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Stephen Hawking, the super-genius brainiac math and physics guru just came out with a new book in which he writes that perhaps God did not create the universe. The new book is called The Grand Design. The book hasn't actually been released yet. But like everything else with crazy amounts of controversy...the news junkies have issued their opinions disguised as factual news! CNN declared that Mr. Hawking "aims to banish a divine creator from physics."
I don't know if Mr. Hawking is saying there is no God. I haven't read the book. But all the newsies are sensationalizing his comments out of context and telling us there is no God. According to CNN, Hawking is saying that "if there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it's less remarkable that there's one with conditions for human life." In other words...we ain't so special after all!
But the die-hard religious peeps say Hawking is really saying YES to God! Religious experts are saying that the science explains how we and the galaxy exist...but religion gives it the meaning. I don't know. In the CNN article Fraser Watts, a priest and history of science expert said that "it's not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God...a creator God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe, and it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not." I don't know.
Basically, you can twist words to say whatever you want. Semantics! The dictionary definition of semantics: The study of meanings. The historical and psychological study and the classification of changes in the signification of words or forms viewed as factors in linguistic development. It is the language used to achieve a desired effect on people. In other words, we are duped daily by word mumbo-jumbo!
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| Clip Art licensed from the clip art gallery on Discoveryschool.com. |
I miss the good old days when all I worried about was how to open a bag of chips in the planetarium without making noise and getting caught! When science was fun. I envy people who fully embrace their religious beliefs. But I just don't know which religion is right...or if any religion is right. I figure I'll find out the truth when I die, right? Because when we die...something is going to happen right? Or will we just be in the dirt and nothing happens. I don't know. But there sure are lots of people who do know...or so they say.
Laura NP
1 comments:
"We do not learn spiritual things in exactly the same way we learn other things that we know, even though such things as reading, listening, and pondering may be used to learn those spiritual things. I have learned that it requires a special attitude both to teach and to learn spiritual things. There are some things you know, or may come to know (such as the existence of God), that you will find quite difficult to explain to others. I am very certain that it was meant to be that way.
I will tell you of an experience I had which affected me profoundly. I sat on a plane next to a professed atheist who pressed his disbelief in God so urgently that I bore my testimony to him of my faith and belief in a divine creator. “You are wrong,” I said, “there is a God. I know He lives!”
He protested, “You don’t know. Nobody knows that! You can’t know it!” When I would not yield, this atheist, who was an attorney, asked perhaps the ultimate question on the subject of testimony, or knowing for oneself without doubt. “All right,” he said in a sneering, condescending way, “you say you know. Tell me HOW you know.”
When I attempted to answer, even though I now hold advanced academic degrees, I was helpless to communicate.
When I used the words Spirit of God and witness, the atheist responded, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” The words prayer, discernment, and faith, were equally meaningless to him. “You see,” he said almost mockingly, “you don’t really know. If you did, you would be able to tell me how you know.”
I felt, perhaps, that I had borne my testimony to him unwisely and was at a loss as to what to do. Then came the experience! Something came into my mind. It felt like pure intelligence flowing into me, giving me a sudden stroke of ideas. I would even go as far as to say it was divine intervention and I said to the atheist, “Let me ask if you know what salt tastes like.”
“Of course I do,” was his reply.
“When did you taste salt last?”
“I just had dinner on the plane.”
“You just think you know what salt tastes like,” I said.
He insisted, “I know what salt tastes like as well as I know anything.”
“If I gave you a cup of salt and a cup of sugar and let you taste them both, could you tell the salt from the sugar?”
“Now you are getting juvenile,” was his reply. “Of course I could tell the difference. I know what salt tastes like. It is an everyday experience—I know it as well as I know anything.”
“Then,” I said, “assuming that I personally have never tasted salt, please explain to me just what it tastes like.”
After some thought, he ventured, “Well-I-uh, it is not sweet and it is not sour.”
“You’ve told me what it isn’t, not what it is," I politely contested.
After several attempts, of course, he could not do it. He could not convey, in words alone, so ordinary an experience as tasting salt. I bore testimony to him once again and said, “I know there is a God. I know He exists. I know he created the heavens and the earth and all things that exist within them. You ridiculed that testimony and told me that if I actually did know, I would be able to tell you exactly how I know. My friend, spiritually speaking, I have tasted salt. I am no more able to convey to you in words how this knowledge has come than you are to tell me what salt tastes like. But I say to you again, there is a God! He does live! And just because you don’t know, don’t try to tell me that I don’t know, for I do!”
From that experience forward, I have never been embarrassed or ashamed that I could not explain in words alone everything I know spiritually.
The Apostle Paul said it this way:
“We speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.”
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:13–14.)
Paul just explained Mr Hawking's position to a 'T'.
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