God and the Scientists
On why we don't need God now that
we have physicists who sit at desks. 

Book Review of The Grand Design
by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents
reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in
from the beginning. … But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research,
there is at least some consolation in the research itself.  Men and women
are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to
confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes
and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours
working out the meaning of the data they gather.  (pp. 143-4) 
Stephen Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, 1979

religion, and once again, shows how credentials in science allow anyone to
philosophize about the meaning of it all as if their scientific mantle confers
a certain 'infalliblity' upon them.  As Blavatsky stated in 1888, "in
our day, the scientists are even more opinionated than the clergy." 
Scientists, like Hawking, Sagan and Weinberg, present their own  personal
biases and dogmas as if based on 'real science,' instead of simply being their
own philosophy, and a superficial one at that.  The Grand Design
provides only glimpses of modern theories in physics and the most preposterous
declarations about what they all mean.

(In addition to reading The Grand Design, i have managed to watch
Leonard Mlodinow on the Larry King Show on CNN, along with Stephen Hawking and
commentators; and to have listened to some of Dr Mlodinow interview on the
Coast to Coast AM show with George Noory.)

In the first chapter, The Mystery of Being, Hawking espouses his attitudes towards 'philosophers' and he states the intention of the book:

philosophy is dead.  Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.  Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in
our quest for knowledge.  The purpose of this book is to give the answers
that are suggested by recent discoveries and theoretical advances.  (p. 5)

In Chapter 1, Hawking and Mlodinow introduces one particular 'theoretical advance' which they regard as promising to explain many of the enigmas of
science concerning the laws of nature and the fine tuning of natural laws as
required to explain the emergence of life.  The authors state: "we
now have a candidate for the ultimate theory of everything, if indeed one
exists, called M-theory."   The book certainly sounds
promising and the authors state their intentions:

We will describe how M-theory may offer answers to the question of creation.

According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe.  Instead, M-theory predicts a
great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not
require the intervention of some supernatural being or god.  Rather, these
multiple universes arise naturally from physical laws. ... Thus our presence
selects out from this vast array only those universes that are compatible with
our existence.  Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the
cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.  (pp. 8-9) 

Hawking likes to have this semi-mystical type element as a subtext to his writings, describing us as such 'lords of creation.'  The authors then
promise to explore three main questions:

Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some other?

This is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  (pp. 9-10)

These are pretty big promises, all to explain why we don't need God or a Creator any more, now that we have Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, and other scientists who sit at their desks.

In Chapter 7, The Apparent Miracle, Hawking and Mlodinow address the issue of the 'fine tuning' of different environmental and physical laws which allow for the
emergence of human life on this planet.  They explain: "Our solar
system has other "lucky" properties without which sophisticated
life-forms might never have evolved."  (p. 149)  The earth
is just the right distance from the sun so that the water neither boils nor
freezes, the eccentricity of the earth's orbit is just 2 percent allowing for
seasons, and there are many features of nature seeming atuned to allow organic
life to evolve on earth.  Whereas a religious person could regard this as
due to the intelligence or design of a Creator, scientists explain such
phenomena in terms of the 'weak anthropic principle.'

Obviously, when the beings on a planet that supports life examine the world around them, they are bound to find that their environment satisfies the conditions they require
to exist.

As scientists have discovered more and more planets, and billions of stars and galaxies, it is apparent that there could be many different inhabital planets
within the universe.  If the earth hadn't been habitable, then we would
not have been here to ask such questions.  What seems perhaps to be due to
fortunate circumstances or intelligent design is due to this type of
self-selection process.

Hawking and Mlodinow then extend the weak into a 'strong anthropic principle'
to apply the same logic to explaining why the laws of physics are so attuned to
allow for the emergence of intelligent life. 

that supports life.

The laws of nature are highly tuned, in terms of the strength of the laws, the masses and charges of elements, and dozens or hundreds of other paramters, all
of which allowed for the chain of events to occur which began with a big bang
singularity and ended up with living beings who could look back in time at
where they came from.  Although many people "would like us to use
these coincidences as evidence of the work of God," Hawking and
Mlodinow argue that we can now explain this in terms of the strong anthropic
theory and a knowledge of M-theory. 

M-theory is described by Hawking and Mlodinow as not a singular unified theory,
"the traditional physicist's dream," but a network of
theories, each good at describing phenomena within different ranges. 
M-theory developed out of string theory and has 11 space-time dimensions: 
including four large dimensions which we are ordinarily aware of, and an
underlying "internal space" of seven "compacted dimensions." 
M-theory does not contain only vibrating strings, or superstrings , but also
point particles, two-dimensional membranes, objects called 'p-branes,' where p
can vary from zero to nine, depending on the dimensionality of the
elements.  M-theory has provided a way of integrating five different model
of string theory and supergravity theory into one network. 

There is an enormous number of ways in curl up these entities into higher
dimensions of this 'internal space.'  The mathematics of M-theory
restricts the manner in which these internal dimensions are curled. 

The exact shape of the internal space determines both the values of physical constants, such as the charge of the electron, and the nature of the interactions between
the elementary particles.  In other words, it determines the apparent laws
of nature. ...

The laws of M-theory therefore allow for different universes with
different apparent laws, depending on how the internal space is curled. 
M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps
as many as 10⁵⁰⁰ , which means it allows for 10⁵⁰⁰
different universes, each with its own laws.  ... M-theory allows for 10⁵⁰⁰ 
sets of apparent laws. (pp. 118-9)

10⁵⁰⁰

This is an unimaginably vast number and yet iin Hawking's views of quanta as represented by the 'sum over histories approach,' then all of these possibilities can occur. 
"In this view, the universe appeared spontaneously, starting off in every
possible way. ... the multiverse concept (but) these are just different
expressions of the Feymman sum over histories."  (p. 136) 
In this view then, out of 10⁵⁰⁰ universes, some of these are going
to have the properties that can lead to the evolution of life forms.  We
happened then to be one such this particular world, so-called 'lords of
creation' by fortunate opportunity.  If the laws of nature were not so
finely-tuned, we would not be here. 

When scientists realized that there are billions of suns and solar systems,
which can have planets and favourable conditions for the evolution of life,
then the fact that there is life on earth does not seem such a miraculous
occurance, as there could be life forms on billions of planets.  So now,
Hawking and Mlodinow extend the weak anthropic principle covering environmental
coincidences to the strong anthropic principle to account for the fine
tuning of the laws of nature.  Since M-theory postulates some unimaginably
large number of possible universes with workable and non-workable dynamics,
then the fact that some of them are just right, is not a matter of divine
intelligence but of good luck,  happenstance and M-theory.  Hawking
defines the M in M-theory as possibly referring to 'master,' 'miracle' or
'mystery', or 'all three.'  M-theory is Hawking's holy trinity.

Hawking offers this philosophical commentary on the human situation:

Were it not for a series of startling coincidences in the precise details of physical law, it seems, humans and similar life-forms would never have come into being. (p. 161)

... the multiverse concept can explain the fine-tuning of physical law without
the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit. 
(p. 165)

We claim, however, that it is possible to answer these questions purely within
the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings.  (p. 172)

Of course, one has to puzzle over this supposed solution to the fine-tuning of the laws of nature, that it is a simply fortunitous occurrance in a world of 10⁵⁰⁰
opportunities.  Can such a concept be falsified?  It seems that
Hawking is simply offering another 'hypothesis' to explain creation and of
course, this is a valuable perspective to consider.  However, we cannot
simply conclude that this is the answer, as it itself is so incomplete,
seemingly arbitray and circular in its logic.  One scientist described the
probability of evolution occuring by chance as being as likely as a tornado
blowing through a junk yard and assembling a Boeing 747.  Of course, if we
had 10⁵⁰⁰ tornadoes, one never knows.  What if we had 10⁵⁰⁰

monkeys typing on typewriters, could they produce the works of
Shakesphere?  Is such a theory or model falsifiable?  Can 10⁵⁰⁰
angels dance on the head of a pin?  Probably in one of these universes.

And so how does Stephen Hawking solve the questions of, 'Why is there
something rather than nothing?' and 'Why do we exist?'   The
idea of 'vacuum genesis,' creation out of the void/plenum of the quantum
vacuum, as been around for thirty years in modern science.  In theoretical
physics, gravity is regarded as a negative form of energy and it is used to
balance out the positive energy bound up in matter, such that the whole thing
adds up to nothing!  This can explain how a universe could be created out
of nothing without violating the laws of the conservation of matter and
energy.  Hawking explains that because "the positive energy of the
manner can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no
restriction on the creation of whole universes."  (p. 180) 
And so, why is there something rather than nothing?  Hawking and Mlodinow,
with a hop, a skip and a jump, conclude:

Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.  It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue
torch paper and set the universe going.  (p. 180)

Wow, this 'real science' has replaced one unknown God with another unknow 'spontaneous creation.'  In fact, Hawking and Mlodinow describe M-theory
in this way as "a model of a universe that creates itself." 

Certainly, this is an interesting hypothesis and theory, but that does not
validate it and in many ways this simply substitutes one unknown for
another.  Instead of God, now we have 'spontaneous generation'  and
our being here will likely be taken as 'proof' of such circular
arguments.

What is most disappointing about this book is the meagre amount of time and space used to explain M-theory, new models of higher dimensional space, the holographic principle, or how M-theory
deals with the issues of gravity.  Discussions of M-theory indicate
practically nothing of its significance or meaning, and Hawking gives no
attention to the emerging ideas about black hole physics, information theory
and such.  As a world leading expert on black holes, i wanted to read more
of such things and not such a standard overview of  the history of science
and philosophy through the past two thousand years.   There is
material on such things as the wave/particle nature of light and material
elements, the uncertainty principle, Feymann's  'sum over history' appoach
to quantum descriptions, the big bang, the inflationary and  expanding
universe, and more, but much of this is quite standard materials and not
especially explained well.  Why would Hawking say so little of his earlier
notion of explaining away God by his smearing out of the big bang
singularity?  Twenty years ago, Hawking was explaining why we didn't need
God because science was on the verge of discovering a theory of quantum gravity
and smearing out the naught singularity point.  Now, Hawking has a new
argument for the non-existence of God and considers that M-theory provides such
a logic to dismiss the creator.  At the same time, he explains practically
nothing of what M-theory is or how it deals with the issue of gravity. 

Stephen Hawking with the publication of the book is raising what i have long called "the problem of God's contracting universe."  In the early 1980's, Carl Sagan
as the Hollywood hero of science, declared that "As we learn more and
more about the universe, the less and less there is for God to do."  Sagan
discussed the issue of God in a chapter entitled A Sunday Sermon of his
best-seller Broca's Brain: Reflections on the romance of science, and
espoused the same philosophical stance as offered to us by the new high priests
of science--Drs Hawking and Mlodinow.  In the 1980s, Dr. Sagan thought
that science was on the verge of solving the mysteries of life and creation and
that this advancement of science made 'the God hypothesis' unnecessary. 

by itself.  God had to say, "Hey, flower, open." ...

There are many legitimate scientific issues relating to origins and ends"
||What is the origin of the human species? Where did plants and animals come
from? how did life arise? the Earth, the planets, the Sun, the stars? 
Does the universe have an origin, and if so, what?  And finally, a still
more fundamental and exotic question, which many scientists would say is
essentially untestible and therefore meaningless: Why are the laws of nature
the way they are?  The idea that a God or gods is necessary to effect one
or more of these origins has been under repeated attack over the last few
thousand years. Because we know something about phototropism and plant
hormones, we can understand the opening of the morning glory independently of
divine microintervention.  It is the same for the entire skein of
causality back to the origin of the universe.  As we learn more and more
about the universe, there seems less and less for God to do.  (1979, pp.
285-6)

Now, thirty years later, Stephen Hawking is solving the mysteries of creation with a hop, a skip and a jump, just as did Carl Sagan, while providing the most superficial analysis of
his favourite new M-Theory and of why we no longer need a creator to fine tune
the parameters and laws of nature. 

Hawking has been arguing that we no longer need a Deity or Creator for over
twenty years.  His earlier focus was upon the need to develop a theory of
quantum gravity in order to 'smear' out the 'big bang singularity'-- regarded
as a boundary condition.

Hawking hopes that there may not be a Big Bang, no “edge” to the universe that can be singled out and pointed to as the initial starting point (the singularity). His
resistance derives from the fact that he believes an edge entails a God—at
least a causal principle that functions like a definite starting point. 
(Weber, 1986, p. 205)

In his best seller, A Brief History of Time (1988), Stephen Hawking attempted to explain creation in such a way as to avoid the God hypothesis.  Hawking suggested that if scientists were successful in
developing a unified theory of ‘quantum gravity,’ then it would do away with
the necessity of a big bang singularity.  The singularity is interpreted
as a last remaining “gap” in science’s explanatory framework, where religious
and superstitious folk still invoke the idea of God or a Creator.  The
problem for scientists, as Hawking explains, is that:

 ... all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity, where the curvature of space-time
is infinite. ... predictability would break down at the big bang. … Many people
do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of
divine intervention. ...  There were therefore a number of attempts to
avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang.   (1988, pp.
46-7)

In Hawking’s unified theory of quantum gravity, the mysterious singularity would be “smeared out” according to the uncertainty principle of quantum theory and
Feynman's sum over history approach to quanta.   In this case, he
argues, science will have arrived at a completely natural explanation of the
origin of the universe and there will be no need to invoke any metaphysical
causes, or God to account for the beginning.  Heaven forbid that a
singularity “smack of Divine intervention.” 

 “So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator.  But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or
edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be.  What
place, then, for a creator?” (Hawking, 1988, pp. 140-1)

approach of physicist R. Feynman, where all possible paths of a quantum in “imaginary
time” are added together to represent the quantum–instead of describing it
as a point particle. (Essentially, the sum over history represents the plenum
condition of all possibilities.)  Hawking notes that, in this case:

 In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down.  But in imaginary time, there are no
singularities or boundaries.  So maybe what we call imaginary time is
really more basic.... (p. 139)

According to Hawking’s philosophical musings, dissolving the singularities into imaginary time and dimensions would somehow mean that the universe would not require “an undefined boundary condition,” represented by the singularity.

Of course, it does seems that even in this model we have a boundary condition where the real time passes over into the imaginary.  In 2010, Hawking agrees with the notion of the point source derivation of the
universe.  He notes:

"... if you go far enough back in time, the universe was as small as the Planck size, a billion-trillion-trillionth of a centimeter, which is the scale at which
quantum theory does have to be taken into account. ... we do know that the
origin of the universe was a quantum event."   (2010, p. 131)

There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for
space-time.  One could say: “The boundary condition of the universe is
that it has no boundary.”  The universe would be completely self-contained
and not affected by anything outside itself.  It would neither be created
nor destroyed.  It would just BE.  (p. 136)

Dr. Hawking’s arguments for why we no longer need a Creator if we can smear out the singularity are really quite peculiar.  Even if one smears out the naughty singularity into imaginary time, it still represents a boundary condition–what Blavatsky calls a ‘ring-pass-not’ or a portal between different
levels of reality.   Dr. Hawking’s logic in dismissing God is his
leap of faith–faith in his own intellect and the powers of rational science. 
In an interview, Hawking comments: “We still believe that the universe
should be logical and beautiful.  We just dropped the word ‘God.’” 
(Weber, 1986, p. 212)  

No doubt the success of A Brief History of Time has motivated Hawking to promote a similar type of logic today, to explain why once again we do not need a Creator, this time because of M-Theory which can solve
the problem of the fine tuning of the constants and laws of nature.  Of
course, Dr. Hawking didn't find his unified wave equation or theory of quantum
gravity promised to us twenty years ago, and in fact he now espouses an
alternative view and questions even if such a unified theory is possible,
instead of a network of partial theories.

Hawking and Mlodinow embody at times, what i would consider to be the most pseudo-scientific attitudes and philosophy and pass it off as though it represents 'real science.' 
Considering that Hawking traces the universe back to 'nothing,' one would think
that we should then inquire into the nature of that 'nothngness.'  Quite
the contrary, Hawking argues:

Some people support a model in which time goes back even further than the big bang.  It is not yet clear whether a model in which time continued back beyond the big bang would be
better at explaining present observations because it seems the laws of the
evolution of the universe may break down at the big bang.  If they do, it
would make no sense to create a model that encompasses time before the big
bang, because what existed then would have no observable consequences for the
present, and so we might as well stick with the idea that the big bang was the
creation of the world.  (p. 51)

Eternal realm, but Hawking and Mlodinow want to treat the nothing as really
just nothing.  In contrast, in the Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky, she
states that there are patterns of existence pre-existent in
non-existence.  She describes a seven skinned Eternal Parent Space,
wherein there are latent Seven Luminous Lords.  When creation occurs, the
seven inside give rise to the seven outside, and the laws of nature evident in
the created world are regarded as manifesting the pre-existing patterns of
creation. 

Of course, these are two different philosophical perspectives and rationales,
but this example illustrates what i consider the glaring deficits of the
science philosophy which underlies The Grand Design.  The
creation out of nothingness is an ancient mystical idea and even in the book of
Genesis, the earth  is described before the beginning as 'empty and
void.'  Modern science also traces the universe back to a singularity, at
least in 'real time,' and this also has been an ancient mystical claim--the
zero point origin of the cosmos.  However, Drs Hawking and Mlodinow want
to dismiss 'metaphysical' or spiritual beliefs and dogmas, but they really have
no idea of how their science relates to what occult sources actually
suggest.  Blavatsky was describing a multiverse, seven dimensional
hyperspace, and cycles of expanding and contracting universes, and much more, a
century before modern physicists arrived at such bizarre ideas.

  In Pythagoras’ Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars, Margaret Wertheim provides a useful analysis of modern physics and she critically
examines the physicists’ obsession to find the ultimate “Theory of
Everything” (or TOE) which would explain all the laws of physics
within one grand theory.   Why, she asks, do physicists assume the
right to associate their endeavours with “God,” the “mind of God,” the ‘God
particle’ and the like?  Physicists assume the role of the “high priests” of
science and associate God with their favourite particle, higher dimensional
superstring or Theory of Everything.  She writes:

 Stephen Hawking, Leon Lederman, and George Smoot–these are men at the heart of contemporary physics. ...  All these men have publicly associated the quest for a unified theory
with God.  In drawing an association with contemporary physics and God,
they are not alone.  Indeed, this kind of dialogue has become endemic
among physicists–at least as far as their popular writing is concerned. ...

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