There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe,
Professor
Stephen Hawking has said.
http://english.kompas.com/read/2010/09/02/14572462/God.Did.NOT.Create.The.Universe-4
Stephen Hawking
God Did NOT Create The Universe
Kamis, 2 September 2010 | 14:57 WIB
Famed: Professor Stephen Hawking, best-selling author of A Brief History Of
Time, believes falling university budgets are scuppering scientific discoveries
KOMPAS.com - The universe was not created by God, scientist Stephen Hawking has
said in his new book. Professor Hawking believes the laws of physics were
behind
the Big Bang instead, in a challenge to traditional religious beliefs.
In The Grand Design, extracts of which were printed today, Prof Hawking
concludes: '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.
'It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the
universe going.'
The book, co-written by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and published on
September 9, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe
must have been designed by God as it could not have created out of chaos. He
cites the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun.
'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.'
Prof Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation
of the universe, writing in A Brief History Of Time in 1988: 'If we discover a
complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we
should know the mind of God.'
He also leaves open the possibility of life on other planets and entire new
universes - the so-called 'multiverse'. And he suggests that a complex form of
theoretical; physics known as M-theory, a form of string theory, could be the
'holy grail' that will explain everything in the known universe.
Physicists have long sought after a universal theory that unites quantum
theory,
matter at the sub-atomic level, with gravity which explains how objects
interact.
He says: 'M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. The fact
that we human beings - who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental
particles of nature - have been able to come this close to an understanding of
the laws governing us and our universe is a triumph'.
Last month Professor Hawking has warned that unless the human race colonises
space within two centuries it will disappear forever. He said that our only
chance for long-term survival is to move away from Earth and begin to inhabit
far-flung planets.
In an interview with the website Big Think, Professor Hawking said he was an
optimist but the next few hundred years had to be negotiated carefully if
humans
were to survive.
