Ever since the idea of the Big Bang was conceived cosmologists who hated God looked for a way around creation. The universe couldn't have a beginning; it would ruin the perfect harmony of an eternal universe. No beginning, no need for an explanation, right? To celebrate Hawking's 70th birthday here is a third installment in the series on him, his cosmology, and his theology.
See Also Balking Hawking Part 1, Part 2, and Georg Cantor's Infinities Part 2.
From NewScientist:
"Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against [the Big Bang] for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don't you need a creator?
Cosmologists thought they had a workaround. Over the years, they have tried on several different models of the universe that dodge the need for a beginning while still requiring a big bang. But recent research has shot them full of holes (see "Why physicists can't avoid a creation event"). It now seems certain that the universe did have a beginning."
Lawrence Krauss in his new book A Universe From Nothing tries to deal a knock-out blow to the deity by replacing one metaphysical system with another. God is given up for the multiverse, a cacophony of quantum randomness belching out universes like Our Idiot Brother.
It is in vogue now to redefine "nothing" to mean "the quantum vacuum that has always existed," but in an interview on Coast to Coast AM, Krauss does his fellow metaphysicists one better. He admitted that you don't even need a quantum vacuum or quantum laws, as NewScientist explains:
"However, the laws of physics can't be conjured from nothing. In the end, the best answer is that they arise from our existence within a multiverse, where all the universes have their own laws - ours being just so for no particular reason.
Krauss contends that the multiverse makes the question of what determined our laws of nature "less significant". Truthfully, it just puts the question beyond science - for now, at least. That (together with the frustratingly opaque origins of a multiverse) means Krauss can't quite knock out those who think there must ultimately be a prime mover. Not that this matters too much: the juvenile asides that litter the first third of the book (for example, "I am tempted to retort here that theologians are expert at nothing") mean that, by the time we get to the fascinating core of his argument, Krauss will be preaching only to the converted."
[emphasis mine]
The multiverse: the great unknown and unknowable. A meta-space that is beyond our space-time and thus forever beyond our ability to test it. Being untestable the multiverse must surrender its claim to the title "science" and accept that it is now, and forever, metaphysics. To do away with the idea of a creation, an absolute beginning of the universe, Krauss throws science away and invents an untestable story. Even the Bible contains historical details that can be tested, the multiverse is just "bullshit metaphysics".
Metaphysicists have tried to propose systems where the universe (or multiverse) is eternal into the past, but Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University has shot holes in all of them (even though he still believes in the multiverse, it had to have a beginning in the finite past).
Eternal inflation, the idea that the inflation that sped up the expansion of the early universe didnt' stop, it still continues in other regions of space beyond our cosmic horizon, spawning new bubble universes forever, was the first to go. Some thought inflation was eternal into the past too, but in 2003 Vilenkin and Alan Guth ran the calculations on Hubble's Constant and found that it doesn't work. Inflation may continue forever into the future, but it had to have a beginning in the past.
Next came the big bounce, the idea that after a long time, a trillion years or so, expansion slows and stops, eventually reversing until everything flys back into a single point called the Big Crunch. Then the shock of impact of everything on everything starts a new Big Bang, and the cycle continues forever. Unfortunately, disorder increases with time, so each new universe must be more disordered than the one that birthed it. If the cycle had been going on forever disorder would be infinite and the universe would be completely featureless. Since there's stuff in the universe the cycles couldn't have gone on forever. Some people then suggested that the universe just gets bigger with each bounce, so the disorder spreads out more so no one notices it (like in the M-Brane ekpyrotic model and possibly whatever the hell Penrose's new idea is - no one seems to understand his Aeons of time model, within the physics community or anywhere). But if the whole thing is getting bigger it had to start somewhere really really small, maximally small, and that means a finite beginning.
There's also an idea from the 1930s called the cosmic egg or primeval atom, where yes, there was a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, but the thing that banged was an uber-dense subatomic thing that existed forever until it got tired of existing as a tiny little particle and exploded. However, Vilenkin and a graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that quantum instability would have led to the egg's collapse after a finite time. The crack (the Big Bang) had to happen before the egg collapsed into oblivion so it couldn't have existed forever, even if it existed for a really, really long time before the Big Bang.
Vilenkin concludes[:] "All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning."
V.J. Torley of UD comments on the implications of a universe requiring a beginning. He reasons (muses, really), in line with William Lane Craig, that the cause of the universe, which cannot be within the universe itself, must be personal. Scientific and mathematic laws are just descriptions of observations. They are not Platonic furniture of reality, and they are causally inert. Only a person, an agent, can bring about the creation of the universe, acting for some reason. The evidence from fine tuning (not only of the universe, but if you read Georg Cantor's Infinities Part 2 and other links provided in the UD article, you'll see that the multiverse too must be fine tuned) is suggestive of a highly mathematical and aesthetic mind behind the constants of the universe.
There you have it, a birthday present, albeit a very bad one, from Alexander Vilenkin to Stephen Hawking: a universe with a definite beginning in the finite past.
Showing posts with label Stephen Hawking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Hawking. Show all posts
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Balking Someone
Up on The Procrustean we see a piece on Roger Penrose's new aeons of time cosmology, which I alluded to in Georg Cantor's Infinities Part Two. Basically here's what aeons of time is:
"after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever."
Using data from sophisticated equipment, Penrose has claimed to have found irregularities in the CMB (cosmic microwave background) that could only be produced if his aeons of time cosmology were correct. However, the supporters of the various inflationary models also claim the data corresponds to precisely what would be expected if inflation occurred. Since the aeons of time and cosmic inflation are incompatable one or both of them has to be wrong (about the data found in the CMB and in general).
After reporting this, Rob at The Procrustean then makes a conclusion about Penrose, inflation, and intelligent design. He says (this whole issue is a bit of a head scratcher for me so I'll just point you in the right direction and let you figure this out for yourself):
"Neither Sir Roger nor the conventional inflationary models have made solid predictions. At best, they can be tweaked to some, but not all aspects of the data. They possess far too many adjustable parameters drawn from some sort of metaphysical repository of models that is itself questionable. Sir Roger attempts to address the metaphysical problem with Creation, and inflationary models address the metaphysical problem of contingency. Neither is particularly convincing. (And a closer look at CCC theory raise more questions about the infinite pressure of dark energy, the rescaling time, the supposed decay of protons and electrons, etc.)
"Which may mean that it is time to assess the situation. Some of the best minds of two generations have addressed cosmology since the discovery of the 3-degree blackbody CMB radiation and not found solutions to the twin problems of a necessary Creator and a necessary Design. Given their failure, and I do mean abject failure to find anything beyond a metaphysical black box with lots of dials, I would suggest that we claim support for the contrary. All of them have put the cart before the horse, trying to create a no-beginning-no-design theory by massaging the data, post-dicting their data to support their theory, and still have not succeeded, thereby proving the very thing they did not want to prove."
I'm not so sure I would jump from Penrose and inflation being wrong to the alternative being correct, but it does give one something to think about.
-Dee
"after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever."
Using data from sophisticated equipment, Penrose has claimed to have found irregularities in the CMB (cosmic microwave background) that could only be produced if his aeons of time cosmology were correct. However, the supporters of the various inflationary models also claim the data corresponds to precisely what would be expected if inflation occurred. Since the aeons of time and cosmic inflation are incompatable one or both of them has to be wrong (about the data found in the CMB and in general).
After reporting this, Rob at The Procrustean then makes a conclusion about Penrose, inflation, and intelligent design. He says (this whole issue is a bit of a head scratcher for me so I'll just point you in the right direction and let you figure this out for yourself):
"Neither Sir Roger nor the conventional inflationary models have made solid predictions. At best, they can be tweaked to some, but not all aspects of the data. They possess far too many adjustable parameters drawn from some sort of metaphysical repository of models that is itself questionable. Sir Roger attempts to address the metaphysical problem with Creation, and inflationary models address the metaphysical problem of contingency. Neither is particularly convincing. (And a closer look at CCC theory raise more questions about the infinite pressure of dark energy, the rescaling time, the supposed decay of protons and electrons, etc.)
"Which may mean that it is time to assess the situation. Some of the best minds of two generations have addressed cosmology since the discovery of the 3-degree blackbody CMB radiation and not found solutions to the twin problems of a necessary Creator and a necessary Design. Given their failure, and I do mean abject failure to find anything beyond a metaphysical black box with lots of dials, I would suggest that we claim support for the contrary. All of them have put the cart before the horse, trying to create a no-beginning-no-design theory by massaging the data, post-dicting their data to support their theory, and still have not succeeded, thereby proving the very thing they did not want to prove."
I'm not so sure I would jump from Penrose and inflation being wrong to the alternative being correct, but it does give one something to think about.
-Dee
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Georg Cantor's Infinities (Part Two)
Continuing the last post on Cantor and how he overturned the entire world, this story comes from UD and is called "Infinitely Wrong."
Cantor demonstrated that some infinities are bigger than others (infinitely so). Robert Sheldon, in the post linked above, attempts to demonstrate that cardinality can be used to show how the multiverse can't save Darwinism.
As Roger Penrose pointed out, in order to avoid conflicting with the second law of thermodynamics, the Big Bang had to be insanely precise. According to Penrose (who now believes that after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever, but that's a different story), the force causing the expansion of the universe has to match the force of gravity to at least one part in 10^(10^123) or the universe would have either exploded into nothing or collapsed back right after it banged. I'm not sure just how many zeroes are in that number, but think of it like this: if the universe had one more or one less proton (or probably less mass than that) at the Big Bang it wouldn't be here right now for us to talk about (or me to bore you about). Hawking, who was balked in September, places the ratio at a more reasonable one part in 10^60.
The Hawking solution to this seemingly fine-tuned feature? Infinite time + infinite space. Hawking et al. propose universes popping into existence all the time in their bubble multiverse. With infinite universes being created in a process that has infinite duration anything that can happen will happen, no matter how improbable, including gravity matching the expansion of the universe to that whole stack of tens. However, at least one part in 10^(10^123) does not mean that the fine-tuning is exactly that precise, just that that is the minimum precision of the fine-tuning. It could be more. It could even be infinite.
To deal with this, according to Sheldon, the anti-design folks ask Hugh Everett for help with creating infinitely more universes. Doing some fancy mathematics, if I'm reading it right, the anti-design folks can get an Aleph-naught infinite number of universes out of their quantum fudgery to solve a design problem with an Aleph-one cardinality, something that is impossible because the fine-tuning is now infinitely larger than the attempts at explaining it away by chance.
So, if all that made sense to you, it should have clearly been demonstrated that an infinite multiverse cannot solve the problem caused by the fine-tuning of the physical constants.
-Dee
Cantor demonstrated that some infinities are bigger than others (infinitely so). Robert Sheldon, in the post linked above, attempts to demonstrate that cardinality can be used to show how the multiverse can't save Darwinism.
As Roger Penrose pointed out, in order to avoid conflicting with the second law of thermodynamics, the Big Bang had to be insanely precise. According to Penrose (who now believes that after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever, but that's a different story), the force causing the expansion of the universe has to match the force of gravity to at least one part in 10^(10^123) or the universe would have either exploded into nothing or collapsed back right after it banged. I'm not sure just how many zeroes are in that number, but think of it like this: if the universe had one more or one less proton (or probably less mass than that) at the Big Bang it wouldn't be here right now for us to talk about (or me to bore you about). Hawking, who was balked in September, places the ratio at a more reasonable one part in 10^60.
The Hawking solution to this seemingly fine-tuned feature? Infinite time + infinite space. Hawking et al. propose universes popping into existence all the time in their bubble multiverse. With infinite universes being created in a process that has infinite duration anything that can happen will happen, no matter how improbable, including gravity matching the expansion of the universe to that whole stack of tens. However, at least one part in 10^(10^123) does not mean that the fine-tuning is exactly that precise, just that that is the minimum precision of the fine-tuning. It could be more. It could even be infinite.
To deal with this, according to Sheldon, the anti-design folks ask Hugh Everett for help with creating infinitely more universes. Doing some fancy mathematics, if I'm reading it right, the anti-design folks can get an Aleph-naught infinite number of universes out of their quantum fudgery to solve a design problem with an Aleph-one cardinality, something that is impossible because the fine-tuning is now infinitely larger than the attempts at explaining it away by chance.
So, if all that made sense to you, it should have clearly been demonstrated that an infinite multiverse cannot solve the problem caused by the fine-tuning of the physical constants.
-Dee
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Balking Hawking Part 2
Stephen Hawking (see previous post for a more or less complete bio) has a new book called The Grand Design out in which he lays claim to an idea he didn't come up with, namely that the universe created itself from nothing by some sort of quantum fluctuation wizardry.
Stephen M. Barr, physics professor from the University of Delaware, writes in an article from First Things: "Right up front, it must be noted that this idea is extremely speculative, has not yet been formulated in a mathematically rigorous way, and is unable at this point to make any testable predictions. Indeed, it is very hard to imagine how it could ever be tested. It would be more accurate to call these “scenarios” than theories." He then cautions theists that just because the idea that a wizard did it isn't testable or has no mathematics doesn't mean it can be rejected outright. In order to reject it, Mr. Barr has more to say on what he feels are good reasons why Hawking's idea doesn't hold water.
First, Hawking and his ilk define the universe as a physical structure, like a bubble (at least pop science writers in Scientific American and Michio Kaku on his Science Channel program use the analogy of bubbles). This bubble universe is floating in some sort of plenum with many many other bubble universes that are also just physical structures. Also, these bubble universes are constantly popping into and out of existence due to quantum fluctuations in the soapy water plenum of all that is (which, if you want to be pickey would really be the universe and the so called "universe" bubble would be just a region within the real universe; hardley seems worth calling this bubble a universe, but some people want to blow some things way out of proportion).
Andrei Linde had an idea called eternal inflation about bubble universes branching off one-another forever within a false vacuum. When a new "universe" branches off, a big bang happens, but all that's really happening is the whole system is branching, nothing is really being created. That's why it's called eternal. The whole system has always existed, and so needs no explanation (at least Linde believes it's eternal in the past, most cosmologists don't think so*).
*Dr. Bruce Gordon says in an interview, The Argument for Design in Cosmology, that: "At first it was thought that it might be eternal into the past too, thus obviating the need for a universal beginning, but it was shown conclusively in 2003 that universes having an expansion rate of greater than zero over their history, universes like ours, must have a begining.... even if the string multiverse existed it would have an absolute beginning in the finite past." He continues to say that even if one were to postulate that quantum laws always existed, even before the multiverse, or plenum as is referred to above, such abstract mathematical laws are causally inert and cannot force anything to happen on their own.
For Hawking and Linde and others the universe wasn't created out of nothing, because nothing has no positive atributes, even if Hawking may misappropriate the word "nothing" to mean something completely else. The universe also didn't "create itself." What happened was the damn thing inflated. This reduced definition of the universe requires the preexistence of the plenum itself, inflaton fields, and quantum laws, but everyone has to assume the preexistence of something, so that itself doesn't toss this idea out. I would say it gets messy having to assume 10^500 random universes just to explain away the fine tuning of the laws of the universe, but parsimony only counts when the most parsimonious option isn't God.
Barr seems to think that Hawking has really goofed the flute with his new book, since in his A Brief History of Time (which I do have and wasn't all that great), Hawking acknowledged that the equations of physics are just numbers and can't cause anything to happen on their own and that physics can't address the issue of why something exists instead of nothing. Now Hawking proposes a new old story for how the universe always existed and so no explanation is necessary. I bet Hawking will rename this "theory" after himself like he does with every idea he steals. Barr concludes: "There are two answers to the question: “Why does anything exist rather than nothing at all?” The atheist answers, “There is no explanation.” The theist replies, God. An intelligent case can be made for either answer. But to say that the laws of physics alone answer it is the purest nonsense—as Hawking himself once realized."
And with that we leave the Sad Sad Tale of Stephen Hawking, a man so consumed by egoism that he no longer is the respected physicist of yesterday, but instead is now spouting nonsense.
-Dee
Stephen M. Barr, physics professor from the University of Delaware, writes in an article from First Things: "Right up front, it must be noted that this idea is extremely speculative, has not yet been formulated in a mathematically rigorous way, and is unable at this point to make any testable predictions. Indeed, it is very hard to imagine how it could ever be tested. It would be more accurate to call these “scenarios” than theories." He then cautions theists that just because the idea that a wizard did it isn't testable or has no mathematics doesn't mean it can be rejected outright. In order to reject it, Mr. Barr has more to say on what he feels are good reasons why Hawking's idea doesn't hold water.
First, Hawking and his ilk define the universe as a physical structure, like a bubble (at least pop science writers in Scientific American and Michio Kaku on his Science Channel program use the analogy of bubbles). This bubble universe is floating in some sort of plenum with many many other bubble universes that are also just physical structures. Also, these bubble universes are constantly popping into and out of existence due to quantum fluctuations in the soapy water plenum of all that is (which, if you want to be pickey would really be the universe and the so called "universe" bubble would be just a region within the real universe; hardley seems worth calling this bubble a universe, but some people want to blow some things way out of proportion).
Andrei Linde had an idea called eternal inflation about bubble universes branching off one-another forever within a false vacuum. When a new "universe" branches off, a big bang happens, but all that's really happening is the whole system is branching, nothing is really being created. That's why it's called eternal. The whole system has always existed, and so needs no explanation (at least Linde believes it's eternal in the past, most cosmologists don't think so*).
*Dr. Bruce Gordon says in an interview, The Argument for Design in Cosmology, that: "At first it was thought that it might be eternal into the past too, thus obviating the need for a universal beginning, but it was shown conclusively in 2003 that universes having an expansion rate of greater than zero over their history, universes like ours, must have a begining.... even if the string multiverse existed it would have an absolute beginning in the finite past." He continues to say that even if one were to postulate that quantum laws always existed, even before the multiverse, or plenum as is referred to above, such abstract mathematical laws are causally inert and cannot force anything to happen on their own.
For Hawking and Linde and others the universe wasn't created out of nothing, because nothing has no positive atributes, even if Hawking may misappropriate the word "nothing" to mean something completely else. The universe also didn't "create itself." What happened was the damn thing inflated. This reduced definition of the universe requires the preexistence of the plenum itself, inflaton fields, and quantum laws, but everyone has to assume the preexistence of something, so that itself doesn't toss this idea out. I would say it gets messy having to assume 10^500 random universes just to explain away the fine tuning of the laws of the universe, but parsimony only counts when the most parsimonious option isn't God.
Barr seems to think that Hawking has really goofed the flute with his new book, since in his A Brief History of Time (which I do have and wasn't all that great), Hawking acknowledged that the equations of physics are just numbers and can't cause anything to happen on their own and that physics can't address the issue of why something exists instead of nothing. Now Hawking proposes a new old story for how the universe always existed and so no explanation is necessary. I bet Hawking will rename this "theory" after himself like he does with every idea he steals. Barr concludes: "There are two answers to the question: “Why does anything exist rather than nothing at all?” The atheist answers, “There is no explanation.” The theist replies, God. An intelligent case can be made for either answer. But to say that the laws of physics alone answer it is the purest nonsense—as Hawking himself once realized."
And with that we leave the Sad Sad Tale of Stephen Hawking, a man so consumed by egoism that he no longer is the respected physicist of yesterday, but instead is now spouting nonsense.
-Dee
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Balking Hawking Part 1
Jane Hawking, former wife of world famous scientist and sore loser Stephen Hawking (he is notorious at losing bets with fellow scientists and never paying up, even after decades), has written a book, Music to Move the Stars. In it she tells of how they met, the troubles of dealing with his progressive illness, raising three children, and religious disputes that put an end to their marriage after 25 years. 25 years is a long time, and this book is suitably lengthy: at over 600 pages you could seriously hurt someone with this doorstopper. Surprisingly, every Amazon review is positive, something you just don't see very often, especially books about celebrities.
Cosmologists like to reduce everything in the universe to equations, she says, and God just gets in the way of what they percieve as mathematical harmony. She goes on to say that because the work of cosmologists is so complex that for some people it becomes a substitute for traditional religion. The cosmologists are seen as being so smart they must have all the answers, and if their answers leave no room for God (because God would mess with their perfect tick-tock system) then God must not exist, end of discussion.
She is distressed over the pseudoscience (my word, not hers) of evolutionary psychology. They try to reduce all human behaviour to natural selection, tossing out things like altruism and artistic expression that do not fit their NeoDarwinian narrative. Unable to answer why certain human faculties exist (or why something exists instead of nothing), the scientistic elite scoff and deny the general public the right to even ask why. Science forbid if one of their own rank should ask why! Such a person is denied tenure or kicked out of academia all together. Asking why the universe exists or why altruism exists is like asking "why Mount Everest exists" (here's a hint: it involves continental drift). It should be noted that none of their hypotheses are testable and therefore do not count as science. There is no way, short of building a time machine, to test what human ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago or whatever survival function their actions served. Evolutionary psychology just takes old hat psychological ideas (every revolutionary idea evo psych has ever come up with has been said by a regular psychologist at some time in the past) and puts a sexy evolutionary spin to it to make it sound science-y.
Jane says of her former husband Stephen: "on one historic occasion he actually made the startling concession that, like religion, his own science of the universe’ also required a leap of faith as did theism."
As Stephen became more famous he became more dogmatic in his atheism and surrounded himself with people who cared more about their careers and equations than about other people. Over time their equations began to replace the real world around them, and Jane couldn't handle living in that world of mathematics. As his fame grew ever higher, Stephen became cold and cruel and condescending and loveless in his vastly increasing arrogance and narcissism. Despite the fact that his wife had to take care of his every bodily function he remained an ungrateful bastard (my word). She says: "I found myself telling him that he was not God. The truth was that supercilious enigma of that smile which Stephen wore whenever the subjects of religious faith and scientific research came up was driving me to my wit’s end. It seemed that Stephen had little respect for me as a person and no respect at all for my beliefs and opinions." (p. 536) He was insulted by his wife's compassion for him, because for him compassion reeked of religion. Stephen divorced his wife in 1995 and married his nurse because he cared more about himself than anyone else. Never satisfied with anything humanity had to offer, he divorced his second wife ten years later.
Fuck you Mr. Hawking. Fuck you very much.
-Dee
Cosmologists like to reduce everything in the universe to equations, she says, and God just gets in the way of what they percieve as mathematical harmony. She goes on to say that because the work of cosmologists is so complex that for some people it becomes a substitute for traditional religion. The cosmologists are seen as being so smart they must have all the answers, and if their answers leave no room for God (because God would mess with their perfect tick-tock system) then God must not exist, end of discussion.
She is distressed over the pseudoscience (my word, not hers) of evolutionary psychology. They try to reduce all human behaviour to natural selection, tossing out things like altruism and artistic expression that do not fit their NeoDarwinian narrative. Unable to answer why certain human faculties exist (or why something exists instead of nothing), the scientistic elite scoff and deny the general public the right to even ask why. Science forbid if one of their own rank should ask why! Such a person is denied tenure or kicked out of academia all together. Asking why the universe exists or why altruism exists is like asking "why Mount Everest exists" (here's a hint: it involves continental drift). It should be noted that none of their hypotheses are testable and therefore do not count as science. There is no way, short of building a time machine, to test what human ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago or whatever survival function their actions served. Evolutionary psychology just takes old hat psychological ideas (every revolutionary idea evo psych has ever come up with has been said by a regular psychologist at some time in the past) and puts a sexy evolutionary spin to it to make it sound science-y.
Jane says of her former husband Stephen: "on one historic occasion he actually made the startling concession that, like religion, his own science of the universe’ also required a leap of faith as did theism."
As Stephen became more famous he became more dogmatic in his atheism and surrounded himself with people who cared more about their careers and equations than about other people. Over time their equations began to replace the real world around them, and Jane couldn't handle living in that world of mathematics. As his fame grew ever higher, Stephen became cold and cruel and condescending and loveless in his vastly increasing arrogance and narcissism. Despite the fact that his wife had to take care of his every bodily function he remained an ungrateful bastard (my word). She says: "I found myself telling him that he was not God. The truth was that supercilious enigma of that smile which Stephen wore whenever the subjects of religious faith and scientific research came up was driving me to my wit’s end. It seemed that Stephen had little respect for me as a person and no respect at all for my beliefs and opinions." (p. 536) He was insulted by his wife's compassion for him, because for him compassion reeked of religion. Stephen divorced his wife in 1995 and married his nurse because he cared more about himself than anyone else. Never satisfied with anything humanity had to offer, he divorced his second wife ten years later.
Fuck you Mr. Hawking. Fuck you very much.
-Dee
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