From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 02:49:04 EDT
I think Stephen Hawking alludes to the "ultimate gap" very clearly in the
last page of "Brief History of Time", by asking questions such as "Why does
the universe go to the bother of existing at all?" "What is it that
breathes fire into the equations?" "Why is there something rather than
nothing?". His book concludes famously with the statement that if we knew
the answer to these questions, then we would truly know the mind of God.
Though Hawking is an atheist, I think he is perhaps making the point that
there are some things for which we may not expect to find a naturalistic
explanation. It just IS, and from there we enter the realm of
philosophy/theology/metaphysics, or whatever. The maths tells us HOW, but
it doesn't tell us WHY.
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Iain .G.D. Strachan
There are 10 types of people in the world ...
those who understand binary and those who don't.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh Bembenek" <jbembe@hotmail.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 6:42 AM
Subject: Van Till's Ultimate Gap
> Just a quick thought that I'd like some feedback on. Many on this list
have
> expressed dismay over IDers usage of God's "hand-like" action as a magic
> wand to use whenever scientists don't understand a particular phenomena.
I
> agree that it is fruitful to point out that God never ceases to act in
> sustaining Creation and that such rhetorical strategy implies
unintelligent
> creation when natural mechanisms are found to account for such phenomena.
> However, I wonder if this same problem exists for the fully-gifted
creation
> viewpoint? What makes us think that the origin of space time and the
> derivation of matter, energy and all of the universe is simply a gap in
our
> understanding that some future naturalistic discovery won't elegantly
> explain, again making the "God Hypothesis" obsolete? Perhaps I should
> remember some discussion of this in some article, but its not coming to
me.
> I don't care to defend my idea by trying to give any explanation for a
> naturalistic origin of space-time. Besides for those here, isn't it
> sufficient enough to hypothesize that a naturalistic explanation is out
> there awaiting our discovery instead of "jumping the gun" and prematurely
> attributing creation to the act of God before all explanations are fully
> explored? The Big Bang Hypothesis is younger than evolution isn't it?
I'm
> not looking for a drawn out debate, just some thoughtful considerations.
>
> Josh
>
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