Clever Brainiac Shorthand

The (£1-a-day) Times has released excerpts of Stephen Hawking’s soon to be released new book, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design.

“ The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he says. “Spontaneous creation is the reason why 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 press are all over Hawking for this, claiming that Hawking used to believe in a god somehow. (You know, they love a good backflip.) The Guardian says:

“ In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text … he said new theories showed a creator is “not necessary”.

What Hawking said in 1988 was,

“ If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”

“Had seemed to accept“? Sir Roger can understand this conclusion if, as is so often the case with journalists, the writer knows nothing about science or scientists and never actually read the original book. The line about “the mind of God” was the last sentence in the book and very few people got that far. Sir Roger may be one of the few who actually tackled the world’s smallest ever, and least read, coffee table book.

Many journalists are overworked, if not really lazy, and they have to get a readable story out quickly and so they grasp at angles, thoughts, probably get a bit of an idea from something like Wikipedia or their own archives and rush the story through. But when it comes to god stuff they really ought to be a bit more careful.

Scientists are stupid, of course, which is strange because intellectually they tend to be on the smarter side and like to make jokes. They make up clever brainiac shorthand. Remember the University of East Anglia emails and the “trick of adding in the real temps to each series”?

Well, the silly atheist scientists keep talking about gods. The Higgs Boson or “God particle”. Einstein’s “God does not play dice wth the universe”. And Hawking’s “then we should know the mind of God”.

Don’t bloody say that stuff! It just confuses stupid people (and journalists after an angle with an angel). And god-botherers.

So let’s be clear.

Einstein didn’t believe in any god the way other people define it. Higgs is an atheist. Hawking is an atheist (although he may at some stage have been an agnostic deist) and he never meant you to take that last line literally. It was an analogy. Smart scientist shorthand. Okay?

Meanwhile, chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, criticised Hawking’s book. Having complained that science and religion are different (“Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation”) he went on,

“ The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being.”

Beg pardon? What was all that stuff in Genesis about? Genesis I, Chapter 1, Verse 1? you know, where god creates the universe? The only part of the Bible that creationists care about??

1    In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2   And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3   And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Explain that again about how the Bible isn’t interested in how the universe came into being?