Stephen Hawking raised eyebrows recently when he said that Pope John Paul II had said scientists should not inquire into the moment the universe was created, because it was the work of God. It’s thus natural that a reader would write:
I’m somewhat suspect of THIS ARTICLE, specifically when Hawking quotes a dead man, but I thought I’d get your take on what JP2 might have meant when he said:
"It’s OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not enquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God."
I’m not sure I understand the distinction here.
Please elucidate.
I’ll do what I can. We have a problem, though, in that we don’t have the full text remarks of what Hawking said, only the snipped you quoted above from the press. There’s also the problem that Hawking said that JP2 said this at "a cosmology conference at the Vatican" (no date given, making it hard to look up what the pope may have said) and he then joked that "I was glad he didn’t realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn’t fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."
In view of the last comment, the whole thing might have been a joke on Hawking’s part that got taken literally. Or it may be that he’s stretching the truth in order to serve the joke or he’s misremembering. He’s certainly not giving a verbatim quotation from the pope, who would not be expected to use the English colloquialism "OK" in an address to cosmologists.
The conference that JP2 addressed may have been THIS ONE, but maybe not. The published version of JP2’s remarks certainly don’t have anything in them like what Hawking reported.
The perplexing statement that we can examine "where" the universe began but not "the beginning itself" suggests that we are dealing with a badly remembered articulation of JP2’s thought, and in the absence of further info from Dr. Hawking or someone coming up with a plausible candidate for the text of the pope’s remarks, I can only speculate on what the pontiff may have been trying to communicate.
But I’m not averse to speculation (as long as it is flagged as such), so here goes: I would conjecture that JP2 encouraged scientists to study the origin of the universe but not to try to force the origin of the universe into a materialistic model that would reduce its existence to purely natural forces, without any Creator. Science must respect its own in-built limits, I conjecture JP2 as communicating, and not presume to preclude the action of the Creator by the theories it proposes. Science must speak to its own realm without trying to settle theological questions, just as theology must speak to its own realm without trying to settle scientific questions.
Or something along those lines.
That’s my guess, anyway.
PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE THINKS IT HAS IDENTIFIED WHAT CONFERENCE HAWKING WAS TALKING ABOUT AND THUS WHAT JP2 SAID.
