Did anyone notice Stephen Hawking contradicted himself?

1) You are misunderstanding what Hawking is saying. In one case time is progressing. The other example is talking about the beginning of time. Before the Big Bang (according to Hawking) time did not exist... in other words, there was no before. Time started at the Big Bang.

2) I can not find any reference where Dr. Hawking says anything like "science takes an equal amount of faith" as religion. I think you are making this up.

3) There is scientific proof for evolution. There is quite a bit of overwhelming evidence including the fossil record to understanding cellular biology to the fact that we have mapped the human genome and can compare it to other species.

4) It is clear that you don't know what a Turing machine is.

The argument you are making is simply wrong. You want it to be true, and so you are ignoring all of the evidence that shows you that you are wrong.

Part of the problem Angel is that you are approaching these thoughts completely the wrong way.

Science starts with an hypothesis... but scientists are completely willing to drop a hypothesis when it stops supporting observations. These hypotheses are tested with experiment and only the ones that are supported by evidence are kept. The hypotheses that are tested, and where there is no other explanations for what it is observed, are kept and promoted to theories.

A theory in science has been well tested. You are willing to ride an airplane because you are sure that the Bernoulli's theory is correct.

Religion starts with a hard and fast "fact". You started with the idea that your conception of God must be true. You reject all of the evidence that contradicts your beliefs about God and twist all of the evidence to support it. You are unable to drop your initial hypothesis about God no matter how much evidence there is against it.

This is why Science is better than religion. Science is based on real objective fact and it has the ability to accept the best ideas that are supported by new evidence. Religion can never do this.

Angel I'm not quite sure I agree. In general, the less evidence for something the more likely it's untrue. However as you imply, just not knowing something doesn't constitute evidence (unless you know everything there is to know)

In general however it's a tiny bit more likely since it involves no contradiction nor paradox. But owing to the suggestion of collapse bringing the tiniest heaviest particle I'd add "...in one form or another"

What bothers me about infinity, as I've said, is "that very everything" that seems to imply all possible Universes at any time, forever

Well put Angel

Just the simple fact that scientists have evidence of human evolution from primates, and the age of homo sapiens on this planet, it behooves anyone to study the available scientific information about human development. To believe anything else is wishful thinking/believing.

Cs, again well put

I believe the understanding of quantum physics is a path to try and figure out the fundamental code to our existence, in essence your all searching for god or the meaning to your existence through perception of visual remainders of a process that you witnessed. You try and control, observe and induce the 3 states of this process to understand it. The setup,present,and post process or the past, present, and future of matter or energy and its placement on the field. This lead me to evaluate light speed vs black holes and the very illogical conclusion that gravity is so intense that even light is absorbed. This disappearing of protons is merely a fractal black hole. Dark energy is merely a larger black hole field that is less dense. We live in a black hole. Dark energy is an ionized photon I dub the Dhoton. If you contemplate the implications of living in a Negatively charged photon field with suns of differentiating color and intensity pushing against the static less dense black hole background dark energy material we live in creating variable light speed environments known as dyson spheres or heliospheres. With this in mind I believe the universe we know once had form to it just like everything else that has a core. A fractal gigantic atom if you will. We are living in the remnants of a dead universe that is flying apart. Which is why we cant find a core to our universe and it doesn't fit the picture on a fractal level in other words if an atom looks a fractal version of a planet with a moon or a sun with a planet why doesn't the universe adhere to this model. Even galaxies look like a black atom with trillions of electrons. The universe model we see and believe in doesn't fit the fractal pattern. Logically speaking it looks like the core of our atom was destroyed and we are flying apart. The good news is my dhoton theory suggests that light speed is not constant... which means the distances we estimate are way off in terms of the mapped universe. The problem is finding a particle that controls a photon field ionization process through traditional methods when light and its speed are the element we use most for observation. My theory has a lot of quantum mechanic relations and roots. This theory has a lot of spiritual ties as well though. The bible is translated as well as possible but they mix up the placers or the vowels in the translation. I stumbled upon Legion and switched out the e with an a and got lagion or the lagion which seemed like a clever word play on the elusive light controlling ion field. Their is a lot of scientific symbolism in the bible covered up with wordplay like this. No i don't believe in the big bang i believe in the separating of the domes or the spherical fields used for creation. I believe in the light and dark torus or matter antimatter cores at the heart of every celestial being with an EMF magnetic torus signature we call our souls as the by product of this matter antimatter relation. Study EMF fields enough it will lead you to light and dark torus fields that relate to the back ground static of the universe or the black hole dark torus field we live in. The hypothetical white hole can't be observed because their is one at the heart of every black hole. Light torus and black torus or white hole and black hole or matter antimatter and the fractal environment we live in. Kick back and watch the entropy of our universe.

Quantum physics may be your thing, but scientists have already explained much of our environment and existence in layman's terms. Think simple; it's all there.

Scientist explain environments based upon physics that are fractal constants. Systems built upon systems. Existence eludes us and is complicated therefore the true meaning of existence can be lost in a struggle to simplify an explanation as to why we exist. Thus you create a slave with no direction in existence trying to simplify its life into layman's terms working a 40 an hour a week job paying with currency to exist. Toiling in the soil. Genesis.

It's my conclusion from what he meant based on many of his quotes and hence no quotation marks there. He believes in science and no God and for the nth time, I believe in science too. However, some people takes science to the extreme, as if it can't be wrong. That's why I hate to argue with some atheist who always accuse others of being wrong without providing any evidence or explanation. For centuries we thought Newton's law is the universal truth, but as we discover things at a quantum level we found that his laws break down. You say science is based on facts and hypothesis testing. I don't need you to tell me this -- I know it. However, as you may or may not know, hypothesis testing gives you a confidence interval. You can be 95% or 99% certain of something, but you can't be 100% sure. There's always this 1% chance (less or more) that you are wrong.

You said Time started with the Big Bang. Did you test that? Did Hawking test this? Read his lecuture here: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html:
" It was therefore not surprising that until recently, the universe was thought to be essentially static, and unchanging in time."
Again, science has always done this, like you said, based on evidence, based on what we know NOW. The absence of evidence to the contrary is NOT a proof of universal truth. If you believe otherwise (my real analysis professor will slap you), then you are more a man of faith than science. As we discover something new, we correct our earlier ASSUMPTIONS and form a new theory, until it's disproved, it becomes the "standard". There are many things the standard model can't reconcile yet, such as why matter dominated the universe but not anti-matter, what's dark energy and what's dark matter, why general relativity seem to break down at quantum level. Until you can answer these inconsistencies, you are relying on your personal believes -- call it faith or whatever -- because you can't prove it, just like you can neither prove or disprove a creator exists.


Oh yeah? Care to explain? This is exactly the type of things that makes my eyes roll -- telling someone that they "obviously have no idea" and then provide no explanation whatsoever -- just makes me think you have absolutely no idea either. Real smart guys like Hawking never diss anyone but tries his best to explain difficult concepts to ordinary people -- that deserves respect.

Your conclusion is wrong. And what you did is wrong.

You don't get to put words in other people's mouths based on your own opinions.

That is not an honest way to have a discussion.

Sure, I can explain. You are the one who brought up the Turing machine. The Turing machine is a mathematical model of a digital computer. It is very important in computer science. It has nothing to do with Physics or the nature the universe.

But let me explain this.

There are people who study math and science. They go to University, they do experiments in labs. They study books. They do problems. They write papers. They collaborate with other very intelligent people both peers and professors.

I think it is fair (and hopefully not too offensive) to say that the people who have spent 6 or 8 or 10 years studying math and science know a good deal more than the people who haven't.

Does this offend you?

I happen to have studied physics, and I currently work in computer engineering. I have solvle the partial differential equations to work out electron fields. I have worked through problems with theoretical Turing machines. I am not nearly as accomplished as Mr Hawking... but I know something about these topics.

But her you are... armed only with a misplaced faith in God, claiming to find inconsistencies in Steven Hawking and talking about Turing machines. You are pretending to have some expertise in something that you clearly (from what you have written) know nothing about.

I would be happy to try to explain some of these things. But I don't think you are here to understand anything... you are here to show how great your faith in God is (am I wrong?). If you want to ask any question on a topic that I know more than you about, I would try to explain it clearly to you.

I would say that some of these topics are difficult. There is a reason that we go to school for 6 or 8 years to learn Physics... it takes time to learn the math and the physics.

You could probably learn physics if you want to. But you have to do the work, and you have to have an open mind that maybe your conception of God is wrong. But for you to pretend some sort of expertise make me roll my eyes.

I do not understand the most of the stuff you said but a few things I remember, if I do remember that correctly from Prof. Brian Green. He said that M theory (used to be called string theory), postulates that reality is something like a 11 dimension manifold. In that sense distance can be somewhat a difficult concept because if we are limited to the three dimensions we can see, then even if there's a "short cut", we just can't perceive it. Some more extreme views I heard even theorizes that the elusive particle, Graviton, which is yet to be proven to exist, actually leaks energy to higher dimensions and that's why gravity is so weak. This led me to think that if there are beings living in 4th, 5th or even higher dimension, there's no way we can comprehend them, just like bacteria can never understand humans, regardless how many eons of evolution (let's not forget if evolution is true, bacteria is evolving, so are humans -- it's a game of catch up). If "God" appears in many forms, then I can interpret that as the higher dimensional beings can't really directly interfere with a lower dimension, and thus, they must somehow project themselves onto the 3D world, just like how we shine a light onto an object and our shadow is cast on a 2D screen. I have no basis for these claims, just a personal thought game.

No one has put words in anyone's mouth, hence no quotation, again for the nth time. Anything I do not quote is not what the person said.

By the way, what Thoth is writing is what you get when you throw a physics dictionary into a blender. What he is saying makes absolutely no sense to someone who has actually studied physics.

I am ignoring him or her.

A high schooler could have said this...

Let me explain to you what a Turning Machine is. It is a machine originally developed by Alan Turing to manipulate symbols on a tape according to a pre-defined rules. However, in modern computer science, based on my limited knowledge, is used as a basis for computational logic such as solving a problem based on a set of If and ELSE statement and once a condition is made, goes into a halting state, i.e., the logic will terminate and exit the program.



Instead of explaining the above, you spent most of your argument criticizing and bragging about your degree. Yes, good for you that you studied computer science. I studied finance instead and yes about 6-7 years, but have a passion for physics and philosophy. Sure, you solved partial differential equations, good for you. I, unfortunately, only had to understand one, that is, the Black–Scholes formula for pricing European style options and Least Square Monte Carlo for pricing American type of options. I occasionally have to use a two factor Hull-White model to calibrate parameters to fit the current interest rate term structure so that we can better price and forecast our balance sheet assets. I don't know about your upbringing -- perhaps your parents didn't give you enough compliments so you try to show off how much smarter you are than everyone around you, but that's your business and I am not here to change your personality.


I never said I do. Did you see how many times I said I have limited knowledge? If I know it all, why am I here having a discussion? If I have a Ph.D in physics, I may already have all the answers or may just ring up Dr. Hawking and ask him myself. It is the FACT that I don't know and that's why I want to know. You on the contrary (based on what you wrote) seem to think you know everything and reject all others as ignorance.


Again, you failed to read that I have said for the nth time that I wasn't here to argue for or against Creationism. You are the one who started it. I said very early that I only wanted to know whether it is true that Dr. Hawking contradicted himself because one of my childhood dreams has been to see the pyramids being built and how the world looked like millions of years ago. Well, when we grow up we realize that's probably impossible in our life time, but if Dr. Hawking is right that time travel is impossible, then that's a shame. That's all I'm saying; you are the one who put words in my mouth and started this whole thing about science vs religion.

Just following...

But it always strikes me as strange how easily the 'purity of science' is threatened and in need of defense.

This is the statement that I found ridiculous.

If you actually have the education that you say you do (which I assume includes a good understanding of integral calculus) then you can understand why the "contradiction" you say that Hawking made isn't actually a contradiction at all.

Why is it ridiculous? No science, not even Hawking can explain what's before the big bang. So I postulate an alternative, which can be right or wrong, it doesn't matter, but rather just a thought game. It is rather it seems to be your own limitation that couldn't comprehend the concept of infinity, which you clearly ignored when I mentioned it in an earlier post, which, fyi, came from Real Analysis. If there's a "machine" or whatever you call it that existed before time that is running some sort of algorithm based on a predefined set of if, else statements, let it be doing permutations or whatever, it resembles a Turing machine. If you say something is wrong, point out where it is wrong. Simply saying it's wrong doesn't help your argument, it is only a reflection of your small mind.

Why not a contradiction? It's rather a philosophical question, if you didn't see it. If something can come out of nothing, regardless whether it's time or anything for that matter, then there's no reason something cannot come out of nothing again. I'm not misunderstanding anything here. No one's arguing with you about whether time begun or not begun with the big bang. It appears, based on what you wrote, that you've misunderstood something crucial. That is, time and space is rather the same thing according to Einstein. Even Hawking acknowledge that time is not "progressing". You just perceive it being progressing but in fact, you are moving along it just like you move through space and therefore, logic dictates that there's no reason you can't go backwards. It only becomes a problem because you'll inevitably meet yourself along the way which means 2 you is occupying the same space-time, which means your doppelganger just popped out of existence out of nothing. THAT is the crux of the problem, not whether time existed or not before the big bang. So in short, Time and Space came out of nothing at the moment of big bang, but then again other objects cannot come out of nothing after the big bang. How does that make any sense to you?

Also Standard Model only concerns itself with the Big Bang and scientists like Green, Hawking, all acknowledge that there will probably not be any good provable theory about what's before the big bang. So you'll have this something come out of nothing for a while. First Law of thermal dynamics states that energy can never be destroyed nor created - it could only change from one form to another. Einstein then showed us that energy and matter are essentially the same thing, with his equation E=MC^2. So in all essence, if the universe came out of nothing the first law is violated. So apparently most, if not all physics law likely applies only to this universe as we know it.

And to make your life easier, let me give you the exact recording of his show:

http://www.pbs.org/genius-by-stephen-hawking/home/

GENIUS BY STEPHEN HAWKING
Episode 1: Can We Time Travel? | Full Episode

Aired: 2016-05-19 01:00:0054:40Rating: TV-G
Stephen Hawking sets three challenges to find out if we could be time travelers.

He'll explain to you all of what I said about time travel.

You are making stuff up again. I have not seen any place where Hawking acknowledges any such thing.

Can you provide a quote...

When you "postulate and alternative" that contradicts actual scientific observation, it is not (as you say) a philosophical question. Your postulate is wrong.

When you claim that Hawking "acknowledges" that there there will probably not be any "good provable theory" you are misstating what he is saying. Whether you are deliberately getting it wrong or whether you are simply misunderstanding is an interesting question.

His point is that time starts for our universe at the big bang. "Events before the Big Bang" are not defined. I don't know how familiar you are with the mathematics... given the claims you have made of your mathematical experiment, you should understand the concept of "not defined". The expression 0/0 is not "unknowable" or "not provable". It is provably undefined.



This shows a basic misunderstanding of Physics and math. It is simply wrong. The Big Bang does note violate the first law because at no time (the key word here is time) is energy created or destroyed.

I think the basic problem you are having is the concept of T = 0. Time started at the Big Bang. There was no time "before" the Big Bang. At the beginning of time, all the of energy in the Universe (presumably) already existed.