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Stephen Hawking: No Hay Ningún Dios. Soy Ateo

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In today’s El Mundo Stephen Hawking makes the sophomoric mistake of equating atheism with knowledge. Was the universe created by miracles or did it evolve by natural law? This is Hawking’s false dichotomy and his conclusion is that science has now surpassed religion. Science now “offers a more convincing explanation.” And so Hawking says that he is an atheist. In fact Hawking is confident that science will soon explain everything:  Read more

Comments
Philosophical Theist did a neat picture of your quote on FB Dr. Hunter "Under atheism there is no such thing as a mind. There is no such thing as understanding and no such thing as truth. All Hawking is left with is a box, called a skull, which contains a bunch of molecules. Hawking needs God in order to deny Him." - Cornelius Hunter https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10344804_736790473055959_5027794313726938258_n.png?oh=32dcc64a81815fd8fbf5884ea44490ed&oe=548E8745&__gda__=1418537725_911886dd89430d275c0e393a46afdb55bornagain77
September 22, 2014
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I do believe that we shall end up understanding the origin and structure of the Universe. In fact we are already close to it. In my opinion, there is no one aspect of reality beyond the scope of the human mind.
The only way to know that "we're close to it" is to know what the answer is. In the hubris of today's science, the distance from here to an unknown answer is considered "close". Knowing the origin of the universe is about as close as knowing the origin of life. Krauss' universe from nothing. Steve Martin, SNL: "You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. "Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?" First.. get a million dollars ..."Silver Asiatic
September 22, 2014
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What you sayin man??? I don't have the money to buy the emperor some clothes? New Atheism’s Wardrobe Malfunction - David Glass Excerpt: The various critics, both theists and atheists, represent the little boy who points out that the Emperor (New Atheism) has no clothes. But what is the Emperor to do? The last sentence of the original version provides the answer: But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all. http://www.bethinking.org/atheism/new-atheisms-wardrobe-malfunctionbornagain77
September 22, 2014
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overdraft is maxed out, anything beyond this is pure rubber.kairosfocus
September 22, 2014
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#22 follow-up Oh, my excitement didn't last long... it's gone now. Don't feel like doing that. Just too difficult to come up with anything to say. Definitely have to admit those guys on the other side have creative imaginations. :)Dionisio
September 22, 2014
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#19 Silver Asiatic Yes, I like BA77's idea in his post #17. Pretending being the opposite side might be fun. Can't wait to start poking holes in the weak ID concepts ;-)Dionisio
September 22, 2014
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KF, what do you mean I don't have any money in my bank account, I still got checks in my checkbook! :)bornagain77
September 22, 2014
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BA77, 17:
Something from nothing
Nothing properly means non-being. And as non-being has no causal powers once there is nothing, thereafter there would only be . . . nothing. So either a quantum foam scenario is incorrectly relabelled nothing or the like, or else someone has missed a big boat. KFkairosfocus
September 22, 2014
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BA
Perhaps we can just have a standard atheistic rebuttal stand in for an actual atheist?
LOL - good idea! I'm tempted to create a fake-atheist User ID to keep the dialogue going. :-)Silver Asiatic
September 22, 2014
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KF #16 Good point. Yes, that does seem right. ID is dismissed quickly without a real understanding of what it is.Silver Asiatic
September 22, 2014
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Perhaps we can just have a standard atheistic rebuttal stand in for an actual atheist? Something along the lines of??? "Your evidence that evolution is impossible does not matter to me because I can imagine it not to be impossible" - random militant Atheist blogger Darwinism Not Proved Impossible Therefore Its True - Plantinga http://www.metacafe.com/watch/10285716/ Of course, I'm sure the bloggers of UD can think up a much better 'stand in' comment for an atheist, but I think you guys get the drift,, 'Just told I was ignorant and illogical (and something worse) for believing in a Creator God... So, help me with this logic, Mr. Smarty-Pants: Something from nothing; Life from non-life; Order from disorder; Rationality from randomness; Consciousness from chaos; Design from destruction; Information without intelligence... This is the enlightened "logic" on which you base your life. Rock On!' Randall Niles - in response to a PhD 'Smarty Pants' who was sending him nasty e-mailsbornagain77
September 22, 2014
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SA: I think people THINK they know what ID is, but unless they have actually gone to the source are liable to be profoundly misinformed and warped in their views. If you have control of the mikes, by and large, you can make a strawman caricature seem real, even as you box away at it and announce your wonderful triumphs in the name of reason and science . . . not to mention tolerance. KFkairosfocus
September 22, 2014
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Let's try: Atheism being mere informed absence of belief in god, the atheist has nothing to prove and can justly claim default. Where, science being the gold standard of knowledge, has or will soon adequately account for reality -- or realities -- from hydrogen to humans (in our sub-cosmos). KFkairosfocus
September 22, 2014
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12 comments and no one defends Hawking? How boring is that?
True. For whatever reason, we've lost almost all ID-opponents here. That could be a good thing - although boring. Over the last day or so here on UD, I'd guess about 95% of the comments are from ID supporters. Debates only arise when allies turn against each other on related matters (opposing religious views, etc.). I think, after a while, when people realize that nobody will react to their comments, they stop posting. Maybe the time for long debates about ID is over -- people mostly know what it is, and opponents don't have any new arguments against it. If so, I'd call that a success in many ways, although not as much fun has engaging against rabid opposition.Silver Asiatic
September 22, 2014
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Mapou #11
The whole thing is pathetically boring, really.
12 comments and no one defends Hawking? How boring is that?awstar
September 22, 2014
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“In my opinion, there is no one aspect of reality beyond the scope of the human mind.”
I'm unhappy to attribute that thought to Christian doctrine - God nowhere tells us we can understand everything he can, and in several places reminds us that we can't. But even as a general principle, as used by Hawkin, it sound philosophically dubious. Humans can always provide an explanation for whatever phenomena they are presented with. If something is beyond their mental capacity, it won't stop them thinking thgey've reasoned to the best explanation - and the bits of reality beyond therir capacity will just go over their heads, unnoticed. You can test it, simply by asking some unfortunate of limited reason the explanation for anything: what's beyond their reason will simply not appear to need explaining.Jon Garvey
September 22, 2014
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Atheists have been pretending for a long time that science belongs to them. Their superiority complex (a sure sign of inferiority) is thick and in your face. At the same time, they accuse theists of not being humble enough to accept that the earth is just another boring rock around a boring star, in a boring galaxy, within a boring universe among an infinite number of equally boring universes. Humans are just boring dirt. The Copernican principle has somehow been elevated as proof that the universe could not have been created because it's so darn boring. The whole thing is pathetically boring, really.Mapou
September 21, 2014
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Mung,,
“In my opinion, there is no one aspect of reality beyond the scope of the human mind.” Christians would agree, what with God being real and all.
touché! Why should the humans be able to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe? As Einstein put the 'miracle',,,
"You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton's theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the 'miracle' which is constantly reinforced as our knowedge expands." Albert Einstein - Letters to Solovine - New York, Philosophical Library, 1987 http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/nave-html/faithpathh/einstein.html
In fact, it was the belief/faith that the human mind could dare comprehend the universe, since we were made in the Creator's image, that drove the founding of modern science by Christians
Epistemology – Why Should The Human Mind Even Be Able To Comprehend Reality? – Stephen Meyer - video – (Notes in description) http://vimeo.com/32145998
bornagain77
September 21, 2014
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Science, therefore atheism. I guess if you have science, you don't need logic. "Was the universe created by miracles or did it evolve by natural law?" BOTH AND? "In my opinion, there is no one aspect of reality beyond the scope of the human mind." Christians would agree, what with God being real and all.Mung
September 21, 2014
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Axel@3 - right on! Humility is most certainly a precondition for scientific discovery. -QQuerius
September 21, 2014
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But inflation, from its inception, created more problems than it has solved,,
In order to work, and as pointed out by Roger Penrose from 1986 on, inflation requires extremely specific initial conditions of its own, so that the problem of initial conditions is not solved: “There is something fundamentally misconceived about trying to explain the uniformity of the early universe as resulting from a thermalization process. […] For, if the thermalization is actually doing anything […] then it represents a definite increasing of the entropy. Thus, the universe would have been even more special before the thermalization than after.”[104] Penrose, Roger (1989). “Difficulties with Inflationary Cosmology”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 271: 249–264.
Moreover, one of cosmic inflation theory’s creators now questions the theory,,,
One of cosmic inflation theory’s creators (Steinhardt) now questions own theory - April 2011 Excerpt: Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted that it is often taken as established fact. The idea is that the geometry and uniformity of the cosmos were established during an intense early growth spurt. But some of the theory’s creators, including the author, are having second thoughts. As the original theory has developed, cracks have appeared in its logical foundations. Highly improbable conditions are required to start inflation. Worse, inflation goes on eternally, producing infinitely many outcomes, so the theory makes no firm observational predictions. - Scientific American (April 2011), https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/cosmology-one-of-cosmic-inflation-theory%E2%80%99s-creators-now-questions-own-theory/ Inflationary paradigm in trouble after Planck2013 Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt, Abraham Loeb Excerpt of abstract: More important, though, is that all the simplest inflaton models are disfavored statistically relative to those with plateau-like potentials. We discuss how a restriction to plateau-like models has three independent serious drawbacks: it exacerbates both the initial conditions problem and the multiverse-unpredictability problem and it creates a new difficulty that we call the inflationary “unlikeliness problem.”,, http://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.2785v2.pdf etc,,,
Thus, inflation, far from being close to 'explaining away' the structure of the universe, is actually becoming more and more untenable as the evidence mounts. Supplemental notes:
The Galileo Affair and “Life/Consciousness” as the true "Center of the Universe" Excerpt: ,,,because of advances in Quantum Mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this: 1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even a central, position within material reality. [14] 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BHAcvrc913SgnPcDohwkPnN4kMJ9EDX-JJSkjc4AXmA/edit
I find it extremely interesting, and strange, that quantum mechanics tells us that instantaneous quantum wave collapse to its 'uncertain' 3D state is centered on each individual conscious observer in the universe, whereas, 4D space-time cosmology (General Relativity) tells us each 3D point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe. These findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by a omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time. These findings certainly seem to go to the very heart of the age old question asked of many parents by their children, “How can God hear everybody’s prayers at the same time?”,,, i.e. Why should the expansion of the universe, or the quantum wave collapse of the entire universe, even care that you or I, or anyone else, should exist? Only Theism, Christian Theism in particular, offers a rational explanation as to why you or I, or anyone else, should have such undeserved significance in such a vast universe. [15]
Psalm 33:13-15 The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.
Moreover, from a slightly different angle, ‘Life’, with a capital L, is also found to be central to the universe in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides a very credible reconciliation to the most profound enigma in modern science. Namely the unification of General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity (Quantum Electrodynamics) into a ‘Theory of Everything’:
The Center Of The Universe Is Life (Jesus Christ) – General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy and The Shroud Of Turin – video http://vimeo.com/34084462
Verses and Music:
Colossians 1:15-20 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell, and having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself — by Him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. You Are God Alone-Phillips, Craig, & Dean - music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPzTSpbYmk
bornagain77
September 21, 2014
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This quote by Hawking is just so ironic for a naturalists/atheists to make,,
I do believe that we shall end up understanding the origin and structure of the Universe. In fact we are already close to it. In my opinion, there is no one aspect of reality beyond the scope of the human mind.
The reason why this comment is so ironic for a naturalist/atheist to make is because, besides the fact that naturalism can't even get on first base as to trying to explain the origin of the human mind, and besides the fact that naturalism fought tooth and nail, for decades, against the evidence for the origin of the universe, is that naturalism has no explanation for the 'structure' of the universe,,
"If you have no God, then you have no design plan for the universe. You have no prexisting structure to the universe.,, As the ancient Greeks held, like Democritus and others, the universe is flux. It's just matter in motion. Now on that basis all you are confronted with is innumerable brute facts that are unrelated pieces of data. They have no meaningful connection to each other because there is no overall structure. There's no design plan. It's like my kids do 'join the dots' puzzles. It's just dots, but when you join the dots there is a structure, and a picture emerges. Well, the atheists is without that (final picture). There is no preestablished pattern (to connect the facts given atheism)." Pastor Joe Boot - Defending the Christian Faith – 13:20 minute mark - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqE5_ZOAnKo
,, this insurmountable problem for naturalism to give a coherent explanation for the structure of the universe, contrary to what Hawking believes, is especially highlighted in the origin of the universe. The 'structure' of the universe, as far a geometry is concerned, is found to be exceptionally spherical and flat. ,,,With the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), the universe is found to actually be a circular sphere:
Planck satellite unveils the Universe -- now and then (w/ Video showing the mapping of the 'sphere' of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation with the satellite) - 2010 http://phys.org/news197534140.html#nRlv The Known Universe by AMNH – video - (please note the 'centrality' of the Earth in the universe at the 3:36 minute mark in the video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U The Cosmic Background Radiation Excerpt: These fluctuations are extremely small, representing deviations from the average of only about 1/100,000 of the average temperature of the observed background radiation. The highly isotropic nature of the cosmic background radiation indicates that the early stages of the Universe were almost completely uniform. ,,, , when we look at the microwave background coming from widely separated parts of the sky it can be shown that these regions are too separated to have been able to communicate with each other even with signals traveling at light velocity. Thus, how did they know to have almost exactly the same temperature? This general problem is called the horizon problem. http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/cosmology/cbr.html
Moreover Theism, as with the origin of the universe, predicted the roundness of the universe thousands of years before it was discovered
Proverbs 8:26-27 While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primeval dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, Job 26:10 He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.
As well, besides the observable universe being exceptionally round, it is also found to be exceptionally flat,,
"The Universe today is actually very close to the most unlikely state of all, absolute flatness. And that means it must have been born in an even flatter state, as Dicke and Peebles, two of the Princeton astronomers involved in the discovery of the 3 K background radiation, pointed out in 1979. Finding the Universe in a state of even approximate flatness today is even less likely than finding a perfectly sharpened pencil balancing on its point for millions of years, for, as Dicke and Peebles pointed out, any deviation of the Universe from flatness in the Big Bang would have grown, and grown markedly, as the Universe expanded and aged. Like the pencil balanced on its point and given the tiniest nudges, the Universe soon shifts away from perfect flatness." ~ John Gribbin, In Search of the Big Bang Did the Universe Hyperinflate? – Hugh Ross – April 2010 Excerpt: Perfect geometric flatness is where the space-time surface of the universe exhibits zero curvature (see figure 3). Two meaningful measurements of the universe’s curvature parameter, ½k, exist. Analysis of the 5-year database from WMAP establishes that -0.0170 less than ½k less than 0.0068.4 Weak gravitational lensing of distant quasars by intervening galaxies places -0.031 less than ½k less than 0.009.5 Both measurements confirm the universe indeed manifests zero or very close to zero geometric curvature,,, http://www.reasons.org/did-universe-hyperinflate Refutation Of Oscillating Universe - Michael Strauss https://vimeo.com/91775976
And, as with the origin and roundness of the universe, this exceptional flatness was predicted by Theism thousands of years before it was dicovered by modern science,,
Job 38:4-5 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
Of note, inflation theory was invented by naturalists to 'explain away' the exceptional roundness and flatness of the observable universe,,
"Inflation theory was proposed to solve two fine-tuning problems of the initial conditions of the early universe known as the "flatness problem"[1] and the "horizon problem"[2]. References: 1. http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/F/Flatness+Problem 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_problem
bornagain77
September 21, 2014
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I think maybe Hawking has become the George Lucas of theoretical physics.HeKS
September 21, 2014
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Hawking is a time travel crackpot who uses his infirmity to protect himself against criticism. It is a sure bet that, deep down, Hawkins blames God for his condition. Promoting atheism is probably his way of getting back at God. We've seen his kind before. IMO, everything Hawkins says should be taken with a large grain of salt. The man has got religion.Mapou
September 21, 2014
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Reminds me of this, from another of today's new threads, An illustration of intellectual humility: 'Subramanyan Chandrasekhar was once asked why he could innovate in physics well beyond retirement age, while most physicists do innovative work only when young. He said, “there seems to be a certain arrogance toward nature that people develop. These people have had great insights and made profound discoveries. They imagine afterwards that the fact that they succeeded so triumphantly in one area means they have a special way of looking at science which must be right. But science doesn’t permit that. Nature has shown over and over again that the kinds of truth which underlie nature transcend the most powerful minds.” Chandrasekhar seems to be saying that early success in knowing “puffs up” the scientist, so that his enlarged ego makes it hard to see the way forward on new problems. The humble self-forgetting love of knowing can remove this impediment.'Axel
September 21, 2014
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He doesn't sound quite the ticket these days, does he? All gone to his head, I'm afraid, without the check on pride mainstream religions offer.Axel
September 21, 2014
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Science now “offers a more convincing explanation.”
That's laughable. Hawking needs to get out more.Eric Anderson
September 21, 2014
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