下為 2010/9/3 自由時報的一則新聞:
霍金改口 稱宇宙非上帝所創造
英國最頂尖、也是最有名的理論物理學家霍金（歐新社）
〔編譯羅彥傑／綜合報導〕英國最頂尖、也是最有名的理論物理學家霍金在即將問世的新書中，一改先前說法，聲稱上帝並未創造宇宙，至於「大爆炸」也不是上帝介入後的產物，而是物理定律無可避免產生的後果。
物理大師新書「大計畫」
霍金與美國物理學家麥洛迪諾合著的新作「大計畫」（Grand Design），預定本月九日出版，書摘二日已搶先刊登在泰晤士報。
六十八歲的霍金，靠著一九八八年探討宇宙起源的暢銷書「時間簡史」，贏得全球一致認可，而且他當時似乎接受上帝在宇宙創造過程中扮演要角的說法。他寫道：「我們如果能發現一個完整的理論，那將是人類理性的終極勝利，因為屆時我們應該會了解上帝的心意」。不過在新書中，他卻說新的理論顯示「並非非造物主不可」。
大膽挑戰牛頓學說
本書大膽挑戰牛頓的學說。牛頓認為，宇宙不可能自混沌狀態中創造，而一定是出於造物主的設計。但霍金寫道：「由於有諸如重力等定律的存在，宇宙能夠、而且也將會無中生有地自我創造。自我創造正是無中生有、宇宙為何存在以及我們為何存在的原因。沒有必要祈求上帝點亮生命之火及推動宇宙運行。」霍金在「大計畫」中表示，一九九二年發現一枚行星繞著太陽之外的另一顆恆星軌道運行，有助於解構物理學之父牛頓的觀點。他提到：「這使得我們巧合般的行星條件─包括只有一個太陽、太陽與地球距離適中及太陽的質量恰當等─變得不算特別，也難以有效證明地球出於精心設計只是為取悅人類。」
罹患側索硬化肌萎縮症的霍金，自一九七九年起一直是劍橋大學盧卡斯數學講座教授，但去年他辭去此一牛頓也擔任過的榮銜。
自由時報這則新聞可能主要是下面的翻譯.
God did not create the universe, says Hawking
EmailPrint.. AFP/File – God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the Universe due to a series of developments …
Slideshow:Physicist Stephen Hawking .
By Michael Holden Michael Holden – Thu Sep 2, 9:08 am ET
LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.
"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," Hawking writes.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.
Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.
His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.
He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."
In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.
"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.
Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.
He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."
Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.
"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.
(Editing by Steve Addison)
The Reference Frame網頁在下文中提到英國衛報(The Guardian)的書評:
Stephen Hawking: The Grand Design
The Guardian promotes Stephen Hawking's new book, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, by the following provoking title:
Stephen Hawking says the Universe not created by God.
The book will be out on September 7th - in five days. A creator is unnecessary because the Universe has inevitably come into existence because of M-theory, i.e. the full laws of quantum gravity. "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he correctly explains.
At the amazon.com page of the book, the authors sketch the content of the book. The book will defend the multiverse and present the recent results on the theoretical and experimental front - especially string/M-theory and the observations of COBE and WMAP. They "assess M-Theory, an explanation of the laws governing the multiverse, and the only viable candidate for a complete 'theory of everything'."
So don't expect any politically correct bullshitting about random crackpots' delusions being as viable as M-theory. ;-)
For Stephen Hawking, the elimination of God from the laws of physics seems to be an unusually high "research goal". And while I don't quantitatively understand what this goal could exactly mean, I kind of understand him. He has been given quite some circumstantial evidence that no good God is in control of this particular Universe or multiverse.
Pre-order the book via the amazon.com link at the top if you care and if you want a guaranteed 40% discount.
Where is Boyle's beef?
Alan Boyle (MSNBC) and others are very skeptical about the "beef" of the claim that something has to arise from nothing according to the laws of physics. I largely disagree with Alan Boyle.
First of all, many people are confused by the range of validity of mass or energy conservation. They think that it's not possible to violate this law. However, in Why and how energy is not conserved in cosmology, I have explained that the energy conservation only holds if the laws of physics - and the appropriate background - is time-translationally invariant which is not true, in any useful sense, in cosmology.
So the intuition that "something cannot arise from nothing" is flawed as soon as one takes the insights of general relativity into account. However, science can actually go further than that. In principle, it can also study whether some space or matter is actually created and how it looks like.
The laymen - including some atheists - have the tendency to think that such questions eternally belong to God and religions and they're not accessible to science. However, this opinion is incorrect according to state-of-the-art theoretical physics. Science can discuss the very beginning of the existence.
It's a very different question whether we completely understand these issues - we don't - but I think it's fair to say that we understand enough to know that such questions are likely to follow some laws that are accessible to the scientific research.
Already with our incomplete understanding as of 2010, we can say many things. Inflation can explain why the Universe is flat, large, and much heavier than the Planck mass (order 1 in fundamental units) but it doesn't quite get to the "Planck time" away from the ultimate birth. However, we also have candidate laws - such as the Hartle-Hawking wave function - that can determine the initial conditions as well.
So Hawking's statements are not really willy-nilly today - and the book will surely try to substantiate the "big claims" about God in some technical detail.
Source:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/09/stephen-hawking-grand-design.html
霍金又開示：神學無其必要 【2010/09/12 15:25】
〔中央社〕神學是沒有必要的。全球知名物理學家霍金（Stephen Hawking）繼發表新書主張宇宙非上帝創造之後，又在電視上如是說。
霍金在10日播出的「賴利金現場」（Larry King Live）中說：「上帝可能存在，但是科學可以解釋宇宙不需要一個創世者。」
68歲的霍金在新書「大計畫」（The Grand Design，暫譯）中說，因為有地心引力，宇宙本身就可以從無到有。霍金主張，「自發性創造」是為何宇宙和人類存在的原因。
當被問及他對自己著作引發熱烈迴響有何看法時，霍金說：「科學越來越足以回答過去一向屬於宗教領域的問題。科學的說法就很完整了。神學是沒有必要的。」
霍金表示，他的書試著「對於宇宙如何運作以及我們在其中的位置」提出一個「廣泛的景象」。
霍金告訴賴利金：「科學就足以解釋宇宙。我們不需要上帝來解釋為什麼世界上有這個有那個，或自然法則的箇中道理。」
Theology unnecessary, Stephen Hawking tells CNN
By the CNN Wire StaffSeptember 11, 2010 -- Updated 1106 GMT (1906 HKT)
(CNN) -- Theology is unnecessary. So says Stephen Hawking, the world-famous physicist who controversially argues in a new book that God did not create the universe.
"God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator," Hawking told CNN's "Larry King Live" in an interview that aired Friday.
Hawking, 68, says in his book "The Grand Design" that, given the existence of gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. "Spontaneous creation," he writes, is the reason why the universe and humanity exist.
"Gravity and quantum theory cause universes to be created spontaneously out of nothing," Hawking told Larry King.
King asked Hawking why he thinks people have reacted so strongly to his book.
"Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion," Hawking replied. "The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary."
Hawking said his book is an attempt to give a "broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire and it also puts our worries in perspective."
The idea behind it is "M-theory," which, he says, allows there to be many universes that were created out of nothing, none of which required the intervention of God.
That's because if there are many universes, one will have laws of physics like ours -- and in such a universe, something not only can, but must, arise from nothing, Hawking says. Therefore, he concludes, there's no need for God to have played a part.
That's the point of his book, Hawking told King -- "that science can explain the universe, and that we don't need God to explain why there is something rather than nothing, or why the laws of nature are what they are."
Hawking said that if he could travel through time -- which he said is theoretically possible -- he would go to the future to "find if M-theory is indeed a theory of everything."
Hawking has ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which has confined him to a wheelchair and leaves him unable to speak without the help of a computerized voice synthesizer. The disease is also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease in the United States and motor neuron disease, or MND, in Britain.
He told King he's doing "pretty well" with the disease, 45 years after he was first diagnosed. The disease has a life expectancy of two to five years, according to the ALS Association.
