sensationalist way...

We're talking about Hawking and not Hitchens or Dawkins, right? This is another unfortunate effect of religion--just the suggestion alone that God doesn't exist sends believers into fits of hysteria. How can anything Hawking ever said about God be considered "sensationalist"?

The vitriolic replies to the article on the site are typical, and telling. One guy remarks that a Supreme Being is highly unlikely, and the faithful start foaming at the mouth and gnashing their teeth. Guess their beliefs aren't quite as strong as they like to pretend...

As a 'believer', I don't mind Hawking's opinion at all. As a matter of fact, I welcome different points of view and admire folk who can express them clearly and with conviction.

Didn't he change his mind on entropy years ago? <g>

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See, now that I disagree with. I've never once felt loved by God. I see a lot of hatred in this world, but very little evidence of a mighty being who gives two shits about me. Or anyone else for that matter.

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I've often said that if Christians would dump this whole "God is Love" nonsense, and acknowledge their Lord for the mean, spiteful, bitter, jealous, vengeful PRICK he is portrayed as being in their manual, I would actually have a lot less trouble believing in him.

I mean, hey! I look at the state of the world today, and I have very little trouble believing the God of the Old Testament is behind it all!

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One of my favorite things about Elizabeth I -- someone I admire greatly -- is that she ran a remarkably tolerant ship of state, at least for the time. Unlike her sister Mary, Elizabeth clamped down on the persecution of those who did not believe as she did, and the people who went to the block or the stake were more likely to be traitors than subscribers to the "wrong" faith.

Elizabeth's position was simple, and one from which modern believers could learn a thing or three. She said that if God had a problem with the misbelievers, God would take care of them in His own time. The notion that we here on Earth should be "punishing" such people was, as she saw it, actually quite presumptuous!

>> Doh! Very audacious syllogism, did he really say that?!

> No, / said that! But it seems like a logical extrapolation, depending on the degree of the "curve".

In my bad English I can't explain it, but how I understood Einstein, I repeat, this is an extrapolation veeeery audacius.

> One of the more disturbing interpretations of Einstein's curved space that I have encountered recently posits that if the degree of the curve is GREATER than we might expect, then the whole universe may be a lot SMALLER than we think it is. When we look out into space, we're not seeing uncounted billions of galaxies stretching to infinity, but a relatively small number that, because of the curvature of spacetime, we are seeing over and over, at different points in their lifetimes!

I think I read this hypothesis, but it start from the idea that physics laws are different in other parts of the universe; for what I know, by now, we have only proofs of the contrary.

This maybe is not the case, but i keep hearing scientific hypotesis that are not scientific at all; it's not enough that someone thinks someting (even if he's a scientist) to make it a scientific theory.

The four dimensions universe model are dacades that works very well.
Eleven dimensions? I still was at the ten of the Superstrings theory (that for the Galilean Science is not a theory, because it can't be proven by experiences)

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But it is absolutely vital that we remember a MODEL is all it is. Like our picture of the atom, or speculation on strings and membranes.

As someone said, long ago, the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine. Models like the four dimensions allow us to operate AS IF we understand what is going on. Fortunately, unlike the models offered by, say, world religions, they also allow us to ACT UPON the world around us, and expect reasonably consistent results.

So far, the good side of mankind has managed to discover and understand the strangest things, too bad the bad side is able to ruin almost everything.