Eminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking I wanted to express my opinion about the unexpected commotion arose a few weeks ago the British physicist Stephen Hawking by asserting that "God was not necessary to create the universe" . He preferred, however, wait to pass over the media storm caused by such statements, which were considered of "bold", "disrespectful", "opportunistic", "provocative" ... (?). Me has attracted attention, after reading what has been published about the reaction so excessive that still arouses the fact that a well-known character, whether scientific or not publicly question or deny the existence of God. For some uninformed clamoring after the ruling ideology is atheism (as noted sociologist Phil Zuckerman, "in many societies, being 'an atheist' stigmatized. Even those who explicitly state they do not believe in God, try not to call themselves 'atheists' " ). It seems that freedom of expression is only permitted for certain purposes. Others, still bear the stamp of 'untouchables' or 'sacred', pun intended. Unfortunately, there are still too religious prejudices about us. And atheism is still frowned upon, especially because it defends secularism, free thought and criticism. Naturally, that's not at all interested in maintaining a cohesive and controlled society, as they have always sought God's representatives on Earth, who have performed many times as genuine masters and tyrants. "The mere mention religion or God becomes in a shell that gives the faithful a high degree of impunity while those who are not transcendent belief of eternal salvation or are excluded from the protection of laws which, thus, end up promoting a worldview, an ideology and high interest individuals " says Albert Riba, president of the Union Atheists and Freethinkers.
The truth is that most media have echoed the angry criticism of Hawking, many of them from ultraconservative sectors, as expected. Critics have focused not only on what Hawking has said about the improbability of God, but have gone much further and to some people without having the slightest idea of \u200b\u200bcosmology, even without reading the works of Hawking, has enabled us to question their important contributions in the field of science (no more than remind his valuable research on black holes, general relativity and The Theory of Everything). In the absence of better arguments to refute their claims, theists, deists, gullible, superstitious, sectarian and religious fanatics have preferred area ridicule and insult. For the umpteenth time, comes out the ad hominem fallacy : if Hawking is wrong in some of its scientific predictions, it is not reliable, therefore, which has said now he can not be taken into account (as if it were always wrong or their opinion as renowned scientist was not worth!). Does his position as holder of the Lucasian chair of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Newton held the same, he was chosen by a lottery? Is it that he was awarded the Albert Einstein Award, an award as prestigious as the Nobel in physics, being confined to a wheelchair because of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? ... Do not forget that Hawking is considered the most brilliant theoretical physicist after Einstein. Has also ensured that sought publicity for his new book The grand design (Great design ), published on 9 September. Rumour has achieved its goal by advertising his controversial statements. And I wonder: Is it crime to advertise a book? Are not those who write books do so to defend the existence of a supreme being that nobody has seen? Is it permissible to criticize Hawking is a famous scientist and that, therefore, sell more books than others? Is it not rather that the media have highlighted that the screaming headline above all other matters addressed in his new book? ... Many criticisms have been so pathetic that sometimes I could not help laughing. Others have caused me stupor, it included comments as reprehensible as "Hawking should die burned at the stake as did the inquisition of heretics who questioned theological dogma" . I have already spoken on this blog from the harmful effects that can cause this dangerous drug called faith. As said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, there are good people doing good things and evil people doing evil deeds. But for that good to do bad things requires religion ".
THE BOOK OF THE CONTROVERSY
Hawking has not said anything we do not know from Laplace (1749-1827). This mathematician and astronomer was the author of the revolutionary Treaty of celestial mechanics. It is said that Napoleon asked him what role God played in their investigations of the Solar System. Laplace's answer was clear and forceful: "Lord, do not need this hypothesis" . I find it very interesting what you said about the physical Antonio Fernández-Rañada documented in his work and God Scientists (2008):
"Certainly the use of God as makeweight has contributed greatly to the erosion of religion by science, because it shows a jealous God who hides in the ebb and tricky task of what man has not been explored yet. It is an absolutely reprehensible speech. Laplace's answer would be that of many scientists who believe, as the attempt to use God as makeweight degrades him to a mere scientific hypothesis unnecessary ".
honestly do not know what the fuss with the statements of Hawking (essentially agnostic consider rather than atheist, because there is no explicit denial of the existence of God.) "Since there is a law like gravity, the universe could create itself, and in fact did, out of nowhere. The spontaneous creation is the reason there is something, that there is a universe that we exist " says in his new work, which makes it very clear that " no need to invoke God to shine the light and have started the Universe ". Demonstrations, one way or another, and has been doing for twenty years. Rereading these days his seminal work Brief History of Time (1988), I run with the revealing words introductory astronomer Carl Sagan, which come straight from the current controversy:
"(...) It is also a book about God ... or perhaps about the absence of God. The word God fills these pages. Hawking embarks on a search for the answer to Einstein's famous question about whether God had any choice in creating the universe. Hawking attempts, as he says, understand the mind of God. And this makes it totally unexpected the conclusion of his effort, at least so far: a universe without a border space, no beginning and no end in time, and no place for a Creator ". Chapter
entitled 'The origin and destiny of the universe, "Hawking mentioned a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican in 1981. He attended the ceremony and tells the following anecdote:
"At the end of the conference, participants are granted us an audience with the Pope. He said it was OK to study the evolution of the universe after the Big Bang, but we should not inquire into the Big Bang itself, because it was the moment of creation and therefore God's work. I was glad I did not know then that the theme of the talk I had just given at the conference: the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, implying that there was no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel strongly identified partly by the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death. "
In late 1992, Hawking was interviewed by journalist Sue Lawley to its successful BBC radio Desert Island Discs . Sue asked near the end of the interview if God had dispensed with considering that the universe exists by itself. Hawking said
"All my work has shown is that there is to say that how the universe began was due to a personal whim of God. But the question remains: why the universe bother to exist? You may want to define God as an answer to this question ".
Hawking Was overly cautious and would not say at that time that God has a place in a universe that had no beginning and will have no end? Maybe. But it may be that things have now clearer than twenty years and be more emphatic in its conclusions.
THE HAWKING most famous work
Hawking speaks of a universe that had no limits in the beginning, and as a totality in itself. To self-generate, it is obvious that the cause of its origin is the universe itself. Therefore, there is no need for an external cause and not contingent (God), contrary to what Leibniz argued in his famous cosmological argument. "According to modern physics and, more specifically, according to Big Bang cosmology, there is no initial time t = O. Had there been a primal moment like that, the universe would be in a stadium impossible because the universe exist in a three-dimensional spatial point would have no spatial dimensions " says Quentin Smith, philosophy professor and author of Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology (1993). If there is no first moment, but a series of stages each one caused by an earlier stage, the existence of these stages and implies the existence of the universe itself. If so, what room is left for God? ... In my opinion, none (stating that Hawking does not say outright that God does not exist). The hypothesis of a Creator superfluous in the XXI century science. Not explain the world. The lack of evidence makes it completely unnecessary and should be relegated exclusively to the world of faith, devoid of any rational basis. Today we can say with complete peace of mind that there are good scientific reasons for denying the existence of God. Simply apply the Occam's razor . In his excellent book Religion go scam! (2009), Gonzalo Puente Ojea sums it up: "Both the scientific cosmology and neuroscience refute physicalist sign without reservation all naturalistic worldview, religious or not. Naturalism expresses the immanence of any attempt to explain the world . " It is therefore high time to recognize the incompatibility between science and religion totally opposite speak two languages, "even if some stubborn claim to be defending the opposite (trying in vain to reconcile reason and faith). "The dialogue between science and religion is impossible says Nobel Chemistry Christian de Duve. I totally agree with him. And the historian Gabriel García Volta and Joan Carles Marset geologist, author of probably no God (2009): "The main difference of scientific knowledge with the so-called religious knowledge is that it is not subject to review or can evolve, because it is based on revelation. And God makes no mistakes, or so claim some of its apologists ". Does the biblical story of Genesis has something to do with what we now know from disciplines como la cosmología, la genética y la biología evolucionista?... Por eso considero tremendamente ilegítima la pretensión de Juan Pablo II, expresada en su encíclica Fides et ratio (1998), de aunar fe y razón (¿hay algo más irracional que la fe?). Fue un vano intento, máxime si leemos en el susodicho texto lo siguiente: “Reafirmando la verdad de la fe podemos devolver al hombre contemporáneo la auténtica confianza en sus capacidades cognoscitivas y ofrecer a la filosofía un estímulo para que pueda recuperar y desarrollar su plena dignidad” . ¡Menuda falacia quiso vendernos! Incluso su sucesor Benedicto XVI, en su encíclica Caritas in veritate (2009), still using the same strategy in their quest to stop the advance of secularism in the West, which is undermining the foundations strides from the pernicious and increasingly discredited Christian faith. Takes clear if you intend to return to the Middle Ages! ...
The reality is that every time there are fewer gaps in scientific knowledge to place God at the end is not merely a means easy and pretty useless (as well as a major obstacle to human progress and justification for the atrocities committed by religion). According to Hawking, science is God cornering with increasing their knowledge of nature ( "Ignorance is the mother of devotion" , says the philosopher David Hume). Today we know that Earth is the center of the universe. Nor are the king of creation. Moreover, we inhabit a tiny speck of dust orbiting one of the many solar systems that are scattered throughout the cosmos, whose age is estimated at around 14,000 million years. And we humans are but a product of millions of years of biological evolution, subject to chance and natural selection. Thus, the vision offered by the theology of the universe and life has been crumbling miserably (in the seventeenth century, Anglican Archbishop James Ussher calculated based on the biblical chronology, the creation of the world was exactly the 23rd of October 4004 BC, precisely what a scientist!). Yes, theology has stepped on a land that did not belong. But science was recovering thanks to their efforts to understand the world through in-depth knowledge of reality, which can only be achieved through the use of reason. "The origin of this universe is a scientific issue, specifically a problem of physics" , says the American physicist Victor J. Stenger, making it clear that religion is not the final word on such a subject. Therefore, those who still ignore about our universe, which is much-should not push us to seek explanations or transcendent magic. "If there is something beyond the natural world as we now imperfectly known, we hope to finally meet and include it within the natural world," says biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins in his famous work The God Delusion (2006), who incidentally has congratulated for their courageous demonstrations Hawking.
WHAT WE KNOW OF THE COSMOS TO A SCIENCE, NOT A RELIGION
If your prime objective, rather to be consistent with scientific truth, had been wanting to sell books to earn big bucks, Hawking would have used another formula success: speaking of God positively. That is, to suggest that it is a possibility to consider. There are scientists who do shamelessly, and even include the term 'God' in the title of his work (an example is The Mind of God, physicist Paul Davies), sometimes in order to get the succulent Templeton Prize (precisely Davies won in 1995), awarded to those who contribute through their research to support the possibility of a transcendent reality or spiritual (the award now exceeds one million euros). By the way, these books if they end up selling like hotcakes.
today's solid explanations offered by science to understand the origin of the universe and life from a strictly immanent and through empirical verification, irritates his opponents who see their outdated supernatural interpretations are called into question. There are the defending creationists still unprovable theory of "intelligent design" that seek to pass off as scientific. These mindless self fierce propaganda campaigns carried out and trample the scientific rigor and honesty at the expense of getting their goals! As the philosopher Christopher Hitchens in God Is Not Great (2007): "argument of creationism or" intelligent design "(its only intelligence lies in its overlapping renaming itself) is not even a theory. Despite all his well-funded propaganda, has never even attempted to demonstrate how a single piece of nature is best explained by the 'design' that through evolutionary competition. For his part, dissolved in tautologies childish ".
Fortunately, no longer chasing scientists to execute on behalf of God. So glad that Hawking is still alive, although many religious fanatics want to see him die as did the astronomer Giordano Bruno after being condemned by the Inquisition burned to a simmer.
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