everything that's excellent/It has no sense of fault or flaw/And I, my lords, embody the law!&quot