Hamlet needs a Shakespeare

I attended the three Life, the Universe and Nothing discussions between Prof Lawrence Krauss and Dr William Lane Craig, but unfortunately I missed the Perth discussion between Krauss and Rory Shiner.

I followed the Perth discussion on the #lunqa hashtag and saw this tweet by @tannemills …

If god is not part of hamlet (the universe) then where is he? #shiner #lunqa

Not being in the audience, I can only guess at why @tannemills wrote this. I suppose Rory must have made a statement like “God stands in relationship to the universe in the same way Shakespeare stands to Hamlet: he is the author of the work.”

If Rory did say something like that (and I understand he did, having checked with someone who was there) then Rory makes a good point.

If you look at the text of Hamlet you won’t find Shakespeare. Even if we have the original manuscript, and even if we could lift a fingerprint from it, we still can’t get Shakespeare from the text.

Yet Hamlet needs a Shakespeare. Much in the same way that …

If god is not part of hamlet (the universe) then where is he? #shiner #lunqa

… needs a @tannemills.