Stephen Hawking, in A Brief History of Time (1988; 2nd edn. 1996) p. 146, attempts to wave away the otherwise lurking Big-Bang singularity by an appeal to Heisenberg Uncertainty. Well, fine; actually the whole enterprise of physics around that moment strikes me as eminently Uncertain -- but fine; passe encore. Instead of a pointy sugar-cone, you have one of those paper cones with a rounded bottom. Fine.
Only -- from this he leaps to:
If the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?
“Simply be”: as though that were self-explanatory. -- On the contrary: philosophical-theological wonder has focussed on, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?”, and in no way on “Yipes! There’s a singularity! Ergo God!”
If Hawking is an atheist, fine, no problem. What is bothersome is rather the chance that an ignorant and mesmerized public might fancy that, with such pronouncements from a media star, he has brought some startling new scientific insight into play, that would make Aquinas slap his forehead and say “Oops, you win! K sry -- my-bad. No God after all.”
(For an alternate proof of the non-existence of God, click here.)
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