'God as the Edge of the Universe'

"In the Beginning … But exactly what in the beginning? The physicist Stephen Hawking, Lucasian Professor at Cambridge University, has devoted much of his career to answering that question. His obsession is the one second between the Big Bang (the postulated birth of the universe) and the beginning of its expansion. A victim of amyotropic lateral sclerosis, an incurable progressive motor neuron disease, Hawking is almost totally immobile and is confined to a wheelchair. He can communicate o

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I think that [one second] is the most interesting question. But if we were certain about the answer as to what happened in that first second, it would be much less interesting, because we'd really know everything then. We'd have solved all the problems and it would be rather dull.

If you like, it would be a tautology. You could define God as the edge of the universe, as the agent who was responsible for setting all this into motion. If you want a complete theory, then we would have to know what happens at the edge. Otherwise, we cannot solve the equations.

It's very difficult to prove there isn't any edge, but if we could show that we can explain everything in the universe on the hypothesis that there is no edge, I think that would be a much more natural and economical theory.

I think it's a cop-out. ...

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