Last week I got to spend time in the NBC studio where they record Meet The Press — re-decorated for this occasion in a cosmic theme, with beautiful images of galaxies and large-scale-structure simulations in the background. The occasion was a special panel discussion to follow a Stephen Hawking special that will air on the Discovery Channel this Sunday, August 7. David Gregory, who usually hosts MTP, was the moderator. I played the role of the hard-boiled atheist; Paul Davies played the physicist who was willing to entertain the possibility of “God” if defined with sufficient abstraction, while John Haught played the Catholic theologian who is sympathetic to science.
The Hawking special is the kick-off episode to a major new Discovery program, called simply Curiosity. I predict it will make something of a splash. The reason is simple: although most of the episode is about science, Hawking clearly goes all-in with “God does not exist.” It’s not a message we often hear on American TV.
The atheistic conclusion is really surprisingly explicit. I had a chance to talk to someone at Discovery, who explained a little about how the program came about. The secret is that it was originally produced by the BBC — British audiences have a different set of expectations than American ones do. My completely fictional reconstruction of the conversation would go something like this. Discovery: Hey, blokes! Do you have any programs we could use to launch our major new series? BBC: Sure, we have a new special narrated by Stephen Hawking. Discovery: Perfect! That’s always box office. What’s it about? BBC: It’s about how there is no God. Discovery: Ah.
[Update: Alas, reality is intruding upon my meant-to-be-funny imaginary dialogue. The episode was actually originally commissioned by Discovery, not by the BBC, although it was produced in the UK. More power to Discovery!]
At first, I will confess to a smidgin of annoyance that an opportunity to talk about fascinating science was being sacrificed to yet another discussion about religion. But quickly, even before anyone else had the joy of pointing it out to me, I realized how spectacularly hypocritical that was. I talk about religion all the time — why shouldn’t Stephen Hawking get the same opportunity?
The more I thought about it, the more appropriate I thought the episode really was. I can’t speak for Hawking, but I presume his interest in the topic stems from similar sources as my own. It’s not just a coincidence that we are theoretical cosmologists who happen to go around arguing that God doesn’t exist. The question of God and the questions of cosmology arise from a common impulse — to understand how the world works at its most fundamental level. These issues naturally go hand-in-hand. Pretending otherwise, I believe, probably stems from a desire on the part of religious believers to insulate their worldview from scientific critique.
Besides, people find it interesting, and rightfully so. Professional scientists are sometimes irritated by the tendency of the public to dwell on what scientists think are the “wrong” questions. Most people are fascinated by questions about God, life after death, life on other worlds, and other issues that touch on what it means to be human. These might not be fruitful research projects for most professional scientists, but part of our job should be to occasionally step back and look at the bigger picture. That’s exactly what Hawking is doing here, and more power to him. (In terms of his actual argument, I’m sympathetic to the general idea, but would take issue with some of the particulars.)
Nevertheless, Discovery was not going to feature an hour of rah-rah atheism without a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Thus, our panel discussion, which will air immediately after the debut of Curiosity (i.e., 9pm Eastern/Pacific). The four of us had fun, and I think the result will be an interesting program — and hopefully I did the side proud, as the only legit atheist participating. Gregory seemed to enjoy himself, and joked that he might have to give up politics to do a weekly show about cosmology. (A guy can dream…) But we all agreed that it was incredibly frustrating to have so little time to talk about such big issues. The show will run for half an hour; subtract commercials, and we’re left with about 21 minutes of substance. Then subtract introduction, questions, some background videos that were shown … we three panelists had about five minutes each of speaking time. Not really enough to spell out convincing answers to the major questions that have troubled thinkers for centuries. Hopefully some of the basic points came across. Let us know what you think.
I so love the angry theists who accuse atheists of believing in science as some sort of “god”. Yeah, nice try. Do you have a degree in sophistry, or are you merely an amateur?
Anyway, the difference is that atheists who truly believe in science don’t blindly follow any scientific idea. From General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics to Evolution, you don’t ever literally hit the point where you believe 100% that the theory is an accurate model. When you teach the idea to others, you say essentially, “This is the best model we have so far; but it may not be perfect”. It’s open to reason and change.
How’s that bible? Yeah, the one inspired by an “omniscient” being, but which even its adherents incessantly argue over.
Oh, I almost forgot: Atheists who believe in the true scientific thought process also don’t fly airplanes into buildings or go on crusades to further their cause.
I’ll echo the caveats of some above: Hawking’s argument would have force only against most varieties of religious textual literalists. At best, his cosmological speculations are correct, excluding what many would consider an archaic, fundamentalist view of how God governed His creation. At worst, his most provocative ideas are wrong, which would put him in a somewhat ironic position, given the force of his argument.
@ #26,
Yes, I do believe in God. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I believe completely in the Bible. Yes, I think some stuff in the Bible is derived from actual events. No, I don’t believe in the Genesis story of creation, nor do I believe that one must take everything in the Bible literally. Belief in God and belief in the Bible are two separate things.
Yes, I do believe in God. I understand that no real scientist ever “believes” a theory as if it were 100% true. But many scientists believe in the multiverse as if it’s a scientific and testable idea. It’s not. Is there any evidence for it? No. Can one test for its possible existence? Most likely, no. Of course, that differs from the fact that you cannot test for God’s existence, at all. But many scientists go around acting as if they believe that M-theory and the multiverse can solve every problem even though there’s absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever. Well, there’s no hard evidence for God either. So if they can talk about M-theory and the multiverse being the answers, there’s absolutely no problem with me saying that God exists. Instead, you have folks who go around telling believers in God how wrong we all are. Do they have evidence for an eternally inflating multiverse? Nope.
@ Larsson, #17, here’s an explanation from for those CMB observations that doesn’t rely on other universes.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-penrose-and-gurzadyan-cannot-see.html
@22, magetoo,
“Arguably not the best subjects if you want to have a calm, reasoned discussion, but to each his own I guess. :-)”
*chuckle* Any discussion into which is brought a strong wallop of “don’t you see, it’s people who believe different things than me that are the problem?!?” runs the likelihood of being unfruitful, regardless of the topic. I’ve been in some pretty insane rows over Steampunk and how old kids should be before taking them to Disneyland ^_^
“Keeping in mind that sometimes one’s fundamental assumptions isn’t everyone elses fundamental assumptions is hard, but can lead to interesting discussion once in a while. (On the Internet, maybe once in a decade.)”
Indeed. I actually eased up a bit after paying more attention to neuroscientific study of belief and non-belief… Temproal lobe activity, connections to Asperger’s, and so on. It introduced me in a serious way to the idea that people might not just have different beliefs because of the way they were raised or the place they were raised or enculturated ideas about evidence or spirituality or whatever, but also because they might just not be ABLE to experience certain things. P.Z. Meyers thinks the emperor has no clothes because he genuinely can’t see them, so of course my talking about them just sounds like a courtier. I can’t begrudge someone who just hasn’t had a religious experience, especially if they physically can’t have one.
The only thing I don’t have a whole lot of patience for is gross misrepresentation… When certain spokespeople of atheism make demonstrably false claims about religious believers or just launch into straight, purile ad hominems. It annoys me when Christian Fundamentalists do it too. It goes back to that demonization of people whose beliefs are different from one’s own… The problem isn’t people who are different than oneself; the problem is the intolerance, self-righteousness, absolutism and entrenched partisanship that prevents us from being able to cooperate in a civil, multicultural society. No one has a monopoly on that.
Anyways, thanks for the recommendations! I tend not to lurk atheist blogs because I know when I’m not welcome. Around here I’ve bookmarked the whole blog list, all of which has been quite interesting.
@Phil
Do you actually know any scientists? Or science? Or, for example, have you read Sean’s popular-level book on cosmology and the arrow of time? Do you understand that some concepts of a multiverse are required by tested ideas like inflation?
@Cory Gross
This is why I can’t have fruitful discussions with theists – we fundamentally disagree about epistemology. I’ve studied enough psychology and neuroscience to understand how fallible our personal experiences are, and enough science and history of science to understand how science is designed to be the best tool we have at overcoming cognitive limitations and finding the truth (or good approximations thereof). But if people value personal experience over all science… we have nothing to talk about. I can point to plenty of examples where personal experience has led people astray, but… “you cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into” (Ben Goldacre).
(This is true from your end as well. Don’t bother talking to atheists about personal religious experience, because we will dismiss it out of hand. We already know people have “religious” experiences, and we have a lot of evidence that these events are just being misinterpreted by those who experience them. We understand they’re emotionally powerful, and that’s all the more reason to doubt them – people don’t think clearly when overwhelmed by emotion.)
@Phil I suggest you google Lawrence Krauss’s lecture “A Universe from Nothing” to answer your question. (eg. In case you didn’t know it, virtual particles spontaneously appear in “nothing”/empty space all the time). As for the multiverse, that is a conclusion based on some explanations for experiments, ie. evidence, in quantum physics. Just because we can’t prove it now, doesn’t mean we won’t later, but we’re following the evidence. What is your evidence that a god exists???
@ Viper Eyewitness accounts, particularly those of Bronze Age shepherds, are worthless. There are literally thousands of people who witnessed the “miracles” of Sai Baba in the 20th/21st century (many similar to those Jesus was reported to do, eg. water/wine) and believed him to be a living god. “Miracles” that any magician could duplicate – google him and prepare to be underwhelmed. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not secondhand stories written decades after the actual events.
@Jackson Where is your evidence that stating the scientific facts, and demanding evidence for the claims of religion, turns moderate religious people against science? In the cases I’ve read about, tiptoeing around the religious so as not to offend them, does not make them embrace science. More moderately religious types have been turned off religion when someone has stood up for reason, than have turned away from science.
Charon,
I’ve read Sean’s textbook on GR. I guess the notion that the existence of the multiverse is an inevitable consequence of inflation is NOT IMPORTANT because he failed to mention it. Or maybe it’s not an inevitable consequence. Or maybe I forgot (it has been many years since I studied his textbook). Yes, I do know science.
Oh, we know so much about inflation (i.e. that it inevitably leads to the multiverse) that we don’t know what caused it or if there’s such a thing as the inflaton.
There are other theories of physics that lead to inflation and are (I believe) compatible with CMB observations. Last I hear, the multiverse MIGHT be a consequence of string theory. I say “might” because we don’t even know what string theory is. Nor has string theory yet calculated the masses and other Standard Model constants (i.e. stuff measured in the real world).
“But if people value personal experience over all science… we have nothing to talk about.”
So, if you witnessed a miracle and had absolutely no scientific explanation for it, you would ignore it because you don’t value personal experience over science? Let’s say you got a cut, and I came up to you, put my hand on the cut, and the cut was gone. Would you disregard that as just “personal experience”?
Looking at the way you are writing to Cory Gross, I really hope most atheists aren’t as arrogant as you seem to be.
Michael,
Virtual particle creation is not from nothing. There’s an already-existing space-time in which the particles appear, that has a non-zero energy. That’s not the same as nothing as in no spacetime whatsoever. If spacetime originated in the Big Bang, then does that mean spacetime had a beginning? If it had a beginning, does that mean the universe originated from nothing? If yes, then what caused it to be made from nothing? God can be an explanation. Maybe that’s a cop-out, but that’s how I think about it. And some scientists like to think about it with the multiverse approach. No evidence to back up either assertion.
“As for the multiverse, that is a conclusion based on some explanations for experiments, ie. evidence, in quantum physics.”
I don’t think so. You’re talking about the many worlds interpretation of QM, which has no evidence to back it up. There are other interpretations of QM which reproduce the observations of QM. There’s also the decoherence view of resolving those issues which many worlds purports to solve. So you really think that the universe splits when you make an observation? I can make a new universe by observing the spin of an electron? Silly.
“Just because we can’t prove it now, doesn’t mean we won’t later, but we’re following the evidence.” That’s precisely what Michael Behe said. He is a biologist who believes in intelligent design (but I don’t). He came up with the argument from irreducible complexity. He’s following his own evidence. What evidence do I have that God exists? I guess I don’t have any. Just like people who spend their lives working on string theory and M-theory. Why do I believe? Well, I have a strong hunch that God’s existence is true. Just like string theorists and M-theorists. “String theory is so elegant…it must be true.”
Charon, I wanted to edit my first paragraph to you, but I rant out of time, so here it is:
Yes, I do know science. I’ve read Sean’s excellent textbook on GR. I guess the notion that the existence of the multiverse is an inevitable consequence of inflation is NOT IMPORTANT because he failed to mention it. Or maybe it’s not an inevitable consequence. Or maybe I forgot (it has been many years since I studied his textbook). Or maybe my knowledge of inflation is too shallow, or there have been recent developments showing that the multiverse (ie. universes which pre-exist our Big Bang) are inevitable for any model of inflation that agrees with CMB observations (as well as others).
Can there be existence without consciousness? Can there be consciousness without eternal life? Do you believe in nothing or eternal life? Can artificial intelligence become God? Can computers simulate a New Earth? Are we living in a computer simulation? Are we conscious?
@19, DrMorbius: no one’s posting links on Reddit to attract the rabid commenters here (I think). It’s the article itself that makes the readers rabid. I simply think that people tend to post their comments when the subject bothers them. So you can expect a divisive issue like equating science with atheism and religious belief with ignorance will get lots of comments. OK?
Having said that, Hawking is waaaaay out on a limb. Completely biased. I’m not saying his science is wrong—but that his motives are clearly bent on disproving God. That should strike everyone, atheist or otherwise, as an unscientific endeavour.
Phil,
Behe did not follow the evidence. He ignored evidence that contradicted his goal or he was a poorly trained in the scientific method. Kitzmiller demonstrated that.
Pingback: August 3, 2011 - Science and Religion Today
First of all, the question (“Did god create the universe?”) is horrendously unscientific: it cheats. It presupposes that god or a god exists.
That makes it a lousy question from the get-go.
First, theists must present evidence for the existence of the object of their belief, which is nothing more than a hypothesis at this point. The burden is on them, not on anyone else to supply evidence for the non-existence of someone’s flight of fancy.
That is typical of how theists sneak it into the discussion. They do it without thinking (no surprise there) and are apt to protest with not-so-innocent mien when they are called out on it, as if it is their priviledge to bend the rules a little. But preconception is not evidence independent of the conceiver, and theists DON’T deserve any free lunch just because they place faith in their faith. Such god-like certitude is obnoxious.
Phil,
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that your understanding of the multiverse theory is coming from talking point/soundbyte information. I know because you’re pretty much saying what I use to say about it.
There’s actually a lot of different independent observations that lead physicists to hypothesize about the multiverse theory. I’d never grasped the concept of the multiverse until I actually read a couple books that talked about it in detail.
Before someone trashes it, one should actually read about it in detail. One can’t really appreciate the depth of the physics behind it from listening to interviews or reading blog posts or articles.
Dear
Does Hawking really thinks that the creator of everything will be detectable with his quantum physics and mathematical calculations? Maybe some day, if Stephen behaves. God loves scientists to keep searching for the truth of things and advises people to go for scientific research based on constant study and observation to shed more light on his creations and its hints he sent us in his arabic version, ask your local imam or sheikh to show you some examples from the Qur’an. My opinion is that Stephen Hawking is blocked or needs attention. The only way to find god is to have unverified faith in him, then your science and research will be more fun and much more fruitful. But then again true believers don’t mind searching proofs for god, they don’t care cause they clearly feel and see it every day. Probably why most cosmology scientists are atheists! Allahu Akbar
Mazen
The ultimate oxymoron – life after death.
WHO ARE YOU, ‘SEAN’? Why can’t you identify yourself like normal people?
Going for one name celebrity like Madonna, Cher and Liberace?
Time to wake up and identify yourself well and fully.
What have you done that could possibly make your name suitable for singleness?
Until you grow up some and identify yourself like a standard adult, nothing you have to to say will interest me or mine. Wake up, ‘SEAN’.
John, your phone battery have life after death
Mazen
Here a Scientific American link where Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark very briefly explain why the multiverse is a legitimate scientific idea:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=multiverse-the-case-for-parallel-universe
The multiverse conjecture may turn out to be wrong, but it is a logical extension of several physical theories, some of which have already made quite precise and verified predictions, or have otherwise provided very useful scientific explanations in regard to open problems. This conjecture is not without controversy, there are very good scientists on either side of the debate, but I would hope that reasonable people could agree that at least it’s not speculation of the same kind as the God conjecture — although from the tone and confusion evidenced in many posts, I recognize this may not be the case.
Pingback: A Universe Out of Chaos | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine
Surely that should be parsed as (Hawking and God) on the Discovery Channel and not as Hawking, and God, on the Discovery Channel. (If the latter, I wonder what the Big Man’s fee is.)
I’m reminded of someone who dedicated his thesis to “My parents, God and L. Ron Hubbard”. Usually, the “when in doubt, leave it out” rule about commas works, but here there really should be a comma before the “and”. (Pedants will note that the rule still holds since in this case there couldn’t really be any doubt.)
So, a bit off-topic, but I figured I’d just eat, shoot and leave. 🙂
For all of the naysayers and theists, just keep in mind that this is the same channel that airs such tripe as “Ghost Hunters”, and “The Baby Whisperer.” The DC sure has gotten dumber and dumber over the years. They went from Science, science, science to motorcycles, crab fishing, and cash cab. *sigh*
Rather a good interview for “atheist” types here. Dr. Peter Fenwick is about as good as you get as a neuropsychiatrist, is sure of life after death and has said so.
The point about the experiences he speaks of here is that they are seen by the carer(s) and patient who is dying.
http://www.victorzammit.com/evidence/endoflife.htm
Also a good book here on this subject of “shared death experiences”. See also the video below the Dr. Fenwick talk with Dr. Moody.
http://www.glimpsesofeternity.com/
Of course this puts religion and God smack bang in the middle of physics, cosmology, biology, philosophy etc.
I just don’t understand why Stephen Hawking hasn’t at least considered this. Perhaps no equation for it? – not meaning to be flippant!
Hey, maybe it’s somewhere in E = A/4 . All that “stuff” going on the volume around us is actually sitting on the universe’s outer surface! God is out there! Yep, that’s it.
“I just don’t understand why Stephen Hawking hasn’t at least considered this.”
I’m sure he has. Every scientist seeking the truth will have thought about ideas like this that overturn so much of what we think is correct about the way the world works.
When you say a scientist might not consider this because there isn’t an equation for it, I think you’re not far from the truth.
There is no equation for it because there is no physical process that we know of that could cause it — and no proponent of these ideas has been able to give any testable, verifiable and, most importantly, falsifiable theory about how it occurs.
If you have a theory — from the books you cite — or elsewhere, that is more than fundamentally anecdotal, with legitimate — repeatable — tests that verify such a theory, or if you have a theory that is based on what we know so far and goes on to answer open questions, then I would love to hear and see it.
Absent such a theory, sorry but I don’t think you’ll ever see more than a handful of scientists taking it seriously.