Pope Advised Hawking Not to Study Origin of Universe 864
BlueCup submits a link to an Associated Press article running in the Northwest Florida Daily News which begins "Famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God. The British author, who wrote the best-seller 'A Brief History of Time,' said that the pope made the comments at a cosmology conference at the Vatican."
According to the article, "The scientist then joked during a lecture in Hong Kong, 'I was glad he didn't realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo.'"
So? (Score:1, Insightful)
Nevertheless, it inflates (Score:4, Insightful)
But, I'm surprised to hear the Pope said this. I'd thought the Catholic church was relatively progressive in terms of creationism. A few hundred years ago, it might have made a difference what they thought.
These days, this kind of comment makes the church look archaic rather than actually discouraging scientists. At least in Europe.
If studying the work of God isn't allowed.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a couple of scientists who are religious (Christian) and none of them understand what the deal is with the fundamentalists who insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible. As far as they're concerned, they're using their God given brain to study how God does His thing. A very classic way of thinking about science. IIRC, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, etc... all thought of their scientific work as a way to worship Him.
The Pope (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If studying the work of God isn't allowed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? What? Threatens their beliefs? The Big Bang? Are you reading the same theory I am? The Big Bang is litterally a religious persons DREAM scientific theory. They couldn't have written it any better themselves. Not only is it the perfect theory explaining the moment of creation, but it also predicts that not only does everything happen, all of creation, in a single moment, at a single point, but it even predicts that our laws and rules and science cannot touch anything that happened before it. It, literally, points to a single moment/point and says the entire universe came from this point, at this time, and we can never hope to know what happened before that.
If that's not "biblical" in it's details, then nothing is.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
of course with knowledge comes the fact that most religions are just social engineering scams designed to control the population and make people feel better about themselves at the expense of others^H^H non-believers.
Oh well I have my beliefs and I don't care if no one else believes what I do. A good life involves giving to others, for in the end only kindness matters.
Re:Nevertheless, it inflates (Score:3, Insightful)
I think your're pretty confused, this isn't about evolution vs creationism, this isn't even about the origin of life (Abiogenesis), this is cosmology and about the origin of the universe itself.
Re:During the meeting (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Pope (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to nitpick (since I have nothing else to do right now) but religion states who and why, rather than explains
Re:The Pope (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea of a "who" makes the assumption that there is a responsible, sentient entity and "why" makes the assumption that there is an entity, and there was reasoning and a purpose in mind. Most religions claim to "know" not only that "who" and "why" exist, but that they know the only answer to both.
Why science and religion don't mix (Score:2, Insightful)
We are curious animals by nature. If we weren't curious we wouldn't have been able to develop the societies we have and everything that goes with them. Why shouldn't we explore how the universe began? If by exploring how things got started we can gain some insight into a better, more efficient form of energy, why not explore?
Maybe what it comes down to is that by discovering that illnesses aren't caused by evil spirits or that mentally deranged people aren't possessed by the devil then the reason for religion ceases to exist. After all, if everything can be reasonably explained to come from natural sources then why have gods and goddesses?
The popes comment leads me to believe it was one designed to undercut the scientific realm so those in a position of power within religious circles could continue their search for new members. After all, we know for a fact that the Vatican has in its possession books which contradict portions of the modern bible as well as some which were written by others which provide a different perspective on what things were like way back when. But one cannot read these books, even if they know the title, because to do so would set off a firestorm of consternation at the hypocrisy of modern Catholicism and Christianity in general. Instead, they are held simply so others cannot expand their knowledge of the past. So long as these works remain hidden, the power of the Church cannot be questioned.
Is it any wonder then that the Pope, the keeper of the gate so to speak, would want to dissuade an eminent scientist from exploring the mysteries of the universe? Religion, as a whole, has become nothing but a quest for power. Not giving hope to the unwashed masses, not giving comfort in time of need. Power, pure and simple.
I seriously doubt he said it (Score:5, Insightful)
what a pathetic religion (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm agnostic about whether there is some higher power. But a world created and ruled by the kind of schizophrenic and conflicted being that the Catholic church postulates makes no sense to me, and my faith tells me that they are wrong; no omnipotent being could sensibly be as petty and hateful towards mankind as the Catholic church claims God is.
how vs why (Score:5, Insightful)
I was raised Baptist but am not religious these days. Many many scientists have a deep spirituality or faith and feel that science just gets you closer to the creation. I've never had a problem with science versus faith: to put it into religious terms, I presume that science is our attempt at explaining "how," and spirituality is our attempt at explaining "why." There's no disconnect here.
The bible doesn't explain how the universe was created, and explicitly says that God's timeline is nothing like man's timeline, so there's no point in parsing "six days" as meaning anything in particular to us. If I feel like parsing it at all, I'd say the seventh day of rest aligns quite nicely with the future era of calmness mentioned in Revelations, so maybe we're still in the sixth day as far as God is concerned. I've subsequently heard some Israeli theologians have put forth the same conjecture. But I don't parse the bible that much, as I already figured out what I want to figure out with regards to my own spirituality: do less harm than good, and the world will be alright.
Major organized religions (aka, Church Inc.) just don't want any explaining of either, as it impacts the bottom line. Come in, drop off your tithe, pat a homeless man on the head, and go watch your kids' soccer game. Questions come pretty close to questioning authority, and they like being the unquestioned authority. I mean, really, condoms in Africa...
Fear (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does it matter that someone like Hawkings studies it? If god is real, then he will discover that.. If god is not real, then that will be discovered. In the end only the truth matters, regardless of which answer is 'found'. ( not that i ever expect that question to really ever be answered, there will ALWAYS be doubt.
Re: Flawed Logic (Score:1, Insightful)
You refer, I suppose, to Hawkings' description of that work in A Brief History of Time?
Re:Nevertheless, it inflates (Score:2, Insightful)
Note that there is a difference between disproving religion and disproving God. One is impossible, but one has been done many, many times over the years.
Re:Why science and religion don't mix (Score:3, Insightful)
I kept reading through the posts until I found it, and I knew I would -- the god-hater's words on the matter.
Religion isn't perfect and neither is science. If, indeed, a religious figure told a great scientist to not study something then that's unfortunate. It doesn't make religion useless, no more than detonating an scientifically discovered atom bomb over a city makes science useless, but pound-for-pound, one could argue that science has been far more effective in providing the means by which humanity can annihilate itself than religion ever has.
Here's one for ya: science & religion are both imperfect. Indeed, science is no slouch itself when it comes to being misused by humanity. Religion can stifle science? True. I concur, and scientifically-based governments have stifled religion. The soviets and Nazi governments both were quite efficient at imprisoning, killing priests & destroying churches. It was unfortunate that governments came to be that both laid foundational claims to science and then also persecuted the religious.
We cannot get rid of either really, nor should we. Science we need and it has vastly benefited the human race, but religion will not go away nor should it. It really cannot you see.
I'll digress here and point to my blog post on the subject: http://fatkiddown.blogspot.com/2005/08/death-of-t
Re:It's just propaganda (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Religion is being backed into a corner (Score:2, Insightful)
When I was little, I was fascinated with mythology - Norse, Greek, Egyptian, etc. They used polytheism to explain the things they observed in the natural world but had no understanding of.
As I got older, I thought that perhaps one of the driving forces behind the general acceptance of monotheism was people discovering how things work in the natural world - i.e., that sun doesn't rise and set because Apollo drags it across the sky, but rather due to the spin of the earth as it revolves around the sun.
As human understanding of the world around them grew, the need for these specialized deities became less and less.
Religion has always been a crutch to explain the unknown (or to keep the masses of the poor from overthrowing and murdering the elite rich).
I think you hit the nail right on the head - as the God bin gets emptied and things which were unknown are predictable, reproducible, and explainable, the threat to major religion increases.
Just my $0.02 - don't flame me for having an opinion!
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally despise religios zealots because you cannot reason with them. Some of them kill people because they believe they are acting on behalf of their religion or their god(s), while the masses of moderates passively aid them. Muslims do it, Christians do it, Jews do it. Anyone who doesn't act accordingly hostile with these three asserting themselves is marginalized, stolen from, or killed.
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is a pitty because I'd like to know how much more advanced the human race would be right now if it weren't towing along this massive collective social fraud that it's hobbled itself with for the last x-thousand years.
Re:what a pathetic religion (Score:2, Insightful)
How much research have you done, and from which sources? If you'd like a brief, straightforward, non-denominational primer on Christian beliefs, try Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. Don't go calling God petty and hateful just because you misunderstand Him.
Re:Ah-ha, now you see the REAL problem (Score:1, Insightful)
You know wrong. From here [virginia.edu]
Galileo worked on his new book, which he intended to call "Dialogue on the Tides", from 1624 to 1630. He was warned as he completed the work that that title seemed to imply he really held the view that the earth was moving, so he changed the title to Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World-Ptolemaic and Copernican. As usual, Galileo spared no-one in the book. He mocked the pope himself, by putting Urban's suggestion (see above) in the mouth of Simplicio, then dismissing it contemptuously (Reston, page 195).
The book was published in March 1632 in Florence. In August, an order came from the Inquisition in Rome to stop publication, and Galileo was ordered to stand trial. Apparently, someone-probably Scheiner, now living in Rome-had shown the pope the unsigned memo from the 1616 meeting, forbidding Galileo even to describe the Copernican system. Galileo was not too upset at the thought of a trial, because he held a trump card-the affidavit from Bellarmine. At the trial, Galileo said he had no memory of being forbidden to teach, and no signed document could be found to support the unsigned memo.
The trial did not address the scientific merits of the case, it was about whether or not Galileo had disobeyed an official order. It was suggested that he admit to some wrongdoing, and he would get off lightly. He agreed to tone down the Dialogue, pleading that he had been carried away by his own arguments. He was condemned to indefinite imprisonment, and, after some negotiation, was confined to his villa until his death in 1642. During this period, he wrote Two New Sciences, a book on the strength of materials and on the science of motion.
Not Merely Flawed Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
- Genesis 15:5
He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars..."
- Psalm 143:5
I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.*
- Psalm 92:4
For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands*
- Proverbs 6:6
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
- Luke 12:24
Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!
*Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.Re:Flawed Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what a pathetic religion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If studying the work of God isn't allowed.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, seriously, _if_ the universe has a creator, then its creation is _the_ ultimately elegant hack. The guy didn't edit each map by hand, so to speak, he just gave it a set of simple rules and enough energy and let the whole thing build _itself_.
And look at how neatly it all fits together. E.g., nuclei having resonances at just the right places so anything can be built by fusion from hydrogen. It may seem trivial, but move, say, Carbon's excited states just a tiny bit and you couldn't get Carbon any more in a star fusing Helium. Yes, that Carbon's states are those is the result of other rules, but that's the whole point. Everything fits together just perfectly, and a small set of rules combine just right to form a whole universe, galaxies, sentient life, etc.
_If_ some "creator" came up with all the constants involved, the guy is a fucking genius. No, seriously. I'm humbled. I can honestly say I can't even imagine coming even close to achieving something so grandiose with so little "code". It's like writing a page of code and watching it combine and arrange everything by itself to form a MMO from scratch, _including_ all the skins, maps, physics, races, classes, quests, and everything. Only many many orders of magnitude bigger than WoW.
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Belief Is Not Faith (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps, but religious "facts", unlike scientific facts, require a large degree of doublethink to accept.
For example, you have never been into space. You may have never looked out the window of an aircraft, yet you are told that the earth is round. You can accept this fact, in contridiction to your own expieriences of a flat earth, as locally the round earth looks like a flat one. What you have accepted as fact, and what you expierience, are indeed compatable. There were no mental gymnastics required to accept the idea of a spherical earth, once given gravity.
However, for religious facts, virtually every one contridicts our expieriences and knowladge. We require doublethink to accept them. The definition of doublethink is one accepts a fact that one knows to be untrue or impossible, and simultaniously forgets that one ever thought or could ever have thought otherwise. The best example of this is clearly a physisist or indeed, any scientist believing in the miracle of loaves and fishes from the new testament. It's clear that numerous physical laws are grossly violated in the parable, yet there are learned, educated people who hold the story to be absolute fact, despite the reality that they would consider you mad if you recounted witnessing a similar event. Doublethink at its purest.
So scientific facts such as the conservation of mass, the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, the average height of a population, the theory of flight, etc; are all acceptable facts which can be shown to agree, eventually, with our own expierience and common sense. Religious facts such as Noah's Ark, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the ressurection of Jesus, meeting Gabriel on Hira, the incarnations of Vishnu, the visions of Joseph Smith, etc; are all facts which can never been shown to agree with either our own expierience or common sense. They are also, unlike scientific, completely unverifiable, uncheckable, unreproducable, and in general, poorly or ambiguously stated.
Doublethink is essential if one is to accept religious facts, especially if one also accepts reason and the scientific method. Only in this way is it possible to completely accept two totally contridictory facts. Humans are quite capable of believing that both A and not A will hold simultaniously, though this can hardly be described as a healthy state of mind. In the words of Mark Twain: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so". Science on the other hand is believing what you know, or what you can deduce, to be true.
Re:what a pathetic religion (Score:2, Insightful)
All the same (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:4, Insightful)
These people are instructed via the leaders of their religion to not think, to not question, to not consider. They are instructed on what the word of god is, how it exactly should be interpreted.
These people have very little memory of the history of their own religion, that fundamentalism extended to the basic beliefs achieved by questioning the world they live in and realizing they needed order. However, to never question that belief again (not that using science to examine things) is rediculous in the extreme and simply means you learn a lot less about what God's intended for everyone to learn.
Ultimately we're talking about hatred of something they do not want or feel they can't, or more importantly won't understand -- and it might be something that can potentially derail their view of the world. It's scary to them. It makes their religious leaders insecure and in turn makes them worried that science might some day effect them in some unforseen way. Ultimately these people probably don't trust God too much, or at the very least themselves.
All opinions at any rate.
In a sense both are right (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me use WoW as an example. Let's say the observable universe is WoW. Even the wisest scholar living _in_ the WoW universe, even with the best gnomish instruments, can only observe and measure things that are _inside_ this universe.
What it _can't_ observe is the universe's creator: Blizzard.
Can such a scholar prove, with only the data in his universe, that Blizzard doesn't exist? No. He just doesn't have the data on which to base such a proof. The best his science can do is state that the universe can be explained well enough without this mystical "Blizzard" entity at the helm.
Same is it with RL science and God. Science _can't_ prove that God doesn't exist. All science can do is explain the universe well enough without needing some "God" entity. But that's all.
No, seriously, I know that we all love to troll and bait the christians. But put your thinking cap for a second and you'll realize the same: if a "creator" exists _outside_ the universe he created (just like Blizzard exists outside the WoW universe), science can't prove or disprove this creator in any form or shape. It just can't get any data from there. At all. Ever.
Not to mention that it's not even possible to prove a negative like that. As long as science can't know every single atom in the universe, _and_ go back in time and observe what happened at every single moment since Big Bang, you simply can't have enough proof that something _doesn't_ exist even _inside_ your universe. It's like proposing to prove that a green three-legged rabbit doesn't exist and never existed. You only need one specimen to prove that it does exist, but it's simply unfeasible to prove that nowhere in the universe such a creature ever existed.
The best science can do is apply Occam's Razor. Basically to say "well, we can explain the universe perfectly well even without some 'God' hypothesis, so we don't need such a hypothesis." But that's all.
Plus, some of the precepts of Christianity are pretty much notions, ideals or moral judgments. How do you scientifically disprove "love thy neighbour"? How would you scientifically disprove "thou shalt not kill"? No, seriously. They're moral precepts that reflect a certain set of values, not something you can run through a spectrograph or whatever other instrument.
So basically, yes, JPII was right: it's not even possible. So while it makes for some good christian-bashing material to compare the answers there, in practice it's about as relevant as asking "what would you do if gravity just suddenly disappeared?" It seems to me like "it's not even possible" is a perfectly valid answer there. Sure, it's not the most interesting or imaginative kind of an answer, but nevertheless it is a valid one.
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhm, yeah, that is basically the problem with the Bible, but I don't think that you will understand...
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bible is a historic document in the same way that the Iliad is a historic document. Both are collections of myths and fables that are roughly based on actually occurences in history. Both have supernatural events that were not likely but make for a better story. Science lets us determine which parts are likely to be true (i.e. history) and which parts are likely to be nothing more than myth.
Yes, the likelihood of a group of Jewish fisherman making up a story about a Messiah figure who claimed to be God (blasphemy) and then turning the entire Roman empire upside down in the matter of a few decades is highly unlikely. It is even more unlikely that they would all suffer torture and death to protect a story that is not true. And yet, that is exactly what happened. If anything, this is a strong indication that their story was real. Would you die for something you know to be false?
By your logic, a prophet in the middle east who turned the entire regious upside down, resulting in the rapid conversion of the entire area to the same belief must be correct. ESPECIALLY since he has thousands of men and women lining up to die for his beliefs on a daily basis and receive martyrdom for their cause.
Yes... there you have it. Following your logic, both Christianity and Islam are true. And since Muhammed came afterward Jesus and plenty more people are willing to die for Muhammed, Islam must be "more true" than Christianity.
Do you see the flaws in your logic now or are you converting to Islam?
When people require absolute faith regardless of the overwhelming contrary evidence, they have already sacrificed enough of their own identity and ability to reason that sacrificing their lives is merely the next step of losing themselves to their beliefs. Welcome to the Church of Jim Jones, you'll enjoy the Kool-Aid.
ETDAV (Score:4, Insightful)
And then read The Jury Is In [infidels.org], which carefully analyzes the infamous Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
Re:In a sense both are right (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
In Scientology doctrine, Xenu (also Xemu) is an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth in DC-8 -like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to wreak chaos and havoc today...
Of course that's not really any sillier than most of the stories in the Bible (talking snakes, log boats carrying two of every species on earth, etc etc etc).
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Re:Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
Your logic is flawed. It contains an implied assumption that a theory that makes an infinite number of untestable predictions is untestable. That is a false/invalid assumption.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with "an infinite number of untestable predictions".
The criteria is testing the testable predictions. If a theory makes an infinite number of untestable predictions (such as predicting an infinite number of undetectable parallel universes), and it also makes a plenty of testable predictions, and those testable predictions are tested and confirmed, then that is a good, strong, and useful theory.
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