Does anyone actually believe in God or are they just afraid...

Hi STUpid! Long time, no see

Speaking of Stephen Hawking, he thinks the universe has a beginning:
The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html

 

...as far as I'm aware, there's no law which disallows faith from shutting his own eye to reason.

 

That pleasure was all mine.

...that can and will create itself from nothing.

The one comes with the other.

 

wow you are returning to that deception. We have done threads on this where you refuse to put that quote in context... so here is the paper... which explains that quote.
in the highly speculative world of top down cosmology in which the constant sort of chose their histories... you can say gravity created the universe...

but in the universe we know... the universe looks designed.



http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0602/0602091v2.pdf

Here hawking explains that if you work with the standard model that we have the universe is carefully fine tuned or you have to invoke the notion of eternal inflation (infinite universes.)


1.
In fact if one does adopt a bottom-up approach to cosmology, one is immediately
led to an essentially classical framework, in which one loses all ability to explain
cosmology’s central question - why our universe is the way it is. In particular a
bottom-up approach to cosmology either requires one to postulate an initial state of
the universe that is carefully fine-tuned [10] - as if prescribed by an outside agency or it requires one to invoke the notion of eternal inflation [11], which prevents one
from predicting what a typical observer would see.



Here - Hawking disabuses Stu of his other bullshit. We see Hawking clearly speak of alternate universes.

2. page 2.
Here we put forward a different approach to cosmology in the string landscape,
based not on the classical idea of a single history for the universe but on the quantum
sum over histories [12]. We argue that the quantum origin of the universe naturally
leads to a framework for cosmology where amplitudes for alternative histories of the
universe are computed with boundary conditions at late times only. We thus envision
a set of alternative universes in the landscape, with amplitudes given by the no
boundary path integral [13].

 

starting at 1:55 explains that his answer is predicated on the landscape idea... which is another name for the multiverse.

As I said before look at the video I posted... he explains it all perfectly well.

 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2cT4zZIHR3s?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

He does not believe what you believe jem, no matter if you post that video 1000 more times. He does not believe in a creator so you can't use him as an argument for a creator.

 

I keep telling you... he does not believe in a Creator... but he states that one of the explanations for why our universe appears so incredibly fine tuned is a creator.
Just look at how he explains the fine tuning at around 6 minutes on the video. (he explains the finest tuning at around 5 minutes.)


why is it so hard to understand that point for you? He does not need to believe what I believe... I am just letting him explain our universe is very finely tuned for life.

How you wish to explain that tuning is up to you. He tells you, you have 3 to 4 choices.

 

Ok, and that possible creator is possibly a leprechaun.

 

sure a leprechaun who could think the universe into existence.

and note on your free will question... since time started with the big bang... and if the Leprechaun is outside of time... then he would possibly know everything but still allow you free will in this universe.