Re: Fire in the Equations

Gene Dunbar Godbold (gdg4n@avery.med.virginia.edu)
Fri, 27 Dec 1996 13:30:27 -0500 (EST)

According to John Miller:
>
> Has anyone else picked
> up on the ironic suggestion that both Hawking and Dawkins, who have a
> worldview with no room for God, may find more satisfaction in removing any
> need for him than they do for their advancement of an understanding of the
> universe?
>
> And to what extent do some in the TE camp subconsciously heave a sigh of
> relief from evidence that can suggest that perhaps God may not be such an
> active intervener after all?

I'm not sure that Hawking is as unamiguous about God's existence as you
suggest. I recently attended a lecture by John Polkinghorne who has been
a colleague of Hawking and he said that S.H. both wants and doesn't want
God, sharing the rationalist's uneasiness with any sort of divinity.

To be charitable to Dawkins, it might be that he honestly believes the
idea of God to have caused more harm than good in the history of mankind
and that he desperately seeks to free his fellow men from the grand
delusion.

I suspect that the great majority of the TE folks believe that their view
is correct, and don't see it as getting rid of God's active intervention.
I think the TE view does rather "contain" God a bit more than I am
comfortable with (He's not a *tame* lion.) Taken to an extreme, the TE
view does seem to posit more than we can possibly know.

Gene
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