Now in discussing the prevalent theories regarding the Universe (6 or so string theories, infinite regression, first cause, multiverse &c), I happened upon Fr. Lemaitre's Wiki page. I was looking for a citation regarding his development of Hubble's Law. Now this of course in itself is a typical treatment of Catholic contributors to science, as the law is named for Hubble, based on Einstein's equations of general relativity and postulated by Lemaitre. The man get's no credit. At best, seldom credit.
At any rate, I stumbled across this story on the infamous Discover Magazine website, which is actually a retraction of a previous article essentially claiming that Lemaitre didn't look at the data for Hubble's law (they retract this), which I understand as an insinuation that Edwin Hubble, who finally "confirmed the data" ten years later, deserves the credit. This notion was admirably retracted by Discover. However, the opening of the story completely robs Lemaitre AGAIN. Here's the quote from sentence ONE:
"We’ve previously celebrated Father Georges-Henri Lemaitre on this very blog, for taking seriously the idea of the Big Bang."
Excuse me? Taking seriously? Who's theory was The Primeval Atom Hypothesis (AKA The "Big Bang")? This was his theory.
This is very typical treatment and ignorance due to the fact, as anyone who watches documentaries (even on Edwin Hubble) knows, people like Lemaitre get very little spotlight. If you happen to be someone that contradicts the false dichotomy of science versus religion, you get swept under the rug.
Now this might not seem like a big deal, but I can't stress enough how prevalent this sort of thing is. For those of you who know what the Big Bang is, and for those of you who watch shows like the History Channel's "Universe", Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" or any such shows.... How many of you know that it was a Catholic Priest that came up with "The Big Bang"? Yeah I didn't either some years ago.
No airtime. Outright lies, and inexcusable ignorance. This is the direction anti-religious education is necessarily headed (cf. sine qua non).
Now to address the basic gist of Hawking, what we have are some options.
1. The Universe is "infinite" in one manner or another, thus making the empirical case for infinity as a real phenomena (sounds pro-God to me). Unfortunately you cannot traverse infinity to get to the present thus making this untenable.
2. The universe is finite, though perhaps one of many. This of course doesn't address the logical requirement of an un-caused first cause. Thus calling into question what sort of "god" Hawking is talking about in the first place.
Neither of these, or any other I have heard for that matter address the response to these two. Food for thought.
A final note, if not the most important of course is that contrary to the Big Bang, which all observation points to, making it the best theory we have for the origin of the Universe; we have no evidence for String Theory (of any kind in any of it's manifestations) or of Multiverse theories. There's zero, I repeat zero physical evidence that there exist any other universes than our own.
Multiverse theory, in my opinion is intended quite purposely to function as God rejecting or agendad Heliocentrist opportunists attempted to function. As an argument against the centrality of our existence in the Universe. Heliocentrism failed to kill God. In the same vein, proving we're "not the only universe" will have the same fizzling effect ultimately.
Further Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/02/hawking.god.universe/index.html
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