Tag Archives: M-Theory

Commentary

Science writer John Horgan comments on Hawking’s ideas

1 Comment

This is from Scientific American. (H/T Reformed Seth)

Keep in mind that the author is a naturalist and an atheist, and he thinks Glenn Beck is a “right-wing nut” – i.e. – I infer that the author is a left-wing nut. But his criticisms of Hawking’s untestable theory are accurate.

Excerpt:

The “sound scientific explanation” is M-theory, which Hawking calls (in a blurb for Amazon) “the only viable candidate for a complete ‘theory of everything’.”

Actually M-theory is just the latest iteration of string theory, with membranes (hence the M) substituted for strings. For more than two decades string theory has been the most popular candidate for the unified theory that Hawking envisioned 30 years ago. Yet this popularity stems not from the theory’s actual merits but rather from the lack of decent alternatives and the stubborn refusal of enthusiasts to abandon their faith.

M-theory suffers from the same flaws that string theories did. First is the problem of empirical accessibility. Membranes, like strings, are supposedly very, very tiny—as small compared with a proton as a proton is compared with the solar system. This is the so-called Planck scale, 10^–33 centimeters. Gaining the kind of experimental confirmation of membranes or strings that we have for, say, quarks would require a particle accelerator 1,000 light-years around, scaling up from our current technology. Our entire solar system is only one light-day around, and the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful accelerator, is 27 kilometers in circumference.

This sounds like bad news for atheism and their beloved deity, but it is a strength of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (peas be upon him) to be untestable, unobservable and speculative! It’s a feature, not a bug.

UPDATE: Cool video of Roger Penrose and Alister McGrath debunking Hawking’s theory:

Atheist Roger Penrose calls it “not even a theory”. Wow. This is from Justin Brierley’s “Unbelievable” show, that I feature once in a while.

Commentary

Physicist Frank Tipler weighs in on Stephen Hawking’s theory

10 Comments

Physics professor Frank Tipler has written an evaluation of Dan Brown’s Stephen Hawking’s speculations theories. (H/T The ID Report via Post-Darwinist)

Excerpt:

In 1966, Stephen Hawking published his first – completely valid – proof for the existence of God. Over the next seven years, he followed this with even more powerful valid theorems proving God’s existence.

So how did Hawking, who successfully proved God’s existence, remain an atheist? Simple. He simply denied that the assumptions he used in his proofs were true. As a matter of logic, if the assumptions in a proof are not true, then the conclusions need not be true. What assumptions did the young Hawking make? He assumed that the laws of physics, mainly Einstein’s theory of gravity, were true. In the summary of his early research, namely his book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Hawking wrote:

It seems to be a good principle that the prediction of [God] by a physical theory indicates that the theory has broken down, i.e. it no longer provides a correct description of observations.

Hawking then began working on quantum gravity, in hopes that God would be at last eliminated from the equations. Alas, it was not to be: God was even more prominent – and unavoidable – in quantum gravity than in Einstein’s theory of gravity. In his latest book, The Grand Design, Hawking has pinned his hope of eliminating God on M-theory, a theory with no experimental support whatsoever, hence not a theory of physics at all. Nor has it been proven that M-theory is mathematically consistent. Nor has it been proven that God has been eliminated from M-theory. There are disquieting signs (for Hawking and company) that He is also unavoidable in M-theory, as He is in Einstein’s gravity, and in quantum gravity.

In spite of what the atheist press is telling you, it’s looking bad for atheism today. And it is extraordinary the lengths an atheist like Hawking will go to avoid the obvious: God exists.

The progress of science has made the case for a Creator and Designer air-tight. Anyone who doubts the existence of a Creator and Designer today is simply not reality-based in their worldview. M-theory, global warming and Darwinian macro-evolution are the scientific heirs of alchemy, geocentrism and phrenology. And that’s why atheists don’t want these things to be debated – because they’ll lose.

Click here to hear a debate on Hawking’s theory between Oxford atheist theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and Oxford Christian microbiologist/theologian Alister McGrath.

Or watch the highlights:

Nobody is impressed by Hawking’s theory – except journalists anxious to delude the public.