stephen hawking atheist or not?

tonyman1989 · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:44 pm Post subject: stephen hawking atheist or not?

Is stephen hawking an atheist or what I have never heard him talk about what he belives.
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Sultan Borat · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject:

Atheist.

Moloth · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject:

most likely an atheist... i'd go so far as to even suggest that he's a Deist.
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benyjets23 · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:59 pm Post subject:

Tony,

While it does not matter for the truth of theism or atheism, it is interesting to find out what our heros think and if they think like us.

From what I have read (Very limited) of Hawking (both from Christians and atheists) I would place him as on the fence between deism or agnosticism. We also know he is interested in ultimate questions as can be seen by his positive review of Kitty Fergusons (A Templetonian) book "The Fire In The Equations". We know his ex-wife is a Christian, we know he has attended a baptist church perodicaly in his life. We also know that one of his close friends in the field is an evangelical christian...

Bottom line: It does not matter what he believes, no man is an apologetic for a position.

Ben

Kelreth · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 7:14 pm Post subject:

Sultan Borat · Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject:

Stephen Hawking is a god of science!

Well I guess Reggie should try inviting the good professor over sometime we have had some high profile guest before.

tonyman1989 · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 9:30 am Post subject:

Yellow_Number_Five · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 9:38 am Post subject:

Why should it matter?

And tony, deism, is simply the the belief that something godlike made the universe, then simply walked away. It's a belief in a Creator, but not a belief in a god who cares about, tinkers with, or gets involved in any way with us. For the deist, essentially, god said "let there be a universe{s)" and walked away. It's probably the most reasonable of theistic beliefs, simply because it is the most ill-defined and vague.
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tonyman1989 · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:39 pm Post subject:

FacetoFace · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:42 pm Post subject:

I just recently read "A Brief History of Time" (I very highly recommend it to anyone, I have a background in Physics from when I was an engineering major, however, with a little bit of looking up confusing principles or a basic understanding of physical laws by name and consequence its quite intuitive and easy to follow. And terribly informative on a wide variety of issues from the nature of time to black holes to quantum physics.)

In the book I gained the distinct notion that god does not fit into his worldview. He is a naturalist and described implanting a supernatural being as the cause of the big bang as intellectually lazy, just after he had an audience with the pope along with other physics, he went about explaining his new theory of quantum gravity which would supplant the neccesity for a beginning to the universe prior the big bang (expansion) event. If indeed it were impossible to have not been any other way then he would conceed something supernatural exists. He only follows evidence and my interpretation of him via his book would be that positing a god as an explaination is unneccasry and sloppy from a scientific standpoint. However I dont think he would condemn someone as illogical for being deist, rather that its a premature conclusion. If anything he seems to be an apatheist and a humanist (in the sense that humanity is thier own saviors and science and philosophy constitute the mechanism for "self-salvation" as it were) He is a very humorus man (especially if you dig physics)

One of the more recognizable quotes being from his essays with Penrose (which are highly technical, requiring a background through calc 3 and inclusive of quantum theory and likely needing a real background in the debated issues within quantum physics, I only know enough about those subjects to have an idea of the topic and that it would take me a long time to understand what the hell the equations refer to or prove)

The quote was in response to Einstein saying "God does not play dice" meaning that he believed that the phenomenon that appeared to contain randomness had to have a lower level to it that was guided in a deterministic fashion.

To which Hawkings quipted "Well it appears that god sometimes does play dice and on occasion throws them where we cannot see them"
For anyone interested this was in the discovery that black holes obey the 2nd law of thermodynamics and give off energy (heating the surrounding area with particles in the form of some type of emission (presumably light (cant remember)) that obeyed the notions of quantum fluctuations and appeared just outside of the event horizon of the black hole (the point of no return for light particles)

Keep in mind though that that view is largely in tune to my own personal view on the nature of existance and theistic belief, with the exception of me not being so much an apatheist.

I hope that this was helpful to the discussion.

FacetoFace · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:47 pm Post subject:

benyjets23 · Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 10:25 pm Post subject:

Tony,

No offense, but if your first paragraph in response to my post was written on the defensive, you did not read my first paragraph.

Does Hawking have all the answers? I bet you could find alot of High School students who could kick Hawkings ass in academic areas he does not specialize in. If I want to under stand the Cosmos, I will call Hawkings. If I want to understand medicine I will call Dean Edell, If I want to understand Jesus I will call N.T. Wright.

Hawkings is a good hero to have and to aspire to be like. He also inspires through his life and illness. The idea that you can be amongst the scientific elite with the physical struggles he has is a great motivator to me.

Ben

Castaa · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 12:04 am Post subject:

Hawking is listed in the Ambiguous section of celebatheist.com

http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=Stephen_Hawking

Read his comments about theism yourself. Smile

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Specus_Meretricis · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 12:50 am Post subject:

tonyman1989 · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 11:16 am Post subject:

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