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Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology

William Lane Craig, Quentin Smith
Published in print: 1995 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780198263838 eISBN: 9780191682650 acprof:oso/9780198263838.001.0001 Item type: book

Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with a cataclysmic explosion called the Big Bang. The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received scant attention from philosophers. This book sets out to fill this gap by means of a sustained debate between two philosophers, William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, who defend opposing positions. Craig argues that the Big Bang that began the universe was created by God, while Smith argues that the Big Bang has no cause. The book consists of alternating chapters by Craig and Smith, with each chapter being either a criticism of a preceding chapter or being criticized by a subsequent chapter. Part One consists of Craig's arguments that the past is necessarily finite and that God created the Big Bang, and Smith's criticisms of these arguments. Part Two presents Smith's arguments that Big Bang cosmology is inconsistent with theism and Craig's criticisms of Smith's argument. The authors' arguments are based on Einstein's theory of relativity, and there is also a discussion of Stephen Hawking's new quantum cosmology.

Reading the Mind of God : Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking in Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion
Published in print: 2007 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2007 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780195310726 eISBN: 9780199785179 acprof:oso/9780195310726.003.0003 Item type: chapter

Stephen Hawking is a public intellectual and the best-selling author of A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, The Large Scale
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Structure of Spacetime with George Ellis, Stephen Hawkings Universe: The Cosmos Explained, and many other books. Hawking is a cosmologist who is well known for his courageous battle with Lou Gehrigs disease. He first published his no-boundary proposal in 1970, concerning the expansion of the universe and the big bang, and he introduced his rather technical ideas at the Vatican in 1981, where he also was able to meet and speak with Pope John Paul II. Hawking dislikes the label atheist, for his views on God are quite mysterious, and he has written of his quest to know the mind of God.

Conclusion : Science and Beyond

Karl Giberson, Mariano Artigas in Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion
Published in print: 2007 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2007 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780195310726 eISBN: 9780199785179 acprof:oso/9780195310726.003.0007 Item type: chapter

The oracles of science: Carl Sagan, Stephen Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Edward O. Wilson, and Stephen Jay Gould make connections between science and culture, and they particularly voice their ideas about religion. Like all great scientists, they have done important work in specific areas, but unlike most scientists, they have a grand view of reality and have elected to engage the deeper cultural and worldview issues of our time. The oracles of science, for the most part, create the impression that science is hostile to religion. Their writings produce the impression that science supersedes religion, and even explains it away. As history has shown, science is all too frequently enlisted in the service of propaganda and we must be on guard against intellectual nonsense masquerading as science.

What Place, then, for a Creator?: Hawking on God and Creation

William Lane Craig in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology
Published in print: 1995 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780198263838 eISBN: 9780191682650 acprof:oso/9780198263838.003.0011 Item type: chapter

This chapter discusses the position or opinion of cosmologist Stephen Hawking on the existence of God. In a review of his recent book, A Brief History of Time, a critic suggested that in Hawking's system, there is no
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room for a Creator God and that God never existed. This chapter argues that while Hawking rejects the role of God as Creator of the universe, he appears to retain God's role as the Sufficient Reason for the existence of the universe.

The Wave Function of a Godless Universe

Quentin Smith in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology
Published in print: 1995 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780198263838 eISBN: 9780191682650 acprof:oso/9780198263838.003.0012 Item type: chapter

This chapter discusses the wave function of a Godless universe. It analyses the concept of nothingness, the interpretation of quantum cosmology, and Stephen Hawking's quasi-instrumentalist interpretation of quantum mechanics. It comments on the concept of imaginary time in Hawking's quantum cosmology and his physical interpretations of the exponential part of the wave function, and suggests that Hawking's quantum cosmology is rationally preferable to theism. It could be argued that his cosmology has greater predictive power since it predicts that it is highly probable there is a universe with properties we observe and that the universe is near the critical density.

Media, Metaphor, and the Oracles of Science

Lynda Walsh in Scientists as Prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy
Published in print: 2013 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press September 2013 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780199857098 eISBN: 9780199345410 acprof:oso/9780199857098.003.0008 Item type: chapter

This chapter examines how Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Stephen Jay Gould, and notes that the polities they addressed together constituted a powerful prophetic ethoswith special attention to structural media effects related to controversy, the use of metaphor, and the uncontrollability of dialogue. It concludes by asking where the women were in these media productions. It also includes a brief summary of the Oracles' confirming signs.

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Oracles of Science : Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion

Karl Giberson, Mariano Artigas
Published in print: 2007 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press January 2007 DOI: 10.1093/ ISBN: 9780195310726 eISBN: 9780199785179 acprof:oso/9780195310726.001.0001 Item type: book

This book examines the popular writings of the six scientists who have been the most influential in shaping perceptions of science, how it works, and how it relates to other fields of human endeavor, especially religion. Biologists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson; and physicists Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, form a constellation of scientists who have become public intellectuals, influencing millions of people around the world. All six have made major and highly original contributions to science, and all six have stepped onto the public stage, articulating a much larger vision for science, how it should work, and what role it should play in the worldview of the modern world. In so doing, they have challenged many traditional ideas, such as belief in God. The scientific prestige and literary eloquence of these great thinkers combine to transform them into what can only be called oracles of science. Their controversial, often personal, sometimes idiosyncratic opinions exert an enormous influence on modern intellectual conversation, both inside and outside science. The book carefully distinguishes science from philosophy and religion in the writings of the oracles, and invites readers to a respectful dialogue with some of the greatest minds of our time.

Caught in the Crossfire? The Public's Role in the Science Wars

Jane Gregory, Steve Miller in The One Culture?: A Conversation about Science
Published in print: 2001 Published Online: Publisher: University of Chicago Press March 2013 DOI: 10.7208/ ISBN: 9780226467221 eISBN: 9780226467245 chicago/9780226467245.003.0005 Item type: chapter

The meaning of the phrase public understanding of science has evolved and diversified in the postwar era: what used to refer to the little-understood and barely interesting phenomenon of the conception of sciences among laypeople now serves a variety of purposes. It provides a label for normative and operational definitions of what the public understands about science, as well as for policy in the area and for the social and educational movement the idea has spawned. Alongside the increasing interest in the more programmatic aspects of this latest surge
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in public understanding of science activity developed a boom in popular science broadcasting and publishing, epitomized perhaps by the success of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. But this boom also brought a definition of science into the public domain that was broader than the scientific establishment had envisaged when they urged the media to carry more science.

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