Stephen Hawking's Quotes Take On God

Hubris is defined as excessive pride or self-confidence and, in its root Greek tragedy meaning, refers specifically to defiance of God. I think we've got an example here with Stephen Hawking's quotes.

First, lets take on the laws of physics, as Hawking thinks of them, and answer the simple question of how much we don't know about them with an even simpler - A lot.

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Advocates of the highly advanced version of superstring theory known as "M Theory" believe there are eleven dimensions, seven more than those we recognize now, when you include time as a dimension that interweaves the other three. As part of the reality in which we all operate, these dimensions are as much a part of our lives as those we know, just not visible to us. While this is an extremely weird situation, it certainly ought to give smart individuals pause before making profound announcements about anything universal. Why is it so hard to say, "We just don't know?"

Dealing with a range of "things" in the universe, from some almost too obscure to be called "things" at all to the impossibly large, we are able to see clumps of matter we call reality and which evolution has given us the skills to recognize. The rest is theory, brilliant, wild, crazy and unproven.

The mass of things we don't know is enough to keep scientists exploring for centuries. We are a very young species. Science is in its infancy. This should be humbling insight, but for Stephen Hawking, it is not.

What justifies the assumption, in the first place, that physics ought some day be able to explain everything? Just because scientists say so? That's fine, as long as they are talking to other scientists. The cocksure posture of many scientists, especially the power hitters, evades the fact that we don't even know for sure what gravity, possibly the most powerful force in the universe, is. We know that it is, and we have theories. That's all. Forget about dark energy, dark matter and the mysterious dimensions superstring theory demands.

Next, let's take on God. I am assuming that in dismissing "god," Hawking is tossing into the scrapheap every rendition, including mine. I will join him in junking the annoying God of the Gaps, hustled in to explain anything science has not; the Medieval Gods that have been extended into modern times through reinvention, some of it fairly desperate and intellectually dishonest; and those who never claimed to be Gods but got promoted by followers and proselytizers anyway-Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, etc.

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Kicking out Gods who should have been polite enough to go quietly is easy enough. None of the miracles claimed by any of them approached the polio vaccine in alleviating human suffering, and none of them elevated human enlightenment as much as, say, Albert Einstein. But that's a far cry from vaporizing the concept as unnecessary in total.

In a tiny corner of the universe, fairly close to us, astrophysicists have discovered an incubator of baby suns. It's at the center of our own galaxy, and new suns are being pumped out continuously. They spin out into the galaxy, just as the sun that fills our world with light must once have.

The space this incubator occupies is too tiny to be explained. The Milky Way itself is one of millions of galaxies, and one with nothing extraordinary about it. Yet, this minuscule (relative to the rest of the universe) incubator has vastly more energy and power bursting in every direction than our mighty power systems on Earth will generate in our entire history.

When we think about that tiny pocket of power extending through the rest of the conceivable universe, we see an entity so massive and complex that the minds we now have are incapable of imagining it. All we really have, in spite of Stephen Hawking's certainty, is theory subject to holistic blindness. There is certainly more out there than any of us have begun to imagine. Some of it will turn out to be miraculous, even Godlike.

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In what is ruled (or maybe just revealed) by the Laws of Physics, is where any God would have to exist in every particle, law or flicker of energy. God would have to permeate all of it.

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And by "permeate," I don't mean sit idly. I mean inform and inspire. In an orderly universe, at least as far as we can conceive it, every object must be connected and operating in a way that infers both intelligence (distinguished from thinking) and intention. Otherwise, we would have only chaos and not order. Intelligence and intention were the gifts God handed out as the Laws of Physics Stephen Hawking has mastered so well. And even if God is away on business, as Tom Waits suggests, we still need the laws.