Stephen Hawking says there is no God. But,...

Haha :D I didn't watch "Through The Wormhole", but to be honest I am a big fan of Dr. Kaku. So, it is probably a bit too late. I found some ebooks of "The First 3 Minutes" on the Internet but they are incomplete,... To really think about these, a lot of time should be perhaps spent on math, to get a better grip. But how to make that kind of time from a daily life? To actually learn physics,... hmm, I learnt from the freshman textbook in university but that's all. After many years, all the other interesting ideas like Relativity and Astronomy I know are from these science communicators and online Open Courses. Just for fun. I don't know how much deeper I wanna go into the rabbit hole yet.

One other thing to note. Stephen Hawking is pretty brilliant when to comes to quantum gravity, but his opinions on the existence of God or the best way of making pizza are not likely to be any better than yours or mine.

Also since we are dealing with zero data, his opinions about what happened before the big bang aren't likely to be *that* much better than yours or mine. He has a view of what happened at the big bang (he thinks that's a meaningless question) but there are people working on a lot of alternative ideas.

If you would like to, you take take a look at the video here http://youtu.be/A2IOOnAdP2s directly from 32'38". It won't take you too much time. The whole argument starts from "the cause", and I think it probably went wrong in the end. And the main problem to me is that he says time stops. But according to relativity, time doesn't stop but simply looks slow from the outside observer. The clock which falls into the black hole still ticks at its own pace. Time doesn't stop inside the event horizon. But here in this documentary, Dr. Hawking suggests the idea that the very beginning of the universe is a big black hole and time stops,... he says there was no time. This contradicts what we know from the relativity. There is time. Just ticks in a different pace from the outside of the black whole.

If you would like to, you take take a look at the video here http://youtu.be/A2IOOnAdP2s directly from 32'38". It won't take you too much time. The whole argument starts from "the cause", and I think it probably went wrong in the end. And the main problem to me is that he says time stops. But according to relativity, time doesn't stop but simply looks slow from the outside observer. The clock which falls into the black hole still ticks at its own pace. Time doesn't stop inside the event horizon. But here in this documentary, Dr. Hawking suggests the idea that the very beginning of the universe is a big black hole and time stops,... he says there was no time. This contradicts what we know from the relativity. There is time. Just ticks in a different pace from the outside of the black whole.

The other night he was on a chat show and told the other guests "there are an infinite number of universes where an infinite number of things are happening. Therefore there is a universe where...[something to do with the trivial topic of conversation]." Such blatant popularisation and assertion of many-worlds theory does not endear me to him.

That and a large number of my female friends find him irresistible

... And phinds us Brits dont all sound smarmy!

One other thing to note. Stephen Hawking is pretty brilliant when to comes to quantum gravity, but his opinions on the existence of God or the best way of making pizza are not likely to be any better than yours or mine.
...

I agree. You don't. But HE does.

Just as an aside, thankyou for the advice on Steven Weinbergs "The First Three Minutes" - I am about halfway through but reading going slow as doing between projects. And the boss keeps coming back to the office!

The book is very accessable and quite clear what Steven is saying - essentially it is cementing the foundations of standard theory for me while raising some important questions which I will address later in a new thread.

Do you have any other recommendations? Prefferably light on math - I am teaching myself some mathematics at the moment but am only qualified upto highschool mathematics and until recently did no calculus since then which was a number of years ago!

Any links/recommendations appreciated.

Cosmo

It is not book, but I watched it and maybe it recommendable. It's entire course videos, homework and reference books for the entry level of astrophysics at Yale university. Open Yale Course ASTR 160: Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics.
http://oyc.yale.edu/astronomy/fronti...class-sessions
These can be watched on YouTube or iTunes for free. The math in it is at high school level.

Looking forward to your another thread concerning "The First 3 Minutes". I tried to find it on the internet but the ebooks are all not complete.

Thanks I have watched a few of those Yale lectures but did not have the rest or all in one place.

Try http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...AxQb2TMhHPI0KQ for a .pdf of The First Three Minutes

Just as an aside, thankyou for the advice on Steven Weinbergs "The First Three Minutes" - I am about halfway through but reading going slow as doing between projects. And the boss keeps coming back to the office!

The book is very accessable and quite clear what Steven is saying - essentially it is cementing the foundations of standard theory for me while raising some important questions which I will address later in a new thread.

Do you have any other recommendations? Prefferably light on math - I am teaching myself some mathematics at the moment but am only qualified upto highschool mathematics and until recently did no calculus since then which was a number of years ago!

Any links/recommendations appreciated.

Cosmo

One thing that comes to mind that's light on math (no equations at all, just some geometric diagrams) is "General Relativity from A to B" by Robert Geroch. I'm only half way through it but have found it very helpful in getting me familiar with "world lines" which you will see in some discussions on this forum, and which are helpful in understanding some of the concepts discussed here.

I'd suggest you do a forum search on "recommended books" since I recal several such threads over the last year or so and I think they generally give some idea of the math dept required to make the books accessible.

Yeah I already did and have a nice long list, was just looking for personal recommendations