Q&A: Hawking and Theology
Hawking and Theology
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Is there a Torah-based response to Hawking's claim in his book A Brief History of Time, whose conclusion is: "The conclusion that emerges from these efforts, at least for now, is even more surprising: a universe that has no boundaries in space, has no beginning or end in time, and contains nothing for the Creator to do."
Answer
I didn't understand the question. This is a declaration, not an argument. All I can do is declare in response that the Creator does have something to do in the world, and in particular to make this very universe itself. So now you have a counter-declaration. Does that help in any way? In order to have a discussion, one has to bring reasons and arguments, not declarations.
More generally, I would say that Hawking is usually quite a babbler. I don't know whether he's a good physicist or not (that's not my field, and journalists in any case understand nothing whatsoever. It's obvious that he greatly enjoyed the halo surrounding him, and justifiably so, because of his impressive struggle with his severe disability), but I do know that he was an extremely weak philosopher, and tended to use physical terminology and knowledge (and sometimes physical games and speculations) to impress laymen in areas (like theology) that have nothing whatsoever to do with that knowledge.
Discussion on Answer
My guess is that it isn't written there. I mainly meant the things he says in matters of philosophy, and the fact that he really loves headlines and presents ideas as findings.
In a quick check on Wikipedia I saw that the quote is taken from the book's foreword, which was not written by Hawking:
Carl Sagan, in his introduction to A Brief History of Time, wrote:
This is also a book about God… or perhaps about the absence of God… To what extent did God have any choice in creating the universe? Hawking is trying, as he states explicitly, to understand the mind of God… The conclusion that emerges from these efforts, at least for now, is even more surprising: a universe that has no boundaries in space, has no beginning or end in time, and contains nothing for the Creator to do.
Thank you very much, Rabbi.
Hello Rabbi,
the questioner wrote that in Hawking's book there is a statement that the universe has no beginning or end in time.
As for the beginning of the universe, isn't it true that today the estimate is that the universe "began" 13.8 billion years ago? Or did he disagree with that theory?
Is that what you meant when you said that he's usually quite a babbler?