Stephen Hawking and the necessity of God...?

Question

"Yet if there really were a [Theory of Everything], it would also determine our actions--so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine we come to the right conclusions based on the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion?"

Hawking (A Brief History of Time)

Without God, is there any reason to believe any of our scientific conclusions are true? Or our logical, rational, reasonable, common sense conclusions, for that matter?

I feel deceptive if I don't point out that Hawking believes Darwinian natural selection answers this question.

Answer 1

Our scientific conclusions are as true as the accuracy of the predictions that spawn from them, as surely as antibiotics help fight disease, gravity keeps us orbiting the sun, and gasoline burns in a controlled fashion in an enclosed space.

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Answer 2

"We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know ....
... In our society it is still customary for parents and teachers to answer most of these questions with a shrug, or with an appeal to vaguely recalled religious precepts ... "

Hawking (A Brief History of Time)

It is only without God that there is a reason to wonder. With God, no one asks - they think they already know.

Answer 3

I do not see where the quote from Hawking says anything relative about the necessity of God. It seems he is pointing out that if we are striving to prove a scientific theory, and we start that quest to prove with preconceived notions or ideas of the outcome, then we could conceivably draw the wrong conclusion to our theory based on our faulty logic and biased.

Answer 4

hard determinism leads strange places sometimes eh? i think god provides some people an illusion of certainty. worrying about whether or not something is true can be good but past a certain point one has to acknowledge that some things are useful even if we don't know if they're true. quantum mechanics may be false but we can still use it as a guide to build computers and other devices, and to discover a better theory.

Answer 5

Science accepts change. Religion does not. Scientific conclusions are not based upon whether god exists but rather whether the information and results are true or can be repeated based on information received. God does not influence us and our decisions. We destroy or recover ourselves based on how we work with other humans, not be what we learn from science. Science can improve our lives but it is our interactions with each other that determines our successes and failures, not data.

Answer 6

You mean you wouldn't be able to accept REALITY without believing in God??

The natural world could have and DID come about, well, NATURALLY. Logic, reason, rationality, they're all wonderful tools and lead those who will listen openly and honestly to the conclusion that no gods exist, not even the Judeo-Christian one.

Answer 7

That's a huge one sided answer. You could also look at it as, if a god existed, then our actions would be predetermined to prove his existence.

It's an interesting *theory*, but if it is not based on anything that is provable, then there is just so much room for "ifs" and "buts" to ever be of use to us.

Answer 8

yes. we make scientific theories in order to make other predictions. often out of self preservation. we can observe gravity, then we can make calculations on how gravity will help fling our spacecraft around planets so we can continue to progress our knowledge.

if we continue to progress, we can do things to help preserve our race. like what the army corps did in new orleans. great science to help save our species. hopefully, when the next big meteor comes, we can divert it, destory it, or move to the moon.

without god, our scientific conclusions still help us preserve our species.

Answer 9

To apply this statement as proof of God is illogical. If it does prove God, then it also proves that everything from the beginning of time is predetermined and therefore there is no need for us to behave in any particular way to go to either Heaven or Hell. And either way, we have no choice to make.

Answer 10

We may well draw the wrong conclusion.

But no gods have stepped in so far and told us whether or not our conclusions are correct...