. . . [Stephen] Hawking claims that the universe created itself by “spontaneous creation.” But how come that the universe—our particular universe—created itself just the way it is? Was that “spontaneous creation” a lucky fluke? Pure serendipity? Could it not be that the universe has been created so it would create itself the way it is? Scientists know that our universe is a most unlikely place; statistically, it’s entirely improbable. According to quantum string theory, there could be about 10 to the 500th power possible universes (this is the number 1 followed by 500 zeros). Only a handful among this staggering number of possible universes could bring forth life, not to mention so-called higher forms of life where beings who consider themselves intelligent claim they and their world came about by serendipity.
To answer “why” our universe “created itself” the way it did is beyond science. To say that it did so spontaneously is not an answer: it’s an excuse for an answer. When Hawking says that the spontaneous self-creation of the universe “out of nothing” is evidence that a creator was not involved, he is not speaking as a scientist. He is not making a scientific statement. His statement is pure theology—of the negative kind typical of atheists. Ervin Laszlo
I agree with Laszlo. Hawkins is stepping way outside his scientific box into nonsense. Of course there is an intelligent Source undergirding reality.
I read somewhere (long ago from a now forgotten source) that to understand the impossibility of “knowing” the creative source is to slip into a single cell within the body and imagine whole-body Beingness from that cell’s limited point of view. But what may be an impossibility for a physical unit is not so for a consciousness unit.
