Remember when Hawking decided that information is lost in black holes, spent thirty years trying to prove it, then finally had a press conference where he unveiled a 'proof' that information ISN'T lost, and played it off as him being right all along?

Hawking is at the same point in his career that Einstein was when he was trying to prove his own 'cosmological constant' theory wrong.

He's right about God and the universe, though. At least, whoever that is pretending to be him on facebook, is. Could have sworn his position was the opposite...

You mean that time he held a press conference and said he was forfeiting the bet (Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet) because he was wrong, and black holes probably do leak information?

The thing that actually happened in reality and not the totally fictional thing you just made up right now?

...Yes, he is at the point in his career when he has tenure.

Why is proving oneself wrong a problem? A scientific advancement in any direction is still an advancement.

I mean, you haven't actually shown anything to suggest that his colleagues don't take him seriously or that he hasn't done any good work.

Michael Green holds the Lucasian professorship now.

Didn't know he still took PhD students though, that's pretty wild. This is apparently one of them:

The Great Alex Kaus:

He didn't tweet anything.

And it's not that so many people needed to share it... it's that there aren't even that many people on the planet... by an order of great magnitude.

You completely failed to "get it" as you claimed.

Look at her - she's already plotting to leave him out in the blazing sun..

yeah I got it. I just misunderstood and thought the words in the original post were Hawking's.

So in effect, Hawking never said God didn't create the universe. He merely said God wasn't necessary for the creation of the universe, due to Laws like gravity already being in place. Fine with me. I've never believed otherwise.

Eh? I don't know why the media are making such a big deal of this. His position hasn't changed all that much. In A Brief History of Time he used "God" as a metaphor for those things we don't understand.

IIRC, He effectively said that if there was a creator, it acts in such a way there's no way for us to perceive it or it's actions to being different to that of natural processes. But I'd have to dig out my copy to get a proper quote. All he's done now is reiterate that position providing some of the maths behind the processes...

For any theists seeing this as a reason to believe in god, hawking doesn't and never has believed in a god which interacts with us or probably even has any knowledge of our existence.

The problem w/ this (his statements at the end of A Brief History of Time), as Dawkins stated, is that the fundamentalists (including the leadership, many of which know better) see an opportunity to exploit this statement, because they're incapable or unwilling to consider the possibility of something being a metaphor (e.g: just look at how strict their biblical interpretation is, even when science has deemed so much of their text(s) as impossible). To this day we still have fundamentalists claiming that Einstein believed in a deity because he also chose to be less than direct on several occasions (e.g: his statements regarding his belief in the god of Spinoza which in reality is quite direct for those that comprehend his meaning but easy to exploit by those that don't or at least pretend that they don't). They basically have 3 approaches (if not more) to this 'problem' as I see it (a. they can avoid the issue entirely, b. they can be as direct as possible (e.g: the Richard Dawkins method) or c. they can be metaphorical (e.g: the Einstein method)). However, if they choose either 'a' or 'b' the fundamentalists will capitalize on this & there will be generation after generation of uneducated people mindlessly making assertions because of what their religious leader told them (e.g: Darwin's death-bed confession). The choice is obviously theirs but I agree w/ Dawkins that the direct method is the one that causes less confusion & doesn't lend a hand to stifling progress.

Be honest...you knew that someone would take it in this direction. That's like posting a Glenn Beck quote & expecting the thread participants to avoid discussing the their hatred or love for the guy (or at least that of Fox News). That's just not going to happen (at least not here at Massassi).

Oh, yeah, I had a gut feeling it would turn into some crap slinging... But initially I thought maybe people would actually see a little humor behind the fact that 247 trillion people supposedly shared the article.

Stupid bible thumper ham-handedly tries to start debate on topic as soon as it's brought up, gets intellectually smashed. More on this developing story at 11.

Is that what you think happened, Tibby?

Wait, who's the "bible thumper"?

I'll thump your bible if you thump mine ok it's a simple principle

Stephen Hawking.

Tibby tries again to belittle someone in attempt to climb the social ladder. More at 12 after a very special new episode of "Everyone Loves Raymond!"

Not to mention make a thread for a nerd dating site, because all us lowly keyboard jockies need help with the romance.

Atleast one person saw how I felt about that.

umm it was a joke, Rob. If you don't have a sense of humor, you really shouldn't be here.

Everything is a joke when hindsight is 20/20.

umm. what?

Are you ****ing serious? Nobody here has a god damn sense of humour.

Boobies!

Fat ass ****!

Please, gentlemen, we're having a serious discussion.

No, Boobies.

No boobies? =[

Hehe, multiple people typed boobies.

I put it into google search and wat r thos?

Rob is the mutha****inmastah when it comes to humor. We are all the punchline to his joke.

the end (?)

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

This is a lie. Everybody loves Raymond is not making new episodes anymore.

Keeping with the original spirit of this thread...

What the hell are they trying to say here?

I doubt anyone's views will be changed by this.



I don't think that's what happened, Tibby.

What about God?


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