Hawking Don't Know No Science

I was going to send this to Ranting Student, but hey... :-)

I was checking Ray's post on the eternal universe after making my response to it clarifying what Hawking actually wrote in the lecture. I was left rather dumbstruck when I read the following comment by erikloza:

Dale, where is Hawking's empirical evidence for his above statement concerning the Big Bang? There is none. That's what he guesses. That's not science.

I am in awe of such a comment. This is even more awe-some than Ray's post about Einstein evolving into him. This reminds me of the beauty pageant queen who challenged Hawking to a public debate on black holes (or something along those lines). The utter arrogance and sheer disrespect of such a comment!

Who is Stephen Hawking?
Stephen Hawking is the world-renown theoretical physicist.
Stephen Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
Stephen Hawking is the author of A Brief History of Time, a book on the Big Bang, black holes, gravity, string theory, and other stuff in cosmology which sold over 9 million copies and stayed on Sunday Time's best-seller list 237 weeks.
Stephen Hawking is the man after whom Hawking radiation is named.
Stephen Hawking is the man who has proved many singularity theorems.

The list could go on (and on and on and on), but Hawking is, put simply, the preeminent physicist of today. In addition to his primary fields of research, quantum gravity and theoretical physics, Hawking has... (per Wikipedia)

many other scientific investigations, included are the study of: quantum cosmology, cosmic inflation, helium production in anisotropic Big Bang universes, large N cosmology, the density matrix of the universe, topology and structure of the universe, baby universes, Yang-Mills instantons and the S matrix; anti de Sitter space, quantum entanglement and entropy; the nature of space and time, including the arrow of time; spacetime foam, string theory, supergravity, Euclidean quantum gravity, the gravitational Hamiltonian; Brans-Dicke and Hoyle-Narlikar theories of gravitation; gravitational radiation, and wormholes.

Who is erikloza?
erikloza is a commenter on Ray Comfort's blog.
erikloza is the guy telling Stephen Hawking what is not science.


Astonishing. You may make claims that God created the universe six thousand years ago and also created mountains of evidence to make it appear that the universe had been operating much longer, and that's fine. You may make claims that God created the Big Bang, and that's fine. You may also make claims that God is running reality on a supercomputer, and that's fine. But to call Hawking out on what is science and that he's simply "guessing"? That's... egregious.

I would say that the comment left me speechless, but this post is evidence to the contrary. If Hawking were to make the claim that I was not left speechless after that comment, then that statement is based on empirical evidence and is science... which is far more than erikloza can say about his claims about the Big Bang, which are merely guesses.

Stephen Hawking's "Guesses" On the "Beginning of Time"
Here is the lecture from which Ray quoted concerning the beginning of time and a discussion of the Big Bang.

Erikloza's Science On the "Beginning of Time"
When searching for other statements on science from this poster, the first result was actually perfect:

The universe must have a beginning, because the concept of the universe always existing does not allow us to arrive at today. "What?" Allow me to explain. If the universe has always existed, then infinity lies behind us. If that were true, how long did it take for us to arrive at today? Infinity. How long does that last? Forever. If the universe always existed, then today would have taken forever to arrive, meaning it wouldn't have.

Spot on science there, erikloza. You should really contact Hawking so you can teach him a thing or two about how science is done.