Was "remarkably" used by Hawking in his comments about our Universe being to good to be true. I hope know one thinks the idea of a multiverse or Landscape is in any way scientific.
The final insult to Hawking is where he is buried or at least his ashes.

As Sir Humphrey says: The Church of England is a social organization, not a religious one. These days people go to the Abbey more to see famous dead people than to worship: Stop by and see Admiral Sir Cloudesly Shovell, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, and Steven Hawking, then go across the street to grab a kebab and hop on a Boris Bike to cycle 'round to the next tourist location. I can't imagine Hawking being offended by being burried at Westminster, it's about the same as being burried at Waitrose.

Do we to wish to be part of the world or part of the Church that Christ founded? That is the question. If we wish to be part of the Church than we must wish to know the mind of the Church and the place to begin is that of the Great Holy Fathers teachings.

"If we open the Hexaemeron of St. Basil the Great or the Hexaemeron of St. Ambrose of Milan, we will see there apologetic passages, aimed at defending the biblical teaching against the criticisms of “outsiders.” Why did it need to be defended? Because for the secular intellectuals of the time, the teaching of the creation of the world by God in six days was a great scandal, just as for modern evolutionists.
In the ancient tradition there were several views on the origin of the world (including a view according to which the world is in general “uncreated,” eternally existing). In their specifics, these views, from the point of view of modern science, appear naïve, but according to the original premise they are much closer to evolutionism than to creationism, because these ancient hypotheses tried to comprehend the origin of the world as a natural process, not positing any kind of supernatural intervention from God.

For the Holy Fathers the doctrine of the creation of the world was never a part of cosmology, but a part of theology. As a piece of cosmology, these questions can be considered only if we are speaking of a natural process—that is, about how the world came about on its own. But the Holy Fathers didn’t consider the world to have emerged on its own. For them the origin of the world, life, and mankind was the result of a miracle, a supernatural event, a creative act of God, which “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”

Sergei Khudiev errs when he supposes that the Holy Fathers, like modern “Orthodox” evolutionists, obediently followed the naturalist views of their times. It seems to him that the Fathers “like all educated people of their time accepted Ptolemaic conceptions.” But if we look at the Hexaemeron of the holy hierarch Basil the Great, we see otherwise.

In a few places the hierarch actually provides a short overview of the then-existing naturalist views, but ends with the words: it’s for the scientists to refute one another, but we will turn to that which God says to us in Scripture.

Thus, the Holy Fathers were aware of the hypotheses of their time and were not afraid to acquaint their readers with them, but didn’t confuse them with Divinely-revealed truths. Sometimes for illustrative purposes they were able to use this or that naturalist view of their time—including erroneous ones—but they never placed them at the foundation of their theological assertions, and never insisted that they were absolutely true.

The Fathers took great care in relation to science. This is well demonstrated by St. Gregory Palamas who says that:

In the case of outside wisdom it is necessary from the beginning to kill the serpent, that is, to destroy the arrogance that comes from it; then it is necessary to amputate and cast aside as undisputed and utmost evil the head and tail of the serpent, that is, patently fallacious ideas about things intelligible, divine, and primordial, and fables about creation; and the middle section, that is reasonings about nature, you should with the help of the intellective and contemplative faculties of the soul isolate harmful intellectualizations, as pharmacists cleanse the flesh of serpents by fire and water, extracting it … From serpents we also receive benefit, but it’s necessary only to kill, dissect, and make a drug out of them, and then to apply it with wisdom against their own bites.[2]" http://orthochristian.com/91496.html

P.S. I have a strong life-long friendship with the Kolbe Center. In the Russian Orthodox Church there views would be normal, only in the world of dystopian modernism do their views seem odd.

I do understand the desire to stop constantly apologizing for ones faith and compromising with whatever secular trends are current. Broadly, "secular trends" could include anything from the ever-changing understanding of disease, nutrition, psychology and so on to the ever-developing discoveries and theories about planetary history, animal life, and so on. To the extent that these topics are usually described in opposition to the a) existence of any Creator and b) the truth of any Christian belief about the meaning of life, I can understand it being easy to just chuck the whole lot as a bunch of anti-Christian propaganda.

Moreover, if I ever do see any cable-TV type documentary about science, the way the information is presented is often totally spun into a kind of exciting drama that has nothing to do with what is actually going on, or is used to teach whatever values or views are current regarding family life, social structure, conflict, and so on. The animals or plants are merely props for a kind of propaganda.

I can think of only one friend - a secular humanist who was in the early stages of converting - who asked me bluntly "But how can you really believe in something like Adam and Eve and not in evolution?" I told her in all honesty it just simply never occurred to me to worry about it. It doesn't seem terribly important to my day to day living of my faith (unlike, say, practicing the Commandments God has asked us to keep with as much diligence as possible; or learning the chant for Sunday...!).

I hope know one thinks the idea of a multiverse [...] is in any way scientific

I fully agree with this (as a physicist, thoug I might be missing something as an experimentalist).

Anything I read about it rests on a big semantic confusion: calling 'parallel universe' what is usually known as 'possibility'. And while many great scientific advances (e.g., the 'law' of conservation of energy) are rooted in questions of the type "why don't some events that we thought were possible, actually happen?", we here get as an 'answer': it's an illusion.

Am I mistaken, or isn't this an implicit acknoledgement - by people who think of science as the 'ultimate' knowledge! - that either the question of why some possible things happen and others don't, or the question of subjective experience (or both) reach beyond science?

As for Hawking I thought he did not want to be buried in a church...

He wasn't; he was buried in a tourist attraction. (Half-snark)

To talk about multiple other universes [...] is fantasy [...] Furthermore it is untestable, and unobservable.

That is what bothers me most: that there are scientists around who do not realise that this is not science, for this very reason.
Of course there is nothing wrong with metaphysics, and scientists who are going on 'holiday trips' into philosophy from time to time - as long as they do not pretend to be the 'real experts' over there when they aren't.
(Same for theologians in cosmology, evolution biology, ecology etc., as discussed at length.)

As for Hawking I thought he did not want to be buried in a church...

He wasn't; he was buried in a tourist attraction.

This summer, I didn't even think of it before I almost stumbled over his grave when leaving the Evensong ... not that there is any physical (haha) obstacle, but everyone in front of me walked on it in a kind of exit procession. Nobody else seemed to notice. I hope Hawking liked the sung prayer, maybe it is designed as part of his purgatory experience ...

Hawking buried?
This old story (which may or may not be an invention) may be applicable to him -
A Catholic priest was praying over the body of a slain soldier in the First World War trenches. The soldier's friend said 'you needn't do that, father, he didn't believe in God', to which the priest made immediate reply, 'well, he does now".

From the Outer Limits

What about God? Do you have a god?

Explain.

An all-powerful being.
A force underlying everything.

Electromagnetic forces underlying all.

No, l mean an intelligent force

God.

Electromagnetic force intelligent.
Matter, space, time: all the same.

All the same?

Different names.
lnfinity.
lnfinity is God.
God infinity.
All the same.

All the same.

one very subtle form of indoctrinization

the majority of congregants are tourists (after all, you can get in free during a service)

Ya caught me, Salieri!
It is telling, though, that 98% (my estimate) of the visitors that day went for the museum-style visit, including queueing up for at least an hour ... on the other hand I experienced the evensong as really prayerful, including participation of the congregation (audience?) in the responses, the Prayer of the Lord, and the Creed.

How touching.

The Consolation of Philosophy is a wonderful resource for those who are overly depressed about the world. Some people read it as a manifesto against 'the world', but they miss the part where Lady Philosophy argues that all of God's creation is good, and that 'perception' of badness is mis-perception.

As for the many-somethings theories (I hesitate to call them 'universes' or 'worlds' though those are the traditional epithets), I agree (MJO) that God *could* manifest His goodness by making such a thing (if there is in fact sense to be made of such a thing, which is a debtable point), but it is worth bearing in mind that many, indeed I would wager most, advocates of such theories are motivated by (or, minimally, committed to) a denial of the real existence of human persons. Such versions of the view (to which it naturally lends itself) are problematic in ways that geocentrism and evolution are not.

(Many years ago I had a long conversation with a well-known (and I think well-meaning) advocate of these views -- I am a professional philosopher who spent many years studying and writing about quantum theory and related matters -- and he finally understand me when he realized that I believe in personal identity and its connection with moral responsibility. And I understood him when I realized that he does not, which, I hasten to add, does not make him an immoral person, just wrong about the underlying nature of morality.)

Briefly, in reply:

How about returning to calling them just "possibilities" or "alternatives"?
Isn't this just a semantic game...?

There's nothing wrong with calling possibilities 'possibilities'. The point of the many-somethings theories is to respond to the so-called 'measurement problem' in quantum theory (QT). Ever so briefly (there are books on the matter...), the problem is that QT does not seem to provide a way to explain (in a principled fashion that doesn't amount to 'it just happens') how one possibility emerges as actual. The many-somethings theories celebrate this feature of the theory by asserting that 'all possibilities are actual'. The other, better, you is just as real as you. Hence the problem with personal identity....

none of my dear collegue scientists will ever convince me that my own 'selfness' is some kind of "illusion" (to whom???) especially when on the other hand all possibilities and alternatives are claimed to be even 'real'.

It is precisely the reality of the other 'yous' that threatens personal identity. (E.g., every time a 'quantum event' occurs (and yes, the definition of a 'quantum event' is slippery at best), some more 'yous' -- maybe infinitely many of them! -- pop into existence. (The matter is complicated by views about the nature of time that these folks tend to hold as well. I'll leave it there.)

...problematic in ways that geocentrism and young-earth creationism are not

What I had in mind, here (which is not to dispute what you say) is that, as has been discussed at great length by others better-informed than I, the perceived threat of geocentrism and evolution hinge on interpretations of the Bible that are by no means forced upon us, and that, as Augustine taught, may need revision in light of the development of science. The threat to personal identity is different from those threats because of the belief that God will judge persons, Christ saves persons, the resurrection occurs to persons, etc..

I hasten to add, however, that this threat to personal identity is not based on the agreed findings of science, but on an interpretation of that science that is both contentious and problematic in other ways that have nothing to do (at least not directly) with personal identity, souls, morality, etc.. Nor do I think it an inevitable outcome of that interpretation, though it might not unreasonably be characterized as 'naturally allied'.

I see no more threat to personal identity in quantum theory than in biology - the body is a completely new set of cells every 7-10 years. I forget the formal name of that paradox (ship builder?)

The earth was younger when this post began...

If every part of the NO is replaced with the corresponding part from the TLM, is it still the NO or is it a new creature altogether?

.

If this thread undergoes enough random topic mutations, will it still be generally the same kind of thread? Only time will tell. Buckle in, folks, it's going to be a several million year wait.

COSMOLOGISTS called it the axis of evil. Spotted in 2005 in the cosmic microwave background, the all-pervading afterglow of the big bang, the axis was a peculiar alignment of features where we would have expected nothing but randomness.

The name was justifiably melodramatic, given that it threatened our established view of the universe. At the heart of that picture is the cosmological principle, which says that the universe appears the same on the largest scales no matter where you happen to be looking. This is what you’d expect in the aftermath of an explosion like our big bang, with all the constituents winding up mixed together in a randomised, homogeneous soup. The reality, it seemed, wasn’t like that – and despite steadily improving measurements, the axis has stubbornly refused to vanish. (New Scientist)

+++++++++++++

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation contains small temperature fluctuations. When these temperature fluctuations are analyzed using image processing techniques (specifically spherical harmonics), they indicate a special direction in space, or, in a sense, an axis through the universe. This axis is correlated back to us, and causes many difficulties for the current big bang and standard cosmology theories. What has been discovered is shocking.


Two scientists, Kate Land and João Magueijo, in a paper in 2005 describing the axis, dubbed it the “Axis of Evil” because of the damage it does to current theories, and (tongue in cheek) as a response to George Bush’ Axis of Evil speech regarding Iraq, Iran and, North Korea.

In the above video, Max Tegmark describes in a simplified way how spherical harmonics analysis decomposes the small temperature fluctuations into more averaged and spatially arranged temperature components, known as multipoles.

The “Axis of Evil” correlates to the earth’s ecliptic and equinoxes, and this represents a very unusual and unexpected special direction in space, a direct challenge to the Copernican Principle. (ThePrinciple)


+++++++++++

The "Axis of Evil" is a name given to an anomaly in astronomical observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The anomaly appears to give the plane of the Solar System and hence the location of Earth a greater significance than might be expected by chance – a result which runs counter to expectations from the Copernican principle.

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation signature presents a direct large-scale view of the universe that can be used to identify whether our position or movement has any particular significance. There has been much publicity about analysis of results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and Planck mission that show both expected and unexpected anisotropies in the CMB.[1] The motion of the solar system, and the orientation of the plane of the ecliptic are aligned with features of the microwave sky, which on conventional thinking are caused by structure at the edge of the observable universe.[2][3] Specifically, with respect to the ecliptic plane the "top half" of the CMB is slightly cooler than the "bottom half"; furthermore, the quadrupole and octupole axes are only a few degrees apart, and these axes are aligned with the top/bottom divide.[4]

Lawrence Krauss is quoted as follows in a 2006 Edge.org article:[5]

But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun – the plane of the earth around the sun – the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe. (Wiki)

So WHO created the AOE?!?!

Yea, I am just waiting for the snarks! The whole friggin universe is pointing to earth and the science community doesn't want to admit it. Done deal, people. God has the last laugh.

The name was justifiably melodramatic, given that it threatened our established view of the universe.

Miracles contravene the natural order. (I'm using 'natural' in the old-fashioned sense of 'in accordance with the nature God gave each created thing.) To suggest that the natural order comes about in the same manner as miracles confuses the two in a manner that diminishes the significance and meaning of the miracles. (WARNING: there is a 100% chance that my judgment on this matter is fallible.)

For what it's worth, the contemporary judgment about geocentrism isn't that it's wrong, but that both it and its denial involve a mistake.

I'm reminded of a 'joke' (which isn't funny, but it's true, if contemporary physics is even close to right): "What would it be like to move nearly the speed of light?" Answer: Just like this. (I.e., you *are* moving nearly the speed of light, relative to *something*.)

Lesson: Geocentrism isn't 'wrong' or 'right' -- it involves a concept ('being at the center of the universe') that doesn't hold water in the context of current physical theory.

The physical world is infinitely mysterious, and yet at the same time not entirely incomprehensible (which, in itself, is a kind of miracle). God gave us reason and creativity, and we may make use of them to try to make sense of the physical world. (Both are crucial.) When that effort goes well, there is something to be learned from it about the majesty and purpose of God's creation. It has gone well many times, but 'going well' does not guarantee that people will understand what is to be learned. The physical world is infinitely mysterious, and the possibilities of human error (including my own, lest anybody draw the wrong conclusion, here) are infinitely frustrating.

Well, it is just extremely funny to me, as I have investigated this only since this thread came on line, that for years, the more technologically advanced we become in scientific analysis, the more we don't understand the laws that are defying science and it comes to be 'a mystery' that we cannot fathom, and very large unfolding mysteries at that.

I heard about the geocentric idea without giving it a second thought years ago. Since I don't buy everything science tries to promote, for me, evolution was a farce from the moment I examined it, but geocentric was something I had never looked into. Don't know if any of you watched the movie I mentioned above, but it is eye opening for sure.

The part that really makes me laugh is this:

https://youtu.be/X6CVzVLP4jw

That would be Mary Higby Schweitzer, would it? The discovery, and the controversy, don't seem to have damaged her career in science. And, more importantly, they have not damaged her faith in God, she remains a firm Christian.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/

Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”
This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”

https://molecularpaleo.wordpress.ncsu.edu/people/mary-h-schweitzer/

I believe God is omnipotent.

For an exposition of the arguments in favour of a consistently rational God, read Pope Benedict's address at the University of Regensburg. Particularly from the question in the fifth paragraph:

Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?