What do you mean, indeed. He is a fitting successor to those illustrious explorers of the cosmos. We can get some further light on the mind of Stephen Hawking, if not of God, from his later book Black Holes and Baby Universes. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. Whatever the hopes of readers who come to the book looking for theological insights, Hawking's invocation of God's name most often records God's absence. At present, no ensemble of observations elucidates the precise nature of the big bang. Amid the confusion created by the pandemic, one thing is clear: the 2020 election will be unlike any other. Of the three options listed by Professor Hawking, I find myself leaning toward Option 2 (there is no ultimate theory of the universe, only an infinite sequence of theories that describe the universe in ever greater detail), and I am therefore distrustful of any claims to know the mind of God, now or in the future, whether offered by New Age gurus or theoretical physicists. We are truly meant to be here. The essence of Professor Hawking's natural theology is this: God's mind is identical with a plan of creation of stunning simplicity and generality, the so-called Grand Unified Theory. In this regard, I am put in mind of an anecdote described by New Age guru Shirley MacLaine in her book Going Within: A Guide to Inner Transformation (Bantam). ", Please help to establish notability by citing, Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mind_of_God&oldid=937468786, Articles lacking sources from December 2013, Articles with topics of unclear notability from November 2019, All articles with topics of unclear notability, Articles with multiple maintenance issues, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 January 2020, at 06:11. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. If God's mind, as reflected in Grand Unified Theories, resides beyond the bounds of our comprehension (and therefore full appreciation), is there anything left to draw us to the book? Indeed, given enough time, all of the energy contained within any black hole will evaporate. In spite of Hawking's teasing invitation to behold the mind of God, no one should refer to his book for enlightenment about God's role in the universe. Today's theories may seem quaintly old-fashioned to the physicists of the next century. The longevity of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Bantam) on international best-seller lists is itself a phenomenon worthy of scientific investigation. Great physicists make unsteady philosophers, and even unsteadier theologians. But the attempt to find confirmation for theology in the gaps or singularities of physics has always been a risky business, and no less so on this occasion. Subtitled The Scientific Basis for a Rational World, it is a whirlwind tour and explanation of theories, both physical and metaphysical, regarding ultimate causes. ", MacLaine persists: "So the question becomes how we define order in relation to how we see ourselves and our behavior? MacLaine goes on pilgrimage to Cambridge to interview Stephen Hawking. Which there isn't. Energy produced by fusion (similar to what happens in a hydrogen bomb explosion) makes the star shine. Pope John Paul II has expressed his views on science and theology in a letter that stands as a preface to a volume of papers that emerged from a Vatican conference marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia mathematica (Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, edited by Robert J. Russell, William Stoeger, S.J., and George Coyne, S.J., University of Notre Dame Press and Vatican Press). Hawking tells an immensely satisfying tale of his own intellectual development, and the story nibbles at the margins of larger questions of admittedly theological interest. After some chatty preliminaries, MacLaine asks if the harmonic energy of the universe is "loving. Apparently, both authors have something to say (or are perceived to have something to say) that the public wants to hear. On his life purpose. The longevity of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Bantam) on international best-seller lists is itself a phenomenon worthy of scientific investigation.As I write, the book has been on the American list for more than ninety weeks. Cosmologies change. Few of us are capable of reading the Grand Design in the language in which it is written. Forget what Donald Trump says. Design by. Might that too be a component of the book's allure? The promise of an easy path to God's mind soon gives way to a quasi-mathematical thicket of superstrings and black holes. But future observations and theoretical investigations will undoubtedly have much to say about the "moment of creation," and no physicist worth his salt will place the big bang off-limits for theological reasons. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it … This article first appeared in the April 6, 1990 issue of Commonweal. If the pope did indeed suggest that theoretical physicists should not inquire into the big bang, that hardly qualifies as radical openness. Many readers of A Brief History of Time will probably give up somewhere about page 25, when the discussion reaches non-Euclidean space-time. So what accounts for the book's extraordinary popular appeal? Here’s some of Commonweal’s best writing on the subject. ", "Maybe," replies Hawking. The mind of God! This relative inaccessibility of modem cosmological thought is surely one reason for the rampant popular interest in those pseudosciences and New Age quackeries that seem to offer the aura of science with none of the drudgery. Both Stephen Hawking and Shirley MacLaine express a preference for Option 1, which may account for their popularity. "Hawking and the Mind of God" examines the pseudo-religious connotations of some of the key themes in Hawking's work, and how these shed light not only on the Hawking cult itself, but also on the wider issue of how scientists represent themselves in the media. Hawking and the Mind of God examines the pseudo-religious connotations of some of the key themes in Hawking's work, and how these shed light not only on the Hawking cult itself, but also on the wider issue of how scientists represent themselves in the media. His meditations are mathematical. And what of ultimate meaning? But there is more. Stephen Hawking, in his final book, argues there's no possibility of God existing because time didn't exist before the Big Bang. In the end, what is most attractive about A Brief History of Time is not the theology or philosophy (which are treated with wry humor), or even the physics (which will be almost impenetrable for the nonscientist), but the ingenuous first-person narrative regarding the author's participation in the remarkable theoretical discoveries he describes.
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