a) An explanation of the model

Robert Koons, University of Texas

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking presented a new model of a beginningless universe. Hawking does not challenge the idea that the universe is finite in space and time. Consequently, there is no time earlier than 16-10 billion years ago. Nonetheless, if the universe does eventually collapse back into a infinitesimal point, and if we use a mathematical technique known as "imaginary time", we can model space-time as a smooth, uneventful surface, with the Big Bang as the North Pole and the Big Crunch as the South Pole. Hawking's model involves "spatializing" time -- turning time into a spatial dimension, no different from the familiar three dimensions of space. Hence, his model involves a radical rejection of change and becoming: the universe is an unchanging, multi-dimensional whole, given once for all. Change is merely variation along a static dimension.

Good explanation of Hawking with nice little diagrams

b) Hawking's unbounded condition.

The problem with this argument in the recent work by Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time in which he purports to prove that the universe had an "unbounded condition," in other words, there is no origin to time. Imagine that time is like a cone and as we move back toward the original point at which time began we move in toward the point of the cone. Hawking’s view would say that the end of the come is smooth, or that it has no end. Actually, he says that as we move toward the ultimate moment of origin time fragments and become four separate coordinates, just as there are four dimension coordinates, in three spatial and one temporal dimension. in this case the one temporal dimension becomes four, making it impossible to say that time has a beginning. The practical upshot of all of this is that a universe in which there is no origin to time is essentially a universe that always was, or that has no real beginning. In other ways this is expressed by saying that the universe "popped" into existence with no prior cause (the big "pop"?).

c) Problems With Hawking's Theory

*Evidence against big Crunch spoils symmetry of model

"Hawking's model is highly speculative, based on what Hawking believes a quantum theory of gravity (which does not yet exist) must be like. In addition, mounting evidence against the eventuality of the Big Crunch spoils the symmetry of Hawking's model." [Robert Koons, University of Texas, ]

*Imaginary time incorporates metaphysical absurdity

Koons:

However, the main problem with Hawking's model is its incorporation of an unbelievable view of time and change. When using physical theory in metaphysical investigation, one must be aware of a GIGO principle: garbage in, garbage out. When using a physical theory in metaphysics, one must be careful not to incorporate metaphysical absurdities in one's interpretation of that theory. Otherwise, any metaphysical conclusions one bases on this interpretation will be vitiated by these prior absurdities. In Hawking's case, he uses the technique of imaginary time, and interprets this technique as reflecting the true nature of the world. This means that Hawking starts out by assuming that time is no different from a spatial dimension, that there is no real becoming in the world. This is obviously false: physics can tell us many surprising things, but if a physicist tells us that there is no such thing as the passage of time, we have good grounds for concluding that a serious mistake has been made. As soon as we interpret Hawking's model in a way that treats time in a credible way, we find (as Hawking himself admits) that the initial singularity re-appears.[Ibid]

* Re-imposing real time singularity reappears

Several other problems: First, Hawking's theory relies upon imaginary time, it does not take place in the real world that we live in. When we understand the situation from the perspective of real time, the universe still begins as a singularity and time still requires a beginning. Fritz Shafer, University of Georgia, "In Hawking and Hartle's no boundary proposal, the notion that the universe has neither beginning nor end is something that exists in mathematical terms only. In real time, which is what we as human beings are confined to...there will always be a singularity, a beginning of time. Among his contradictory statements in A Brief History of Time, Hawking actually concedes this. 'When one goes back to real time in which we live there will still appear to be singularities...in real time the Universe has a beginning.'" (Shaffer lecture, Website, Leadership University http://leadership.com/bingbang2.com/html)

* Unbounded condition imposes its own bounded condition

Stephen Barr:

"The sufficient answer to the no boundary boundary-condition [Hawking rather than eliminating boundary conditions has actually imposed one, that there is no boundary] as an argument against God has been well expressed by the physicist Don Page, a friend and collaborator of Stephen Hawking, as it happens a born again Christian: 'God creates and sustains the entire universe rather than just the beginning. Whether or not the universe has a beginning has no relevance to the question of its creation just as whether an artist's line has a beginning and end or forms a circle has no relevance to the question of it's being drawn.'" This is the response by Stephen M. Barr, physicist at the University of Delaware (in review of book by Kitty Ferguson, "Fire in the Equations." Published in First Things 65 August/Sept. 1996, 54-57.)

In other words, the issue is not merely the "beginning" of the universe but the source of it. That it couldn't pop into existence out of nothing is a proof of God, that it couldn't exist on its own with no cause is a proof of God, that it may have always existed with no actual beginning is beside the point because it still has to have a source of origin even if it has no starting point in time. In other words this talk of boundary conditions and no beginning in time is just a paradox of language created by the fact that time would start up with the universe. The universe still has to have a source or a sustaining source of its existence.[Ibid]

*Finitude still meaningful

Robert J. Russell
- Center for Theology and the natural sciences

"Though highly speculative, the Hawking/Hartle model of the "quantum creation of the universe" is an example of the kind of challenge presented by quantum cosmology to the relation between theology and cosmology. If there is not "t=0" in the Hawking/Hartle model, does this 'disprove' the theological claim that the universe is created? Actually the interaction method produces a more nuanced result than this. Recall that, according the Hawking, the universe has a finite past but no past singularity at "t=0;" the universe is temporally past finite but unbounded. If we had too narrowly reduced the theological meaning of creation to the occurrence of "t=0" in standard cosmology we might well have a problem here! (Certainly not the problem Carl Sagan tries to raise in his Preface to Hawking's book - namely that there is nothing left for God to do. Deism like this is not even remotely presupposed by those theologians who do take t=0 as direct evidence for God. For them, as for all contemporary theology in one way or another, God acts everywhere in the universe, and not just at its beginning.) Yet if we kept the two worlds separate, we would have nothing to learn either."

"But the interaction model provides a surprising new result: The move from the Big Bang to Hawking's model changes the empirical meaning of the philosophical category of finitude; it does not render it meaningless. With Hawking/Hartle the universe is still temporally finite (in the past) but it does not have an initial singularity. Hence the shift in models changes the form of consonance between theology and science from one of bounded temporal past finitude (found with the Big Bang model) to one of unbounded temporal past finitude (found in the Hawking proposal). Thus, as we theologize about creatio ex nihilo we should separate out the element of past temporal finitude from the additional issue of the boundedness of the past. What the Hawking proposal teaches us is that in principle one need not have a bounded finite past to have a finite past. This result stands whether or not Hawking's proposal lasts scientifically."[Robert J. Russell. founder Center for Theology and the natural sciences
scienceshttp://www.counterbalance.net/physics/bbang-frame.html]

* Interaction Model: contingency.

A Theological answer by a physicist and a theologian based upon Hawking's model shows us that Hawking does not do away with the contingent nature of the Universe.

CTNS

QUOTE: The Hawking-Hartle Proposal for the early universe is the most ingenious of the quantum-cosmological speculations which aim to overcome the problem of the singularity. It is important to emphasize that these fascinating ideas are still speculations, and that they may never be amenable to receiving any experimental support. The speculations as they stood at the end of the 1980s were reviewed by Willem B Drees. He points out that at this early stage in the development of these theories a physicist might be influenced as to which one to pursue by a sense of their theological connotations (as we saw with Fred Hoyle’s development of steady-state theory (see is the Big Bang a moment of creation?). Stephen Hawking posed the question:

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose that it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

The militantly atheistic Oxford chemist P.W. Atkins has written that:

The only way of explaining the creation is to show that the creator had absolutely no job at all to do, and so might as well not have existed.

Atkins drew comfort from the notion that quantum cosmology has shifted away from the ‘blue-touch paper’ model, in which everything arose from a single inexplicable moment, towards various types of proposal in which space-time arises by chance out of a simpler state - Hawking’s boundariless space, or a quantum vacuum, or some such. These quotations show that such cosmologies can be taken to show consonance not so much with theistic creation as in Genesis as with the view that the universe arose by some transition which had no purpose or meaning. Keith Ward in his God, Chance and Necessity has rightly taken issue with the suggestion that quantum cosmology implies that the reason for the universe is pure chance. He writes:

"On the quantum fluctuation hypothesis, the universe will only come into being if there exists an exactly balanced array of fundamental forces, an exactly specified probability of particular fluctuations occurring in this array, and existent space-time in which fluctuations can occur. This is a very complex and finely tuned ‘nothing’... So this universe looks highly contingent after all, and a creator God might well choose to create a partly probabilistic universe by choosing just such an origin for it."

Drees points out that in fact the Hawking-Hartle proposal accords well with a theology which emphasizes that every space is equally created by God, ‘“sustaining” the world in all its “times.”’ R.J. Russell has shown, moreover, that at the core of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is the principle of ontological dependence - that all matter, all energy, and the laws that govern the universe all depend for their existence on a God whose existence is not dependent on anything. The discovery of an actual temporal beginning to this material universe would not prove this doctrine (since the doctrine rests on metaphysical convictions about God and existence) but only provide an additional gloss to it

Russell, Ph.D. Physics Santa Cruz,
Prof. of Theology and Science
Founder and director CTNS

Ward
British philosopher and theologian -
Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford

* Evidence of Temporal Beginning.

Moreover, Barr goes on, "The evidence that our universe has a temporal beginning is now enormously strong. In the 'classical description of the big bang (one that leaves quantum effect of account) the universe has a first instant of time...t=0. As one goes back toward the first instant various physical quantities (such as temperature) grow without limit. A the point t=0, if it existed, the quantities would have been infinite and one could no longer make sense of the equations such singular points are looked upon with suspicion by physicists...t=0 looks unpleasantly like a moment of creation....There is a belief among physicists that by banishing this point they will have struck a blow against religion...the point of there being no boundaries is itself just a special kind of boundary condition among many other.." [Stephen M. Barr, physicist at the University of Delaware (in review of book by Kitty Ferguson, "Fire in the Equations." Published in First Things 65 August/Sept. 1996, 54-57]

*

Hawking not proven.

http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11037.html Odenwald
NASSA

Question:
If the Big Bang happened in a vacuum, what was it that was fluctuation without time present?

Answer:
"Although some cosmologists such as Stephen Hawking can write down the mathematics that describes a particular version of what might have happened, the truth is that we do not really know. We especially do not know what happens to gravity under these quantum conditions because we as yet have no theory that describes gravity in the necessary quantum language that has been experimentally shown to be sound. Until then, all we can do is look at pieces of the mathematical machinery and wonder what it all means."