Sunday, October 24, 2010
Blog 32 - "You don't need God to create the universe"
Controversial title for a blog huh? During the summer, close to about 2 weeks before school started, Stephen Hawking was on Larry King Live to talk about his new book, The Grand Design. Basically, the book talks about how he's come up with new math and physics formulas that prove that the universe can be created with the environment that it has been provided with, aka, God doesn't have to be the one that created our universe, though he still could have. This was a very controversial book, and so Larry King interviewed Stephen Hawking for the first 15 minutes, and then for the remaining 30 minutes he talked to three people. The first person is the co-author, Leonard Mlowdinow, a spiritual guider, Deepak Chopra, and a priest of a Jesuit church, Robert Spitzer. It was very very interesting to see these three very different perspectives talk about the same subject, and even more entertaining (at least for me) to see these three men at each others necks trying to prove their points. What was surprising was the fact that the spiritual guider seemed to have a pretty sound argument. I had thought he would kind of be a wish washy kind of guy talking about spirits like a palm reader of sorts, but really the things he has to say (which was a lot, by the way) made a lot of logical sense to me. Anyway, I thought this interview was SO interesting, and for any of those who enjoy this kind of "what-if" kind of conversations, this is perfect for you.
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I thought this was super interesting, I watched the whole video as soon as I saw your post. It reminded me of an interview I saw with Will Wright. (The Creator of the Sims Video Game) He said that, in the not so distant future, computers will be able to make universes just as large as ours, expanding just as fast as ours - or faster. He said this was good insight that we do not need a god, or if we have a god, he may not be so god-like as we envision.
ReplyDeleteI am involved pretty strongly in a local church, and I think that it is not too important to get caught up with how everything started. Although I am a Christian, I don't personally believe in a seven-day creation and I think that the lack of information that was provided to us in the Bible is just a way for God to tell us that its not too important to worry about. How are we affected if we find out the origin of the universe? That probably happened billions of years ago, if not much much more. We are living in the present, so I think the most important thing to concern ourselves with is our lives in our current situation.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Grand Design" Stephen Hawking postulates that the 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.
ReplyDeleteIn my e-book on comparative mysticism 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 at 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 (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.