27 - CELEBRITY SCIENTISTS & ERROR

Nonsense is nonsense,

even when spoken by famous scientists.

                                                                                              John Lennox

February 27, 2025                                                            

I realize that “despise” is a strong word, so I am being quite intentional when I say that I despise “celebrity culture” – a curse in our age of mass media where some people are famous for being famous, and others, who achieve great success and fame – as an athlete, or entertainer, and so on – are presumed to have great expertise on matters far from the area in which they achieved success.  Thus, we have the movie star and the pop music star whose views on social and political issues media outlets consider influential.

I won’t mention names…

Celebrity scientists are another part of celebrity culture.  Richard Dawkins is an example of a celebrity scientist.  As for Albert Einstein, if not a celebrity scientist, he was certainly a celebrated scientist, and rightfully so!  (He died before celebrity culture fully blossomed.)  Other celebrity scientists of recent vintage include Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking.  Professor Hawking is my person of interest for this post.

The “down side” is Celebrity Science is the façade of authority that it gives to anything “scientific” that a celebrity scientists says.  Science has enjoyed a good reputation in our culture for many decades, much of it deserved because science has produced many great discoveries.  However, that good reputation may shield scientists from criticism some of their ideas deserve. 

Richard Dawkins is a good example of this: as I showed, his claim that Science and Religion are mutually corrosive is a “straw man;” set in the proper context, there is no conflict, yet, Dawkins’ status as a celebrity scientist has given his opinions a credibility that is not merited by evidence and his arguments.

That said, I realize that Science has increasingly been corrupted and distorted by ideology (i.e. politics) in recent decades and its standing in the culture has declined.  So-called Climate change (hereafter “Climate change”) and pandemic mismanagement during Covid – both of which relied on politicized pseudo-scientific “evidence” and scare tactics to manipulate people – have soured significant segments of the public on Science’s reputation.

Stephen Hawking is an interesting case.  In many ways, he is to be admired: a brilliant scholar, a ground-breaking scientist (physicist) whose research advanced our understanding of the Universe, and an individual who persevered through great personal adversity to have a productive career while living with a disabling disease.

But… he is also the scientist who co-authored this:

“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. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

                          — Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 2010

The quote from John Lennox that begins this post is aimed precisely at the Hawking-Mlodinow excerpt above.  For Professor Lennox’s full critique, go here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200327195214/https://www.rzim.org/read/just-thinking-magazine/stephen-hawking-and-god

Let me offer a few thoughts in line with what I have presented about the Principle of Non-Contradiction and the nature of scientific inquiry:

“Spontaneous creation” is NOT a scientific concept, because it contradicts the Law of Causality: it proposes that an effect (the Universe) caused itself.  This is a) cannot happen, and b) is not testable or falsifiable.  I would call it Mythical – you cannot find spontaneous creation any more than you can find a circle with corners!!

 “A law such as gravity” is NOT nothing.  Granted, it is nothing physical or material, but it is something; otherwise there is nothing on which to build an argument.  There is an ancient Latin saying: Ex nihilo nihil fit (Out of nothing, nothing comes.)  This is self-evidently true! It is also plain, old common sense!

Alternatively, Hawking and Mlodinow play fast-and-loose with the definition of “nothing,” and attach a meaning to “nothing” that is different than the common, garden-variety definition.

A Wikipedia article about The Grand Design summarizes John Lennox’s critique, but it is also far too respectful of various other views of book and props up the credibility of a ridiculous, unscientific myth, in part because one of the myth’s authors was a celebrity scientist!

This is another reminder of the lengths to which fallen human beings will go to suppress the truth!

Next time: Thus Far, Some Reflections