Stephen Hawking and the Reality of a Creator

I've been reading a book on Stephen Hawking, the British theoretical physicist who has ALS.
Dr. Hawking wrote a book in 1988, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME; FROM THE BIG BANG TO BLACK HOLES. In it, he asks, "So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
The analogy for the shape of the universe he uses is that of the earth, having a point - somewhere - at the top, widening to the equator, then becoming smaller to a point - somewhere - at the bottom. Since there is no place on the earth that is identifiable as the point of beginning of the earth, so there can be no point of an end to the surface of the earth. Dr. Hawking takes the position that because this is so for the earth, if it is also true for the universe, then there is no need or place for a creator.
He further posits that there is no place for a creator - i.e., no reality of one - because, without a point of beginning, there is no possibility of "anything existing before time".
I believe Dr. Hawking is wrong, and that his position has a basic flaw. This basic flaw stems from the logic he uses to make his position. He appears to believe that if we cannot measure either "time", or the point at which "time" began, nothing existed before it except possibly energy, and nothing could have. Simply because there is no point of beginning - of time or anything else - that we mere humans can measure does not automatically insure that nothing came before the thing we call "time". In fact, 'nothing' has been proven to be impossible to exist; nature abhors a vacuum and there are no true vacuums to be found anywhere.. If there were, the basic laws of physics would be nullified. In short, Dr. Hawking depends on humans' ability to measure and quantify the universe in order to define both the universe and the reality, or lack thereof, of a creator, and his position is based on a premise that is a direct violation to the most basic laws of physics.
Moreover, the lack of a point of beginning or ending of the earth or any part of the universe in whole or in part proves the reality of a Creator, simply because it reflects the eternal nature of the Creator, Which has not beginning or ending Itself.
While Dr. Hawking is welcome to espouse any theory he cares to, the lack of ability to measure a thing does not prove it doesn't exist. The most basic laws of physics speak to this. What this lack does prove is that human technology is not infallible, may never achieve the perfection he seems to believe it can, and in any case, since physics has long ago proven that there is no such thing as a 'true' vacuum – i.e., a space containing absolutely nothing, there may well be a creator.
More than that, I believe absolutely that the universe is a logical creation, and that this in and of itself proves absolutely that there is indeed a creator. To believe in the logic that allows physics and mathematics to exist and to describe the mysteries of the universe and then to claim at the same time that the universe happened by accident is completely illogical. If the universe happened entirely by accident, logic could not function. Predictability would not exist. Chaos would rule, rather than entropy and predictability. The Big Bang may have happened, but it did not 'just happen'. There was a logic – a creator – that made it happen, if it happened at all.

I am a Traditional person of my Lakota People. We have a creation story, as does every other culture on earth. I will tell a part of it here, because it reinforces my position.

Our Lakota Creation Story teaches: Long, long ago, before measurable time existed, and so, before the world (= universe) existed, everything existed, but it was formless. We Lakota call this formless condition 'being in the void'. A void is not an empty space; no such place exists. Void means “the absence of physical form”. Yet, there was life, because everything is made up of spirit (energy) at its most basic.

A proof of this would be lightning. We can see lightning and its effects, but we cannot see the parts that make it up, and we know it is pure spirit, pure energy. Yet, among our People, there are those wakan (mysterious / holy) people who can call the lightnings – the Wikangli Oyate – and work with them. These are the heyoka – sometimes called the Thunder Dreamers.

Anyway, the many parts within the void may not have had form, but they did have a connection to each other; we say, "they were related"; and they knew this and that they made up a whole, because the world (= universe) is composed of spirit at its most basic, and spirit has no one form itself, yet It is everywhere.

For whatever reason, suddenly the group consciousness began to wonder what Its various parts were like. It wondered about this for awhile, until finally Its curiosity was so great It decided to find out.

It began to separate out some of its most basic spirit energy, since Power has many levels, and what eventually formed, was Inyan, the Rock, which later became the Earth.

As the most basic spirit energy separated out and formed Inyan, the Rock, some of the Power of Takuskanskan – Something Holy Moving, which is spirit / energy, which is always moving – also leaked out. As it turned out, it had to be this way, although we don't know why, or need to know why, and it could not be reversed without great difficulty.

The color of this Power was bright blue, and became the disc of the sky. This shade of blue is the holiest of the colors. The point when Takuskanskan began to separate out some of Its most basic spirit energy and it became Inyan as it solidified into having form, is when Time began.

We Lakota have known these things far longer than the majority culture has existed. And, whether we argue Dr. Hawking's question from the perspective of the newcomer, physics, or from that of ancient knowledge from my people's culture, we know his question and his belief that there is no Creator, is wrong and his logic is flawed; that he has apparently overlooked some basic tenets of physics and logic. Just because something has always been does not mean there is no creator - it means there must be a creator, since only the form, or lack of it, is the point of contention. The universe IS the Creator, then; resolving Itself into Its myriad parts, in order to learn what It is really all about. The ongoing formation of the universe is a voyage of self-discovery by the Creator. Hechetu ye.

A Response to Another Article about Where we ITI "Reeally" Came From

I am an ITI - an Indigenous Turtle Islander. A First 'American', although in reality, 'America' is a construct made by a self-agrandizing Italian mapmaker, Amerigo Vespucci, who wanted to immortalize himself, not the proper name of this land.
Contrary to popular myth-conceptions developed and promoted by people of European descent, we have been here for far more than the 15,000 years generally quoted - not that it matters. We were here first, by far first and before Europeans made landfall on this side of the Mni Tanka - the Big Water - therefore we are the ones to have properly named it, and we did.
The arrogance that ignorance engenders never fails to amaze me - along with the many forms it takes - about us ITI Peoples. First is the insistence that it 'must' be 'proven' that we 'came here from somewhere else'. Why? Why 'must' this be 'proven'? What prompts this lemming-like rush to make a sea of claims about our 'true' origins? My guess is, cultural guilt. Well-deserved, from where we ITI sit....
After "Why?", we can then ask, "What - if anything - would it 'prove' about our claim to this land if it could be proven that we actually migrated here from somewhere else?" IF we did - and we Elders who are Traditionals, who carry the Creation Stories of our Peoples, KNOW WE DIDN't come from somewhere else - would it prove anything? No.
Would it lessen our claim to this land? No. IF it could be proven beyond any reasonable doubt that we ITI had come here from somewhere else, it wouldn't make a clamshell's worth of difference, because (a) we were here first; (b) we were here first by thousands of years and as a result, the exact number doesn't matter; (c) there is ample evidence that we were here for at least 65,000 years before Europeans came her, should anyone be so backward as to insist on counting the number of years.
And believe me - THAT IS the real reason for the lemming-like rush to 'prove' we ITI "actually came here from somewhere else". It is a sophomoric attempt to try to decrease our claim to this land, so that a rationale can be made for the atrocities committed on our Peoples over the past 516 years or so: The land grabs, the anti-Indn legislation, the outlawing of our Traditional spiritualities and worship forms (with only partial return of our theoretical First-Amendment Rights), the continuing assaults on our cultures and attempts to force us to assimilate, the seemingly-never-ending efforts to terminate our Treaties, our Treaty RIGHTS (not "priviledges") and the US government's / majority culture's concomitant Treaty Obligations, and dispose of our Reservations, and so on to terminal nausea.
Historians try to speak about "The period of The Indian Wars". Listen up, takoszja - The Indian Wars never ended. They are still going on today. Right now. Only the overtness and the form appeared to change. But then, our word for Europeans is "washichu" (wah-SHEE-choo). It can be broken into its root words in two ways; neither of them is a compliment. We give people and things their true names according to their spiritual essence, not some physical characteristic. True names are earned, therefore.
Washichu can be broken into 'washi' and 'ichu' - 'washi' is fat on a body and 'ichu' means 'to take'; thus this means 'to take the fat'. In hunter-gather cultures, fat is a precious commodity, because it is such a concentrated energy source. Fat has twice the calories per unit of mass that protein or carbohydrates do. If you eat a very high-protein diet, as wild meat is, you will starve to death in cold or famine times because you will not put on much, if any, fat. Thus, someone who takes the fat is a greedy, ungenerous person; someone who behaves as if they do not have any relatives. In the ITI Way, this is a huge flaw. Of the few universal threads among our many cultures, to be called greedy or ungenerous is a huge insult.
Washichu can also be broken into 'wa' - snow, and 'shichu' - the conscious fourth of the soul. In my People's Way, the soul has four parts; this is not so for all ITI cultures, of course. Nonetheless, we see it that way, and the word is ours.
Thus you see that we have said this person's sould is that of snow. In every culture in the world, the snow spirits do snow jobs, kill the warmth of the heart, kill kindness, make the path appear to be one way or place when it is another.. It speaks of ungenerousness, deviousness and untrustworthiness.
Over the past 516 years, there haven't been enough members of the majority culture who are no washichu for us to find a new name for them. We make an exception for those who prove they are not entirely washichu, but those are far and few between in our experience.
Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the invading culture over the past 516 years haven't said a whole lot of good about the invading culture or the people who live by it.
Tch, tch, tch!

In my People's Way, when someone does something wrong, the rest of us ask that person, "Where is your respect? WHERE IS your RESPECT?!?" People who are asked this are shamed; and ashamed, if they are not washichu in their heart of hearts..
So on behalf of us ITI People, who have been here since time immemorial, I ask you who continue to insist on trying to 'prove we ITI came here from somewhere else' and therefore have less original right to this Turtle Island than you, so that your culture can somehow try to find an acceptable rationale for the ongoing assaults on our cultures and for your culture's not-so-far-past atrocities committed on us -
Where is your respect? WHERE IS your RESPECT?!? You can quit this nonsense now. That would 'show' respect. Along with fulfilling your Treaty Obligations with no further stupid lawsuits trying to duck your 'word of honor' given when your agents signed the Treaties and stopping your ongoing attempts to destroy our Traditional Ways and our spiritual ways in particular, to mine our Sacred Sites or dump nuclear waste in them, to either force us to take a giant step down and back and assimilate into your culture, or die.. To do anything else is to continue to earn the name we gave you 'way back when - washichu. Tch, tch, tch!

On Us Horse-Indns as Mascots

There has been a lot of uproar about Us horse-Indns being used a mascots by majority-culture schools and sports teams in recent years.

People ask me for my opinion of the matter, and are often surprised when I tell them, "It's wrong to use us as mascots. It's rude and it's demeaning because mascotting makes us into cartoons. We are not public figures or public property for any bonehead to use that way. We are living, breathing People - Nations! - and our Traditional cultures are very much alive, however tattered by the ongoing assaults of the majority culture over the last 516 years. It shouldn't even be a subject for discussion. It should be intuitively obvious how wrong it is, and it should stop automatically as a result."

Those who have asked are invariably dismayed as well when I tell them these things, for they had not thought of them before. It seems the majority of people think of themselves as respectful, so it grabs them when they find out that they have wrongly colored themselves.

Here in Dakota Territory, we have two divisions of the area - North and South. In North Dakota, the state's largest university uses my people as its mascot. Without our permission, of course. There has been quite a bit of media coverage of the controversy as my People get active n objecting to being used this way. There has been quite a bit of rancor from the spoiled brats faction of the majority culture, too. They've made tons of money from us over the years, & we haven't gotten one red cent. We mean to kill off their cash cow and they like that as little as they like being forcefully reminded that they have behaved like a bunch of bigots and clods.

We were never asked if we wanted to be used as the mascot for the state's main university.. A university whose slogan includes such drivel as claiming that it exists to educate and to teach people to sift for truth and honor.. We were never offered gifts or any other kind of 'pay' before this practice was begun..
Indns in Dakota Territory exist at the bottom of the economic totem pole, and thanks to "The Custer Effect", the majority seem to think we belong there. Wrong. Just the same, there are a lot of excuses given for not hiring us, as employees or as contractors or otherwise patronizing our businesses.

Excuses given for not hiring us, or for not paying us equally with whites include such gems of stupidity as:
(1) Indns drink; meaning, "always to excess". This is blatant garbage. The majority of Indns do not drink alcohol at all, let alone 'to excess'. So - who are those people in beer commercials, anyway? Not Indns! We're a minority in our own country. We didn't create the problem when it does exist, either.
Alcohol was not made by any of us here before Europeans brought alcohol here when they 'discovered' us. (We'll discuss 'discovered' later.)
(2) Indns are unreliable. They don't show up & they don't call to say they aren't coming. This is not a uniquely Indn problem, either. I've been in business most of my life; if you read business magazine for the past 25 years - maybe more - you will find that The Top Problem discussed in them is "employee absenteeism" and how to stop it.
I'll tell you what employee absenteeism really is... First, it's not an Indn problem. We're a minority in our own land, remember? What employee absenteeism really is is the employees saying in actions, rather than just in words, that they are grossly unhappy with their working conditions. They are saying it with actions rather than words because they've tried words & have been ignored by their bosses every time. Actions speak louder than words..
In the case of Indns, though, there are other reasons for not calling when they aren't coming in. Since we live at the bottom of the economic totem pole, a telephone is a luxury we can't always afford. So there's seldom a neighbor to go to to make a call. Businesses have been UNfriendly about letting us use their phones.. If you can't come in, you aren't going to go to the job site to tell them, are you?
"Emergency" is a regular part of our language for a long time now. Out here, it's mainly because of what I call "The Custer Effect" or "Custerism". We beat the snot out of Custer et al at the Greasy Grass in 1876 and the whites are still trying to beat us up and "get even" for that. Basically, it's a 132-year-old temper tantrum, & its' still going on. People like me, who refuse to knuckle under, and who raise stink about it to 'the outside world' are not the most popular people here. I've been told "how dare you tell them about it?" "Them" is you out there.
Anyway, if you're up to your eyeballs in an emergency, you aren't likely to go looking for a phone to call work to tell them you aren't coming in on time. Besides, we know we'll tell them when we get there.. We are adults, after all.. In the Indn Way, adults don't say 'captain may I', we take care of our problems & then go on. The whites haven't learned that yet.
(3) Indns steal. / Indns are all thieves. I reply, "So who was it whose culture stole an entire continent from US, anyway?" There's always big silence after that one....
While we're at it, guess what is the second-most-discussed problem in American business the past 25 or so years? Em-ploy-ee theft. It's not an Indn problem. Your lot is no more virgin in this than we are, and there are more of you...

While we're discussing theft - let's consider the theft of dignity and self-esteem caused by mascotting. If you've been beaten on all of your life, you are likely to have low self-esteem to begin with. Being seen as a cartoon character isn't going to improve that, is it?

For my own self, I think I'd like to see the UND mascot changed to the Battling Bigots or some such. As for sports teams, there are plenty of possibilities for them that don't include making fun of us Indns.

So - now you know. Hechetu ye.

O Hanh! Welcome!

I send a warm handshake and good greetings to you. You will find many things here - satire, sarcasm, humor, puns, outrage, and even sometimes sorrow. I have a very wide range. In the majority culture's bigoted way, if I were male, I would be called a Renaissance man. Since I'm female - & horse-Indn to boot - I'm just called odd, different, or sometimes (rudest) 'weird'.
You will find my perspective, and you will find that I am not your average 'anything'. No one thinks for me and no one ever doubts where I stand on anything; not for more than a few minutes, anyway. I am said to be 'outspoken', by my detractors. Yep, I am. I haven't asked "captain may I?" since I was about 10 in very many instances. You can take it or leave it.. my heart won't cry.
If you've read About Me in here, you know I'm a horse-Indn, not an elephant-Indian, and not a "Native American". I'm anything but politically correct. No one ever thinks or speaks for me. Technically, I'm an ITI - an Indigenous Turtle Islander, me...
I am one of those who has always walked in two cultures - my Indn one (D/Lakota) and the majority culture. While we're here, touching on Indn cultures, let's get something straight. There is not, and there never was, "an" Indn culture. So unless you want me to poke you with the sharp end of my tongue, or maybe even slice you, if you write to me, don't speak about "the" Indn culture.
(My first ex would be the first to tell you that my tongue was made by Wilkinson Sword. Like any other tool, a knife, or a sharp tongue, can be used to do many things - cut away dross, skin a beast, slice n dice to ribbons...)
In the majority culture way, my essence is 70% air, & in 2 dual signs; 20% fire, in their own rulers; and 10% earth, so fire in earth. Sharp wit, lots of range, born an unusual being, moves fast most of the time, tons of tough and endurance, not afraid to tackle practically anything. Yes, we're talking about horoscopes. Another handy tool. One that touches the right side of the brain & speaks with your intuition. (In-tuit-ion - one's inner teacher).
While we're at this part about horoscopes, I'll tell you a true story. For all of my life, the simplest things I've done have ended up in amazing uproar oftener than not. It about drove me crazy, and like so many, I didn't used to put much stock in horoscopes. On t'other hand, I couldn't find any answers via either my culture or the majority culture as to why this is so.
I have a friend who did horoscopes for a living at that time, & finally, I went to her and asked if a natal horoscope could give me any insight. She said, "Sure!" Such a positive response was comforting, so I asked her if she would cast mine & give me a quick-&-dirty assessment. She would.
After she put the needed information into her computer, it kicked out my natal chart. These are uniquely one person's, because they are defined by latitude, longitude, time of day/night, month, day, and year of a person's birth. While it is within the realm of possibility that 2 people 'might' be born in the same city at the exact same time/day/month/year, the odds are pretty small.
Anyway, she looked at my chart for about 60 seconds, then jabbed a finger at it and said, "There! You have your asteroids in your "Nth" house, in Libra. You attract controversy like a lightning rod." I'm not telling you which house because I can't remember if it is the 5th or 6th.
Given that I am an heyoka, & we play with the lightnings on occasion, this was not comforting news. I said, "Loren! Couldn't you come up with a better analogy? I have enough trouble with the lightnings as it is!" and I laughed nervously. She smiled and said, "Ok. You attract controversy like honey attracts bears." I moaned. Then I said, "Big improvement. We've gone from lightning to large powerful things with long claws & huge fangs & vile tempers, that occasionally eat us." We both laughed & she said, "It's how you are, lady. Rosin your seat, sit deep, and get used to it. Your life will always be a wild ride." I've been working on that ever since.
She was absolutely right. It has always been a wild ride. I do the simplest things & chaos comes to visit. I'm not complaining, mind you. More like, I'm giving you notice. If you want a fresh perspective, no punches pulled, and controversy, this is probably the place to find it.
I don't have to try to be different - I was born different. Mitakuye oiasin.