Re: Stephen Hawking's Junk Science Atheism
One cannot help but speculate whether Mr. Hawkings would have adopted his detached and bitter no-God stance had he been born not just with a brilliant mind, but aslo looking like Tom Selleck or George Clooney. Surely anyone having to wake up each day with a twisted, painfully deformed body might well choose to regard this as proving that either there is no God or that he/she is so cruel as to be denied and dismissed with “prejudice.” The fact that some people rise above such challenges to become among the most loving and patient and spiritually sublime human beings on our planet, almost prove God by their very grandeur of soul and resonant care for others. Hawkings could learn from them, and perhaps should.
Rich Loomis
Colorado, USA
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Stephen Hawking has surprised people by his statement ” God has not created the Universe ” . However, a recent poll showed that 40% of scientists believe in God although they do not “come out of the closet”.
This is not the case of Francis Collins, winner of the Principe de Asturias Award in 2001, director of the historic Project of the Human Genome who states, “We are living in a critical time regarding how we should look for truth and meaning . I believe that the Universe was created by God with the concrete purpose of its leading to intelligent life. The existence of God outside the Universe (time and space) is the only valid rational explanation for the nature we observe. DNA is the code used by God to give life to beings, as He thought of a plan to create creatures with who he could relate. As a scientist I discover that by exploring Nature I find a path of understanding of the mind of God, who can be found equally in a laboratory and in a cathedral. I try to give time to prayer in the mornings, when the rest of the world is still in silence. But also, to keep my spiritual side awake and alert during the day. I keep a Bible on my desk and I endeavour to go more deeply daily into my relationship with God”.
Lucía Rivera
Barcelona
Spain
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Mr Hoffman's intense attack on Dr. Hawking's book without reading it is baffling. His points could be valid, but to review a book he hasn't even read reduces his credibility to one of Hawking's black holes. What happened to integrity and scholarship?
Dr. Hawking is not the only one who has proposed “A Universe From Nothing”. That it is not intuitive does not make it wrong. It is not intuitive that we are on a spinning globe going 1,000 mph at the equator, 67,000 mph around the sun, and about 500,000 mph around the Milky Way Galaxy: we feel stationary.
Evidence matters. Lawrence Krauss, another astrophysicist, has stated the same thing and explained why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
“Scientists are explorers; philosophers are tourists”. ~ Richard Feynman
John Peters
Portland, Oregon, USA
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While some of the points in Matthew Cullinan Hoffman’s commentary were interesting, I believe the article does more to misinform than to inform.
It had a glaring mistake in that it cast doubt on the existence of black holes. Readers who trust this article on this point, and believe it, will lose credibility in any public debate. Moreover, existence of black holes is actually irrelevant to the issues Stephen Hawking touched on…you cannot be effective by losing focus. And you cannot win a public debate by criticizing Hawking on his knowledge of physics. The focus should be on his metaphysical speculations which are not justified by the science…this was done but not persuasively. Overall much of the commentary was weak…that is, not very helpful for a public debate. Much more useful would be to refer readers to the website https://www.magisreasonfaith.org/ and in particular the mp3 lectures listed here https://www.magisreasonfaith.org/podcast/. Also great are the YouTube lectures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDY6o-VP8Lo&feature=related .
Short but powerful is the EWTN interview Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. with Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J. of June 2, 2010 found in EWTN’s audio library at https://www.ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/resolve.asp?audiofile=el_06022010.mp3
Roland Stefani
North Vancouver BC
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Matthew Hoffman responds to his critics:
My comparison to black hole theory was generous…black holes have more going for them than M-Theory, which isn't even fully formulated and cannot be empirically verified by any known means. The main point of Hawking's book, The Grand Design, is to push M-Theory. It is speculations built on speculations built on speculations. Many physicists discard M-Theory for precisely that reason. One physicist I know, who studied briefly with Stephen Hawking, calls his kind of science “theories in search of facts.”
As for something coming from nothing, that is an absurdity in and of itself. As I pointed out in the article, affirming that would destroy all of science, which is based on the axiom of causality. No physics theory can dispense with the law of non-contradiction or with mathematical principles, etc…there can never be a sound physics theory, or any other kind of theory, showing that something can come from nothing.
By the way, just to assuage any fears about black holes being “proven,” here are a couple of interesting articles on their competitor, “black stars”. According to new theories, black holes can never form because they lose their mass faster than it can be compacted by gravity, and therefore they never shrink within the “event horizon” (the boundry at which light itself can't escape because the curvature of spacetime).
The theory isn't regarded as a crackpot idea. It's from real PhDs at Case Western Reserve University and the big sci magazines are giving it a respectful hearing:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12089-do-black-holes-really-exist.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=black-stars-not-holes
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Re: Pope Benedict’s Scylla and Charybdis in Britain: the Media and His Own Bishops
Hilary White's analysis of Pope Benedict's upcoming visit to Great Britain is pretty much on track. However, I would pick the nit that the song, Heart's Cry, is not being used for the liturgy, as Ms. White seems to imply. It's the “youth anthem,” and it will probably be performed before major public events, but it will not be used for the liturgy.
Though I am not one to listen to such music regularly, it's actually a fairly decent song. The only thing I don't like in the lyrics is when you suddenly hear, “Feel the love, y'all.” With that interjection, one wonders if one has suddenly been transported thousands of miles across the ocean from Britain to Texas. And “feeling the love” isn't exactly going to get you through the times when we find it “difficult to grasp His mysterious and inscrutable ways,” as the song quotes Pope Benedict saying. Mother Teresa didn't “feel the love” when she was getting people out of the gutters of Calcutta, but she did it anyway. But beyond that, as I said, it's a fairly decent song. A heck of a lot better than other stuff that could have been chosen, that's for sure.
Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz
Peterson, Minnesota
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Thank you very much for Hilary White's Commentary regarding the Pope's upcoming visit to Britain (“Pope Benedict's Scylla and Charybdis in Britain: the Media and His Own Bishops,” 9/7/10). Unfortunately, it appears that the British government has handed over its international relations portfolio to a group of sophomoric pranksters. If the visitor was anyone but a Christian leader, the United Nations would be wringing its blood-stained hands and setting up a Commission to “Develop international Rules for the Reception of Distinguished Visitors,” or something similar.
The one issue I have with the Commentary is found in the statement, “the elite British institution hates and fears the traditional Christian mores and the world’s last unequivocal upholder of them – the Catholic Church.” Actually, the once-united Orthodox Church was the original developer of most these “mores” and has defended them -at a cost of millions of martyrs- for nearly 2,000 years. This is not to take anything away from the Roman Catholic Church's efforts and achievements in these areas. It is only to recognize that today's Roman Catholic Church is not alone -and has not been alone- in defending life from conception through natural death. Given the current “culture of death” being promoted by the Administration here in Washington, DC, it is certain that all of our efforts will be necessary to restore a focus on life.
Ed Burke
Warrenton, VA
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Re: Notre Dame Abruptly Sacks Only Admin Member to Protest Obama
It is a sad loss of what could be good in the world when a university that is to be a beacon of light to a young person's mind is not a beacon, and whose administration is so steeped in darkness that they do not realize how ugly they have become in the abortion fiasco, and that they now evoke a revulsion when one hears the name “Notre Dame”.
Iris Yawney
Dauphin, Manitoba
Canada
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This kind of cheap vindictive firing of Mr. Bill Kirk by Notre Dame University presages a wider public persecution of the Catholic faithful. I was fired from a public university in New Jersey for espousing Catholic viewpoints on a faculty blog site! Because I was nontenured, like Mr. Kirk, I had no legal grounds for redress.
What is truly vexing is that the superior quality of reasoning of the Catholic positions on “hot-button” issues does not serve to protect against administrative sanction. We win every discussion; and still get fired. The problem is one of “clout,” political power to do as administrators please without fear of reprisal. I suppose that has always been the case, ever since Pontius Pilate. The situation at Seton Hall University, for example, is not far from the situation at Notre Dame (or Georgetown).
The archbishop of Newark is incapable of stopping Seton Hall University, -which is touted as the University of the Archdiocese of Newark,- from running a class in support of gay marriage. I think all of these suchlike universities will in the very near future all become officially NON-Catholic universities….because, that's what they are!
Mike Miller
Newark, NJ, USA
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Re: D.C. Archdiocesan Blog: Let the Man Head the Household
I would just like to thank Kathleen Gilbert and Monsignor Charles Pope for this story. It is a well balanced and accurate account of what is expected in a Christian Marriage.
The important sentence that must be understood is “[the husbands authority] is not a worldly, autocratic authority but a Christian, servant based authority”
In order for us to really understand this we must study authentic church teaching. The tendency is to see this topic, and jump to the inaccurate misrepresentations accepted by most in our society.
I was watching Colleen Carol Campbell's show “Faith and Culture” where she talked about statistics of domestic abuse. Three types of families were considered, the least likely was a family who attended church regularly, higher probability was a family that didn’t attend church at all, and the highest were a family that attended occasionally. It was thought that the family who attended occasionally had the basic message but did not have a deep understanding of the “servant nature” of authority. This is the problem, I believe, that we are a culture that does not study our faith, we are caught up in all the things that make demands of our time, and fail to give our relationship to our God sufficient attention, (myself included).
Bernard Morris
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
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Re: Mexico City Official Investigated for 'Human Rights' Violation for Criticizing Miss Universe Pageant
Truly the emperor has no clothes, but no one has courage to say so……AND if one does, she is reviled unmercifully. I could only have wished that she had stuck by her word instead of bowing to the politically correct.
Mary Fawcett
Sao Paulo, Brazil
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Re: Sterilize the Unfit Says British Professor
Professor Marsland should resign his professorship since he doesn't seem to be interested in teaching but in coercing people to his vision of the world. Bona fide professors discuss, debate, research and peacefully explore ideas; they do not advocate imposing their ideas on others. But, of course, in our time it seems returning to the ways of Hitler and Stalin can be deemed palatable by and to some folks. These notions are indeed thinkable but thinking them is worse than what de Sade advocated.
Tibor R. Machan
Silverado, CA
USA
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