Pope Advised Hawking Not to Study Origin of Universe

BlueCup submits a link to an Associated Press article running in the Northwest Florida Daily News which begins "Famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God. The British author, who wrote the best-seller 'A Brief History of Time,' said that the pope made the comments at a cosmology conference at the Vatican." According to the article, "The scientist then joked during a lecture in Hong Kong, 'I was glad he didn't realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo.'"

Hardly news

[jawtheshark (198669)]

He wrote that anecdote himself in "A Brief History of Time". So, this *really* is old news.

Re:Hardly news

[Tx (96709)]

You got there before me. Well, Hawking once believed that time would reverse when the universe started contracting towards the big crunch, so this would have been news on the way back down the timeline ;).

Re:Hardly news

[jawtheshark (198669)]

Ah, that is why lots of drops of coffee from my computer screen just magically jumped in my mouth! ;-)

swen yldraH:eR

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

!gnineppah si ti ,on hO

Re:Hardly news

[dr_dank (472072)]

Agreed The real news is that the Inquisition finally caught up with Galileo. I'll submit the story right away!

Re:Hardly news

[kin_korn_karn (466864)]

good idea, nobody will expect that

Flawed Logic

[mfh (56)]

If you love God, why not read up on his work?

Re:Flawed Logic

[Kiaser Zohsay (20134)]

As far as they're concerned, they're using their God given brain to study how God does His thing.

A biology professor I once met was fond of saying that if you study biology in long enough, you will find not only that God exists, but He has a sense of humor.

Re:Flawed Logic

[larkost (79011)]

You don't have to study very much, just have a good long look at your own reproductive organs. After all, as the joke goes: "God must be a civil engineer, who else but a civil engineer would put a waste water outlet through a recreational facility?".

Re:Flawed Logic

['nother poster (700681)]

The problem is he built the recreational facility on the existing waste water plants property, so it sounds like he's a speculation developer rather than an engineer. "Hell, this place will be so much fun they will come no matter how bad it smells."

Next up...

[evileyetmc (977519)]

Pope Palpatine will advocate not studying conception...since it is an act of God. Great. Guess my girlfriend won't be putting out.

The Inquisition

[Kamineko (851857)]

The Inquisition can't come for Hawking now: he's expecting it!

Re:The Inquisition

[91degrees (207121)]

Ah, but he knows they can't come, becasue they're expected so they're unexpected. Which means they can come. Except Hawking obviouslyt expects them to know they're expected and therefore unexpected, so he should probably expect this.

From TFA:

[blackbeaktux (525688)]

[FROM TFA]...he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."

The Vatican was unavailable for comment.

During the meeting

[Billosaur (927319)]

Pope, speaking in bad Italian accent: Yeah, you see, it's like this Mr. Hawking... the beginning of everything... that's God's work... he wouldn't be too pleased if you found out too much about what he did... he's very private that way... he tends to get upset easily... and we wouldn't want anything to say, happen to you... you wouldn't want to end up in a wheelchair or nothin'... oh wait...

ask any person of "faith"

[Lord Ender (156273)]

It's turtles all the way down.

The Pope

[Goody (23843)]

The Pope doesn't represent all of Chistianity or religion for that matter. Hawkings should study and theorize the origin of the universe as much as he wants. He probably will never determine if a higher being actually flipped the switch that made it happen, though. Science explains how, what, where, and when. Religion explains who and why.

Re:The Pope

[haluness (219661)]

Religion explains who and why.

Just to nitpick (since I have nothing else to do right now) but religion states who and why, rather than explains

I seriously doubt he said it

[Creedo (548980)]

If you look at all of the other statements that JPII made regarding science and faith, this would immediately strike you as out of character. Add that to the fact that I've never seen someone actually produce proof that he ever said it, like a transcription or something. So, I think Hawking either misquoted, misunderstood(given JPII's accent, understandable) or made up the quote. After all, it makes a good joke, right?

Re:I seriously doubt he said it

[Creedo (548980)]

He was also "demanded" that science not contradict Christianity.

I think I know where you got that semi quote(more than a little mangled):
159 Faith and science : "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." (Dei Filius 4: DS 3017) "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are." (GS 36 ' 1)

From the Catechism, the official teaching guide of the RCC. As far as the Church is concerned, the only caveat to scientific study is that it respects moral law, which boils down to the fact that in biological sciences, you can't treat human beings in ways that are offensive to their innate dignity(Tuskegee study, Axis death camp studies, etc). The idea is that that faith and science can never be in opposition because they have one author, not that science has to be altered to fit religious belief.

Chardin was condemned not for his scientific writings, but because of his religion. He was most certainly, judging from his own writings, not Catholic anymore. His desire was to eliminate most if not all of Christian belief, and replace it with his own. It had nothing at all to do with science. He wanted to create a new religion and call it Catholic, and the RCC understandably said no. He was free at any time to leave and publish his beliefs in any way he wished. But the RCC is also free not to teach his religion in its schools.

Evolution was never condemned by the RCC, so I fail to see how that is "backhanded and deceptive."

how vs why

[Speare (84249)]

I was raised Baptist but am not religious these days. Many many scientists have a deep spirituality or faith and feel that science just gets you closer to the creation. I've never had a problem with science versus faith: to put it into religious terms, I presume that science is our attempt at explaining "how," and spirituality is our attempt at explaining "why." There's no disconnect here.

The bible doesn't explain how the universe was created, and explicitly says that God's timeline is nothing like man's timeline, so there's no point in parsing "six days" as meaning anything in particular to us. If I feel like parsing it at all, I'd say the seventh day of rest aligns quite nicely with the future era of calmness mentioned in Revelations, so maybe we're still in the sixth day as far as God is concerned. I've subsequently heard some Israeli theologians have put forth the same conjecture. But I don't parse the bible that much, as I already figured out what I want to figure out with regards to my own spirituality: do less harm than good, and the world will be alright.

Major organized religions (aka, Church Inc.) just don't want any explaining of either, as it impacts the bottom line. Come in, drop off your tithe, pat a homeless man on the head, and go watch your kids' soccer game. Questions come pretty close to questioning authority, and they like being the unquestioned authority. I mean, really, condoms in Africa...

Re:If studying the work of God isn't allowed....

[lbrandy (923907)]

Funny how they only do this with the sciences that threaten their beliefs.

Huh? What? Threatens their beliefs? The Big Bang? Are you reading the same theory I am? The Big Bang is litterally a religious persons DREAM scientific theory. They couldn't have written it any better themselves. Not only is it the perfect theory explaining the moment of creation, but it also predicts that not only does everything happen, all of creation, in a single moment, at a single point, but it even predicts that our laws and rules and science cannot touch anything that happened before it. It, literally, points to a single moment/point and says the entire universe came from this point, at this time, and we can never hope to know what happened before that.

If that's not "biblical" in it's details, then nothing is.

Re:So?

[peragrin (659227)]

That's my thought. Why shouldn't we study everything so we can bask in the full glory of God's work?

of course with knowledge comes the fact that most religions are just social engineering scams designed to control the population and make people feel better about themselves at the expense of others^H^H non-believers.

Oh well I have my beliefs and I don't care if no one else believes what I do. A good life involves giving to others, for in the end only kindness matters.

Re:Nevertheless, it inflates

[Jboost (960475)]

Well, Pope Pius XII approved of the Big Bang theory in 1951 and Pope John Paul II said "that it is acceptable for Catholics to believe and teach evolutionism."

The Vatican also has some fine astronomers (and one of the oldest astronomical research institutions).
http://vaticanobservatory.org/ [vaticanobservatory.org]

The Vatican isn't as backwards as those fundamental christian creationists that take everything the bible says literally.

Ah-ha, now you see the REAL problem

[Moraelin (679338)]

"Galileo got in trouble for saying that the earth moves... in a book that irreverently satirized the current pope."

Read again the part after the "..." and there you have the real problem.

AFAIK, Galileo had had a pretty civilized talk with the Pope, and while the Pope wasn't convinced by Galileo's argumentation, he let Galileo go.

Before you blame the Pope of being too fanatical to accept science, remember that it wasn't just faith, but they did have their own explanations (derived from Aristotles) about how the world works. It may have been wrong in retrospect, but as far as any wise man at the time was concerned, they already had a science of sorts. Something that comes and turns the whole cosmic model on its head, damn better be convincing, and at any rate the Pope wasn't convinced. And remember that the Pope had been willing to hear Galileo's arguments, which doesn't strike me as too closed-minded.

Unfortunately, Galileo seems to have had the same kind of personality one can see often on /. So Galileo proceeds to publish a book in which he thoroughly flames the Pope, and puts the Pope's words, in some cases distorted or taken out of context, in the mouth of a character whose name is just one letter away from "Stupid"... and is pronounced almost the same as "Stupid." In effect it's the kinda flamebait post that goes on and on about how the opponent is just too stupid to understand, only in print.

Now also bear in mind that the Pope at the time was debatably the biggest political figure. A king above kings, if you will. They weren't big on democracy and freedom of speech back then...

And Galileo goes and flames him in public and calls him stupid...

I don't know, seems to me like science-vs-religion had _nothing_ to do with what happened from there. You get in a public pissing contest with the dictator of the realm, you get roughed up in return. It's that simple.