But does Stephen Hawking exist?

Dr. Ian Malcolm:
"God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs..."

Dr. Ellie Sattler:

"Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth..."

"Jurassic Park" 1993

Has Stephen Hawking destroyed God?

In his opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, which is based on the book "The Grand Design" by Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow of CalTech, Hawking argues that according to the latest theories of quantum physics and gravity a universe can spring from nothing. In fact, existence is really a multiverse, many universes that each have their own laws of nature.

If I understood this correctly, he is saying that there are other universes in which the laws of physics work differently. Gravitational constants, the mass of a proton, the strong nuclear force, the electric force, all could be different in these other universes. Change any of these factors by just a small percentage and life could never exist.

We just happen to live in a universe where the laws of physics allow for the creation of heavy elements and planets that exist in the proper distance from stars to support life. We also just happen to live on a planet that is just perfect for the evolution and continued existence of used car salesmen, college professors, baseball players, flight attendants, massage therapists, lion tamers and Stephen Hawking. (Unless we destroy ourselves.)

Newton argued that because of the order of the universe that favors the creation of our world and human life that it demonstrated that the universe was created by God. This point of view was still reinforced after the development of the Big Bang theory. 

When I was in Catholic school in the fifth grade, I remember my class talked about the Big Bang Theory. I believe we were told that at one point all that is now in the universe had once been contained within a space no bigger than a thimble. It exploded out and created existence.

But where did that thimble of very dense matter come from?

God was our answer.

I remember reading Hawking's earlier book, "A Brief History of Time." He talked about discussing the Big Bang with the Pope. The Pope told him science could explore any question up to the Big Bang, but not to go inside the Big Bang itself for that was the realm of God.

Hawking didn't tell the Pope that he was already theoretically probing the inner workings of the Big Bang.

Now, physicists have gone far beyond the Big Bang.

I remember the other side of the Big Bang theory was that eventually the universe might collapse into a Big Crunch, then maybe spark another Big Bang. But that doesn't seem to be the conclusion now.

Instead, the universe is projected to just keep expanding into a Big Rip. After several generations, stars will die out and new stars will no longer be born. The universe will get very cold in the distant future and  matter will tear apart into atoms and then subatomic particles, all scattering further and further out. (The Buddhists have it right. Nobody gets to keep their toys.)

But even at this stage, there could be a rebirth.

I watched a documentary on this new theory of the fate of the universe. It explained that in quantum physics -- the physics of the very small -- the possibilities at the subatomic level can be endless. One of those possibilities could be the creation of a new universe.

A universe can be created from nothing. 

Fine.

No God needed?

Well, humans may have a psychological need for God, but the existence of God does not rely on a human need for God. God exists or does not exist independent of our need for him.

Does the universe need God?

Well, the laws of physics have no psychological need for a higher being. But again, God can exist or not exist whether or not there is a need for God in the universe.

Just because it is possible the Big Bang happened without God does not mean he does not exist.

So, let's back it up even further and consider Hawking's and other physicists' concept of the multiverse.

How does the multiverse prove there is no God? Perhaps God's plan goes back farther than we ever imagined. We used to imagine that the world was created 6,000 years ago in a matter of six days.

We now realize that story was a fable. (Sorry creationists, but you're way behind the times.)

Then through science, we discovered how old our Earth is, how old our sun is, and how old our universe is, which is something like 14 billion years old. Science showed us this existence that we know came from a Big Bang. 

So, those people of faith who saw the value of science concluded God must have created the Big Bang.

Now science has drawn back another curtain and said there's now a multiverse. God didn't cause the Big Bang. (We win, God loses.)

But to go back to that discussion in fifth grade, about where the thimble came from, what we were really talking about was the point where science ends and faith begins.

The whole problem with the debate between science and faith is that there is no common ground. There is no point where science and faith touch. No matter how much science discovers or understands, no matter how many curtains are drawn back on the origin and nature of existence, faith is never revealed to be a fraud.

Faith is not a matter of science, just as science is not a matter of faith.

A year ago, someone sent me a video about a scientific proof of God. The theory was rather twisted, but it turned on the so-called existence of polonium halos found in rock. Polonium is a very unstable matter, it exists very briefly as uranium decays into lead. The claim was that they had found evidence of polonium that had remained stable long enough to leave a halo in the rock. Such a transitory material could never survive long enough to leave a halo in rock, therefore God must have intervened and held the polonium in that state and created the halo. Therefore, God exists.

Nonsense.

I wrote back this guy and said "I do not need science to prove God exists." 

I think it is as foolhardy to try to prove God exists through science as it is to try to prove that he does not exist. If you build your faith on God based on a scientific proof, then if that proof collapses or if science pulls back another curtain, then your faith is destroyed. Your faith is revealed to be false.

Hawking has not proven that God doesn't exist. He has simply given us a deeper understanding of our existence.

I also don't buy the idea that just because we live on a planet that is perfectly suited to human life that means that the universe was created only to suit humans.

When you consider the vastness of the universe, the possibilities of other life, and now the possibilities of  other universes and the prospect of life there (in those universes where the laws of physics allows it), I am struck by the potential for how big God's plan may be.  

Perhaps humanity does expand out into the universe and survives for billions of years. Perhaps we will discover that not only are not alone, but that we are just one of millions of species. That we are not the most important species, but that we have a role to play in the universe, a role to play in God's plan. 

We shall see.

Hindsight

For all the merits of the jobs bill proposed by President Obama, the entire effort suffers from a case of very bad timing.

It should have happened much earlier.

In the current political environment in Washington, such an initiative can nearly be considered dead on arrival just because it has the president's name on it.

That's easy to understand why, given that the opposition's No. 1 goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president. So anything that would make Obama look good -- disregarding the possible benefits to the country -- will not get GOP backing.

Since the T.E.A.-party-flavored Republican House swept into office, every bit of legislation that might have been handled in a more amicable and reasonable way in other administrations has instead been bitter, grueling death matches.

This year, legislation on the federal budget and the debt ceiling chewed up months in a conflict orchestrated by T.E.A. party radicals who bent the government agenda to their will and nearly forced the government to default on its loans.

They continue to play this game, endangering emergency relief funds for regions devastated by recent storms. And if they continue to make the kinds of cuts in government services that they want, they could even threaten our ability to respond to major storms like Hurricane Irene. A smaller government would not have to ability to bring federal resources quickly to bear during natural disasters. Average people could end up suffering more.

No wonder Obama had to wait until now to roll out a jobs program. This was just a moment when the T.E.A. party was not hijacking the agenda.

We will have to wait until November 2012 to find out who the voters will blame for this political quagmire. But the roots of this grim situation can be traced back to the hope and optimism of November 2008.

Obama had been elected on many promises, but I think he was elected so overwhelmingly because of his promise that we would not be Red States and Blue States but a United States of America. We so wanted an end to the divisive politics of the past that we threw our support behind this one man.

But electing one politician -- even if that one politician is president -- does not change the nature of politics. Even if that president truly and earnestly wants to change the way politics works, his election will not change the behavior of other politicians.

By nature, politics is divisive. It is driven by competition and conflict.

By nature, we are human. And we remain human even when elected to office. Some with more human failings than others.

When Obama came into office in January 2009, he was flush with the success of a landslide victory and a Congress that was fully behind the Democratic agenda. He may have taken office with every intention of negotiating and working with the Republicans.

But they didn't want to work with him.

And I think that Obama may have looked around at the potential he had with a Democratic Congress and a landslide victory and felt less of a need to work with the GOP. It was a human failing to allow the electoral success to put aside his ideals of compromise and unity.

To his credit, he pursued most of his campaign promises, chiefly health care reform. It was a piece of legislation that would not have happened with a divided Congress. He seized the opportunity and let go of some of the dream of political cooperation.

The GOP, if they had any interest, let go of the rest. The health care reform legislation was the trigger for the popularity of the T.E.A. party movement.

I support health care reform, but in looking back at this situation with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the bitter political cost that came with it.

It's easy to second guess someone else's strategy. It's like playing chess against a computer. Make a stupid mistake and lose your queen? Hit the undo button.

So, just for fun, let's do that. Let's look at what happened.

When he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination, health care was a major issue for Obama in the spring of 2008. Throughout the primaries, throughout the factory visits and chicken dinners and handshaking and canvassing of voters, health care would come up again and again. Obama promised to make it a priority of his administration.

He got the nomination in part because of that and other promises, along with a broader promise for "hope and change." That was in August 2008.

But that fall, everything changed.

The economy nearly collapsed.

Many of those workers who had told Obama that health care was a priority now were out of a job. Health care was probably still a big priority for these people, but in the meantime unemployment went up to nearly 10 percent.

I believe that the actions taken by the government in early 2009 helped to stabilize the economy and prevented a much deeper recession, even a depression.

The economy stabilized and finally began to grow. But it was a jobless growth.

Obama knew in 2008/09 that unemployment was going to stay high for some time, and that it would cost him politically in 2010.

It did.

What seems apparent to me now is that while health care was the big issue for the Democratic nomination, by late 2008/early 2009, the bigger issue was the economy and jobs.

And let's be frank, with all the blue collar and union support in the party, jobs should be a Democratic priority.

And for a Democratic president looking for common ground with a Republican opposition, jobs would have been the natural choice in early 2009.

More jobs means more money in the economy, stronger businesses, and a fiscally sound government. It's a Dem-GOP win-win.

C'mon, don't you remember "Dave," the movie where Kevin Klein gets to be president? He plowed through all the political nonsense and zeroed in on what he knew to be the most important issue: Getting everyone a job.

Could Obama have pursued an aggressive jobs package in early 2009 while also pursuing health care reform and the bailout packages?  Maybe. Maybe not.

Could he have pursued jobs first and then brought in health care reform after some kind of precedent for political compromise had been established? Who knows?

In 2010, the voters sent one message that both sides should have understood: The American people were tired of a weak economy and 10 percent unemployment.

So, what if even right after the T.E.A.-party swept into office, Obama called Boehner and said, "Tell you what, Let's focus on jobs as our priority. That is what everyone needs." Would that have made a difference? I'm not so sure. This all is just theoretical. Like fantasy football and computer chess.

The reality is that for whatever reason, our 2008 hopes for a new way of doing politics was lost. Obama did not find the other side willing to help build his dream.  He also learned too late the lessons of political strategy, that -- as Dana Milbank put it recently -- he should not begin "a game of strip poker in his boxer shorts."


For what it's worth, I still consider Obama to be an honorable president. He set out to achieve what he promised to achieve. I am grateful for the good he has done. I think he has had to bear some very unfair attacks from the other side, who have called him not a true American, a secret Muslim, a socialist and a Nazi.


He's really a moderate, and considering where we've come from -- the presidency of George W. Bush -- and where we might end up -- a presidency that serves the whims of T.E.A. party radicals -- I hope and pray that Obama finds his "inner Harry Truman" and survives the 2012 election. 


My faith, once again, rests with the middle. It is my hope that the independent and moderate voters  have been horrified with the positions spouted by the current crop of GOP candidates and that they realize that the T.E.A. party tactics of obstruction and radicalism are not good for the country. 


It depends on whether Obama can find a new message that will resonate with the American people.  Not a vague dream of "hope" but a concrete plan for his second term.

Panda pajamas

John Stewart handles the Arizona shootings better than anyone else, as only he could handle it.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Arizona Shootings Reaction
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The aftermath of the Giffords shooting

When I first heard the news that a congresswoman in Arizona had been shot in the head at an event in Arizona, my first reaction was that this was likely an attempt by some crazed individual to influence legislation through violence.

Then as I read postings from my friends on Facebook, a more sinister possibility surfaced, the Sarah Palin ad, which I now repost:

What this ad shows was Sarah Palin's target list for the 2010 election. Gabrielle Giffords is one of the U.S. Reps on the list, with a gun sight targeted over her district. Giffords herself talks about the consequences of violence creeping into the political process in this video, and in particular about the Palin ad at about 2:20:





But as we have learned more about the suspected shooter, we get a picture of him from Internet postings and YouTube that he was an incoherent and deeply troubled individual. He included both "Mein Kampf" and the "Communist Manifesto" as his favorite books. Think about that. One is an example of extreme right, fascist thinking and the other is the ultimate blueprint for the extreme left. Nazis and Communists were bitter enemies during World War II, remember?

More importantly, there is no evidence that this suspect was a supporter of Sarah Palin, did not seem to advocate for her political platform and does not seem to have been motivated by her ad or by any particular vote by Giffords as a congresswoman. (At least not as far as we know now.)

And yet, Palin should be ashamed of how she has conducted herself. "Violent rhetoric, when legitimized, will always trickle down to someone who is unstable enough to take the literal message to heart," as Derrick Stamos posted on Facebook. I don't know Derrick, but it rings with truth, especially when you remember how Glenn Beck's rhetoric presumably led to a shoot-out in Oakland:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/30/AR2010073003254.html

We have the right to free speech, but violent rhetoric abuses that right. We can say what we want, but we can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater because it will get someone killed. It seems to me that Palin and Beck have been getting closer to crossing that line. It is a line that no sane American wants to see crossed.

On the day that politicians in this country are shot and killed because of their political views, that will be the day America dies. And the more this brand of rhetoric is used, the closer we get to that day.

In any event, if Palin has any conscience, decency or at least basic smarts, it will be a long time before she uses the phrase "Don't retreat, reload," or use guns and gun sights in her ads.

My hope is that we have reached a high-water mark for violent rhetoric in American politics. My hope is that most Americans have felt enough disgust over the shooting in Tuscon that we will no longer welcome such inflammatory and divisive politics.

Using the N-word

Recently on Facebook a group of my friends were debating the new edition of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which had been edited to change the n-word into "slave."

Overwhelmingly, we hated the idea. There were a lot of great points about it. The best point was that Twain's work gives us a window into a shameful period of American history, and we need to be able to confront that honestly.

I wrote: "You can definitely oversanitize history. The problem is that by sanitizing history, later generations don't even realize how offensive the words can be. They don't realize the history, meaning and pain behind words, symbols and actions. Twa...in's use of the n-word is an opportunity for a teaching moment with the kids, and it can be handled in a way that is not offensive or hurtful.
Editors: Put down that red pen and move away from the literature!"

But I have one additional point to make. When I read the full story about the new edition, the editor explained that he wanted to make the change because he had to deal with negative reactions from audiences when he read the book aloud.

I get it. I understand. I have to say I would have a great deal of trouble saying that word out loud to a group of people, even if it was in the context of one of the greatest works of American literature. It is a word that carries so much pain that I do not think anyone can give me sanction to say it out loud, even if Mark Twain were to rise from his grave and tell me so himself. (And he wouldn't have far to walk. He's buried in the next town over from me.)

Anyway, the debate is pointless. The sanitized edition is being published. It will be out next month. But it does not mean that this edition will replace, supercede or be superior to earlier editions. It is an option that is now available for audiences that had not been able to read this work before. It can go on library bookshelves and read in middle schools, where it had often been banned.

But it should be read with the understanding that the full, original version is out there and if someone wanted to have a complete experience and have a unsanitized version of this work, they should go out and find it. Perhaps it is not a book for middle schoolers (ironic because Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher and Huckleberry Finn were roughly middle school aged) but readers who are at least high school age should read the unchanged work.