No place for God

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A brilliant article with a great summing up:

Julian Baggini: If science has not actually killed God, it has rendered Him unrecognisable - Science, News - The Independent:

"In the scientific universe, God is squeezed until his pips squeak. If he survives, then he can't do so without changing his form. Only faith makes it possible to look at such a distorted, scientifically respectable deity and claim to recognise the same chap depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For those without faith, that God is clearly dead, and, yes, science helped to kill him."

We can say that it is only the semitic God that has died, but then, it is cold comfort indeed, to know that science leaves no room for any avatar of God.

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• Hawking: "No place for God" (theworld.org)

An uneven match

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Surely a sane voice- you can't match up something that is constantly put to test against something that is trusted to be true, no matter what kind of evidence turns up-

Has Stephen Hawking ended the God debate? - Telegraph:

"Hawking's view appears to be that the belief in a God-created universe can be supplanted by a belief in M-theory, a good candidate for a fundamental theory of nature at its finest level. Experts assure us of the potential of this theory and I for one am quite prepared to believe them.
One problem with the theory is that it looks as though it will be extremely difficult to test, unless physicists can build a particle accelerator the size of a galaxy. Even if the experimenters find a way round this and M-theory passes all their tests, the reasons for the mathematical order at the heart of the universe's order would remain an unsolvable mystery.
Even religious scientists – and there are still a few – never use the God concept in their scientific work. Perhaps it is time for a moratorium on the use of the concept in popularisations, too? This would avoid mixing up scientific and non-scientific statements and put an end to the consequent confusions. I think it wise for scientists and religious believers to keep out of each other's territory – no good has come out of their engagement and I suspect it never will."

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• CosmicLog: Is the grand design within our grasp? (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)

Tha nature of laws

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"In his new book, Stephen Hawking reiterates that there is no big gap in the scientific account of the big bang. The laws of physics can explain, he says, how a universe of space, time and matter could emerge spontaneously, without the need for God. And most cosmologists agree: we don't need a god-of-the-gaps to make the big bang go bang. It can happen as part of a natural process. A much tougher problem now looms, however. What is the source of those ingenious laws that enable a universe to pop into being from nothing?"

Stephen Hawking's big bang gaps | Paul Davies | Comment is free | The Guardian

There is always something that needs explanation: even if you have explained all the process, there is still the natural laws: how come they are the way there are? In fact, why should there be laws at all?

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• "Bad News, Religious People: Stephen Hawking Says God Didn’t Create the Universe" and related posts (nymag.com)

Q&A: Slavoj Žižek, professor and writer | Life and style | The Guardian

Effervescent-

When were you happiest?

A few times when I looked forward to a happy moment or remembered it - never when it was happening.

What is your greatest fear?

To awaken after death - that's why I want to be burned immediately.

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Q&A: Slavoj Žižek, professor and writer | Life and style | The Guardian:


Great to read, as usual, and scary: the happiness of stupid people makes him unhappy, love feels "...Like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures," and Zizek's secret is the knowledge that Communism will win!