From Meghan Bartels at MSN:
Hawking approaches the problem by offering a detailed analogy, comparing space-time to any other continuous, curved surface, like the surface of the Earth. “There is nothing south of the South Pole,” Hawking says. The same principle holds with the universe: “There was nothing around before the Big Bang.”More.
“Nothing” is actually a big word. It can mean many different things while purporting to be one big Nothing. Fine print.
Ken Francis replied to this line of thinking at New English Review:
About seven years ago, during a talk on Hawking at a university, I raised my hand and criticised comments he made in his then latest book, The Grand Design, which he co-wrote with Star Trek screenwriter Leonard Mlodinow.
My question was, “why did Hawking write such a nonsensical idea that the universe created itself because of gravity?” (In order for the universe to create itself it would have to have existed before it exists, and gravity is part of the universe). I also asked why did Hawking write “philosophy is dead” at the beginning of his book (a self-refuting statement, as it’s philosophical), while constantly philosophising throughout the entire book?
There was an awkward silence in the lecture hall and the speaker looked at me in what seemed like a confused expression. He said, “Did he really say that?” (He hadn’t read the entire book). I told him the page numbers where he could find the quotes. I wasn’t criticising Hawking the man (a man enduring a severe neurone disease that has paralysed him for decades), but Hawking the scientist.
But, as the speaker looked at me with what seemed like an expression of disbelief, to my rescue came a distinguished astrophysicist on the panel, who stood up and said, “Kenneth is right; Hawking did write those things”. The subject was quickly changed in a ‘move-along-nothing-to-see-here’ kind of way. Because Hawking is an atheist and doesn’t believe the universe was created by God, his views on the origin of the cosmos generally go unchallenged by secular academics and the mainstream media who are generally hostile to Christianity.
And he’s not alone in this view. … (September 2017) More.
Yeh. We see it all the time here at our UD News Free Cold Shower Clinic 😉 : Atheism rots the brain. At a basic level, it produces a bad orientation to reality. Let to go far enough, it leads to PoMo rot, where science becomes the enemy for trying to measure anything at all.
See also: At BigThink: Top ten greatest scientists alive today – Are Stephen Hawking and James Watson oversold?
Must we understand “nothing” to understand physics?
NPR: Can everything come from nothing?
That weasel word “nothing” … which “nothing” does Hawking think created everything?
The Big Bang: Put simply,the facts are wrong.
and
Memo to Marx: Technology, not religion, is now the opiate of the people (Ken Francis)