The BBC likes Professor Stephen Hawkings and he was on Today this morning. His profound atheism is a quality that they admire and his physics background provides a convenient distraction when he comes out with statements such as there is no God and that man made global warming warming may well bring about the end of mankind. I suppose it is one of those ironies that because of his condition, Hawkings gets to make statements without interruption but I have to say that I find his views pretty offensive and for a supposedly clever man, he makes some very stupid comments It’s not exactly bias but I believe that he is used by the BBC because his alleged genius advances their narrative of god-hating and global warming advocacy.
HAWKING HAWKINGS
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When it comes to religion I’m apathetic, I was raised a Christian and adhere to Christian values. However I don’t believe there is a God. I am not an athiest.
An atheist is merely one who lacks god belief a-theist as in without god; like asymmetry – without symetry. “I don’t believe there is a God” would seem to qualify you.
I am usually driving home from work between 430 and 530 and during that time I tolerate Radio 4 on some occasions although after the first few minutes of sickly Eddie Mair I usually revert to the CD player. Yesterday it was Material World at 430 and it is often is interesting and thought provoking. It was about apocalyptic ‘end of the world’ predictions – see link for details http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018xwt3
One of the ‘experts’ was an Irish sounding Dame Jocelyn (not quite an Orla Guerin but getting close in accent) an astronomer. She described numerous astronomical phenomena and dire predictions and discounted most with miniscule statistical probabilities… until – you guessed it – finally being asked about the greatest current threat to our world… yes CLIMATE CHANGE!!! Well she is a member of the Royal Society so probably lunches with Sir Paul Nurse the geneticist who is another world expert on Mann-made climate change too. Yes I did switch off before hearing Eddie Mair’s dulwit tones.
Oh, sounds interesting. I might listen to that on iPlayer. I presume that’s Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who is from Belfast and discovered pulsars. I would say her soft Ulster tones are a fair ways off from the Dublin foghorn of Orla “Stentorian” Guerin. 🙂
You know, I always wondered what others thought of Hawking.
He is treated as some sort of Messiah, and people hang on his every word. I can’t think why. OK, so he is a physicist, but no better than any of the others, and no more right than anyone else, either, so why do these smarmy buggers idolise him? I find him creepy, and have often wondered whether or not he’s real, or just a one big con trick dreamt up for a lark by some naughty students (who have since outgrown the joke). I’m sure he’s a nice chap, really, and I don’t mean to be disparaging, but the slimy adulation, and the treatment of his every word as Gospel, I find offensive. And he is SO over exposed, especially this week because it’s his birthday, or something
they like him because he is an anti-theist
but then,the beeb must be schizo
they adore islam and muslims……oh the philosophical conundrums to be wrestled with at tv tax payers expense!
I find his line of work interesting, I admire his commitement to science even through his disease and he will be a great loss to it.
I find his thoughts irrational sometimes, I also find that he says things that you would keep to yourself I guess when you’re locked into your body, every thought you want to get out there, regardless of what people will think.
I think his personal story resonates with the public and journalists. And if you know about his research there’s no doubt he’s done some Nobel-worthy stuff. Indeed if people managed to measure “Hawking radiation” then he’d almost certainly get a Nobel. I think that’s pretty unlikely before he dies though and of course the Nobel committee don’t give the award postumously.
Yes, I caught Hawking casually dropping in the ‘Global Warming’ reference and my heart sank. These days, I only have to have the BBC Toady Programme on for a few moments before its bias begins seeping through. I didn’t catch Hawking’s comments about God, but as a determined athiest myself I’m not too worried about his views on that matter (because they don’t matter).
I didn’t hear this interview but it’s another of the “celebrity opinion – because it’s celebrity opinion – must be given respectful credence” items. Hawking is an outstanding theoretical physicist and cosmologist. I’ll listen to him all day (if I cared) about his views on the subjects on which he is expert. However, his opinion on God and atheism has as much weight as, for instance, Black on CAGW (or Black on anything for that matter). Whether or not God exists is not open to scientific enquiry (ie not within Hawking’s expertise) because it’s scientifically impossible (within the Popperian system) to disprove.
Hawking has said:
“ “the actual point of creation lies outside the scope of presently known laws of physics,”
His views on the deity are therefore private speculations and his undoubted mathematical and conceptual skills…his work on black holes is extraordinary……..do not add authority to his musings outside his field.
I prefer the writing of Leon Lederman (a Physics Nobel prize winner, which Hawking is not):
“In the very beginning, there was a void, a curious form of vacuum, a nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound. Yet the laws of nature were in place and this curious vacuum held potential. A story logically begins at the beginning, but this story is about the universe and unfortunately there are no data for the very beginnings–none, zero. We don’t know anything about the universe until it reaches the mature age of a billion of a trillionth of a second. That is, some very short time after creation in the big bang. When you read or hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up–we are in the realm of philosophy. Only God knows what happened at the very beginning.”
Hawking doesn’t know. His guess is as good as any man’s.
why is Billy Brag’s twitter avatar floating at the top of each new thread?
It’s a sign, it’s a sign – we’re doomed…
He’s all over the BBC like a rash, but does he have to be here as well?
As a non baptised person and atheist I should be right up there with the hawk but no![sorry I find him over rated ] the one group I really dislike is the army of self serving/advertising anti god lot like Dorkins and Shigh who cannot let it alone, they are as driven by religious zeal the equal of any bible firebrand and are as totally wed to the ‘end of days rapture ‘ story that the bible warriors that they laugh at are!
They can speak all they want but they don’t speak for me !!
Not sure why Hawking is any more of an expert on Global Warming than I am, or Al Gore, Michael Mann or Phil Jones for that matter. I treated his comment with the same disdain as if he was opining on zonal marking.
Just for some balance, there are a lot of us who do believe in God (not allah, by the way). People can believe or not but I am always unsettled when people in prominent positions are afforded air time to hold forth on their atheism, or agnosticism, when few Christians are given the same opportunity (and I’m not thinking of the Archbishop of Canterbury, here, because he doesn’t strike me as being very Christian in his beliefs). In my opinion, destroy Christianity (of course, that’s not going to happen, but imagine if the forces levelled at us succeed) and you don’t obtain some worldly nirvana, you allow the forces of evil to enter; in the current guise of islam. And evil takes no prisoners.
“destroy Christianity (and)…you allow the forces of evil to enter; in the current guise of islam…”
Well, of course, you realise the Muslims would say exactly the same thing about Christians, of course? Therein lies the utter madness of it all. You’re all heretical to each other. That’s why I choose to have nothing to do with anyone’s preferred version of God.
Declaring one’s atheism through the public media in the UK is exactly the same kneejerk statement as declaring one’s undying love for Gasworks United. The football claim is a straightforward appeal for a credibility with the (assumedly) football crazy audience (or, for politicians, electorate): the atheist claim is meant to be “edgy” and “brave” particularly when linked to a slur on Christianity (never Islam of course). Such statements are essentially meaningless or, rather, demean both the audience they’re aimed at and, more to the point, the person making the statement.
John but that’s the point, every time the BBC have some halfwit in a dog collar on TV or radio the only thing they won’t talk about is religion, that’s their fault and one of the reasons why the C of E is dying on its feet.
Leave capitalism and the bankers to the politicians and voters and concentrate more on teaching the good bits of the Bible to people, but they don’t seem to want to do that.
I’d suggest people who are C of E goers perhaps try to vote off that tosser from Canterbury.
I heard a Today programme back in 2006 that had both Camilla Batmanghedghli and Stephen Hawking on.
In one piece Camilla said that her kids suffered from some emotional thermostat malfunction-Humphrys let her carry on like this with no mockery or scorn whatsoever for this loopy ladies new-age gobbledegook.
The next piece had Hawking going on about extra-terrestrials/parallel worlds and their racing certainity…it does need checking because it was loopy science fiction. Thoroughly bizarre, but yet again-because it was our other-abled friend-he was not treated the way that he should have been…on a par with David Icke.
I don`t recall it that well-think it was Nov/Dec 2006-but it`s worth seeking out.
Like other atheists with only the one golf club…their reasoning to absurdity makes them all sound like Spock or worse when it comes to the big questions.Which is why they get invites to the BBC, whereas proper scientists don`t get to equivocate or produce complex evidence…much of which is REAL science.
There is a PhD in the weird effects of subjecting too many boys to Star Wars, Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams…look what it did to Colin Pillinger and to Brian Cox!
I refer you to todays paean of praise (1.45 pm…6/1/12).
Note how seriously the sci-fi aspects are taken as opposed to ranting Christian collage in the programme.
But at elast, I wasn`t deluded…selfish gene, global warming and what about the polar bears…all ticked by Hawking.
But at least he included some of his research in an actual Science Fiction Museum in the States as it was THAT embarrassing. Should make a good BBC archive if the UEA let them use it!
I can’t say I’ve noticed Hawking on the BBC that much, not compared to Brian Cox for example.
I really don’t see the issue of not believing in god, Hawking’s often made the point that science can show (not as an absolute yet) that you don’t need a god to create the universe but plenty of scientists do believe in god.
I don’t believe in the man made god of the Bible or Koran, but I can’t prove one way or the other that some ultimate creative force isn’t at work somewhere.
The only issue I have is that the BBC attack’s the ‘Bible believers’ about their beliefs but doesn’t treat the Koran followers in the same way.
Like many of the BBC scientists who comment on religion Hawkings assumes that religion rests on a scientific hypothesis. From that point onwards his comments on religion go downhill.
Well that’s because Hawking is a scientist, god is more an issue of faith. From what I’ve read from Hawking and seen on his TV programes his argument is a scientific one which is basically do you need a god to create the universe.
Hawking’s view is you don’t I don’t think he’s ever trashed religion though generally, just that he think’s a god is not needed scientifically.
As far as the climate change nonsense goes that does deprress me.
Science is descriptive and is limited by what it can measure. What science cannot do is ascribe meaning or purpose. It can prove existance but cannot explain why we (the universe) exists. Science describes process not purpose.
Please forgive my repeating what I quoted above from Leon Lederman (Physics Nobel Laureate):
“In the very beginning, there was a void, a curious form of vacuum, a nothingness containing no space, no time, no matter, no light, no sound. Yet the laws of nature were in place and this curious vacuum held potential. A story logically begins at the beginning, but this story is about the universe and unfortunately there are no data for the very beginnings–none, zero. We don’t know anything about the universe until it reaches the mature age of a billion of a trillionth of a second. That is, some very short time after creation in the big bang. When you read or hear anything about the birth of the universe, someone is making it up–we are in the realm of philosophy.”
Regardless of belief, any scientist claiming that they KNOW God doesn’t exist is showing their own mental or logical limitations.
I’m always reminded of this humorous story when it becomes an issue:
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.
The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’ve got to the point where we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go and get lost.”
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this? Let’s say we have a man-making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “Okay, great!”
But God added, “Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.”
The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go and get your own dirt”.
Teddy Bear,
Believers doubt what they believe truly exists. Hence faith.
Non-believers know without question that what they don’t believe in doesn’t exist.
I prefer people who ask questions than the people who have answers.
Besides if they’re right, then what the hell. If I’m right, they are in BIG trouble.
Louis, Rumsfeld put this point very well, although the BBC and their ‘comedians’ seemed unable to understand it and thought it worthy of ridicule, when he said:
there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
and
“There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.”
I can’t respect any intelligence that doesn’t understand this basic facet of reality. this is what shows an ‘agenda’ rather than good reason.
There was once a Doctor Who episode which showed the horrible little green squawking creatures that sat inside the daleks. Clearly one of them planned to exterminate us one day by grating on about atheism, global warming and the universe until we were all bored to death. That day has come.