This popular Google knol or article was first written soon after the publication of Hawking’s book, the Grand Design.
Prologue
First a few words about the big picture. Atheists are right in exposing the irrationality of the Christian dogma. However, the Christians are right in as far as their claim that there needs to be a Creator of this universe, Who employed natural means to do His work. However, both parties in their self-conceit are not listening to how Islam resolves their conflict; Islam as understood by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
The title of his recent book that he has co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow is ‘The Grand Design.’ The title itself is a Freudian slip revealing the underlying conflict of Hawking’s premise. He cannot express his proposition, even briefly so, without borrowing a phrase that argues the exact opposite and suggests a Designer, a Creator, a First cause, Alpha and Omega! The authors do not offer us any new evidence to prove their premise. The book repackages commonly known scientific information. Nowhere in the book have the authors told us what could science have discovered that would have proved a Transcendent God, in other words their conclusion is in fact, only their starting premise. The main thesis of the book seems to rely on the multiverse theory and M Theory, which is used to rescue the sinking ship of atheism. These are invoked in one form or the other in concluding paragraphs of almost every chapter after the fifth one. The multiverse theory however belongs to science fiction rather than science and this point is elaborated in detail in a section of the article titled, ‘All about Multiverse.’ Hawking teaches us in the final paragraphs of the fifth chapter that the M theory allows for ten raised to the power 500 different universes, each with its own laws. Now, any universe outside our own by its very definition cannot be observed, so multiverse theory lies outside the realm of science, but paraphrasing Hawking’s number of possible universes, there may be ten raised to the power 500 variables that make our universe biophylic. The other main emphasis of the book is that if there is natural and orderly explanation of everything then it rules out the possibility of God, the Creator, as if God could resort to only supernatural, miraculous or chaotic means and He did not have the wisdom to create Natural Laws and use them for His creative work. A fairly detailed discussion on this issue can be found in one of my other articles titled, ‘Religion and Science: the Indispensible God Hypothesis.’ In medical science, in almost every study with any statistics, there is something called p value! The long and short of which is that anything that has only 5% likelihood of happening by chance is not attributed to chance but to the treatment under study. In contrast to this the likelihood of blind chance in cosmology can build to one in a billion or one in a trillion or beyond and those who have preconceived commitment to atheism keep on weaving fairy tales despite the odds. This article should be read along with two sister articles by me: 1. The anesthesia of familiarity: There should be a Creator for this universe 2. A challenge for Dawkins: Where did carbon come from? If you cannot read the whole article, just read the Epilogue at the end.
Article
A concise review of the book, the Grand Design by Stephen Hawking was published in early 2011 in the Muslim Sunrise. This article is a detailed version of that review.
There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe, Professor Stephen Hawking has said. He had previously argued belief in a creator was not incompatible with science but in a new book, he concludes the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics. To set the record straight let me quote what he had said years ago, “The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications.”
The question arises where did the laws come from and how can they create a whole universe purely by chance?
Never mind recreating a complete universe, let us just try creating a sequence. Imagine ten numbered balls in the picture I show only nine here:
Suggested reading: Stephen Hawking Passes Away – May God Bless His Soul, But He Didn’t Believe in One
Now these ten balls are in a lottery machine:
The machine coughs out one ball a second and I want to get all ten balls coming out in the numerical sequence, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. After every draw the ball is put back in the pile of ten in the machine, one keeps popping out every second and we keep recording it. How long will it take us to get our whole sequence right? It is a simple exercise in statistics. Let us start from the scratch. For the first ball to be number one among the ten the likelihood is 1/10 for the next number to be two the likelihood is 1/10 multiplied by 1/10 (1/10 * 1/10) and for the next number to be three the likelihood is 1/10 * 1/10 * 1/10. To get the whole sequence right and to rephrase this probability issue we will need 1 followed by 10 zeroes seconds, namely, 10,000,000,000, which is 10 billion seconds. It does not seem such a difficult goal but now imagine that you and me are going to have a life expectancy of 100 years, how many seconds is that:
100 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 3,153,600,000
So, it is probably not happening in your or my lifetime. We will need to live at least 300 years to be sure that this simple sequence pops up, during our lifetime. This is the simple nature of blind chance.
But, if we have infinite time at our disposal this sequence will happen infinite number of times. With infinite time at our disposal both probable and improbable events will happen infinite times. That is the nature of infinity and that is the main ploy of the atheists to deny a Creator and blame every wonderful creation on blind chance. How come?
God is infinite but His creation is finite. If somehow we imagine the creation as infinite as well then chaotic things begin to happen, as humans cannot easily fathom infinity, in that both probable and improbable events will happen infinite times in an infinite and eternal universe. Multiverse is a ploy, by the atheists, to invoke infinity to create the desired effect to fool the naive. ‘Infinity,’ becomes the creator, a god to be worshiped by the atheists, but, without any accountability, which the atheists so strongly desire to escape!
Plato would make Socrates say in the Republic (7.514a ff.), the human condition is comparable to that of prisoners of an underground cave, whose unfortunate fate is to confuse reality with passing shadows created by a fire inside their miserable abode and kept in motion by clever manipulators, who in the name of politics, religion, science, and tradition control the human herd.
The Grand Design, part serialized in the Times, says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something,” Hawking concluded. A good refutation of this atheistic turn by Stephen Hawking is a book the Mind of God by Paul Davies. Davies may not be a devout believer now but his most famous book the Mind of God, does outline a good case for there being a Creator of this universe. In the words of Professor Kenneth Miller, “Science itself does not contradict the hypothesis of God. Rather, it gives us a window on a dynamic and creative universe that expands our appreciation of the Divine in ways that could not have been imagined in ages past.”[2] Additionally, “If dinosaurs had not died in this event, they would probably still dominate the domain of large-bodied vertebrates,” so theorizes a committed atheist Stephen Jay Gould, “as they had for so long with such conspicuous success, and mammals would be small creatures in the interstices of their world. This situation prevailed for 100 million years; why not for 60 million more? . . . In an entirely literal sense, we owe our existence, as large and reasoning animals, to our lucky stars.”[3]There are innumerable lucky chances or for a believer, instances of Providences that have gone into making the universe suitable for human life. Some of these have been enumerated and explained in books like Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, and Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe. When we look at the totality of the evidence in biology and astronomy, for Allah’s Providence, we are reminded of the words of the Holy Quran, “If you try to count the favors of Allah, you will not be able to number them. Indeed man is very unjust, very ungrateful,’ as the odds against our biophylic universe are infinite. (Al Quran 14:35)
Now I will write refutation of some individual chapters of the book:
Chapter 3: What is Reality?
After talking about the duality of light, mentioning Newton rings as an example for the wave nature of light and photo-electric effect as a manifestation of the particle nature of light, Hawking and Mlodinow go on to write:
“The idea of particles was familiar from rocks, pebbles, and sand. But this wave/particle duality-the idea that an object could be described as either a particle or a wave-is as foreign to everyday experience as is the idea that you can drink a chunk of sandstone.
Dualities like this-situations in which two very different theories accurately describe the same phenomenon – are consistent with model-dependent realism. Each theory can describe and explain certain properties, and neither theory can be said to be better or more real than the other. Regarding the laws that govern the universe, what we can say is this: There seems to be no single mathematical model or theory that can describe every aspect of the universe. Instead, as mentioned in the opening chapter, there seems to be the network of theories called M – theory. Each theory in the M-theory network is good at describing phenomena within a certain range. Wherever their ranges overlap, the various theories in the network agree, so they can all be said to be parts of the same theory. But no single theory within the network can describe every aspect of the universe-all the forces of nature, the particles that feel those forces, and the framework of space and time in which it all plays out.”[4]
It is a strange paradox that the best human minds after centuries of investigation, have barely begun to scratch the surface of ‘what is reality,’ yet some among them claim certainty that there is only chaos and an accident behind that has led to and orchestrated this ‘reality!’ The dual nature of light that Hawking chooses as a metaphor, when we pursue it deeper, the elegance and beauty of a simple ray of light, argues for a Designer and a Creator. I have discussed this point in a separate article. Whereas the 19th century physics, in its arrogance, had shut the door to ‘Personal God’ the 20th century physics has widely opened it again. The article, the Indispensible God Hypothesis can be reviewed in the fall, 2008 volume of Muslim Sunrise:
Chapter 4: Alternative Histories
“Probabilities in quantum theories are different. They reflect a fundamental randomness in nature. The quantum model of nature encompasses principles that contradict not only our everyday experience but our intuitive concept of reality. Those who find those principles weird or difficult to believe are in good company, the company of great physicists such as Einstein and even Feyman, whose description of quantum theory we will soon present. In fact, Feynman once wrote, ‘I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.’ But quantum physics agrees with observation. It has never failed a test, and it has been tested more than any other theory in science.”[5]
Chater 7: The Apparent Miracle
One of the first to recognize that this might involve a good measure of serendipity was Fred Hoyle, in the I950s. Hoyle believed that all chemical elements had originally been formed from hydrogen, which he felt was the true primordial substance. Hydrogen has the simplest atomic nucleus, consisting of just one proton, either alone or in combination with one or two neutrons. (Different forms of hydrogen, or any nucleus, having the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are called isotopes.) Today we know that helium and lithium, atoms whose nuclei contain two and three protons, were also primordially synthesized, in much smaller amounts, when the universe was about 200 seconds old. Life, on the other hand, depends on more complex elements. Carbon is the most important of these, the basis for all organic chemistry.Though one might imagine ‘living’ organisms such as intelligent computers produced from other elements, such as silicon, it is doubtful that life could have spontaneously evolved in the absence of carbon. The reasons for that are technical but have to do with the unique manner in which carbon bonds with other elements. Carbon dioxide, for example, is gaseous at room temperature, and biologically very useful. Since silicon is the element directly below carbon on the periodic table, it has similar chemical properties. However, silicon dioxide, quartz, is far more useful in a rock collection than in an organism’s lungs. Still, perhaps life forms could evolve that feast on silicon and rhythmically twirl their tails in pools of liquid ammonia. Even that type of exotic life could not evolve from just the primordial elements, for those elements can form only two stable compounds, lithium hydride, which is a colorless crystalline solid, and hydrogen gas, neither of them a compound likely to reproduce or even to fall in love. Also, the fact remains that we are a carbon life-form, and that raises the issue of how carbon, whose nucleus contains six protons, and the other heavy elements in our bodies were created.The first step occurs when older stars start to accumulate helium, which is produced when two hydrogen nuclei collide and fuse with each other. This fusion is how stars create the energy that warms us. Two helium atoms can in turn collide to form beryllium, an atom whose nucleus contains four protons. Once beryllium is formed, it could in principle fuse with a third helium nucleus to form carbon. But that doesn’t happen, because the isotope of beryllium that is formed decays almost immediately back into helium nuclei.The situation changes when a star starts to run out of hydrogen. When that happens the star’s core collapses until its central temperature rises to about 100 million degrees Kelvin. Under those conditions, nuclei encounter each other so often that some beryllium nuclei collide with a helium nucleus before they have had a chance to decay. Beryllium can then fuse with helium to form an isotope of carbon that is stable. But that carbon is still a long way from forming ordered aggregates of chemical compounds of the type that can enjoy a glass of Bordeaux, juggle flaming bowling pins, or ask questions about the universe. For beings such as humans to exist, the carbon must be moved from inside the star to friendlier neighborhoods. That, as we’ve said, is accomplished when the star, at the end of its life cycle, explodes as a supernova, expelling carbon and other heavy elements that later condense into a planet.This process of carbon creation is called the triple alpha process because ‘alpha particle’ is another name for the nucleus of the isotope of helium involved, and because the process requires that three of them (eventually) fuse together. The usual physics predicts that the rate of carbon production via the triple alpha process ought to be quite small. Noting this, in 1952 Hoyle predicted that the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the isotope of carbon formed, a situation called a resonance, which greatly increases the rate of a nuclear reaction. At the time, no such energy level was known, but based on Hoyle’s suggestion, William Fowler at Caltech sought and found it, providing important support for Hoyle’s views on how complex nuclei were created.Hoyle wrote, ‘I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars;’ At the time no one knew enough nuclear physics to understand the magnitude of the serendipity that resulted in these exact physical laws. But in investigating the validity of the strong anthropic principle, in recent years physicists began asking themselves what the universe would have been like if the laws of nature were different.[7]
Today we can create computer models that tell us how the rate of the triple alpha reaction depends upon the strength of the fundamental forces of nature. Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Change those rules of our universe just a bit, and the conditions for our existence disappear!By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. It turns out that it is not only the strengths of the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force that are made to order for our existence. Most of the fundamental constants in our theories appear fine tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life. For example, if the other nuclear force, the weak force, were much weaker, in the early universe all the hydrogen in the cosmos would have turned to helium, and hence there would be no normal stars; if it were much stronger, exploding supernovas would not eject their outer envelopes, and hence would fail to seed interstellar space with the heavy elements planets require to foster life. If protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms. If the sum of the masses of the types of quark that make up a proton were changed by as little as 10 percent, there would be far fewer of the stable atomic nuclei of which we are made; in fact, the summed quark masses seem roughly optimized for the existence of the largest number of stable nuclei.
If one assumes that a few hundred million years in stable orbit are necessary for planetary life to evolve, the number of space dimensions is also fixed by our existence. That is because, according to the laws of gravity, it is only in three dimensions that stable elliptical orbits are possible. Circular orbits are possible in other dimensions, but those, as Newton feared, are unstable. In any but three dimensions even a small disturbance, such as that produced by the pull of the other planets, would send a planet off its circular orbit and cause it to spiral either into or away from the sun, so we would either burn up or freeze. Also, in more than three dimensions the gravitational force between two bodies would decrease more rapidly than it does in three dimensions. In three dimensions the gravitational force drops to X of its value if one doubles the distance. In four dimensions it would drop to Ys, in five dimensions it would drop to;, and so on. As a result, in more than three dimensions the sun would not be able to exist in a stable state with its internal pressure balancing the pull of gravity. It would either fall apart or collapse to form a black hole, either of which could ruin your day. On the atomic scale, the electrical forces would behave in the same way as gravitational forces. That means the electrons in atoms would either escape or spiral into the nucleus. In neither case would atoms as we know them be possible.The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it. 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.The most impressive fine-tuning coincidence involves the so called cosmological constant in Einstein’s equations of general relativity.[8]
Many people through the ages have attributed to God the beauty and complexity of nature that in their time seemed to have no scientific explanation. But just as Darwin and Wallace explained how the apparently miraculous design of living forms could appear without intervention by a supreme being, 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.[9]
What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It cannot be so easily explained, and has far. deeper physical and philosophical implications. Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained, and raises the natural question of why it is that way.Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago right up to the present. In the Mayan Popol Vuh mythohistorical narratives the gods proclaim, “We shall receive neither glory nor honor from all that we have created and formed until humanbeings exist, endowed with sentience?’ A typical Egyptian text dated 2000 BC states, “Men, the cattle of God, have been well provided for. He [the sun god] made the sky and earth for their benefit?’
…A more modern illustration of the Christian view was given a few years ago when Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, wrote, ‘Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse [many universes] hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human nature by proclaiming that the immanent design in nature is real?’ In cosmology the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design to which the cardinal was referring is the finetuning of physical law we described above.[10]
I could have ignored the authors’ lack of mention of Islam and the Muslims in the above paragraphs until I noted their seemingly deliberate omission of naming the first Muslim Nobel Laureate, Dr. Abdus Salam and his contribution to the unification of the forces of nature. Hawking mentions Newton, Einstein and Maxwell but conveniently omits Salam, in the conclusion of his seventh chapter:
“Ever since Newton, and especially since Einstein, the goal of physics has been to find simple mathematical principles of the kind Kepler envisioned, and with them to create a unified theory of everything that would account for every detail of the matter and forces we observe in nature. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Maxwell and Einstein united the theories of electricity, magnetism, and light. In the I970s the standard model was created, a single theory of the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic force. String theory and M-theory the came into being in an attempt to include the remaining force, gravity.”[11]
Chapter 8: The Grand Design
The authors very eloquently try to summarize what they have explained about the laws of nature, through out the book, in the very beginning of the last chapter:
“In this book we have described how regularities in the . motion of astronomical bodies such as the sun, the moon, and the planets suggested that they were governed by fixed laws rather than being subject to the arbitrary whims and caprices of gods and demons. At first the existence of such laws became apparent only in astronomy (or astrology, which was regarded as much the same). The behavior of things on earth is so complicated and subject to so many influences that early civilizations were unable to discern any clear patterns or laws governing these phenomena. Gradually, how¬ever, new laws were discovered in areas other than astronomy, and this led to the idea of scientific determinism: There must be a com¬plete set of laws that, given the state of the universe at a specific time, would specify how the universe would develop from that time for-ward. These laws should hold everywhere and at all times; otherwise they wouldn’t be laws. There could be no exceptions or miracles. Gods or demons couldn’t intervene in the running of the universe.At the time that scientific determinism was first proposed, Newton’s laws of motion and gravity were the only laws known. We have described how these laws were extended by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, and how other laws were discov¬ered to govern other aspects of the universe.The laws of nature tell us how the universe behaves, but they don’t answer the why? questions that we posed at the start of this book:Why is there something rather than nothing?Why do we exist?
Why this particular set of laws and not some other?
All about Multiverse
Baron John Rees, President of the Royal Society of UK writes in his book, Just Six Numbers: the Deep Forces That Shape the Universe describes:
“I have highlighted these six because each plays a crucial and distinctive role in our universe, and together they determine how the universe evolves and what its internal potentialities are; moreover, three of them (those that pertain to the large-scale universe) are only now being measured with any precision.These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if anyone of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator?”[13]
“There are various ways of reacting to the apparent fine tuning of our six numbers. One hard-headed response is that we couldn’t exist if these numbers weren’t adjusted in the appropriate ‘special’ way: we manifestly are here, so there’s nothing to be surprise about. Many scientists take this line, but it certainly leaves me unsatisfied. I‘m impressed by a metaphor given by the Canadian philosopher John Leslie. Suppose you are facing a firing squad. Fifty marksmen take aim, but they all miss. If they hadn’t all missed, you wouldn’t have survived to ponder the matter. But you wouldn’t just leave it at that – you’d still be baffled, and would seek some further reason for your good fortune.”[14][15]
“Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, wrote, ‘Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse [many universes] hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human nature by proclaiming that the immanent design in nature is real?’ In cosmology the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design to which the cardinal was referring is the fine tuning of physical law we described above.”
I agree with the Cardinal completely in his assesment of the multiverse. It is the preconceived atheism that makes many scientists weave artificial explanation for the order, beauty and organization that they have observed in the universe and in the living organisms on our planet earth. Multiverse is the main ploy of the atheists to wriggle out of the evidence of the finely tuned universe. Antony Flew explains, “This fine tuning has been explained in two ways. Some scientists have said the fine tuning is evidence for divine design; many others have speculated that our universe is one of multiple others—a ‘multiverse’—with the difference that ours happened to have the right conditions for life. Virtually no major scientist today claims that the fine tuning was purely a result of chance factors at work in a single universe.”[16]
“Some people may be inclined to dismiss such concepts (multiverse) as ‘metaphysics’ (a damning put-down from a physicist’s viewpoint). But I think the multiverse genuinely lies within the province of science, even though it is plainly still no more than a tentative hypothesis. This is because we can already map out what questions must be addressed in order to put it on a more credible footing; more importantly (since any good scientific theory must be vulnerable to being refuted), we can envisage some developments that might rule out the concept.”[19]
God cannot be disallowed natural mechanisms
Paul Davies, Author of God and the New Physics, and the Mind of God, has presented evidence from design. I may not agree with every thing that he has lately said but would whole heartedly agree with the following quotes. He says in a Templeton Award address, From First Things:
“All the richness and diversity of matter and energy we observe today has emerged since the beginning in a long and complicated sequence of self- organizing physical processes. The laws of physics not only permit a universe to originate spontaneously, but they encourage it to organize and complexity itself to the point where conscious beings emerge who can look back on the great cosmic drama and reflect on what it all means.
…Now you may think I have written God entirely out of the picture. Who needs a God when the laws of physics can do such a splendid job? But we are bound to return to that burning question: Where do the laws of physics come from? And why those laws rather than some other set? Most especially: Why a set of laws that drives the searing, featureless gases coughed out of the big bang toward life and consciousness and intelligence and cultural activities such as religion, art, mathematics, and science?”[23]
Planetary conditions
In his new book, an extract of which appears in the Times, Britain’s most famous physicist sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have sprung out of chaos.
Citing the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun, he said: “That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings.”
“Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not ‘arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature.’ Instead, he maintained, the order in the universe was ‘created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition:’ It is easy to understand why one might think that. The many improbable occurrences that conspired to enable our existence, and our world’s human-friendly design, would indeed be puzzling if ours were the only solar system in the universe. But in 1992 came the first confirmed observation of a planet orbiting a star other than our sun. We now know of hundreds of such planets, and few doubt that there exist countless others among the many billions of stars in our universe. That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions-the single sun, the lucky combination of earth-sun distance and solar mass-far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings. Planets of all sorts exist. Some-or at least one-support life. 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.”[24]
Free will argues against a deterministic universe
How can one tell if a being has free will? If one encounters an alien, how can one tell if it is just a robot or it has a mind of its own? The behavior of a robot would be completely determined, unlike that of a being with free will. Thus one could in principle detect a robot as a being whose actions can be predicted. As we said in Chapter 2, this may be impossibly difficult if the being is large and complex. We cannot even solve exactly the equations for three or more particles interacting with each other. Since an alien the size of a human would contain about a thousand trillion trillion particles even if the alien were a robot, it would be impossible to solve the equations and predict what it would do. We would therefore have to say that any complex being has free will- not as a fundamental feature, but as an effective theory, an admission of our inability to do the calculations that would enable us to predict its actions.[25]
M Theory
Stephen Hawking concludes his book with the following paragraph:
M theory is well and good, in due course of time we may have XY and Z theories but they have no bearing on there being a Transcendent Creator. The greater the complexity and organization of the Natural Laws, louder they announce the presence of a benevolent God! What has been discussed earlier under the heading,
The Rubin Vase
Epilogue
“As man cannot perceive with his physical eyes the Imperceptible Being Who is latent in everyone like fire and yet is hidden from everyone, nor can he find Him through the exercise of his imperfect reason, he has been subject to many errors in his understanding of Him and through his errors he renders to others that which is His due. God Almighty has mentioned an excellent illustration in the Holy Qur’an that the world is like a great hall paved smooth with slabs of glass and a current of water flows underneath them which runs very fast. A person looking at the slabs of glass wrongly imagines them to be water also and is afraid of walking upon them as he would be afraid of walking upon water, though in reality they are only glass but very clear and transparent. Thus, these great objects in heaven like the sun and the moon etc. are transparent like glass and are worshiped by mistake. Behind them, there is a Higher Power at work which is flowing swiftly like water. It is the mistake of those who worship created things that they attribute to the glass all this activity which is being manifested by the Power behind it. This is the explanation of the verse, Al Quran 27:45.اِنَّه صَرْحٌ مُّمَرَّدٌ مِّنْ قَوَارِيْرَ
‘It is a great hall paved with smooth slabs of glass.’ (Al Quran 27:45)As the Being of God Almighty, despite its brightness, is hidden beyond sight, the physical universe is not adequate for its true recognition. This is the reason why those who depended upon the physical system despite their careful consideration of its perfect orderliness which comprehends hundreds of wonders within itself, and despite their pursuit of astronomy and physics and philosophy to a degree which shows that they had penetrated through heaven and earth, could not get rid of their doubts and suspicions and became involved in all types of errors and wandered far afield in their absurd fantasies. Many of them become involved in grave errors and wander far away in pursuit of their stupid fancies. Their utmost conjecture is that this grand system which displays great wisdom must have a Maker, but this conjecture is incomplete and this insight is defective. The affirmation that this system must have a creator does not amount to a positive affirmation that He does in truth exist.”[30]
References
- J Boslough. Stephen Hawkings universe. William Morrow, New York, 985. Page 121.
- http://www.templeton.org/belief/
- Stephen Gould. Wonderful life. Page 318.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 58.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 74.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 66.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Pages 156-159.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Pages 159-161.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 165.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 162-163.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 165-166.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Pages 171-172.
- John Rees. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe. Basic Books, 2000. Page 4.
- John Rees. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe. Basic Books, 2000. Page 4.
- John Rees. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe. Basic Books, 2000. Page 165-166.
- Antony Flew. There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Harper One, 2007. Page 115.
- Paul Davies, “Universes Galore: Where Will It All End?” http://cosmos.asu.edu/publications/chapters/Universes%20galore.pdf
- Richard Swinburne, “Design Defended,” Think (Spring 2004): page 17.
- John Rees. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe. Basic Books, 2000. Page 166-167.
- John Rees. Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe. Basic Books, 2000. Page 168.
- http://knol.google.com/k/zia-shah/the-indispensible-god-hypothesis/1qhnnhcumbuyp/16#
- 5.Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 165.
- http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9508/articles/davies.html
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 153.
- 4.Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Pages 178.
- Kenneth R Miller. Finding Darwin’s God. Cliff Street Books (Harper Collins), paper back edition 2000, p. 253.
- Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. Bantam Books, New York, 2010. Page 181.
- Stephen Jay Gould, “Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge,” Scientific American, July 1992, 267(1):118-121.
- Michael Shermer. Why Darwin Matters. Times Books, 2006. Page 40.
- http://www.alislam.org/library/books/Philosophy-of-Teachings-of-Islam.pdf
Categories: Highlight, Religion & Science, Religion and Science
Limits of probability
Atheist writers are fond of building computer generated models or other ways of playing on the Law of Large Numbers to support their creation theories when design is purely accidentally based on chaos and randomness.
Here I borrow a metaphor from a Teaching company course, ‘What Are the Chances? Probability Made Clear,’ Taught By Professor Michael Starbird, Ph.D., at University of Wisconsin at Madison.
In the second lecture, he examines the odds of blindly generating a short sentence like, ‘to be or not to be,’ in the lifetime of our universe at one attempt per second is only one in a billion. Prof. Starbird writes:
Professor Michael Starbird, Ph.D. What Are the Chances? Probability Made Clear. The Teaching Company course Guidebook, 2006. Page 12.
These will be some monkeys, creating a billion sequences a second, still a small odds for getting a short sentence randomly, not to speak of the whole of Hamlet! Imagine the food supplies for all these monkeys, the ink supplies for all these type writers and the garbage disposal of all the paper! Odds for any event can be calculated, if we have some requisite information at our disposal. But, as I mentioned in the introduction of this article, any outcome that has a probability of less than 5% by chance alone is not attributed to chance but to the therapeutic agent being studied. But, in astronomy the odds against a biophylic universe can rise to like one in a billion or one in a trillion and the atheists fail to see Providence.
The long and short of this is that when Humpty Dumpty had a fall, evidence suggests that he was pushed!
Some quotes from Hawking from before with theistic implications
Hubble’s observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no conservational consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined. It should be emphasized that this beginning in time is very different from those that had been considered previously. In an unchanging universe a beginning in time is something that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe; there is no physical necessity for a beginning. One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job! [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 8-9.]
The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started — it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. 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? [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 140-41.]
Stephen Hawking is just trying to sell a book
By Suresh Emre
In the excerpts of the soon to-be-published book titled “Grand Design” the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking says:
“God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the Universe due to a series of developments in physics.”
I am not shocked by the extreme arrogance displayed by a physicist. I was a professional physicist so I know the world of physics very well. Such arrogance is commonplace among physicists. My indignation is caused by the irresponsibility demonstrated by the publisher Bantam Books and Stephen Hawking. He is one of the most respected theoretical physicists and it is irresponsible of him to state his personal opinion as scientific fact. He is misleading the public about the current state of physics. He is not a representative of the majority opinion among physicists either.
I wrote elsewhere that not all physicists are atheists. Among the physicists Paul Davies is the voice of reason. Paul Davies articulates the position of a significant number of scientists when he says:
Paul Davies, “The Mind of God”, Simon & Schuster (1993), ISBN 9780671797188.
http://knol.google.com/k/suresh-emre/stephen-hawking-is-just-trying-to-sell/35vsnxisjn2mw/330#
The biophylic universe
Antony Flew who used to be formally a well known champion of atheism, has presented another interesting metaphor to look at the biophylic universe that I did not include in my article. He writes:
(Antony Flew. There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Harper One, 2007. Page 113-115.)
In “The Grand Design” Stephen Hawking postulates that M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics…the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate, but never completed. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theories.
In my free ebook on comparative mysticism, “the greatest achievement in life,” is a quote by Albert Einstein: …most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is the center of all religion.
E=mc², Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Love, Grace, Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.
About six years back I have postulated gravitation force theory of God.
1. Gravitation force is the ultimate creator
2. In scientific terminology source of gravitational wave is God.
Stephen Hawking writes in The Grand Design, “It is not necessary to
invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”
Hawking said the Big Bang was merely the consequence of the law of
gravity. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking had suggested that the
idea of God or a divine being was not necessarily incompatible with a
scientific understanding of the Universe.
Although Hawking is very close to Truth yet he is not perfect in his
views while discarding the role of divine being. I consider the role
of eternal gravity uppermost but I strongly differ with Hawking on the
role of divine being. I consider Divine Ordainment is the cause of
Creation of Universe.
Now I give Radhasoami Faith view of Creation Theory. In Sar Bachan
(Poetry) composed by His Holiness Soamiji Maharaj the August Founder
of Radhasoami Faith the details of creation and dissolution has been
described very scientifically. It is written in Jeth Mahina (name of
Hindi moth) in this Holy Book: Only He Himself (Supreme Father)and
none else was there. There issued forth a great current of
spirituality, love and grace (In scientific terminology we may call
this current as gravitational wave). This is called His Mauj (Divine
Ordainment). This was the first manifestation of Supreme Being. This
Divine Ordainment brought into being three regions, viz., Agam, Alakh,
and Satnam of eternal bliss. Then a current emerged with a powerful
sound (this was the First Big Bang). It brought forth the creation of
seven Surats or currents of various shades and colours (in scientific
terminology we may call it electromagnetic waves). Here the true Jaman
or coagulant was given (in scientific terminology this coagulant may
be called as weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force). Surats,
among themselves, brought the creation into being.
These currents descended down further and brought the whole
universe/multi verse into being i.e. black holes, galaxies etc. were
born.
I would like to add further that sound energy and gravitational force
current are non polar entity and electromagnetic force is bi-polar.
Hence spiritual polarization, if occurred, is occurred in the region
of Sat Lok and region below to it only.
Infinite expanse of gravitational force field is the region of dark energy.
In Bible it is written that in the beginning was the Word; the Word
was with God; and the Word was God.
According to Radhasoami Faith “Shabd (Word) is the beginning and end
of all. The three loks (worlds) and the fourth Lok, all have been
created by Shabd.” (Sar Bachan Poetry)
If atheism is the answer of everything then our living is futile for everything will perish & we will never be able to meet our parents & forefathers.
If atheism were the true answer all 124000 holy Prophets will not have lived impoverished lives.
They would have tried to live like kings rather than paupers. They saw what scientists cannot see or even perceive , therefore they declared life after death with the faith in ALMIGHTY CREATOR is the real life.
All true Religious Books contain the same information There is a CREATOR , All alone,
HE is invisible, Beyond time WHO has no beginning and no end. HE is the SUPREME REALITY.
This reality has bestowed us with enormous power
The power of mind. The minds that travels faster than the light, The mind which can go back to the past million years,Which can travel amidst time & space in a second. Each has an identical face with identical finger prints a beautiful design.
THE HOLY Quran contains the spoken words of glorified ALMIGHTY GOD.
Yes,everything has a purpose:Is this the only purpose of our livings that we work or beg or rob or steal ,sleep, enjoy & die & get rotten?
What is the purpose of Creation?
THE CREATOR ALMIGHTY GOD was all alone , HIS throne
was above water & the universe was full of smoke.
THE CREATOR wanted show HIS power & created humanbeing to know HIM ,Glorify HIM BOWDOWN before HIM and adore HIM for granting us endless life.
HE DIVIDED our life in two portion like a divided HOUSE. one portion for this earth with death & the
other portion with endlessliving.
HE divided first portion to test us & granted free Wills either to accept HIM or reject. follow the rules of laws set by HIM .
Before HE began the creation HE set HIS own rule” MY mercy supersede my wrath”
HE therefore does not punish unfaithful as human does,
but HIS mercy has also limit.
History stand as witness how sinneres were destroyed by HIM in the time of Prophet Noah, Prophet Moses, Prophet Lot .
THe Noas Ark was discovered at the mount of Ararath Turkey, Sodom & Gumera discovered near Oman, Pherror’s charriot was discovered in Red sea.
Most of the atheists play the games of Darwin ,but
they donot read that at the end of life Darwin said he was an Agonist not an athiest.
Einstein clearly stated” The more one penetrates to space,the more respect he conveys to GOD.
Sir Issac Newton rejected trinity & said only ONE created the vast universe.
Many scientists now believe in Holy Quran & has accepted Islam.
1400 years ago,ALMIGHTY GOD declared to Holy Prophet Mohammed that HE created expanding Universe and at the end after second coming of Holy Jesus will roll back the universe.
Everything will collapse ,only HE will be there like the beginning & then HE will recreate the universe, call everyone from their graves & there will be the judgement day.
Believer will believe ,non believer will be veering
round the chandlier of their athiest minds.
Dear Dr. Ahmed I agree with your quotes of Einstein and Newton. In fact neither scientists are atheist nor their work supports atheism. They take us closer to Truth/God/Ultimate Reality.
Thanks Dr. Ahmed. I am also a firm believer in God.
Sir David Attenborough on God
Sir Attenborough certainly stands in awe of the majesty of nature but raises the question of suffering to deny God. Let me quote here the concluding paragraph, in the later editions of the legendary book of Sir Charles Darwin, on the Origin of Species that can make one quickly conceptualize the role of suffering in the grand scheme of things:
Once the question about suffering is understood as a tool for evolution, as Charles Darwin suggested, then one is ready to fully appreciate the beauty of God’s creation as suggested by many of the verses of the Holy Quran.
Religions rely on faith which is believing in something without evidence and more to the point, believing in something because of a “want” for it to be true. Science is based on repeated observations. Theories become facts by those repeated observations always having the same outcome. Only a very disturbed individual does the same action over and over expecting different results each time. That’s why evolution as a theory has the same weight (no pun intended) as gravity as a theory. The discovery of the Higgs Boson makes creationism Mythology and nothing more. No religion can claim their books have prior knowledge of scientific discovery that happened hundreds if not thousands of years after their respective texts were around. The more science discovers about the nature of matter and the forces involved, the more rediculous the old cop out explaination, “God/Allah did it” becomes and when the pious are exposed to facts like that, they usually resort to closed-minded arrogance, crying offence or even implying that flaws in their ideology don’t exist and stating otherwise amounts to some form of bigotry.
Atheists are working on a principle “Seeing is believing”. That is bad. I amend that principle to “Seeing is not denying”. i.e. to see is not to deny. That is all.
In fact seeing is no believing. Belief needs some kind of curtain or invisibility or doubt. For example, I see the Sun. If I believe in the Sun, it is not anything of importance. It would be foolish of me to deny the Sun. What do I gain by believing in the SUN. Even a child believes there is a Sun.
We may need to define the word “Belief”. Belief should be concerned with the visible and invisible. If there are visible things and invisible things, if there are real and imaginary things, as we have in mathematics then we need to keep the belief for such things which are not visible. We cannot apply the belief to visible things only.
That is why, the Quran teaches, in the very beginning of the second chapter about belief. It says belief is for the unseen things (Yuminoona bi alghaib..) i.e. the God fearing people will believe in the unseen things… they will not apply the condition that they will believe only in the things which are seen.
In real world, we experience things which we cannot present but feel there effect. What is electricity?/ Current is running in the wire. We observe its effects but we cannot actually see the current. Similarly there is imaginary resistance (reactance) we cannot measure and we cannot deny it. So there is a realm of imagination which is being well admitted by all of us, of unseen things; things which we cannot present but at the same time we cannot deny.
I would request all atheists to abandon the saying “Seeing is believing.” We believe in the things by their effect. In fact we see some things by their effect only (not by the eyes), that may be love and hatred and pain and happiness, there are so many abstract things that are part of us. Shall we reject them all, i.e. our feelings? We feel hot, sometimes we feel cold. Have we seen the heat? But we admit it.
Let us chart out a good way as to not apply a precondition that Seeing is believing.
In different religions, it is a sin to say that they want to see God. That is in Islam and Judaism. Prophet Moses wanted to see God. He was told that he cannot see his God.
The followers of Moses also demanded to see God. they were severely punished for demanding such a thing. there is a Creator, whoever He is and we believe in Him even if we cannot see him.
VARIOUS LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Anirudh Satsangi, Ankita Satsangi, Achraj Satsangi
Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Dayalbagh, Agra
“…we tend to see hydrogen as just dead, material, odourless, colourless stuff. But from an evolutionary perspective, we realize that if you just take hydrogen, and you leave it alone it eventually turns into a human. To me, it suggests that if human are spiritual beings, then hydrogen is somehow spiritual too.” (Brian Swimme, Cosmologist)
A. MACROCOSMIC LEVEL
1. “Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, reason, and also ego; these constitute My nature divided into eight parts. This indeed my lower nature; other than this, by which the whole universe is sustained know it to be My higher (or Spiritual) nature in the form of jive (the life principle)….. all beings have evolved from this twofold prakriti, and that I am the source of entire creation, and into me again it disappears.” (Lord Krishna)
2. “The current descending some distance and focusing ………., it brought some creation (Agam Lok, Alakh Lok & Sat Lok) into existence. The process of creation stopped at this stage and for a considerable time this was the entire creation.
THE CURRENT MENTIONED IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH IS EXTREMELY SUBTLE AND IT CANNOT BE SEEN IN ANY MANNER NOR CAN ONE HAVE ANY IDEA OF ITS FORM.” (His Holiness Huzur Maharaj, 18 – 1898, 2nd Spiritual Head of Radhasoami Faith)
3. “Below this Region, during second phase of creational process, the two Kalas viz., Niranjan (Invisible Force Current) and Jyoti (Electromagnetic Force) together evolved the creation of five Tattwas (elements), four Khans (species, categories of life) and three Gunas (qualities). Then Niranjan separated Himself from the rest, putting the burdens of looking after the creation on them. Nobody could know of Niranjan. Only they made conjectures.” (His Holiness Soamiji Maharaj, Founder of Radhasoami Faith)
Invisible Force and Gravitation Force have identical characteristics.
4. According to Radhasoami FAITH THE UNIVERSE (MACROCOSM) has been divided into three Grand Divisions –
(a) Pure Spiritual Region – Region of pure spirit or pure consciousness
(b) In the second grand division both Spirit Force and Material Forces are manifest but spirit force predominates
(c) In third grand division material forces predominate over spirit force. Spirit force is very feeble in this region.
There are many subdivisions in each grand division. Every subdivision has its own level of consciousness.
Gravitation Force is the strongest force on black holes and weakest on Earth Planet.
B. MICROCOSMIC LEVEL
1. “………… The human body provides the opportunity for going down into life forms of animals, birds, vegetables etc. and go further down into metals or go up from the human form and attain the status of gods etc. and then become one with God.” (Sir Sahabji Maharaj (1881-1937), 5th Spiritual Head of Radhasoami Faith)
In other words metal and God and other intermediary stages, all have consciousness, although different from each other.
2. Maharshi Mahesh Yogi (1975) had described seven levels of consciousness. Each level of consciousness has different values of Physiology.
3. Swami Niranjananand Saraswati (2006) says: “Human beings are composed of two forces; prana-the cosmic energy, and consciousness-the evolving energy.” Thus consciousness is constantly evolving.
4. “……..only some aspects of the consciousness of the CE (Consciousness Element) are accessible through physical measurements. The main instrument capable of sensing any feature of CE or deriving some properties of it is the mind of a sentient entity.” (Prof. Ashok Agarwal (2012))
Through spiritual practices (Meditation and Yoga) we may be able to have access at all levels of consciousness.
CONCLUSIVELY it can be stated, “Ek tattva ki pradhanta, kaho use jad ya chetan” (Jai Shankar Prasad).
(ONLY ONE ELEMENT PREDOMINATE, say it matter or consciousness)
Thus Living and Non-living needs to be redefined.
this is only misleading concept that there is no GOD. ONLY ONE thing THAT ANYONE ANSWER that what is human being? are human is the composition of elements or some other thing? what is the soul? a person who do not know about himself, how he says that there is no creator of this universe.i ask Stephen hawking that first he study himself because he is more complicated than this universe.universe is very simple, it is the mixture of light( dark or white) matter, gases, and plasma, but human being is most complicated creator of this universe.