Dr Paul Allen

Tidal force as appearance of Gravity force (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) It's almost an institution, in our culture, in our nation, to describe God as a  higher power , something greater than ourselves. What's that, "the force be with you"? What is this higher power— gravity , lightning, earthquakes ? Now one thing about this nebulous, amorphous, nameless, characterless power, is that first of all it is impersonal , and second of all and most important, it is amoral. See, there's an upside and a downside to worshiping a higher power—a nameless, faceless, force like gravity, or cosmic dust , or lightning, or thunder . Here's the upside to a sinner. A force that is impersonal and amoral makes no ethical demands on anybody. Gravity does not make judgments about people's behavior unless they jump out of windows six-stories high. But even at that, there is no personal condemnation that comes from gravity, or an earthquake. Gravity has no voice; it sa...

Image via Wikipedia The news outlets are abuzz with reports of some provocative claims made in Stephen Hawking ’s latest book,  The Grand Design , which is due for release on Tuesday. For obvious reasons I haven’t yet read the book, so I don’t know the broader context of his claims or how he supports them. However, since the claims in question have been widely quoted, and several folk have already asked me about them, I’ll offer a few tentative comments (with all the necessary caveats assumed). Here are Hawking’s statements as reported by the  Telegraph  (and by numerous other outlets): Because there is a law such as gravity , the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going. In the first place, I have to assume that Hawking is speaking loosely when he says that “...