Paris, France October 20, 1988 Professor Stephen W. Hawking Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Cambridge University Cambridge, England Dear Professor Hawking: I've just finished reading your book A Brief History of Time from the Big Bang to the Black Hole . Thirty years ago while living in Britain I read Fred Hoyle's book setting forth his theory of "continuous creation". I was at that time struck by Hoyle's theory and made it part of my "provisional understanding" of how the universe works. I was put at loose ends some years later when I learned he'd abandoned his theory in favor of the Big Bang, which seemed to have all the contemporary evidence in its favor. I've never been comfortable with the concept of the universe having been suddenly created out of nothing, always wondering what existed before the moment of creation. I sadly realize that I'm neither scientist nor mathematician, and of course as you say it is possible that Time only came into being with the Universe. But I consider myself a reasonably intelligent individual (I'm an economist, and we do use some maths); and I've always assumed that anything of fundamental importance could be reduced to language understandable by a reasonably intelligent person. Your book validates this optimistic view. Some months ago it was announced that Hoyle has resurrected his theory of continuous creation. But the news accounts I've read gave no reason for this. I suspect I've found the reason in your book. On page 136 of the Bantam edition I'm reading you assert, "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundaries . . . . It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE." In other words, it appears that the Universe has always been and that matter is neither permanently created nor destroyed -- just transformed from one form to another. While I realize that how one feels has no bearing on how things are , I at the same time am aware that most scientific laws have an internal coherence which makes them feel right. I suspect that Einstein felt this way when he said he couldn't believe God played dice with the universe. I personally find congenial your notion of a Universe without beginning or end. I have no doubt Hoyle is familiar with your work, which may account for his return to his concept of continuous creation, or -- rather-- continuous transformation from less defined form to the physical forms we are familiar with -- possibly quarks becoming sub-atomic, then atomic particles. In your book you say that your arguments neither favor nor disfavor the possible existence of God. However you also set forth what you describe as the Weak and Strong Anthropic arguments accounting for the existence of intelligent life. I am writing in part because it seems to me that in advancing these Anthropic conditions (which one way or another at least account for the existence of intelligent life), you overlook a powerful argument in favor of God. To make my point, let me bring in the thinking of another scientist, the astronomer Carl Sagan. When Sagan's book Contact appeared some years ago, I wrote a book review for the Mormon Journal Sunstone , a copy of which I enclose with this letter. As I am sure you will not know, Mormons have a somewhat different notion of the nature of God than most Christians or other religions. To us He is not the unembodied, omnipresent creative force who imposed all laws of the universe by fiat , creating matter out of nothing. Rather, we consider him (or them ) as somewhat akin to the Intelligent Beings described in Sagan's book. We see God(s) as ultimately Beings who've had time to evolve for eons of time more than mankind here on earth, we being a rather late product of a rather recently created corner of a rather young arm of one galaxy. Indeed, Mormons believe we are offspring of Deity in our third morphological state of evolution. Just as you describe the earth as being made up of derivative products of former suns from an earlier universe, Latter-day Saints believe man has gone through two previous stages: the first as Intelligences , the most ultimately refined for of matter (quarks?); and the second as Spirits, prior to being incarnated here on earth as the physical beings we now are. As you'll see from my review of the Sagan novel (if you have time read the book. You'll enjoy it), man, as offspring of Deity, has made enormous progress during his few hundreds of thousands of years of earthlife. And given another 10,000 (50,000 -- 1,000,000?) years of further evolution, we should be able to do pretty much all the things normally attributed to God (except create the universe -- which Mormons don't believe God did anyway, believing as you apparently do that the universe just is , and God and Man are but natural attributes and actors within it. As we understand matters, God has merely taken advantage of natural law, acting as kind of a catalytic agent to speed up some processes which, left to themselves, would have taken far longer to occur, primary among His acts being the creation of spirit children from the previously existing natural intelligences , as well as bringing into existence planets or worlds on which they can live as mortals to acquire knowledge, and experience happiness. Sagan's novel suggests that the purpose of existence is "to have a good time". The Mormon view is not dissimilar: our scripture tells us: "Man is that he might have joy ". Therefor God's objective in catalyzing natural evolution is more rapidly to enhance the amount of joy in the universe through stepping up the rate of creation of intelligent life, which is the only state of matter which can experience this highest of all conditions of being. It is already evident that eventually man will achieve space travel, and enormously extended lifespan, more medical miracles to improve the quality of life, population of other planets, and, who knows, the possibility of group-shared thought through some form of ESP. Hence the title of my review: Pascal, Carl Sagan, & Me . Pascal, as you'll recall, postulated that it was more logical to wager in favor of there being a God, since if there isn't, all one loses are a few altruistic acts and a few foregone bad deeds; whereas if we wager there is no God, and prove mistaken, we lose all. The Timmins Corollary to Pascal's Theorem is: Better to wager in favor of God for all Pascal's reasons, plus: even if He doesn't yet exist, given another 50,000; 100,000; 1,000,000 years, for all intents and purposes He will , 'cause we'll have evolved into the type of advanced Being we now describe as God. At least this is so if one accepts the Mormon definition of God as a collective noun describing entire societies of advanced beings living in peace and harmony and dedicated to just the types of virtuous group activities described in Sagan's Contact. As for your concept of a boundless, uncreated, and indestructible universe, it often happens that poetic vision precedes scientific discovery. Please compare the poetic vision of the enclosed Mormon hymn If You Could Hie to Kolob , written a hundred and fifty years ago, (Kolob being our concept of the Black Hole, or other major controlling, gravitational body, with that described by you as possibly existing in the center of the galaxy. P.S. I enclose a brief paper on some of the philosophical implications, as they appear to me, of Chaos theory. If you have time and interest, I'd be pleased to receive your evaluation before submitting it for publication. Sincerely, Enc: 1. Pascal, Carl Sagan & Me 2. Poem "If You Could Hie to Kolob" 3. Chaos Theory, Determinism, & Free Agency