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Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

cnn.com

41–50 of 72 posts

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#41
post #38
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to promote the ID "theory" or anything like that. Can't we just focus on the question instead of questioning my motives? > The problem is you are not considering the timescale - which is over millions of years. This is exactly what I mean by hand waving. So there's a humongous timescale involved, so what? That doesn't constitute any form of evidence. Unless you're saying it's not really testable becaus…

No, I was saying that the apparent problems you see in mutation is due to the fact that you don't seem to be considering the huge time-scale involved. Saying "design is obvious" is all very well but I see lots of flaws with that? Who's right? :)

It seems you don't understand what I'm talking about.

Having a long time is only useful if mutations can produce good "patches". If you can't prove that they can, then all the time in the world won't do you any good.

It's like you're saying:

A & B & C & D, therefor Z

I'm pointing out that A is false. You're objecting by pointing out that B is true. I'm saying "who cares"?

When one of your basic premises doesn't hold, it doesn't matter if all the other ones hold.

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#42
post #41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I was saying that the apparent problems you see in mutation is due to the fact that you don't seem to be considering the huge time-scale involved. Saying "design is obvious" is all very well but I see lots of flaws with that? Who's right? :)

It seems you don't understand what I'm talking about. Having a long time is only useful if mutations can produce good "patches". If you can't prove that they can, then all the time in the world won't do you any good. It's like you're saying: A & B & C & D, therefor Z I'm pointing out that A is false. You're objecting by pointing out that B is true. I'm saying "who cares"? When one of your basic premises doesn't hold,…

I'm somewhat confused by your argument (actually; entirely confused). Perhaps a quick refresher of Evolution is useful.

Basically there is a wide misconception that mutation and NS is Evolution. This is something of a well taught fallacy.

Evolution consists of three parts - Variation, Mechanism and Outcome. The first of these, Variation, relates to the physical phenomena that cause changes in organisms. One of these is mutation; which is a random action at the gene level causing something different to occur in the organism. There are several other things that can cause variation in an organism.

The second is Mechanism; which is the process by which individual variations take effect across a "population". This is, in effect, the guts of evolution - and one of the main parts of that is Natural selection (which is an easy theory to comprehend). The thing to remember about NS is that this is a very very slow process; if one variation is favoured this is not a process that occurs from one generation to the next. NS works best in larger populations - so the progress of multiple variations through the population can take hundreds, or thousands, of generations.

The final part of Evolution is the outcome of the progress of variations across a species; this is more about the phenomena we observe (i.e. that we are adapted to our environment, or that two species "co-operate" at a very basic level). This is the guts of your particular problem. Mutation is a pretty provable phenomena because, well, we see mutation all the time!

Your original post made this note:

If you have a really good team of tester and code reviewers, but no one submits any patch (or, no one makes any change), then the software will not evolve on its own. It will not get better just because there are a lot of people to test it. It needs other people to make changes/submit patches.

Consider a more "true to life" version of your example; a program exists that can compile and produce a version of itself as well as doing some other specific task. People download V1 of this program that, say, flashes a pixel on your screen. As the program compiles itself a random "mutation" may occur in the code - adding, removing or changing something. Programs that don't work are discarded (naturally) and those that do something extra or cool are favoured. Over the course of millions of generations you will end up with a number of highly evolved programs - for example a network scanner, a web browser and a word pad.

Your mistake is in assuming a system that requires an intelligent input.

You seem to be suggesting that it is unlikely for mutation to create useful variations; this is also a fallacy because mutation is random. So despite being unlikely it is not impossible; please remember we are not talking about a mutation that suddenly means the offspring grows a lung - that is a common misconception. We are already highly evolved over millions of generations - so it is a lot harder to observe directly in current organisms. But we can observe it in bacteria who adapt to new situations through mutation. That is the basis of the whole shebang.

The theory of evolution has survived this challenge a number of times without being proven fallacious.

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#43
If evolution is such a obvious theory as to be taken as fact, then why are there no species obviously evolving into another?

According to the theory, millions of years ago Chimps evolved into humans. Why then are there no chimps in a stage of evolving that would signify a progression to a different species? They've had millions of years to do so...

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#44
post #7

> And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it. Definitely deserves a "well, duh", but so many people seem averse to this line of thought. I can't count the number of times people have argued in my vicinity for God's existence based on how nicely our planet suits us... while in the same breath demonstrating that they underst…

The anthropic principle is useful for rationally debunking "... but surely..." arguments, but it's definitely a last resort, because it doesn't tell you anything about how or why . It's a form of proof by reductio ad absurdum . You assume the counterfactual ("what if the universe couldn't support human life?"), derive a contradiction ("the universe can't support human life, yet here we are discussing it"), and conclu…

Thank you for wording it this way. This articulates very well how I've felt about the whole anthropic principle thing ever since I read about it.

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#45

If evolution is such a obvious theory as to be taken as fact, then why are there no species obviously evolving into another? According to the theory, millions of years ago Chimps evolved into humans. Why then are there no chimps in a stage of evolving that would signify a progression to a different species? They've had millions of years to do so...

How do you know there aren't any?

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#46

If evolution is such a obvious theory as to be taken as fact, then why are there no species obviously evolving into another? According to the theory, millions of years ago Chimps evolved into humans. Why then are there no chimps in a stage of evolving that would signify a progression to a different species? They've had millions of years to do so...

Probably this is just a troll, since these answers are so well known, so I'm not going to bother looking up citations.

1. There are many examples of speciation that are documented in the time we've been watching rigorously.

2. If you think that the theory of evolution says that chimps evolved into humans, than you have no understanding of evolution.

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#47

I find it funny how hands-off the article is. CNN tries too hard not to offend anyone, and unlike most articles, it doesn't actually present its own opinion. Which would be nice to see in everyday reporting, but it seems the risk of offending people is the only way to garner true neutrality.

This is just my opinion, but I think big news networks should keep their opinions out of their reporting, supplying us with as much factual information as possible (even if some would find those facts offensive). I find this article to be good reporting because it introduces Hawking's controversial opinion and a few opinion-based reactions without muddling them with its own bias.

It's a nice idea, but utterly impossible. There's no way to present information without bias. Your selection of which facts to present (and which to skip) in what order, what people to quote and which statements to use, etc., all contribute bias, sometimes in subtle ways that aren't immediately obvious.

So for me, I'd much rather that the writer and editor wear their bias on their sleeves. It saves me the work of having to reverse-engineer it all.

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key problem with this line of reasoning is a lack of proportion. Evolution takes place over millions of years . Any intuitions you have are probably wrong on this timescale. Nobody claims that a proto-bird one day woke up in a treetop, thought "oh heck, how am I going to get down?", and sprouted wings. Rather, over millions of generations of proto-birds, random variation and natural selection made winged birds mo…

As a side note, wings worked so well for survival that most current insect species have them.

Dawkins points out that at insect scale, flight isn't particularly interesting: in many environments, tiny organisms would have difficulty not flying. Thus, it may be that wings started as little rudders to control how the wind is blowing you. From that point, it's easy to imagine a gradual evolution to self-powered flight.

But I'm afraid this doesn't help us understand avian and mammalian evolution of flight. The example of the flying squirrel (that can't fly, but can direct his glide) may be a little instructive...

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#49

I find it funny how hands-off the article is. CNN tries too hard not to offend anyone, and unlike most articles, it doesn't actually present its own opinion. Which would be nice to see in everyday reporting, but it seems the risk of offending people is the only way to garner true neutrality.

This is just my opinion, but I think big news networks should keep their opinions out of their reporting, supplying us with as much factual information as possible (even if some would find those facts offensive). I find this article to be good reporting because it introduces Hawking's controversial opinion and a few opinion-based reactions without muddling them with its own bias.

Unfortunately, "keeping their opinions out" and reporting both sides is no guarantee of avoiding bias. By way of analogy, let's pretend Hawking said something slightly different from what he actually did, something a bit more non-committal like "Formerly, it was widely thought that the existence of the universe and its suitability for life are good reasons to believe in a creator, but in the light of present-day physics I think we must say that these things offer no evidence whatever concerning the existence or not-existence of any sort of god". Now, imagine two possible articles reacting to this:

1. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking's statement. In the interests of balance, also quotes a theologian who claims that the existence and well-suited-to-us-ness of the universe really do demand that there be a creator.

2. Quotes hypothetical-Hawking, as in #1. In the interests of balance, also quotes someone who maintains that present-day science is not neutral on the God question but offers strong evidence for the nonexistence of God.

The first would give the impression that the real debate is between those who think modern science gives evidence for God and those who think it's neutral. The second would give the impression that the real debate is between those who think modern science gives evidence against God and those who think it's neutral.

Someone puts out a report saying that anthropogenic global warming is going to be twice as bad as currently forecast. Newspaper 1 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from a climate scientist who defends the current consensus figure. Newspaper 2 quotes the report and gets some "balance" from someone who doesn't believe in anthropogenic global warming at all.

Someone puts out a report saying that 20% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Newspaper 1 gives this "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and talking to one person who believes Obama is a Muslim and one who doesn't. Newspaper 2 gives it "balanced" coverage by quoting the report and talking to one person who believes it and one who thinks the whole idea is so ridiculous that the report must the the result of push-polling, sampling screwups or something.

During the recent US healthcare reform debate, Newspaper 1 reports on the proposals before Congress and provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks those proposals will mean "death panels" and nationial bankruptcy. Newspaper 2 provides "balance" by quoting someone who thinks they don't go nearly far enough and what the US needs is a robust single-payer system.

Giving equal time to both sides is only unbiased in so far as there's no question what "both sides" are.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window .

Re: Stephen Hawking: God didn't create universe

#50
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His PR team have already spun this as Hawking throwing down the gauntlet to religion, gleefully canvassing outrage and outright denial from Rabbis and Bishops. Wiser theologians should take a step back, bring out that age old trick, and inquire "ah... but who created gravity?"

And who created the creator? The problem with an infinite regress is that it's, um, infinite. It sounds like Hawking is trying to refute the claim that everything that exists must have a creator. That's the claim which allows the snooty "who created gravity" response, and also leads to the self-defeating infinite regress. Whether you believe in a creator or not, you're better off without that argument.

It's not my argument. It's the god-of-the-gaps argument, hitherto to be found sitting lazily on that rather awesome gap called the big-bang, that Hawking is deftly refuting in his book. I'm just noting, with minor repulsion, the cheap tricks that his publisher seems to have used to turn this non-argument into an argument.
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