In my previous blog posting regarding the logical consequences of material monism, I showed that it is self-contradictory because it asserts that all of human experience is merely the compelled effects of the physical properties of matter. I also mentioned my latest discovery in the blogosphere of Sam Harris' assertion that he is a robot -- a mindless automaton of the universe. But there are more.
A second example of an atheist robot is found in the writings of Stephen Hawking. A material monist, such as Hawking, believes there are no "minds," just physical brains. So then, it is no surprise, when in the following link, (Hawking: There is No Heaven), Hawking declares that we are merely "meat computers," i.e., we are just like our familiar desktop computers, except that our brains are composed of meat rather than silicon.
To my knowledge, Hawking has not disavowed man's free agency, though he openly sacrifices his rationality on the altar of the goddess Tyche ("chance"). Hawking states in the above article, "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in."
Science predicts no such thing.
We have already pointed out previously (here) that the "nothing" of Hawking is most definitely something. It is a configuration of quantum fields (which is something) that have a total energy balance of zero -- but to say that a configuration of matter with zero energy (and even the reference point for zero energy is conventional) is "nothing" would be akin to saying the assets of a person with net worth zero is "nothing" in spite of the fact that it is merely that the value of his many assets is equal to the amount of his debts. It is remarkable what nonsense such brilliant men will utter!
Then we also have Hawking's appeal to "chance." "Chance," of course, is the correlate of lawlessness, the unexplained, or stuff from the surd. As it turns out, no physical experiment has shown the existence of "chance." Atheists worship it nonetheless. Be that as it may, if it were "chance" that decided in which universe Hawking found himself, it is also "chance" that dictates his every action -- Hawking can have no waivers. It would follow that Hawking's "reasoning" itself would be the result of random events dictated by quantum dynamics. He would not be a "free thinker"-- as many atheists tout -- but a mindless robot uttering random propositions dictated by lawless "chance." So much then for Hawking's rationality and denial of God.
The same analysis applies to all self-contradictory freedom-denying atheist "robots." On the atheist worldview, there is no transcendent reality -- the material universe is all there is. In this case, man is nothing more than a part of the material universe and thus totally governed by material laws. Mindless matter grants no waivers.
In Christianity, on the other hand, there is an ultimate reality that transcends the world -- the Transcendent Triune God. Only on the presupposition of theism is man free from physical determinism, since he is the creation of a transcendent living Triune God who has created the physical world and has created man with a nature that is not totally physical -- but physical and spiritual. Man's created spirit is not ruled by material laws and his will is independent of those laws. It is the seat of rationality, of self, and of the will. Christian theism is the only worldview that accounts for all of human experience, that breaks the shackles of material monism, and accounts for the rationality of man.
Showing posts with label Hawking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hawking. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, September 24, 2010
More on Hawking's Grand Design (and Penrose)
In the few weeks since my previous post on Hawking's book, more has emerged on the "The Grand Design."
This is rather belated, so let me rewind a bit.
In the early days of the book's first reviews, some of my physicist and mathematician colleagues (not necessarily Christians or theists) expressed unreserved dismay at the reported content -- such as the espousal of subjective "theory-dependent-realism." Some said they doubted they would buy the book even to quench their curiosity. These were remarks that I found encouraging.
Of course, Hawking, the self-described "positivist," is wrong on all the big philosophical counts -- though he may be correct on some technical details of a mathematical variety. But without a doubt, his physical monism has no capacity to explain "why we exist," as he has stated. And by "we" that must include all of human experience. His theory explains nothing of human existence or experience. His hubris goes even further when he states that with M-theory philosophy is dead. With that remark, and with his adherence to the self contradictory philosophy of logical positivism, I'm certain that philosophy is, without a doubt, dead to him.
There was formerly a day and time when physicists showed a little more sobriety in regards to their profession and realized, and openly stated, that physics only deals with physical theories. Even today, Roger Penrose, though no friend of theism, correctly speaks of the theory as a theory of the physical universe. (More below). Years ago, Eugene Wigner also generally spoke of physics as the study of inanimate matter. Not Hawking, however! He asserts that M-theory is the reason why animate beings, such as "us," exists.
Some of the further details (an excerpt can be found here) that have emerged is that Hawking now espouses the absurd concept of theory-dependent-reality -- as if there could be such a thing as any abstract theory, period, in a purely material reality. That an abstract theory could be legislative of physical laws (which are the only laws that exist in Hawking's universe) is absurd. A universe ruled by nothing but random quantum processes cannot produce rational beings, such as us, who regulate our reasoning by way of immaterial laws of thought (logic) and thereby produce abstract physical theories such as M-theory -- whether true or not.
Other Reviews
I have read a few customer reviews on various book sites, and agree with those who have described the book as a typical shallow popularization of physics.
For a pure physical objection to Hawking's views, we have the review of Roger Penrose. Penrose's review avoids discussion of the more pure philosophical aspects of the book. I have always found Penrose to be a bit more sober among contemporary physicists -- though his "Platonistic" pluralism is just as absurd as material monism. (Though we might say Penrose is an inconsistent materialist.) You can read Penrose's physics critique here: Penrose's Review
So despite Penrose's insightful critique of Hawking, we have the following:
On the one hand, we have the absurd and incoherent monism of Hawking that accounts for nothing. And on the other hand, we have the multiple unrelated realities of Penrose's neo-Platonism that posits a mysterious plurality of impersonal, co-eternal and co-ultimate realities of physical matter, mind, and "Platonic" mathematics --a plurality more incoherent than the polytheism of pagan Greece and Rome. Of course, positing such co-eternal things solves the "which came first" problem, but the cure is worse than the disease of monism. Atheistic pluralism is incoherent, arbitrary and incomplete. And, we should add that conspicuously absent from both Hawking's monism and Penrose's pluralist metaphysics is ethics.
This is rather belated, so let me rewind a bit.
In the early days of the book's first reviews, some of my physicist and mathematician colleagues (not necessarily Christians or theists) expressed unreserved dismay at the reported content -- such as the espousal of subjective "theory-dependent-realism." Some said they doubted they would buy the book even to quench their curiosity. These were remarks that I found encouraging.
Of course, Hawking, the self-described "positivist," is wrong on all the big philosophical counts -- though he may be correct on some technical details of a mathematical variety. But without a doubt, his physical monism has no capacity to explain "why we exist," as he has stated. And by "we" that must include all of human experience. His theory explains nothing of human existence or experience. His hubris goes even further when he states that with M-theory philosophy is dead. With that remark, and with his adherence to the self contradictory philosophy of logical positivism, I'm certain that philosophy is, without a doubt, dead to him.
There was formerly a day and time when physicists showed a little more sobriety in regards to their profession and realized, and openly stated, that physics only deals with physical theories. Even today, Roger Penrose, though no friend of theism, correctly speaks of the theory as a theory of the physical universe. (More below). Years ago, Eugene Wigner also generally spoke of physics as the study of inanimate matter. Not Hawking, however! He asserts that M-theory is the reason why animate beings, such as "us," exists.
Some of the further details (an excerpt can be found here) that have emerged is that Hawking now espouses the absurd concept of theory-dependent-reality -- as if there could be such a thing as any abstract theory, period, in a purely material reality. That an abstract theory could be legislative of physical laws (which are the only laws that exist in Hawking's universe) is absurd. A universe ruled by nothing but random quantum processes cannot produce rational beings, such as us, who regulate our reasoning by way of immaterial laws of thought (logic) and thereby produce abstract physical theories such as M-theory -- whether true or not.
Other Reviews
I have read a few customer reviews on various book sites, and agree with those who have described the book as a typical shallow popularization of physics.
For a pure physical objection to Hawking's views, we have the review of Roger Penrose. Penrose's review avoids discussion of the more pure philosophical aspects of the book. I have always found Penrose to be a bit more sober among contemporary physicists -- though his "Platonistic" pluralism is just as absurd as material monism. (Though we might say Penrose is an inconsistent materialist.) You can read Penrose's physics critique here: Penrose's Review
So despite Penrose's insightful critique of Hawking, we have the following:
On the one hand, we have the absurd and incoherent monism of Hawking that accounts for nothing. And on the other hand, we have the multiple unrelated realities of Penrose's neo-Platonism that posits a mysterious plurality of impersonal, co-eternal and co-ultimate realities of physical matter, mind, and "Platonic" mathematics --a plurality more incoherent than the polytheism of pagan Greece and Rome. Of course, positing such co-eternal things solves the "which came first" problem, but the cure is worse than the disease of monism. Atheistic pluralism is incoherent, arbitrary and incomplete. And, we should add that conspicuously absent from both Hawking's monism and Penrose's pluralist metaphysics is ethics.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Hawking's "The Grand Design" -- a new sub-Platonic Cosmogony for Itching Ears
The release of Stephen Hawking's latest book, The Grand Design, is making rounds in the news.
The use of the word "design" in the title is a bit ironic. Atheist scientists tend to use words in their popular books in less than precise ways, and no doubt this helps sell more books to the less scientifically literate public. But, the use of such loose words is contrary to their usual practice of terminological precision in scientific journals.
We can be sure that "design" does not mean it was designed -- it is Orwellian doublespeak for "description." Calling it the "Grand Description," and asking "Is Hawking really describing nothing?," may help clear the field in what I describe below.
In this book, we learn that Hawking now explicitly says there is no need for God. In the place of God, he says we have the mindless law of gravity (quantum gravity, I would presume) to thank for it all. This bit of "news" should not be a surprise. Alongside paying lip-service to "God," he had already said much the same in A Brief History of Time. In connection with his no-boundary conjecture, he had written, "What place, then, for a creator?"
So then, just what is Hawking's "new insight"? Here is one extract that is being circulated:
This type of philosophical nonsense is not even as good as that typically produced by college freshmen. It is philosophical conjuring, verbal subterfuge and "creative accounting." If Hawking's profession were investment management, his accounting techniques would amount to securities fraud, and he would be subject to criminal prosecution.
As a physicist whose special field is General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory, I can attest that the law of gravity and the rest are not "nothing." Gravity is a property of matter, along with those other laws and other fundamental forces as incorporated in the Standard Model. If all of these other fields, particles, and laws governing their interactions are nothing, then one is left to wonder how the many details of the structure of the physical universe can be analyzed in mathematical terms. And by terms I am being explicit!
All of the physical stuff -- individual particles of matter and their fields -- that supposedly emerges from Hawking's "nothing," by way of gravity, is already in the "mix." There are explicit mathematical terms describing both the individual particles of matter and the laws that govern the interactions of all that "stuff" in the equations from the "git go." To talk as if it is not is just simply creative accounting -- all of the physical stuff is already "lurking" there. And so then the physical universe, too, is already there. If they are truly "nothing," Hawking ought to take a red pencil and strike those descriptors from his equations.
This should be no surprise, since the equations of physical models and theories are deductive in nature, and, therefore, they predict the implications of the theory. If a theory could not deductively predict its logical consequences, it would violate the very tenets of the scientific method and be useless. On the surface, Hawking's claim is equivalent to someone deducing "Socrates is mortal" while omitting the minor premise "Socrates is a man" from that famous syllogism.
Hawking has stated nothing new -- he has just restated the standard brute-fact material universe of atheism. A universe of matter-in-motion not adequate to the task of accounting for all of human experience -- a universe conspicuously devoid of logic, mathematics, morality, human minds and human freedom.
But as Hawking describes the universe, it is something even more absurd than Plato's cosmogony. In place of Plato's intelligent demiurge acting on eternal matter, we have Hawking's mindless gravity and. . .nothing. Well, not quite nothing, but a "nothing" describable by some explicit and rather advanced mathematics. Now that is something!
According to Hawking, after years of work and study in the field of physics, I am now supposed to believe that the elegant mathematics was a description of nothing rather than something.
If Professor Hawking wants to insist that these are all "nothing," then apparently he is writing about nothing and describing nothing (an oxymoron if ever there was). Since it would then appear that the latest property of the law of gravity is "forgiveness" -- and it must be so since gravity is the reason we exist -- then he should please forgive those who curtly dismiss his book.
Maybe, he should change the title to Much Ado About Nothing -- but, alas, that title has already been taken.
The use of the word "design" in the title is a bit ironic. Atheist scientists tend to use words in their popular books in less than precise ways, and no doubt this helps sell more books to the less scientifically literate public. But, the use of such loose words is contrary to their usual practice of terminological precision in scientific journals.
We can be sure that "design" does not mean it was designed -- it is Orwellian doublespeak for "description." Calling it the "Grand Description," and asking "Is Hawking really describing nothing?," may help clear the field in what I describe below.
In this book, we learn that Hawking now explicitly says there is no need for God. In the place of God, he says we have the mindless law of gravity (quantum gravity, I would presume) to thank for it all. This bit of "news" should not be a surprise. Alongside paying lip-service to "God," he had already said much the same in A Brief History of Time. In connection with his no-boundary conjecture, he had written, "What place, then, for a creator?"
So then, just what is Hawking's "new insight"? Here is one extract that is being circulated:
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist...".
This type of philosophical nonsense is not even as good as that typically produced by college freshmen. It is philosophical conjuring, verbal subterfuge and "creative accounting." If Hawking's profession were investment management, his accounting techniques would amount to securities fraud, and he would be subject to criminal prosecution.
As a physicist whose special field is General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory, I can attest that the law of gravity and the rest are not "nothing." Gravity is a property of matter, along with those other laws and other fundamental forces as incorporated in the Standard Model. If all of these other fields, particles, and laws governing their interactions are nothing, then one is left to wonder how the many details of the structure of the physical universe can be analyzed in mathematical terms. And by terms I am being explicit!
All of the physical stuff -- individual particles of matter and their fields -- that supposedly emerges from Hawking's "nothing," by way of gravity, is already in the "mix." There are explicit mathematical terms describing both the individual particles of matter and the laws that govern the interactions of all that "stuff" in the equations from the "git go." To talk as if it is not is just simply creative accounting -- all of the physical stuff is already "lurking" there. And so then the physical universe, too, is already there. If they are truly "nothing," Hawking ought to take a red pencil and strike those descriptors from his equations.
This should be no surprise, since the equations of physical models and theories are deductive in nature, and, therefore, they predict the implications of the theory. If a theory could not deductively predict its logical consequences, it would violate the very tenets of the scientific method and be useless. On the surface, Hawking's claim is equivalent to someone deducing "Socrates is mortal" while omitting the minor premise "Socrates is a man" from that famous syllogism.
Hawking has stated nothing new -- he has just restated the standard brute-fact material universe of atheism. A universe of matter-in-motion not adequate to the task of accounting for all of human experience -- a universe conspicuously devoid of logic, mathematics, morality, human minds and human freedom.
But as Hawking describes the universe, it is something even more absurd than Plato's cosmogony. In place of Plato's intelligent demiurge acting on eternal matter, we have Hawking's mindless gravity and. . .nothing. Well, not quite nothing, but a "nothing" describable by some explicit and rather advanced mathematics. Now that is something!
According to Hawking, after years of work and study in the field of physics, I am now supposed to believe that the elegant mathematics was a description of nothing rather than something.
If Professor Hawking wants to insist that these are all "nothing," then apparently he is writing about nothing and describing nothing (an oxymoron if ever there was). Since it would then appear that the latest property of the law of gravity is "forgiveness" -- and it must be so since gravity is the reason we exist -- then he should please forgive those who curtly dismiss his book.
Maybe, he should change the title to Much Ado About Nothing -- but, alas, that title has already been taken.
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