How do black holes unsettle atheistic scientists?
For some time now, it has been known that our life-friendly cosmos depends on the delicate balancing of a host of universal constants.....If the value for any one of these constants was slightly different, questions about the universe couldn’t be asked—intelligence, and biological life itself, would have never come about. And that makes scientists edgy, because conditions that depend on fine-turning suggest something of a “set-up” job.....
Speaking at an international conference in Dublin, Ireland, [Stephen] Hawking said that he was wrong about his 30-year assertion that material entering a black hole leaves our universe..... In a dream-squashing conclusion, Hawking emphasized, “I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if [mass and energy] is preserved [as required by the laws of physics] there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.”
His peers were unsettled.
Stephen Hawking’s announcement was a warning that the multiverse and, with it, philosophical naturalism is in trouble. Added to its technical difficulties, the theory fails to do what it sets out to do—namely, to explain how our universe turned out the way it did. Instead, it asserts that our world must exist, because in an infinite number of universes all configurations are possible—and we’re here, so that proves it! Such contrived reasoning leaves some researchers cold. A theory in which anything is possible is a theory that explains nothing.
Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind is among those who understand what is at stake. Susskind admitted that without some alternative “explanation of nature’s fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID [Intelligent Design] critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.” (Emphasis added.)
~ nuclear engineer Regis Nicoll, in “The Day Stephen Hawking Unsettled His Atheist Peers”, read the whole thing here: http://tinyurl.com/y4d42yoy
