I an trying to work various deadlines at the moment,
so I don't really enough time to do something about
Hawking's thoughts on God. Hawking has a new book out.
From the reviews, it looks like the standard hard sell for
the usual crap: M-theory and the multiverse.
Haking makes some remarks about God that have excited the
press.
This is the ideal time to write a short piece of theology for a magazine, so that the Templeton foundation notice me, and thus start my campaign to win the Templeton prize for bringing togeher science and relgion. I liked Paul Davies's article on Hawking's views from a writing perspective. The basic idea in the essay is that we don't know as much about the "big bang" as Hawking claims and that there is still much to do. Howvever, Davies dresses this up to make it seem as though he is making a theological point. Very clever! This is why Davies won the Templeton prize.
The best I can up with is that gluons are like little angels (massless, but chained), but that QCD forces them to coalesce into heavy devilish glueballs. If I had more time I would try and link this to the gnostic Gospels found in a cave, deep in the desert.
You can start to see my problem. I don't really know that much about Christianity. I have read extensively about Gnosticism, heresy, and Scientology, but my knowledge of standard Christianity comes from critics such as Gore Vidal, Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, or from Bob Dylan songs. Of course I could try reading the bible, but I worry that might infect me.
Another problem is that my colleagues might think I have gone insane if I try to link "solving non-perturbative QCD to the essence of God". The Templeton prize is one million pounds, so that would help with professional jealousy.