Stephen Hawking & the mind of God:

...At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope...

...On such questions the Cambridge professor is probably no more (or less) reliable than Shirley MacLaine...

...Whatever the hopes of readers who come to the book looking for theological insights, Hawking's invocation of God's name most often records God's absence...

...However, concludes Hawking, if we ever do discover an ultimate theory, it should be possible in time for anyone to understand it...

...He cautions theologians against making "uncritical and hasty use for apologetic purposes of such recent theories as that of the 'big bang.'" This is good advice for theologians, and good advice too for readers of A Brief History of Time...

...He continues: "The unprecedented opportunity we have today is for a common interactive relationship in which each discipline retains its integrity and yet is radically open to the discoveries and insights of the other...

...MacLaine goes on pilgrimage to Cambridge to interview Stephen Hawking...

...Hawking was born on the anniversary of Galileo's death and holds Isaac Newton's chair as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University...

...For many people, Hawking's physical trial and intellectual triumph confirms the primacy of mind over matter, of optimistic spirit over debilitating misfortune...

...The mind of God...

...He writes: "The Catholic church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went around the earth...

...Hawking relates how his interest began to shift from black holes to the origin and fate of the universe when in 1981 he attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits at the Vatican...

...Order," replies Hawking...

...If the star is sufficiently massive-roughly eight times as massive as the sun-no known force can resist the gravitational collapse...

...We are seduced by his achievement into believing that whatever he has to say on any topic must be worth listening to-even as Newton was pressed into public service as Master of the Mint and Einstein was sought out to be Israel's head of state...

...It is a goal of formidable dimension, and if either book provides the answers, it deserves long tenure on the best-seller list...

...Hawking interprets modern cosmology with admirable clarity, but his book is hardly a "gripping" read...

...This relative inaccessibility of modern cosmological thought is surely one reason for the rampant popular interest in those pseudosciences and New Age quackeries that seem to offer the aura of science with none of the drudgery...

...In this respect, Pope John Paul IPs further remarks on the relationship of science and religion are relevant...

...I don't think loving is a word I could ascribe to the universe...

...For a work on relativity and quantum physics to achieve this distinction is unprecedented...

...wonders MacLaine...

...Today's theories may seem quaintly old-fashioned to the physicists of the next century...

...He knows we are still a long way from knowing how the universe works, much less why it works...

...Perhaps what the book best illustrates is the inspiring power of the unfettered human mind to comprehend patterns of order that permeate creation, from the level of the fundamental particles to the distant quasars and big bang...

...Best sellers do have a way of generating their own aura of irresistibility, but, in the case of Hawking's book, this can hardly be the whole story...

...Some uncharitable critics have suggested that A Brief History of Time is more a publicity event than a book, that it is bought but not read, and that its main value is as a coffee-table status symbol...

...His illustrious predecessor as Lucasian Professor confined God's role in the universe to that of a Great Clockmaker who set the world going and then retired from his creation...

...And indeed they explicitly assert the same goal-to know how the universe works and the role we play in it...

...Hawking says that his goal as a physicist is "to know the mind of God...

...Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology...

...the professor is more tentative...

...I don't know that there is anything loving about energy," says the wheelchair-bound professor, via his computerized voice-synthesizer...

...In the end, what is most attractive about A Brief History of Time is not the theology or philosophy (which are treated with wry humor), or even the physics (which will be almost impenetrable for the nonscientist), but the ingenuous first-person narrative regarding the author's participation in the remarkable theoretical discoveries he describes...

...What do you mean, indeed...

...His meditations are mathematical...

...But the attempt to find confirmation for theology in the gaps or singularities of physics has always been a risky business, and no less so on this occasion...

...His insights are the crux of the story told in A Brief History of Time...

...Watching the plan for creation take shape in Hawking's mind may be as close as many of us come to participating in God's thoughts.come to participating in God's thoughts...

...The universe is well-defined order...

...What is a word you could use...

...In spite of Hawking's teasing invitation to behold the mind of God, no one should refer to his book for enlightenment about God's role in the universe...

...Maybe," replies Hawking...

...Wrote the pope: "Science can purify religion from error and superstition...

...And it is exactly here-the singularity of the moment of creation-that Professor Hawking's theoretical investigations are of relevance, for on this question his expertise is unsurpassed...

...The first and most obvious is Hawking himself...

...Professor Hawking lists three possibilities in the search for the ultimate meaning of the universe: (1) There is an ultimate theory describing the universe that we will one day discover, if only we are clever enough (for Hawking that theory will be mathematical, the so-called GUT, or Grand Unified Theory so vigorously sought by physicists...

...Purchasing Hawking's book may be a conscious or unconscious way of paying homage to the inspiring courage of the man...

...And what of ultimate meaning...

...He is confined to a wheelchair and speaks and writes with the help of a computer and voice synthesizer...

...Hawking is a physicist with a particular interest in cosmology...

...STEPHEN HAWKING & THE MIND OF GOD A BRIEF HISTORY OF 'A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME' CHET RAYMO The longevity of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Bantam) on international best-seller lists is itself a phenomenon worthy of scientific investigation...

...or (3) the universe is random and arbitrary, with no more than occasional fleeting and accidental patterns of meaning...

...The promise of an easy path to God's mind soon gives way to a quasi-mathematical thicket of super-strings and black holes...

...The essence of Professor Hawking's natural theology is this: God's mind is identical with a plan of creation of stunning simplicity and generality, the so-called Grand Unified Theory...

...Hawking himself might merely use the words "lucky" and "unlucky...

...It seemed that the universe came into existence at a moment in time, full of the rich potential that would lead to the universe we enjoy today...

...Hawking, characteristically, asks for a kiss...

...Drawing upon his investigations of stellar black holes, Hawking applied the laws of quantum gravity to the universe itself, especially at the first moment of creation when the entire universe can be thought of as a black hole singularity...

...MacLaine lives in a world of penny miracles...

...Cosmologies change...

...The story begins with black holes and the fate of stars...

...But there is more...

...If God's mind, as reflected in Grand Unified Theories, resides beyond the bounds of our comprehension (and therefore full appreciation), is there anything left to draw us to the book...

...At present, no ensemble of observations elucidates the precise nature of the big bang...

...So what accounts for the book's extraordinary popular appeal...

...Hawking tells an immensely satisfying tale of his own intellectual development, and the story nibbles at the margins of larger questions of admittedly theological interest...

...Until recently, physics had nothing to say about what came before the big bang...

...What do you mean...

...Few of us are capable of reading the Grand Design in the language in which it is written...

...According to our present understanding, the universe itself began as an explosion from a mathematical singularity about 15 billion years ago...

...He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God...

...By proposing a universe that has no boundary in space or beginning in time, Hawking removes even the need for a Creator...

...Here, certainly, was work worthy of a Creator, and some incautious theologians lost no time exclaiming how modern physics here served to confirm theological doctrine...

...Both Stephen Hawking and Shirley MacLaine express a preference for Option 1, which may account for their popularity...

...The translation into ordinary English (no matter how artfully done) means something essential is lost...

...But the professor's engaging invitation to know God's mind is a bait-and-switch come-on, for in the end God's thoughts turn out to be couched in the language of mathematical physics...

...When the energy resources at the star's core are depleted, gravity gets the upper hand and the star collapses upon itself...

...Quantum physics blurs the boundaries of creation as it blurs the boundaries of collapsed stars...

...Tentativeness, of course, is one thing that separates science from New Age sorcery (or, for that matter, from Old Age religion...

...If we find the answer to that," he says, "it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason for then we would know the mind of God...

...Within the region of blackness the star continues to collapse until it becomes infinitely small and infinitely dense-what mathematicians call a the equations of physics break down...

...His body is almost totally disabled...

...Stephen Hawking suffers from ALS, or motor neuron disease, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease...

...After some chatty preliminaries, MacLaine asks if the harmonic energy of the universe is "loving...

...In this regard, I am put in mind of an anecdote described by New Age guru Shirley MacLaine in her book Going Within: A Guide to Inner Transformation (Bantam...

...He has achieved theoretical insights of remarkable originality, particularly with regard to the quantum physics of black holes...

...If the pope did indeed suggest that theoretical physicists should not inquire into the big bang, that hardly qualifies as radical openness...

...But future observations and theoretical investigations will undoubtedly have much to say about the "moment of creation," and no physicist worth his salt will place the big bang off-limits for theological reasons...

...Here matters are very much more speculative, but the theories suggest interesting conclusions, among them the possibility that the universe did not have a beginning in time...

...Pope John Paul II has expressed his views on science and theology in a letter that stands as a preface to a volume of papers that emerged from a Vatican conference marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia mathe-matica (Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, edited by Robert J. Russell, William Stoeger, S.J., and George Coyne, S.J., University of Notre Dame Press and Vatican Press...

...Indeed, Hawking's own labors as a theoretical physicist might seem to restrict ever more severely any actual or potential role for a divine being...

...Indeed, given enough time, all of the energy contained within any black hole will evaporate...

...What the actress and the professor have in common is they both sell lots of books...

...MacLaine persists: "So the question becomes how we define order in relation to how we see ourselves and our behavior...

...We have caught, he believes, many essential elements of that plan, and now stand at the threshold of the Grand Design itself...

...One wonders how accurately Professor Hawking remembers what transpired at the papal audience, but the pope's purported advice raises interesting questions, particularly with regard to Hawking's own theoretical work on the big bang...

...She seeks wisdom...

...Apparently, both authors have something to say (or are perceived to have something to say) that the public wants to hear...

...Then we can get on with the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist...

...Hawking's frequent use of the G-word is one thing that distinguishes his book from other popular works on contemporary cosmology by physicists (there have been dozens in recent years...

...Now the justly famous professor from Cambridge turned his attention to the ultimate singularity-the big bang, the beginning...

...To qualify as science, any theory for the origin (or nonorigin) of the universe must make predictions that can be tested against experience...

...MacLaine asserts her preference for Option 1 emphatically...

...Professor Hawking's reputation has exploded beyond his physics to make him a revered icon of our time...

...He is a fitting successor to those illustrious explorers of the cosmos...

...In A Brief History of Time he describes his personal discoveries within the context of our current understanding of the origin, evolution, and ultimate fate of the universe...

...Of the three options listed by Professor Hawking, I find myself leaning toward Option 2 (there is no ultimate theory of the universe, only an infinite sequence of theories that describe the universe in ever greater detail), and I am therefore distrustful of any claims to know the mind of God, now or in the future, whether offered by New Age gurus or theoretical physicists...

...It also raises questions regarding the proper relationship between science and theology...

...religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes...

...The star gets smaller and denser until not even light escapes the irresistible tug of gravity...

...Certainly, Hawking makes no dogmatic claim for the truth of this insight...

...The discovery that established Professor Hawking's scientific fame was to show that when quantum physics is applied to black holes they turn out to be not so black after all...

...Within this incapacitated body is contained a remarkably capacitated mind, some would say the most brilliant theoretical mind since Einstein...

...2) there is no ultimate theory, only an infinite sequence of theories describing the universe in ever greater detail...

...Energy produced by fusion (similar to what happens in a hydrogen bomb explosion) makes the star shine...

...Instead, I am content to enjoy Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time for just what it is-an engaging personal account of a brilliant mind at play...

...Hawking salts his speculations with words like "maybe," "if," "perhaps," and "probably...

...In effect, the application of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle blurs the boundaries of a black hole, allowing radiant energy to appear outside the region of "irresistible" gravity...

...As I write, the book has been on the American list for more than ninety weeks...

...Might that too be a component of the book's allure...

...the star becomes a black hole...

...I would suggest several reasons for the popularity of A Brief History of Time...

...Mass, energy, space, and time came into existence with the explosion...

...Great physicists make unsteady philosophers, and even unsteadier theologians...

...In a normal star, in the prime of its life, the contractive force of gravity is balanced by an outward pressure caused by thermonuclear fusion occurring at the core...

...Many readers of A Brief History of Time will probably give up somewhere about page 25, when the discussion reaches non-Euclidean space-time...

...There is not much chance for a meaningful dialogue in this encounter between latter-day shaman and bemused physicist...

...What Hawking does reveal, and admirably so, is a universe of wondrous complexity and simplicity, a proper stimulus for wonder and awe...

...Chants, crystals, chakras, channelers, and clairvoyants: These are the instruments of her dreamy conjurations...

...Hawking, on the other hand, modestly admits to only one miracle, the universe itself, and even that may be something less than miraculous...