How smart is Stephen Hawking?

"Did God create the universe?"

That is the question posed in the first episode of the new Curiosity documentary series recently aired by the Discovery Channel. As answered by noted scientist and atheist Stephen Hawking, the answer is “No.”

Hawking, a theoretical physicist known as much for his debilitating disease as his academic work, is considered one of the most intelligent people on the planet.

Why is his answer “No”? Apparently, just because Stephen Hawking says so. That is the only conclusion that I can draw after sitting through an hour-long television program heavy on graphics and video, but in the end light on any meaningful explanation or support.

To lesser minds such as mine, Hawking's explanation appears based upon scientific inconsistencies.

In the show, Hawking explains that one only needs three things to create a universe: matter, energy and space. However, Hawking then explains that, because Albert Einstein's famous equation regarding the theory of relativity (E = Mc²) shows that matter is but another form of energy, one only needs two things: energy and space. Yet again, later in the episode, Hawking claims that the energy of the Big Bang created space. Thus, apparently energy is the sole ingredient necessary in order to create a universe. Admittedly I am not entirely clear if this is Hawking's supposition, as it is uncertain if his reference to “space” as an ingredient for recipe to create a universe is the same as his reference to “space” as the far distances between stars and galaxies and the repository of the negative energy that he believes must have been created to offset the positive energy present at the instant of the Big Bang.

But then, it is this idea of negative energy which is the greatest evidence of Hawking's scientific inconsistencies.

Hawking states that people through their ignorance believe that results must have causes (i.e., cause and effect), while science can prove that a result can happen spontaneously without any cause at all. Therefore, for the Big Bang to happen, it was not necessary for any starter device, whether that be God or otherwise.

Yet, Hawking also postulates that as the result of the Big Bang and its massive release of energy there must therefore have also been a massive release of offsetting negative energy. Though this is never completely explained in the television episode, to an unscientific mind such as mine it would appear that this is in part based on Newton's third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

However, many if not most scientists and undoubtedly Hawking assuredly would reject any notion that Newton's laws and theories have any place in modern scientific thought. Newton's theories have been replaced by quantum theory. Yet, even if this were not the case, Hawking no doubt would have to reject Newton because of his first law: an object at rest will stay at rest unless a force acts upon it. This first law would be counter to Hawking's idea that something (even something as big as the Big Bang) could happen spontaneously without any force. After all, tracing back through time to the moment of the Big Bang, according to Hawking, would reveal an infinitesimal speck of a black hole in which all has stopped. Newton would require that some force act upon the speck. While acknowledging that there are those who believe that this force could be evidence of God, Hawking dismisses any such assertion because such a force would be counter to Hawking's idea of spontaneous creation.

In any event, according to Hawking, the Big Bang occurred without any impetus, releasing massive amounts of energy which became what we know as energy (heat, light, etc.) and matter (hydrogen gas burning with the stars and the rock, water and gases making up the planets), yet also releasing massive amounts of negative energy which Hawking says either became or resides within the “empty” reaches of outer space. And, according to Hawking, this negative energy of the Big Bang must equal and offset the positive energy of the Big Bang. No real explanation for why this is so is given (Hawking implies that television viewers are too ignorant to understand the theory), but clearly it can have nothing to do with Newton's ideas.

So, at the moment of the Big Bang, we have equal amounts of energy and negative energy. And, according to Hawking, as these would cancel each other out, we essentially have nothing. Thus, the universe was created spontaneously from nothing. Therefore, you do not need three ingredients to create a universe, or two ingredients, or one ingredient. You do not need any ingredient. The universe was thus created spontaneously out of nothing. And, in Hawking's mind, the only conclusion can be that there is no God that created the universe.

Now, as I am not a scientist neither am I a mathematician, but something seems inherently wrong in Hawking's concept of nothing. His idea is that energy and negative energy cancel each other out and thus equal nothing. But does doing the math necessarily equal reality?

Let's say I have plus-1 and minus-1. Mathematically, these cancel each other out and the equation would result in 0. So, what do I have? Nothing? No, I have plus-1 and minus-1. Of course, any mathematician or scientist would say that this example is not plausible because minus-1 does not exist in reality. It is merely a concept for subtraction.

But for a perhaps more scientific example, let's say I have one proton and one electron. The charge of one proton is equal to the charge of one electron, but their charges are opposite with the proton considered to have a positive charge and the electron a negative charge. Therefore, the charge of the proton will cancel out the charge of the electron. Does this mean that I have nothing? No, it means that I have one proton and one electron with opposite but equal charges. The mere fact that they are opposite and equal does not render them nonexistent.

But Hawking's rationale as expressed in Curiosity is that equal amounts of energy and negative energy yield a result of nothing and thus the infinitesimal speck of a black hole existing before the Big Bang is a nothing where motion, time, energy, and matter do not exist. Thus, that which existed in theory before the Big Bang did not exist at all. And then spontaneously, with a big bang, all came into being; nothing became everything. No force, no energy needed; and certainly no God.

Similarly, Hawking states that the Big Bang not only created the universe with all its matter, energy, and space, but also created time itself. For prior to the Big Bang when nothing existed but an infinitesimal speck of nothing, in that nothingness of a black hole everything had stopped; or more accurately perhaps had never started. Thus, time did not exist until the Big Bang. And if time did not exist, then there is no need for a God and thus God does not exist. The reason for such a conclusion is not explained, just stated.

However, this leads me to wonder. If time did not exist, if matter did not exist, if energy did not exist, if space did not exist, if the only thing that did exist was nothing which means that nothing existed, then what was there? What was there before time? What was there before space? What was there before the universe? What was there before the Big Bang if the Big Bang came from nothing?

Hawking has in fact been asked in at least one interview this very question. The answer he has provided is no answer at all. Instead, he dismisses the question. His response is that the question is meaningless just the same as asking what is north of the north pole. In his world, in the strict scientific world, there is no formula that will explain before the Big Bang. The immutable laws of nature that Hawking relies on all require a Big Bang, all derive from a Big Bang, and can explain nothing before a Big Bang.

And if something cannot be explained, then it must not exist. In effect, it has become nothing. Such is how Hawking can reach a conclusion that the universe was created out of and by nothing. His lack of knowledge and understanding of what could be before allows for no other conclusion.

There are two common and somewhat related idioms: a leap of faith and jumping to a conclusion. A leap of faith is a belief or trust in something incapable of being proved, while jumping to a conclusion is evaluating something without sufficient facts.

Those who believe in God are often criticized as having taken a leap of faith, holding a belief in something that cannot be proven. But are scientists such as Hawking who subscribe to atheism any different? Is not his leap of non-faith merely his jumping to a conclusion, passing judgment that there must not be a God because he lacks sufficient facts or the ability or knowledge to discern a God?

A theist may take those things which are not or cannot be known (what was there before the universe, what was there before time) as evidence, however slight, of the existence of God. In considering those same questions, a scientific atheist merely dismisses the questions as meaningless because not only are there no simple answers but there are no answers that they can derive within the confines of the complexity of their theories.

As an atheist and scientist, Hawking believes that he can explain everything, except that which cannot be explained. And if it cannot be explained, it is dismissed as nonexistent, meaningless. This is perhaps Hawking's greatest failing, the inability to realize (or admit) that he does not know.

The Discovery Channel's Curiosity asks: “Did God create the universe?” Stephen Hawking's answer is: “No, because that's what I say and what I believe, and I am smarter than you.”

But perhaps Hawking is not so smart as he believes or as we are led to believe.

 -- AH