Stephen Hawking proves that a very smart person can make very dumb arguments.
Here is his great big fantastic argument that God didn’t create the universe.
the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, ... It is not necessary to invoke God...
Breathtaking! What an argument! It “just happened!” WOW! A towering intellect has spoken! He calls this an argument? “It just appeared.”? I am reminded of a line from the movie Repo Man, “People just blow up sometimes”.
Sorry, Mr. Hawking, there is precisely no evidence at all that Universes are spontaneously being created. His remark is typical of the over-reach that scientists are often guilty of. They observe a proton being generated from energy and they then decide energy, space, mass, time also can be generated from mere energy…oh but wait, where did the energy come from…drat. We must admit that the spontaneous creation of the universe is a much lower probability than spontaneous creation of Lawrence Whelk clones, and so far we have measured no instance thereof, but that’s another post.
He also fails to mention that scientists still have no idea how to reconcile the “laws” of gravity and quantum mechanics. And, as any physicist will tell you, because they cannot reconcile them, it means they all know that they have one, the other, or both, partially wrong.
But on he goes with non-arguments:
Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, ...
Seems?
What does “seems” mean?
He did an experiment and the results are positive? Uh, no. What he means is that he believes. He believes he understands, he believes that he can successfully calculate the consequences of any laws he partially understands, and he believes in non-scientific realms where he can never go.
In other words, he believes he likes his job as exclusive priest and arbiter of the other realms. More simply: he likes thinking that its he who is god.
As I have written in this space before, “multi-verses” are not a scientific idea. You cannot measure the existence or non-existence of a multi-verse. You cannot go to one, make a measurement, and return. If you could do either of those things, the “multi-verse” would not be a multi-verse any more but would be simply part of this universe. So multiverses are hermetically sealed inside a cask of anti-science. You can never confirm a hypothesis with experiment; you cannot do science; multi-verses are not science, by reference to their very definition.
His argument is pathetic. Its not an argument. It is an appeal to authority – his. And as such it represents the worst possible squandering of a scientist’s moral authority and public integrity.
The proposition that “universes suddenly happen” and “multiverses exist” are not arguments from science. They are diktats from the priesthood to the proletariat.
Let us throw off his folly and reject him and his monkish pronouncements outright, no matter what his rank, stole, or scepter.
