Stephen Hawking: This Blogger's View Brings Out A Scary Crowd

Stephen Hawking's new book The Grand Design has - as it was designed to do, I suppose - stirred much debate.

In this blogger's case, the approach was to present the little-talked-about view of choice. That is, I choose to believe that God created the universe, where Stephen Hawking elects to assert that God did not create the universe. This video blog explains why:



Now, I never professed to side with either science or religion, understand, because for me, they exist as one. That's a conclusion I also came to at 15 years old, and have not wavered from it since.

My intent was to prove that people who "back" or support Professor Hawking are, in their own way, just as much religious zealots as the people they complain about who are religious zealots. Sadly, I have succeeded.

There's a small crowd out there, some of them who live right in my backyard of Oakland and San Francisco, and frankly mostly residing within a white, male, 20-something to 40-something, moderate education, more beer-drinking than wine-drinking, demographic, who I have come to consider as dangerous. That is, so full of basic anger that they're to be considered not safe to be around until they prove otherwise. They're the kind of people who contact you online just for the sole purpose of being hostile, but in public will hide in the shadows.

They will be the first to say they're not racist, but then lack the proper introspection to ask why they take the time to be who they are? No one black or minority, or female contacts me in the hostile way some of the people I refer to have done. Yes, openly hostile, out-of-the-blue communications primarily via Twitter and email. (Comments I discount because one really doesn't know who the person commenting is.)

So, tired of such a pattern of contact, I'm putting my foot down to the "B Walsh'" types of the World - stop it.

Disagree In An Agreeable Way, Can't You Be?

Prof. Stephen Hawking

What's most disturbing about this situation I point to is the person's inability to disagree in an agreeable way. But then, in this case, how can you disagree when I state my choice of believing in God? It's not something for disagreement. It, as they say, "is what it is."

I have friends who are atheists, but I don't argue with them about that; that's their choice. What I'm more interested in is why a person elects to adopt the belief system they have? In Stephen Hawking's case, the missing issue for me is what personal, not scientific, path led him to his recent conclusion?

For me, the idea that the Universe came from "nothing" is contradictory to the basic mathematical proof that one-times-zero equals zero and one-times-one equals one. That means you can't have a Universe from "nothing" and calls into question why Hawking has such a device as "nothing," if only to be used as a "something" - a something used only to disprove God's role if not God's very existence.

Why?

I also must ask this very thorny question: why is it that the people who introduce the ideas that God doesn't exist as we think of him (like Hawking), or that whites are a superior intellect (like the late William Shockley) tend to be white and male and use "science" as some tool behind which to hide their prejudices?

That's a pattern I find disturbing and unanswered. It seems society spends more time asking why a disproportionate number of black men commit crimes, without stopping to consider the damaging impacts of centuries of racism and discrimination. Then, because of the kind of persons such an environment produces, some so-called scientist, who happens to be white and male, then says, "Oh, they're genetically inferior," which in turn lets racism off the hook. So it's OK for that person, and everyone else to be racist. Think about it.

You're just not going to come up with a black male scientist who asserts that blacks are genetically inferior intellectually.

You see my point here? I'm asking questions about the very psychological underpinnings of why we chose to believe what we believe. For some, my approach is unsettling, but it does not call for the person to be hostile to me. Indeed, I'm concerned that the people who consider themselves scientists or "fans of science" aren't more introspective.

So, I say this, if you can't control yourself, stay away from me, please. It's not worth all the emotion you express. Use it for more productive efforts that advance society.