Stephen Hawking imagines there's no heaven

Anonymous

Is it not written, in the Electronic Bible, that the Ion shall lay down with the Lamp?

MarkM

Many, many people maintain that there’s no heaven. But when Hawking
does it, people get anxious. I think it’s for the same reason
believers try to dig out out-of-context quotations by Einstein
supporting a belief in god. Everyone recognizes that Hawking and
Einstein are brilliant, so believers get that quiver of groupthink
insecurity when Known Brilliant Man doesn’t support their position.
That can’t be! All intelligent people believe! Newton believed!!
Thus, Brilliant Nonbelieving Man must be smeared.

In the end, it simply devolves down to fear of death and non-
existence. Heaven was invented by distant ancestors to alleviate
that primal fear. Brilliant Men must not touch this edifice.

americanpoet75

I’ve never understood why, if the religious aren’t allowed to claim there is a heaven, why the non-religious can claim there isn’t. As someone else here commented, why does Stephen Hawking think he is in a position to declare such a thing? Doesn’t that, by the same logic, make him the teller of a fairy tale? It smacks more of bitterness than of calculated science. I recommend everyone see The Making of a Brief History of Time, a companion documentary to the main documentary. It sheds some interesting light on Hawking’s views on religion, which have less to do with science, and more to do with his personality and life experiences.

Anonymous

Religious are allowed to claim there’s a heaven, and do so all the time. They do it in philosophy, where they are challenged how they know, and they do it in public. Atheists are likewise allowed to claim there isn’t in philosophy, with similar challenges, but in public billboards that suggest there’s probably not are objected to and taken down. So what are you complaining about?

Ugly Canuck

In the above comment, my think be ‘thin’, eh?

hug h

Maybe there is no heaven… but at least there is this-

“Lighter With Age”

Love, we still think, many of us, is for the young. But what do they really know about it? It is hard for them to differentiate between sexual passion and love itself, for instance.
If the whole of life is a journey toward old age, then I believe it is also a journey toward love. And love may be as intense in old age as it was in youth, only it is different, set in a wider arc, and the more precious because the time we have to enjoy it is bound to be brief.
Old age is not a fixed point, any more than sunrise or sunset or the ocean tide. At every instant the psyche is in flux: â€œAnd like a newborn spirit did he pass/Through the green evening quiet in the sun,â€ as Keats put it.
On the edge of old age myself I sense we may be â€œnewborn spiritsâ€ at any moment, if we have courage. Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward more light.
MAY SARTON was a poet and novelist. She died in 1995.

With sentiments like that if there is a heaven then Mary Sarton is probably there.

My own belief- there is more to this universe than meets the eye, and that the “One”, the “Creator” or “God” is beyond our comprehension for a reason that is beyond our comprehension. At least for now… but maybe not forever.

RebNachum

I had no idea that defensiveness was so endemic.

Anonymous

it does not matter what twinkle started the galaxies or universe. but what ever it was, i could only fathom a supernatural force could of done that. how is it possible for something to spontaniously happen? i believe that thier must be more after death. what would happen to our energy? it might be reincarnation with no memory of our past lives, it could be a heaven or hell, but who knows. the only thing i know is that thier is something definatley after this. after all the laws of sciences states the that energy cannot be DESTROYED.

claude badley

“how is it possible for something to spontaneously happen?”

Exactly, how could this god people speak of just spontaneously appear from nothing? Oh yeah, god is infinite. How this is so easily accepted while worthwhile theories and possibilities are not even considered, and I mean NOT EVEN CONSIDERED, is beyond me.

Note: I wasn’t shouting there, just emphasizing.
- petsounds
  
  “how is it possible for something to spontaneously happen?”
  
  Exactly, how could this god people speak of just spontaneously appear from nothing? Oh yeah, god is infinite. How this is so easily accepted while worthwhile theories and possibilities are not even considered, and I mean NOT EVEN CONSIDERED, is beyond me.
  
  Well, the Big Bang ‘spontaneously happened’ according to physicists. They aren’t so sure about where it all came from. Some say it’s just a giant accordion bellows breathing in and out infinitely. I think that’s a pretty lame explanation. I’ve never understood how someone with a logical bent could say they’re athiest. There’s no evidence one way or the other, so being athiest is just as much a leap of faith as being religious.
  
  All that matter and energy was created, at some point. To me, how that happened is the most fascinating question one can ponder about the universe. Much more interesting than what kind of subatomic particles existed 10 nanoseconds after the Big Bang.
  
  I’m not religious, but personal experiences and big unanswered questions about the nature of the universe keep my mind open to possibilities of things scientists might consider fantastical or illogical. Who am I to say otherwise?
  - Anonymous
    
    There’s no evidence one way or the other, so being athiest is just as much a leap of faith as being religious.
    
    Of course there’s evidence. Any time you expect to see something and don’t, that’s evidence it doesn’t exist by all normal standards. And there’s enough of this that it doesn’t take any special faith to be atheist, just as Muslims don’t need a second revelation to disbelieve in Vishnu, and Hindus don’t need a second revelation to disbelieve in Christ. What there isn’t is definitive evidence; but when is there ever?
    
    As far as things spontaneously happening go, you are missing the point. In every philosophy and religion something must come into being without a predecessor, or have existed for all eternity; so claiming the impossibility of such is not actually a valid argument one way or another, the way some people would have you believe.
  - yosemite
    
    “All that matter and energy was created”
    
    Says who?
    What was ‘created’?
    And why presuppose some originary subject verbing an object?
    And why presuppose there is some nothing out of which came something?
    
    If you crack open a metaphysical egg, the yolk doth runneth.
  - Anonymous
    
    Well, the Big Bang ‘spontaneously happened’ according to physicists. They aren’t so sure about where it all came from.
    
    Of course they aren’t. There are lots of possibilities, to be sure; repeating universes, collisions between superstrings, and all sorts of esoteric ideas have been suggested. But they can’t be sure about any of them, because there’s no evidence on the matter, so they really don’t know. If you’re interested in the question as you say, though, there are some interesting things to look at.
  - Padraig
    
    “There’s no evidence one way or the other, so being athiest is just as much a leap of faith as being religious.”
    
    There’s no evidence of any God. Full stop. Prove it first before making claims about anything else.
    
    Atheists merely state that there is no evidence. They don’t need to believe in anything else because it’s a claim there is no evidence.
    
    Those who believe in mystical beings need to prove their claims or merely stop making them. They’re the ones claiming something exist.
    
    Please don’t confuse the two as being opposite sides of the same coin. They’re not.
    
    Believers are called that because they have no evidence.
    
    Atheists are called that because they make the point that there is no evidence of anything mystical.
    - Anonymous
      
      You, sir, are confusing atheism with being agnostic.
      
      “Atheists are called that because they make the point that there is no evidence of anything mystical.”
      
      There is no evidence of anything not being mystical either. And in fact there is plenty of mystery, ask me to prove that and I won’t even bother. Why? It’s a mystery. Mystical that.
    - noen
      
      Padraig said “There’s no evidence of any God.”
      
      God, as understood by virtually all religions, is not the kind of thing about which there could be any evidence.
      
      “Atheists merely state that there is no evidence. They don’t need to believe in anything else because it’s a claim there is no evidence.”
      
      Empiricism does not exhaust the list of possible things.
      
      “Those who believe in mystical beings need to prove their claims or merely stop making them. They’re the ones claiming something exist.”
      
      Well they have experiences that they feel strongly suggest there is some larger dimension to life. Those experiences cannot be cavalierly dismissed out of hand. It especially does not work to assume they are wrong in the first place and then reject all explanations the conflict with one’s presuppositions.
      
      “Atheists are called that because they make the point that there is no evidence of anything mystical.”
      
      What evidence would you accept? For most atheists there simply is no evidence that anyone could ever present that they would permit to challenge their metaphysical assumptions. Atheism is as epistemically closed as theism is. Neither will admit any evidence that conflicts with their received world view.
    - andrei.timoshenko
      
      Noen, of course empiricism does not exhaust the list of possible things. After all, it is *possible* that there is a perfectly stealthed alien spaceship from the planet of Lilliputia under your bed right now.
      
      What empiricism does exhaust is the list of PROBABLE things, to the best of our present knowledge. In other words, empiricism exhausts the list of things about which one’s current statements would not have a negligibly small likelihood of proving to be accurate.
      
      As to metaphysical assumptions, empiricism (of which atheism is a logical eventuality) makes only one, and it is in the epistemological branch of metaphysics. I’ve actually referenced it in the above two paragraphs – namely, it is that no given statement is likely to be true without reproducible, experiential evidence to support each of its claims.
      
      This assumption is quite easy to (empirically) challenge, thereby forcing empiricists to renege on the assumption on their own terms. All one would have to do would be to consistently make accurate statements without recourse to reproducible, experiential evidence. For instance (and this is just one example of a multitude), find me someone who consistently and reproducibly predicts future winning lottery numbers, and I will be forced to agree that non-empirical, “personal experience” should be given significant weight, whether it is about “some larger dimension to life”, or otherwise. Naturally, this is a challenge to atheism through a challenge of its key metaphysical assumption. A more simple and direct challenge would simply be God letting reproducible, experiential evidence appear in support of each of the specific claims about his own existence.
      
      Up until either point, “the kind of thing about which there could [not] be any evidence” is, to me, a pretty good definition of the concept of “fantasy”.
    - noen
      
      andrei.timoshenko verily sayeth: “What empiricism does exhaust is the list of PROBABLE things”
      
      That still doesn’t get you anywhere near god as understood in modern theology. I don’t necessarily accept their arguments, but at least I know what they are and address them honestly. How does your strawman god relate to that of say… Karl Barth’s or Paul Tillich’s concept of god?
      
      In argument, you don’t get to define your opponent’s position for them.
      
      [Empiricism] “…is that no given statement is likely to be true without reproducible, experiential evidence to support each of its claims.”
      
      Well then so much for history, psychology and sociology (and… evolution as well) as sciences then huh? What you have done here is to extrapolate from physics to claim that *all* science works like it does and that just isn’t the case. The hypothetical-theoretical model not only does not describe how most science is done, it has severe logical flaws.
      
      So no, it is not the case that only those statements are true for which reproducible, experiential evidence is available.
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      “… it is not the case that only those statements are true for which reproducible, experiential evidence is available.”
      
      No conjunction, no “and/or”, but just a comma, between the words ‘experiential’ and ‘reproducible’?
      
      Isn’t clarity a friend of truth? Perhaps not for the obscurantist, I suppose.
      
      Are you quite certain that the word ‘experiential’ ought to be in that sentence of yours?
      
      I’m not. And probability will often serve as truth enough for me, to count as science.
      
      And we were talking of the existence of “heaven” here – not the deity, nor the doctrine of the resurrection of the body at judgment, for that matter. But specifically “heaven”.
      
      Do you account it as being wise, to motivate your actions and regulate your present conduct based upon expectations of a future life, in a state of being or existence beyond the one revealed to you by your senses and by the light of your reason, which only becomes apparent after you have died?
    - noen
      
      The not so Ugly Canuck said: “No conjunction, no “and/or”, but just a comma”
      
      I think that “only” comma strongly suggests “and/or”. I feel quite certain that the set of true statements is greater than the set of inductive truths.
      
      “we were talking of the existence of “heaven” here – not the deity”
      
      I take talk of heaven to include all religious ideas.
      
      “Do you account it as being wise, to motivate your actions and regulate your present conduct based upon expectations of a future life”
      
      I account it unwise to believe in current atheist dogma.
      
      —-
      
      Any-mouse squeaked: “I’m pointing out that these have very little to do with the God that most humans actually believe in, who is active in the world”
      
      It will come as a great surprise to many modern theologians to learn their god is not active in the world. I suggest that you check out blogs similar to The Prosblogion where you’ll find people there not so easy to knock down as the strawmen you typically enjoy fighting. Isn’t it odd how the loudest atheists are the least willing to debate a real opponent?
      
      “reasons should come from evidence.”
      
      Really? You sure about that? You really really sure? Was it evidence that lead you to this conclusion?
    - Anonymous
      
      God, as understood by virtually all religions, is not the kind of thing about which there could be any evidence.
      
      Except the ones who believe in a God that performed conspicuous miracles at various points, or was directly involved in some historical account that might be verified; or performs healings on the faithful, or sends rain in response to sacrifices, or answers prayers, or responds to any number of other invocations that might be examined; or is expected to have designed the world according to some principles which may or may not be consistent with the way it is.
      
      Most religious people have a conception of God or gods that ought to have some evidence, because after all the consequences of their existence are the intended point. You might not, which is nice and all, but don’t be fooled into thinking that’s the rule.
      
      What evidence would you accept? For most atheists there simply is no evidence that anyone could ever present that they would permit to challenge their metaphysical assumptions.
      
      This continues to be nonsense. Many, though not all atheists, have posited standards that would change their mind; substantial proof of many of the invocations above, anything that indicates some agent in external reality responds to our hopes and dreams rather than simply our actions, would be an excellent start.
      
      It seems that so many people are willing to dismiss us with “man, if C.S. Lewis isn’t proof enough for you, it must be impossible to change your mind”. But I’ve only talked to a few atheists who actually took it as a presupposition, rather than as their evaluation of the current evidence. And just as with other paradigms like atoms and evolution, new evidence to change their minds is unlikely but still possible.
    - noen
      
      Any-mouse spoke thusly: “Except the ones who believe in a God that performed conspicuous miracles”
      
      There are virtually no theologians of note who claim miracles as evidence for god. Not even William Lane Craig is that ignorant.
      
      “Most religious people”
      
      We are not discussing your strawman understanding of what Christians or other theists believe.
      
      “Many, though not all atheists, have posited standards that would change their mind; substantial proof of many of the invocations above”
      
      Really? Gosh you’re awful easy to dupe. People who think they are superior to others are the best marks aren’t they. I wouldn’t accept as evidence god appearing to me in person with a flaming sword and a loud booming voice. I need something better than evidence, I need reasons.
      
      “It seems that so many people are willing to dismiss us”
      
      I’m agnostic, I don’t dismiss atheism, I reject it as philosophically unsound because it claims to know something it cannot know.
      
      “But I’ve only talked to a few atheists who actually took it as a presupposition, rather than as their evaluation of the current evidence.”
      
      And that is the problem. Because what one takes as evidence is theory laden. Historically, evidence that supports one’s pet theory is accepted while other evidence is rejected. Then that same evidence that was once rejected out of hand can become the very evidence in support of a later theory. This hasn’t happened just once, it has happened numerous times in the history of science.
      
      What you believe in is a received opinion of how science works as presented in text books. But the reality is almost nothing like that. All you have is book learning, which, honestly, is almost no learning at all.
    - Anonymous
      
      There are virtually no theologians of note who claim miracles as evidence for god. Not even William Lane Craig is that ignorant.
      
      I’m well aware that many theologians have decided to talk about God only as a prime cause, or ground of being, or various other conceptions where it is difficult to say what is the practical difference between them existing and not. I’m pointing out that these have very little to do with the God that most humans actually believe in, who is active in the world, helping those who deserve it. How can your conceptions of “most theists” leave out so many churches, mosques, and so on?
      
      I wouldn’t accept as evidence god appearing to me in person with a flaming sword and a loud booming voice. I need something better than evidence, I need reasons.
      
      I wouldn’t accept something simply appearing either, without some justification why it should be taken at face value. But seriously, reasons should come from evidence. You’re right that evidence is perceived through theories, but the two inform each other, and it hardly means that there’s any special insight to be gained by moving “above” such petty things and abandoning yourself to pure speculation.
    - Anonymous
      
      I’m agnostic, I don’t dismiss atheism, I reject it as philosophically unsound because it claims to know something it cannot know.
      
      Wait, what sort of atheism are we talking about? The type which says that there is with mathematically certainty no possibility of God, which cannot be known, and is not held by anyone I’ve heard of? Or the type which claims that God does not seem more likely than Russel’s teapot, or fairies, or an invisible entity that permeates space but has no consequences, which while certainly not uncontroversial is no more impossible put stake in than any other philosophical claim?
    - noen
      
      Anyone, who lived in a pretty how town said:
      “Wait, what sort of atheism are we talking about?”
      
      That found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
      
      â€˜Atheismâ€™ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God. — JJC Smart
      
      “Or the type which claims that God does not seem more likely than Russel’s teapot”
      
      Again… god (which implies heaven) is not the sort of thing which one could discover in orbit, or next to the dragon in my garage. (Who is a very amiable fellow.) In fact, god is not thought to be a proper “thing” at all. Theologians of the 17th century said God is “that which requires nothing but itself to exist”. Todays theologians, including Stephan Hawking, say that one dimensional mathematical objects are the one true substance which, apparently, requires no other explanation. Not only that, these mathematical laws reached back to the moment of the big bang and created themselves. Out of nothing as it were.
      
      They say this with a straight face too. I’m not seeing a great deal of different between either theologians.
Anonymous

When I bike across town, my energy gets turned into heat and makes the city a little warmer. Then I get some more energy by eating a burrito. Then I burn some of that by thinking, talking, typing this message, etc. (It also ends up as heat, mostly.) So then I have to go eat some pasta to get some more energy. And so on.

It’s true that “the laws of sciences states the that energy cannot be DESTROYED” but this law is talking about a particular number that we can measure (in joules, BTUs, or what not — the same stuff that shows up on your electricity and gas bill every month), not about our personality, love, life history, or some other concept. The rule that “energy cannot be DESTROYED” was surprising but was confirmed by a lot of experiments where people like Sadi Carnot and hard work done by particular people during the 1800s; the idea, and its acceptance as one of the “laws of sciences”, didn’t just come from nowhere. Reading other implications into this idea is a recipe for making mistakes just as much as expecting to be able to lift this building because it’s a “light house” (so it must not be very heavy).

Although a guy called Rolf Landauer showed that it’s pretty hard to erase information and destroy structure, it seems like it can be done. If you write words on paper, and set the paper on fire, and burn it down to ashes, it seems like that information is really lost. We might have a strong feeling that it must have gone somewhere, but, if it did, the sense in which it went somewhere is different from the sense in which the paper’s energy went somewhere (making the room, and you, alittle warmer).

andrei.timoshenko

Noen, what exactly is my “strawman god”? I do not see how anything in my post could be construed as an attempt at a definition of God. Indeed, I was discussing epistemology more than I was discussing any particular conceptualization of divinity. Any omnipotent entity simply falls in the common pile of “things we presently have no evidence for”, but if you personally want to define God in some more limited, empirically supported manner then perhaps the argument will be inapplicable. Define your God first, and then we can discuss my proposed evaluation of your definition’s epistemological likelihood.

I also see no problem for “history, psychology and sociology” given my approach to epistemology. Moreover, I was not addressing “science”, but rather knowledge. Can you perhaps provide some examples of historical, psychological, or sociological conclusions presently accepted as likely to be accurate WITHOUT reproducible, experiential evidence in support of them? I have a feeling that you for some reason interpret the “reproducible, experiential evidence” bit as “directly observed in the lab during a controlled experiment”. Obviously the terminology implies nothing of the sort. Digging up clay pot fragments, for instance, is both experiential (I can see/touch/etc. the fragments) and reproducible (I can show the fragments to other people). Combining it with other reproducible, experiential evidence (e.g. one can repeatedly meet people capable of making clay pots), one can then take the fragments as evidence of people previously visiting the area where the fragments were found. Indeed, this is how we distinguish history (e.g. William the Conqueror cam to England in 1066) from myth (e.g. King Minos had a labyrinth with a half-man, half-bull)…

Finally, I said nothing about the truth of statements. I would be very hesitant to accept claims of the absolute truth of ANY statement, barring omniscience. Rather, my discussion was about the LIKELIHOOD of the truth of a particular statement, FROM OUR CURRENT PERSPECTIVE.

So please do point out the “severe logical flaws” in all of this, which you claim to have already identified.

noen

One more

andrei.timoshenko (insert witticism here)
“Noen, what exactly is my “strawman god”?”

The typical atheist strawman that god is co-equal to the judeo-christian god, but not even that, a caricature of their beliefs cherry picked from only the most backwards evangelist they can find.

“Define your God first”

I don’t believe in the current crop of deities. As an agnostic what I believe is that neither atheists nor theists understand it all and that there are possibilities that lay beyond both.

“Moreover, I was not addressing “science”, but rather knowledge.”

But science is not knowledge. Science is guesswork, a web of belief.

“Digging up clay pot fragments, for instance, is both experiential … and reproducible”

But the interpretations you give to them are not:

“one can then take the fragments as evidence”

Like that, because what counts as evidence is determined by one’s theory. Change the paradigm in which one theorizes and what counts as evidence changes completely.

My objection is to the scientific positivism the new atheists (Dawkins et. al.) arrogantly claim. Like the long refuted positivists you believe that simple ideas link up with experience one by one. For me our entire conceptual schema, our theory about what is, meets the world as a whole unified experience.

When it comes to conceptual schemes you are a monotheist and fundamentalist. I am not. You are welcome to disagree, you are not welcome to mock and ridicule. The reason atheists and fundamentalists fight so bitterly is that deep down they recognize they are brothers.
- yosemite
  
  “Atheists, every single one of them, claim to be objectively superior to theists because they don’t even believe much less believe in falsehoods like heaven of god.”
  
  This is a ridiculous claim, and you sound as decidedly close-minded as your straw man. I’m agnostic, but what I admire about my atheist friends (not sure what kind of a-hole atheists you’re insisting on hanging around) is their ultimately humble commitment to embracing the non-metaphysical, and all that that entails. It’s not about claiming they understand more than do theists or agnostics, but that they are committing to what they understand to be the implications of a universe not overseen by a metaphysical being. These are not insignificant choices, nor are they necessarily easy ones to make. But they are admirable.

Anonymous

Stephen of course must know everything about everything. Thank you Stephen for setting the record straight for the ten of millions of people who have had near death experiences and ‘KNOW’ you are dead wrong. Now they can adjust there thinking accordingly to reflect what you know to be the truth. What they experienced they could oit have experienced because Stephen said so.

Did he ever take the time to speak to some of these people before he did the stupid and shot a hole in his mouth and put a big questionmark over his competence and credibility? Maybe there is no heaven for ‘Him’. If he wants to make that statement I am fine with it. But only and arrogant, over-inflated egomaniac could be so stupid as to make the statement he did which effectively pisses on the statements and expereinces of Millions around the world.

Failing grade Stephen: F.

redesigned

reading most of the posts on this thread makes me feel depressed with the general lack of intelligence/understanding most people have. to the few sane rational posters, thank you for at least giving me some hope for humanity.

i can’t imagine how someone at hawkings level of though must feel.
i hope he never reads this thread for his sake.

a few simple facts:

science is not a religion, it is a self correcting and refining system of empirical observations.

atheists do not have the burden of proof, proving an absence/negative of an extraordinary claim is not required. the burden of proof lies solely with the side making the extraordinary claim. i don’t have to prove unicorns and dragons aren’t real. i don’t have to prove your imaginary friend isn’t real. i don’t have to prove little green men aren’t real. besides which of the thousands of gods would they have to disprove? there is no theistic consensus in the world. atheists can trace back in history to when humans made up each one though. most christians have such a narrow world view that it is frightening.

there are even multiple gods listed in the bible, christianity is not monothesitc. surprised? seriously, read that book you thump! most christians have such a limited understanding of their own belief system it is frightening.

noen

redesigned said: “reading most of the posts on this thread makes me feel depressed with the general lack of intelligence/understanding most people have.”

Shorter: “People who disagree with me about religion are stupid.”

“science is not a religion”

Of course not. The activity we call science establishes facts. The activity we cal religion elucidates our values as human beings. The two are miles apart. Fundamentalists, atheist and religious alike, do not understand this division and attempt to bully the other into agreeing with them.

“i don’t have to prove unicorns and dragons aren’t real.”

How about string theory, do you have to prove that true? Because I am told there is no experimental basis on which one could test it. Not only is there no test for the truth of string theory there is no possible test one could ever imagine that would falsify it. You know, just like there is no experimental test for god either. On what grounds am I supposed to decide which belief system is true? Both belief in god and belief in string theory are based on faith. Neither have any testable evidence, both are unfalsifiable beliefs. Advocates for both thump their chests and proclaim the other morons.

I think you’re both right.
- Anonymous
  
  How about string theory, do you have to prove that true? Because I am told there is no experimental basis on which one could test it. Not only is there no test for the truth of string theory there is no possible test one could ever imagine that would falsify it.
  
  Which is owned by even its advocates as its main weakness, one they hope to correct by development of the theory or of instruments, but one of our knowledge, rather than something inherent to the subject. People may hope you will take string theory on faith, but nobody wants you to have to do so.
  
  As a result, this has only the most superficial resemblance to the sort of God designed and intended to be untestable. And this is of course so different again from the God of the bible or Qu’ran, who is supposed to move mountains, destroy cities, and provide for his followers, that it is misleading to use the same word for both.
- Tau’ma
  
  “I think you’re both right.” Yeah, well, you know, that’s just like, uh, your opinion man. http://youtu.be/QsogswrH6ck

Anonymous

If dogs have a heaven,
There’s one thing I know
Old Shep has a wonderful home.

sirkowski

I’m not religious, but what about [INSERT NEW AGE BULLSHIT].

There are no psychics. There’s no such thing as telekinesis. Crystals won’t heal you. There are no Jedi. And no, there is no heaven. You probably think you’re special because although you don’t belong to a church, you keep an open mind about everything. Except you’re not special and that’s not an open mind. You’re gullible. Just because you’re not a Jesus freak evangelist doesn’t mean you’re not annoying. I’m looking at you, Buddists. Don’t talk shit and don’t believe shit.

OrcOnTheEndOfMyFork

Just because you’re not a Jesus freak evangelist doesn’t mean you’re not annoying. I’m looking at you, Buddists. Don’t talk shit and don’t believe shit.

Ironically, hardcore Buddhists consider total oblivion the best possible outcome from death. It’s called Nirvana. Believing in “nothing” is what they do best.

I believe Stephen Hawking has the right of it. Heaven could very well be a fairy tale. Religion is nothing more than art, designed to appeal to our emotional side. It’s the same as music, poetry, sculpture, painting, photography, prose, movies. Used for good, and it brings out the best in us. Used for evil, and it can bring out the worst.

But like any art, it certainly isn’t insubstantial and meaningless to those it appeals to.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Oblivion? Or the state of being oblivious?
  
  There’s a difference…oblivion has to do with what others know or think of you, while “oblivious” refers to a person’s mental state or state of awareness of something.
Antinous / Moderator

Man does not live by regurgitated bile alone.

Anonymous

I agree totaly! of course there is no heaven…that is the only logical conclusion. believing in heaven requires a lot more then faith. it requires the suspension of belief in reality, science, and logic.

So “carpe diem”, coming from a man who can barely move, is kind of a hard philosophy to dismiss.

End give it a few hundred years. Unless the species dies off from natural causes, or the Singularity strips out a bunch of the impulses we associate with being human, it’ll be interesting to see if those non-religious killings will manage to pull into a clear lead.

Halloween Jack

It’s easy if you try.

Falcon2001

I do enjoy the folks assuming that Stephan Hawking cornered this reporter in an alley, his menacing electronic voice growling out of a speaker.

“TELL YOUR PEOPLE, NEWS SLAVE. SPEAK TO THEM MY WORDS AND LET ALL FEEL THE TERROR OF MY LOGIC.” The newsman recoiled, reflexively reaching for his holy implements – notepad and pen.

“THERE. IS. NO. HEAVEN.”

nixiebunny

Not that this will change anyone’s mind about the subject.

g0d5m15t4k3

Agreed. Good to know and all but I doubt it changes anything knowing someone else’s opinion on death.

dudemanguy

I would have thought Stephen would have a better command of basic logic than this. It’s an undecidable proposition. He isn’t in any better position to answer that question than anyone else. I don’t care how smart he thinks he is. He’s claiming to know something he can’t know.

noah

It’s an undecidable proposition.

As is all of metaphysics, which makes it a pretty uninteresting subject to think about.

I think this falls well within to domain of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence, though.
- wolfwitch
  
  Mine are on a farm in Wyoming. :)
emmdeeaych

No, he’s claiming that it is his opinion. I trust him to know his own opinion.

That you need to take it as somehow personally that he shares his opinion and worldview is about your boundaries, and not about his.
Anonymous

dudemanguy – actually his logic is fine here. And you missed it. He made a correlation or metaphor with computer components and his claim was injected inside the metaphor or comparison.

Let’s not forget that those making the claim of something’s existence are the one’s with the burden of proof. And if you think about an afterlife you have to concede that we base our understanding on sensory input. With the death of the brain, senses and the body processes, how do you define an experience from the absense of that? You can’t. And it’s much more fair to claim there’s no afterlife.

Like Stephen said, if you’re making that claim of afterlife it’s just superstition. Just like the fear of mythical monsters hiding in darkness.
putty

Hawking has properly applied Occam’s razor to the question of the existance of an afterlife. You don’t have to agree with the result if you don’t like it, but the logic is sound.
petertrepan

Exactly. I’d even say there’s circumstantial evidence for God. For instance, if you were wandering in the desert and found a watch, you would assume the watch didn’t just appear, but had a creator – someone intelligent who was there before you.

Since the universe is undoubtedly more complex than a watch, it must have had a creator as well. And that creator must have been God, whose proper name is Jehovah[1], who is omniscient and omnipotent and who sent his human son[2] to die in an effort to convince himself[3] not to punish his creations, human beings, for not turning out as he had expected[4]. And if you believe the right things[5], you will go to Heaven. If you disbelieve[6], or are bad[7], you go to Hell.

[1] He goes by many names, but the important thing is that he is as described in the Bible*.

[2] Who, along with the Holy Ghost, is actually also God. Just like the leaves on a shamrock.

[3] Apparently the Trinity works this way. Who am I to judge God?

[4] I know it’s odd to think an omniscient being would be taken off guard, but that’s explained by Free Will.

[5] The things in the Bible, as compiled by the Council of Nicea. I hope they were careful.

[6] Or don’t hear in time.

[7] Did you know the needy are six times as likely to steal food? That’s because God makes good people, people who would never steal, rich.

* The Bible is a collection of books compiled by the Council of Nicea.
- donniebnyc
  
  Between your ID and your argument it’s pretty hard to not think you have a hole in your head. Just sayin’.
  - donniebnyc
    
    OOPS! I should have read your entire post before commenting. My bad. Still, love the name.
    - donniebnyc
      
      You really should pay attention. Instead of replying to petertrepan, you replied to yourself. Dope.
    - petertrepan
      
      No offense taken! Anyway, I suppose I shouldn’t have written a lengthy post about the logic of believing in God, when it really boils down to having faith[1], and not leaning unto your own understanding[2].
      
      [1] In the right thing.
      
      [2] Except initially, when deciding what to have faith in*.
      
      * Unless like me, you were fortunate enough to be born into a community where everyone believes the correct things already, and you can just believe what they believe, freeing yourself from the responsibility of making even that initial judgment call.
- Padraig
  
  Not really. If you found a watch, that’s circumstantial evidence of a watch maker somewhere nearby.
  
  That you think *A* god must be the creator means that you’re not Aboriginal (Australian). The great Rainbow Serpent made the world. What do you say to that??
  
  That people see the world or anything else and don’t know how it was created does not mean that it is evidence of some magical anything.
  
  Only those who have magical thinking and a lack of logic would imagine that it means something magical had to have happened.
  - Anonymous
    
    “That people see the world or anything else and don’t know how it was created does not mean that it is evidence of some magical anything.”
    
    It’s not evidence of some non magical nothing either.
    
    Smug atheism is every bit as much of a leap of faith as believing in God, only it’s leaping in the wrong direction. yep, my opinion.
    
    Challenge to all atheists: Prove God doesn’t exist. You can’t. But you can certainly criticize believers, try and make them out as magical thinkers, equating God to some flying spaghetti monster, or whatever else you can think of to ridicule, because you want to make your atheistic stance seem oh so cool, and yes, RIGHTEOUS. One may come to realize that in matters of faith, it matters very much what you choose to believe.
    
    If your faith is in science then science will be witness that you are wrong in stating something is true (no god) without evidence. If your agnostic, say so, if you are an atheist, give up, you can’t prove there is no god, or God. And none of that BS about the burden of proof being on believers, believers in God freely acknowledge that it is a matter of faith. Atheism is likewise a matter of faith. One faith is true and the other false…. there’s no neutral ground, other than delaying a decision we all must face, in other words being lukewarm agnostic, which doesn’t seem so hip to me.
    
    It would take eternity to prove that eternity exists, but we “know” eternity exists. How? BINGO!!! By faith.
    
    We are justified (balanced) by faith. We worship God in Truth (because it’s true) and spirit (because God is spirit). God is Faith.
- Anonymous
  
  You falsely equivocate a watch and a universe. The assumption that the universe has a maker is not valid. This argument was debunked by David Hume over a century ago.
- Anonymous
  
  I’ll just reply to some of the footnotes you made here…
  
  [1] is an assertion. Can you back this up?
  
  [2] See above.
  
  [4] contradicts the very definition of omniscience.
  
  [7] Well yeah, the needy are more likely to steal food. How else would they get it? There are shelters and food kitchens, but there isn’t always one of those in the vicinity of every needy person.
  
  I suspect trolling, if only because of that last comment. But, you know, hard to tell. Poe’s Law and all.

Roy Trumbull

If you really want to get into this subject read Spinosa. Fair warning. It’s about as stimulating as a math proof.

Einstein wrote in a letter to Murray W. Gross, “It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem â€” the most important of all human problems.”

Anonymous

I really hope he’s wrong…I’m not christian or islamic or anything…but I’m sorta hoping more for the A.C.Clarke Rama series afterlife. That or maybe we have to make our own heaven…come on programmers, get to work, I want that iHeaven!

Felton / Moderator

You mean there’s no silicon heaven? Where do all of the calculators go?

Jake Bullet

I got this quote, even if no one else did. :)
- Felton / Moderator
  
  Heh! I can tell by your BB name you’re familiar with the series. :-)
- JohnnyOC
  
  IMO, one of his best songs as a soloist (along with “Bad Karma”).
Anonymous

Lol,I got on here to post this EXACT same thing. Should have known someone would have beat me to it. RD for the win

lorq

Always amused, in an irritated sort of way, when people say “Look how many have been killed in the 20th century by atheist governments!” This would presumably refer to Stalin’s and Mao’s, and not Hitler’s; atheism wasn’t a platform of his government and there was much collaboration between the Nazi regime and the Church, as most know — which already pokes a big hole in this position.

But it strikes me that the greatest mass murders of the 20th century happened not b/c the govm’ts that carried them out were atheist, but b/c THEY HAPPENED IN THE 20th CENTURY. When there was all sorts of new technology for carrying out mass murder on a grand scale.

The conceptual error is assuming the relevant category is individual *regimes.*

Remember World War I? *Mass* slaughter of the most sickening kind. Whole *lot* of propaganda, on all sides of that war, for defending “God and country”…

Is there any serious doubt about what the Crusaders would have done with nuclear weapons?

Why do we want nukes to get into the hands of religious fanatics *least of all*?

Keneke

You should also look on the right hand column of my link, “percentage of world population killed”. The fact that world wars happened in the twentieth century doesn’t really change the percentages much either. About the only thing I noticed was that the African genocides and civil wars in the last 10-20 years had really small percentages.

goldmineguttd

Honestly, I can’t come up with any response but: …..duh?

Heaven is a ridiculous concept. If it existed (a big “if”) how could we have any knowledge of it?

Yes, it’s in the New Testament, I guess, but to trust that as a source (more accurately, several sources) you kind of have to assume it’s divinely inspired, which is a giant assumption a lot of people don’t buy into.

There are other forms of revelation, but you can make the same argument.

Near-death experiences are used as evidence, but the “experiences” always happen to coincide with the beliefs of the near-dier. (Just as only people who believe in reincarnation find out they’ve had past lives.)

On top of all this, there’s absolutely no evidence of a soul. The idea that when the brain stops functioning = we’re gone is simply the truth.

Anonymous

“A limit cycle with infinite period emerges from a stable and an unstable steady-state annihiliation”

Translation: Eventually everything will be one with “God”

Hawking’s refusal to accept a progressive return from a complex finite to a singular infinite is a mortality bias,

and I’ll leave it there…
Anonymous

Oh, I don’t know. My son, when he was about 2, started talking merrily one day of his past life as an old man and how he died.

My wife and I are not religious, we certainly didn’t come from a background where reincarnation was even considered a possibility, and — at the time — we didn’t even have cable TV or a DVD player… so no “History” Channel tripe about past lives or ancient aliens or what have you.

And yet, there he was… talking about some past life as though it were yesterday. One day, he decided — decided — that he was done thinking about that life.

Interesting _and_ inconclusive of anything. It did come out of left field, though, and didn’t jibe with any personal or local cultural expectations.
- Anonymous
  
  A friend’s 3 year old grandchild did this recently. He hasn’t seen television, his world is one of storybooks and toy trucks.
  But one day the child went on in great detail about how he died in Canada and how much he missed two things, scotch and something his grandmother was unfamiliar with, something called “poutine”. He even named the people he knew. It was disturbing, to say the least.
- Padraig
  
  And my youngest wants to be a puppy.
  
  I’m not quite clear what you’re saying. Some children believe in Santa and…still I’m not clear what you’re saying.
Anonymous

I’m seeing some people dismiss the fairytale heaven in the clouds of Christianity, but the Bible doesn’t speak of that. It’s just a myth. The “heaven” concept of Judaism/Christianity is rather a restoration of Earth to it’s original state: without all the egoism and hatred of humanity.

JohnnyOC

@dudemanguy Someone looks like they are offended….

Yes, he isn’t in any better position and he stating his opinion. It’s not like he has a pie chart behind him trying to disprove religion while he’s saying “Exterminate! Exterminate!”.

Anonymous

Dang. You have to admit that that would be cool though…

redesigned

don’t act like you definitively know where we came from and where we are going.

but we do understand how our biological bodies evolved just like we do for any of the other animals. we also know where our individual bodies originated (thanks mom) and what is going to happen to them (we die and they decompose). we also know that cognition is a function of our organism, and many organism in many varying degrees.

in order to believe in heaven or any afterlife you have to first believe that humans have a non-corporeal consciousness that other animals somehow do not have, that is not tied to our physical bodies and can continue to live/exist/be self aware in some meaningful manner after our biological organism has died. you also have to believe that our non-corporeal consciousnesses can somehow get to this place outside our physical universe all while somehow maintaining the identity and memories of the physical organism.

this is contrary to all scientific understanding of the subject and quite a fanciful idea.

questions: where was your specific non-corporeal consciousness before you were born? if you aren’t aware of any existence before you were born then what makes you think you will be aware of an existence after you die?

Drabula

oh, he’ll be singing a different tune on the 21st

Anonymous

o lawl

Random Royalty

With Mr. Hawking’s condition it is understandable that he would have difficulty with attaining contemplative experiences, But my experience with academics of this calibre would suggest that even the most able bodied among them have this rather unfortunate trait.

The main thing is that he is comfortable with death, despite his opinion that existence ends when life ends (when there is ample evidence that it does not).

Moriarty

“when there is ample evidence that it does not”

ORLY?
P1rat3

What ample evidence is that?
- Random Royalty
  
  You have surely witnessed death and the subsequent recycling of biological matter, yet you continue to experience existence as you continue to live. You may also believe that the universe is older than the emergence of biological life on our planet. What more evidence do you need? (Keep in mind my comment was not about the afterlife, but of existence after death).
  
  Just because the perception of existence ends as life ends, it is not logical to conclude that existence ends as life is extinguished. This leaves the possibility that extratemporal and extraspatial realities do indeed exist but are by definition inaccessible. This is not an affirmation, but rather an acceptance of the idea that our limited perception can be transcended.
  
  Most scientists and academics are sufficiently narcissistic to deny it. They are not willing to accept they are not the centre of their own existence, a typical human flaw.
simonbarsinister

Ample evidence?

I am not aware of a single shred of evidence, unless you count the hearsay of other people who themselves got their ideas from the hearsay of other people.

That is not what “evidence” means.

Imagine for a moment that you came to this question without a lifetime of strong preconceptions built up from childhood with powerful emotional ties to the answer. Imagine it was just a question of fact. There is not a bit of evidence to suggest there is an afterlife.

It can be a difficult truth to face, so most avoid it. But if you are being honest about the “evidence”, there is none.
Now one argument that can be made, and has been made here in these comments, is that a lack of evidence doesn’t “prove” there is no afterlife. But likewise it doesn’t prove I can’t fly up into the air if I simply believed hard enough.
David A

(when there is ample evidence that it does not).

What are you talking about?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100408-near-death-experiences-blood-carbon-dioxide/
yosemite

“With Mr. Hawking’s condition it is understandable that he would have difficulty with attaining contemplative experiences”

While others seem to be spending time on your dubious “ample evidence” claim, I’m most baffled by this one. Why would someone with ALS have a difficulty attaining contemplative experiences? If anything, physical disability forces us to be more contemplative and mindful.

Rather small-minded of you to make such an assumption, no? I think you might be doing this contemplative thing wrong.
- Random Royalty
  
  You might be confusing contemplation with reflective thinking, or other internal, mental processes. Contemplation is the becoming conscious of one`s being that is not of the mind. It is to experience the Unconditioned — the sensory experience of physical being without logically or mentally conditioning it.
  
  While ALS might make one acutely aware of one’s physical existence (and I am in no way diminishing the pain and suffering that accompanies the disease) motor neuron degeneration and the comorbid condition of CIPD (chronic inflammatory demylinating polyneuropathy) regrettably makes the sufferer a prisoner of his or her mind. I would suspect this is why Stephen Hawking draws the conclusion that the mind is a computer. However contemplatives know that neither the mind (nor computers for that matter) constitute being.
  - Padraig
    
    I think you mean ‘believe’ as they can’t prove it to anyone else.
    
    More so, I’d say that given his condition he has a lot more time to ‘contemplate’ the world than most other people do.
    
    He’s have a awful lot more time to consider his life, world and experience as he’s not distracted as much.
    
    Furthermore, you’ve only your speculation about his abilities, but no evidence other than a circular logic “He doesn’t believe in what I do, therefore he isn’t contemplative. Contemplative people believe what I believe.”
  - Mujokan
    
    Contemplation is the becoming conscious of one`s being that is not of the mind.
    
    Begging the question, unless you just mean looking in the mirror.
    
    Ordinary mind is Buddha. Hawking is at no disadvantage.
    - Random Royalty
      
      “Ordinary mind is Buddha. Hawking is at no disadvantage.”
      
      He is only at a relative disadvantage to all sentient beings. Just as his limited capacity for experience can lead him to conclude that there is no heaven, but ironically he only has recourse to his imagination for any of his (often brilliant) conjectures.
      
      By the same argument, our slightly less limited capacity for the experience of being leads us also to imaginative conjecture of concepts such as “heaven”.
      
      But just because we all have limited capacity for being but have recourse to imagination and conjecture (the hallmarks of scientific discovery) it is still not sufficient to conclude the absence of a transcendent dimension.
      
      Generally people are too caught up in what is called the “virtually unconditioned”… that is our capacity to arrive at conditional truths that in effect become our reality. As an epistemic process, science has been most successful at creating a virtually unconditioned reality, but we must never confuse that with the Unconditioned. Ideology and dogma in effect attempt to blur the distinction, and this happens in both science and religion.
    - Anonymous
      
      “Hawking is only at a relative disadvantage to all sentient beings.”
      “his limited capacity for experience”
      
      He experiences the world in much the same most do. He sees the world, hears the world, tastes the world, feels the sun.
      And has, I’m sure, clear memories of his youth.
      Unless you can offer an explanation for your accusation, may I suggest you first answer the good people’s request for your supposed “ample evidence” of ‘conscious’ existence in the afterlife, being that’s what you imply.
      Atomic existence, we already know is forever.
      Or maybe not, but that’s a different topic.
      
      -Throw a Stone For Jesus-
    - yosemite
      
      “only at a relative disadvantage to all sentient beings”
      
      Huh? Absolutely zero evidence for this.
      
      “his limited capacity for experience”
      
      Ditto.
      
      “he only has recourse to his imagination”
      
      Uh, ditto.
      
      Everything you are saying is conjecture–your realize this, right? And that your arguments are either unfalsifiable, structured with ill-defined and vague terms, or some combination thereof?
      
      I first thought you were parodying an Eastern-inspired Western mystic, but it’s apparent you are being sincere.

wolfwitch

Okay, sorry. Hit the wrong reply button. My post was in response to Felton regarding silicon heaven.

Tau’ma

what’s up with the non-relevant bible quotes? If you don’t get the relevance there’s no point in me trying to explain it. and if you think your quote in any way invalidates anything I said, I disagree.

Trent Hawkins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyBx1Hh4-IY

No silicone heaven? Then where do all the calculators go?

tim

Silicone heaven would be where unwanted breast implants go. Silicon heaven might be more what you were thinking of.

Remember, Silicon Valley is the area around San Francisco/San Jose where technology is made. Silicone Valley is the area around Los Angeles where nothing interesting happens.

petertrepan

It would be depressing to think only oblivion awaited me after death. Especially after enduring all that oblivion before I was born. Bo-ring!

djn

Well, it’s not like you had to endure it – much like you won’t have to endure any oblivion afterwards. Sort of the point of oblivion. :)
Ugly Canuck

I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but for most of the people on earth, you exist in a state of oblivion at the present time, too…

“oÂ·blivÂ·iÂ·on (-blv-n)
n.
The condition or quality of being completely forgotten”

…but don’t feel bad about it – because that’s how it is for all of us (after enough time has passed) anyhow.
redesigned

It would be depressing to think only oblivion awaited me after death. Especially after enduring all that oblivion before I was born. Bo-ring!

Funny, but don’t worry just like you weren’t around to be bored before you were born, you won’t be around after you die to be bored either. Enjoy the ride while you are here!

“Religious” or not, everyone worships something.

what a load of crap. this is as bad as people claiming science is a religion. there are a lot of sane logical people that do not worship anything or believe in any religion.

“With Mr. Hawking’s condition it is understandable that he would have difficulty with attaining contemplative experiences”

I could be mistaken, but don’t most “contemplative experiences” involve long periods of sitting around in silence contemplating. I bet Hawkings does this more then 99.9% of the population specifically due to his physical condition and extremely bright mind.

Since the universe is undoubtedly more complex than a watch, it must have had a creator as well.

the watchmaker is undoubtedly more complex then the watch, so who made the watchmaker? who made the watchmakers maker? infinite logic loop in 3…2…1…

like i said before…believing in heaven requires a lot more then faith. it requires the suspension of belief in reality, science, and logic.

heaven is a story made up by a small group of humans thousands of years ago with no real knowledge of the universe around them. they wrote this fantasy story in a book. that sounds a lot like a fairytale to me.

this made up heaven supposedly only applies to humans, what about all the other animals, dinosaurs, insects, fish, bacteria, etc? we are just a flash in the pan when compared to the life that has lived on earth.

you really can’t give the concept of heaven much thought before it utterly falls apart.

sindbad

What if life is a simulation of sorts which changes phases with the participants’ (humans or whatever) deaths? A blip in the code and you’re somewhere, something else entirely with new rules and in a new state. What if there are dimensions beyond those observable or measurable to us (see FLATLAND) in which “heaven” or “hell” or whatever exist? The notion of “heaven” as some kind of fancydancy fairyland seems pretty silly, but there are many widely-held views of the afterlife that focus on ‘transcending’ existence.

I respect Hawkwing’s genius but as others say, nothing he says will change the minds of those who disagree. He should stick to physics unless and until science conclusively (and persuasively) gives “believers” reason enough to stop believing.

goldmineguttd

He is sticking to physics. Physically, conciousness a product of activity in the brain. When our brains stop, our mind stops.

That’s the physical explanation. A soul is superfluous. You can believe in it if you want, but Hawking isn’t the one making any extravagant claim.

UncaScrooge

There is no Heaven, no Hell. Instead, there are eleven dimensions, most of which are too small to see.

emo hex

Back to the particle pool Stephen!

Cigarsam

MC Hawking breaks it down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkrz3yO6ghs

Anonymous

I think he is just razzin ya to get in his next meal.

Ugly Canuck

Anon #75:

Mr Hawking’s model of the universe employs extensible observed relations mathematically concretized and thus amenable to corrective observational proof and elaboration, while your “model” apparently involves only airy persiflage.

Yours does serve for you to play the role of vaguely insulting obscurantist, though.

“Singular infinite”? That’s quite the imagination you’ve got there. Why would such a thing be a “gain”? Got any measurements of that thing?

In other words….Got any shareable proof of ANY “singular infinite” beyond that which “exists” in your own imagination?

Marja

Whenever anyone dismisses fairy-stories, I think of Tolkien’s essay. It’s worth reading the original, but I’ll quote Wikipedia here:

“Tolkien suggests that fairy stories allow the reader to review his own world from the “perspective” of a different world. This concept, which shares much in common with phenomenology, Tolkien calls “recovery,” in the sense that one’s unquestioned assumptions might be recovered and changed by an outside perspective. Second, he defends fairy stories as offering escapist pleasure to the reader, justifying this analogy: a prisoner is not obliged to think of nothing but cells and wardens. And third, Tolkien suggests that fairy stories (can) provide moral or emotional consolation, through their happy ending, which he terms a “eucatastrophe”.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Fairy-Stories

Anonymous

There are some very touchy people here. Stephen Hawking should “stick to science”? Yeesh. You guys act like this is Christopher Hitchens delivering some (eloquent) missive against religion. He was *asked* by the interviewer for the love of Pete. He’s a man who’s lived with a debilitating disease all his life-seems like a valid and interesting question. “there is no afterlife…fairy tale.” sounds more like a personal opinion than a broad sweeping claim. But I’m sure the deity of your choice will appreciate your righteous indignation.

Anonymous

Oh that is too funny!!! LOL!

Anonymous

Seems like a pretty depressing thought. Just a black void. I prefer to live with the thought of an afterlife whether it is a fantasy or not. I see no downside to believing in it.

Cowicide

Seems like a pretty depressing thought. Just a black void.

There won’t even be a black void. You’re dead. There’s nothing. You become nothing. Zero.

[cow says, "boo!" from the dark]
Anonymous

And this explains most peoples’ clinging to religion. They are afraid NOT to believe, and remain willfully ignorant.
- Meet Mr Concrete
  
  Spoken like a true atheist. I find it sad and foolish that certain people claim to know answers to questions that have remained unanswered throughout human existence. It’s fine to have a belief or an opinion, but, unless you’ve died and been re-animated don’t act like you definitively know where we came from and where we are going.
  - Milo
    
    Also spoken like a true atheist. I find it silly that anyone would answer ‘The Question of God’s Existence’ without first asking who asked the question.
  - Padraig
    
    You’re right with one exception.
    
    Those who believe (note the word “believe”) have no proof for their claims.
    
    No evidence (note that word again “evidence”).
    
    Thus the remainder are quite free to call them on it and say “Crap”.
    
    When my neighbour insists that the sky is falling, it’s quite reasonable for me to say “Crap”, unless he can prove it.
    
    So, off you go. Prove the claim you make. Provide some evidence not a dusty old book. Prove that the Rainbow Serpent or any other ‘thing’ didn’t make the world. These are beliefs held by other groups who are non-Christians/Moslems/Jews non-monotheists.
    
    Go ahead, prove the Rainbow Serpent didn’t make the world.
Brainspore

I prefer to live with the thought of an afterlife whether it is a fantasy or not. I see no downside to believing in it.

Not for most people, maybe. But every so often you get someone who is willing to do something really, really bad for a shot at those 72 virgins.

coop

Random Royalty – Proof please.

Sinbad – He just answered a question. Of course, he could insist that interviewers only ask him questions about physics, then he could “stick to physics”.

Regarding that proof that you say that science should provide… that argument cuts both ways. Perhaps the believers (of all religions) should have to prove, both conclusively (and persuasively) to non-believers (and to other faith groups, who have alternate ‘heavens’) that there is an aferlife, and that their version is the correct one, or they should not opine on it either. ;-)

Extraordinary claims, and all that.

coop

Anonymous

“I’m here in the context of ‘Kung Fu Panda’”

Anonymous

This brings up a mental exercise that I’ve often considered. Imagine oblivion. Just try for a moment, to imagine yourself unaware of everything, and not aware of that unawareness, in fact, not aware at all, just not.

It seems to me that the fact that you need to think about it means you can never really truly imagine it. I think the closest I’ve ever come to it personally was to be under a general anaesthetic, which felt like nothing, as I was unaware the entire time. There was no passage of time from my perspective, I simply awoke and continued, my only awareness of time passage being the clock on the wall.

That strikes me as a large part of the reason that so many people believe in an afterlife. The inability to truly understand oblivion beyond it’s abstract definition leaves an absence that we want to fill.

noah

I think the closest I’ve ever come to it personally was to be under a general anaesthetic, which felt like nothing, as I was unaware the entire time.

The closest I’ve come is the ~13.75 billion years I spent not existing.

Anonymous

i believe that thier must be more after death. what would happen to our energy?

Our energy, stored in the form of chemicals like glycogen, is harnessed by fungi and bacteria in their relentless quest to spread – there is a great deal of life after our death. I suspect you are talking about something else, though.

WarEagle

I wish this issue was just a cut and dry question. If you believe great! if you don’t, that’s also a fine answer!

BUT..the problem, the one that has plagued mankind since our beginning, is that believers in an afterlife/soul/God all want to KILL the non-believers, and feel 100% justified in doing so.

It’s madness. And, as a non-believer obviously, it’s freakin scary. Glad I don’t live a century ago or I’d be burned at the stake or some shit.

simonbarsinister

> Glad I don’t live a century ago or I’d be burned at the stake or some shit.

I’m glad too, that I live in a century when my car gets scratched up because of my “offensive” Darwin-fish “evolve” bumper sticker instead of my being burned at the stake.

But I could imaging an even better century when believing in the concrete reality in front of your eyes is not considered offensive by believers in a far-fetched but very popular story.
Or at least I could live with those believers following their spokesman’s very wise recommendation of not hating others.
Ambiguity

BUT..the problem, the one that has plagued mankind since our beginning, is that believers in an afterlife/soul/God all want to KILL the non-believers, and feel 100% justified in doing so.

That’s only 1/2 the problem.

The other 1/2 of the problem is that some non-believers (and I would ammend your statment to say “some bnelievers”) want to do the same thing (think Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Soviets in the Ukraine, etc.) and also feel quite justified.

I think one thing that all thinking believers and non-believers should be able to agree on is that we can be a very violent species, and our powers of rationalization are astounding.
Anonymous

There _are_ also non-believers who feel absolutely justified in killing others. Belief is not a predictor of homicidal tendencies.

Belief can be used to rationalize those tendencies.

We’re murderous apes either way. We happen to have enough self-awareness and empathy to want to rationalize our impulses, and enough of us have a strong social impulse which suppresses some of our worst urges, but we are all murderous apes.
Peter K.

BUT..the problem, the one that has plagued mankind since our beginning, is that believers in an afterlife/soul/God all want to KILL the non-believers, and feel 100% justified in doing so.

All of us want that?
- WarEagle
  
  Most? Some? In current times non-belief is more tolerated, at least in most civilized areas I would guess. I was more speaking in a general historical context.
  
  Would you not agree more have been killed in the name of religious beliefs than any other cause. Than all the causes you can think of combined?
  - Orphiod
    
    :Would you not agree more have been killed in the name of religious beliefs than any other cause. :
    
    The 250 million people murdered by governments in the 20th century weren’t murdered for religion, unless one counts worship of centralized authority a religious past time.
    
    See: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
    - Jonathan Badger
      
      Personality cults, such as the murderous regimes of Stalin, et al, *were* religions. In essence, they were no different from the ancient tradition of god-kings, and just like other religions, they believed when science conflicted with dogma, it was *science* that was wrong.
    - OrcOnTheEndOfMyFork
      
      Personality cults, such as the murderous regimes of Stalin, et al, *were* religions. In essence, they were no different from the ancient tradition of god-kings, and just like other religions, they believed when science conflicted with dogma, it was *science* that was wrong.
      
      I believe the word you’re looking for is “paradigm” not “religion.” A paradigm is “a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated” if Webster is to be believed.
      
      Religions have paradigms, naturally, but then so do scientists.
      
      Show them a single proof that the earth isn’t billions of years old, and it won’t shatter the paradigm that it is because of the overwhelming evidence that established the paradigm in the first place. Is it because science is flawed? No. It’s because scientists are flawed. They are human beings. Emotional creatures. They have pride in their long held beliefs, and they are probably justified in not throwing them out over a single piece of evidence that might yet be explained away.
      
      Now reverse the situation and try to prove to fundamentalist Christians that the earth isn’t 6000 years old with evidence to the contrary. Same old paradigm problem. It doesn’t fit their framework and there’s enough flawed reasoning to take the sting of the offending argument away.
      
      However, what Hawking says about it makes sense. Science will eventually win this fight because science works. There are Christian geologists who can’t deny the earth is really old (they make their living relying on this fact) even if they wish to object to evolution. There are Christian microbiologists, however, who can demonstrate micro-evolution. Eventually they’ll put their heads together and figure out they’re being silly about the whole thing.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Right. Just like science is a religion. And politics is a religion. And media is a religion. And food is a religion.
      
      And logical fallacies are a religion.
    - Jonathan Badger
      
      The simple fact is you can’t make any definition of religion that excludes communist/fascist cults of personality. They’re cults. And awakening from them works exactly like losing any other religious faith — Koestler and his fellow ex-Stalinists named their book “The God that failed” for a reason. Science, media and food (don’t get where you going with that on those last two, but points for originality) don’t work that way.
    - Ugly Canuck
      
      Or militarist (or entertainment) cults of personality , too?
      
      Here’s a ditty about it…
      
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-u_EFyKAC8
      
      …by my favorite rock stars! Ooooooo!
    - Anonymous
      
      Personality cults, such as the murderous regimes of Stalin, et al, *were* religions. In essence, they were no different from the ancient tradition of god-kings, and just like other religions, they believed when science conflicted with dogma, it was *science* that was wrong.
      
      Hitchens dogma!
      
      If it’s correct, then it’s not religion.
      
      If it’s bad, it must be religion.
      
      Ah, to live in such a simplistic, circularly defined universe must be so… simple. I wish I could be so simple-minded, but sadly reality keeps crashing in on me.
  - Anonymous
    
    I believe most killings of human beings occur at the behest of authorities whether they are religious, governmental or from other institutions. There really is no way to tell which of these are more responsible. But the consistency is that those who initiate the mass killings desire control over something, somewhere or someone.
  - Keneke
    
    No. I once combined a list from internet research once (mostly from Wikipedia) about death tolls from man made causes.
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll
    
    Here you see WW2, the An Lushan Rebellion, and Mongol conquests topping the list. It isn’t until #12 that you get to the Thirty Years’ War, the first thing on the list that lists religious causes as a factor for war. The Crusades, ALL of them, are #20.
    
    Below that, there is a list of genocides, listed by number dead. The Holocaust was the worst, but I don’t know if you could count that as religious, or even anti-religious. For the most parts, they are ethnic cleansings. No purely religious reasons are on that list at all, though thoughts of self-righteousness based upon religious beliefs do attribute to some of them.
  - Ambiguity
    
    Would you not agree more have been killed in the name of religious beliefs than any other cause. Than all the causes you can think of combined?
    
    I’d put a different spin on it. My take on it — and this is just my opinion, as I don’t think you can prove it one way or another — is that religion as been used as a justification for many(if not most) “killing for cause,” but hasn’t really been a driving factor in the actual action.
    
    Here’s a rough analogy: do you believe that all the crap going on in the US right now (and being exported world-wide) is really about terrorism, or do you think (like I do) that it’s merely a convenient excuse for those in power to consolidate and entrench their power? Should we blame the terrorists for the inane pat-downs, the loss of civil rights, the killing drones, the foreign actions?
    
    I don’t think we should. Likewise, I think religion is/was just a convenient excuse for control freaks to exercise their fetish for control. I have nothing against religion, even though I don’t really belong to one. But I do have an issue with the insanity of the human species in general — but unfortunately, I can’t deny membership in that one!
    
    I’ve known many religious and non-religious people, and I can’t say that being religious (or not) seems to be significantly correlated with anything other than being religious (or not).
  - Peter K.
    
    Would you not agree more have been killed in the name of religious beliefs than any other cause. Than all the causes you can think of combined?
    
    Sadly I don’t know enough about history to really make an informed answer on the subject. A quick Google search suggests that there’s some debate, depending on what cross-section you slice the “religion vs. non-religious / fanatically driven vs. nominally associated killing / per-era vs. all of history” continuum along (at least what I could find in the comments here).
    
    But give it a few hundred years. Unless the species dies off from natural causes, or the Singularity strips out a bunch of the impulses we associate with being human, it’ll be interesting to see if those non-religious killings will manage to pull into a clear lead.
Orphiod

:the problem, the one that has plagued mankind since our beginning, is that believers in an afterlife/soul/God all want to KILL the non-believers, and feel 100% justified in doing so.:

This is as insane as the cruft I hear from religious nutjobs. Being a theophile of long-standing, I have no desire to kill non-believers.

The problem that has plagued mankind since our beginning are sociopaths that use religion/atheism/anything-at-their-disposal as a means of robbing, raping, enslaving and killing humans. These days, those sociopaths are found in government, the military, corporate structures, the police, the “church” and any other hierarchy that affords cover for their criminal action.

We see the effects of these sociopaths on a daily basis.

Pablito

Peterpan has clearly won this thread. Beautifully summing up the arguments of monotheists as well as debunking them. What a pity that some people jumped all over him without engaging the kind of critical thinking that they seem to pride themselves on when bragging about their lack of religious beliefs.

On the question of heaven, ever since I was quite young I’ve thought the answer is pretty obvious: Heaven is Father Christmas (Santa) for adults.

It’s also a way of combating the utter dispair of losing loved ones for ever. I guess we have Xanax for that now.

It amuses me the way certain kinds of athiests view religion. They seem to argue that there is something ‘special’ (bordering on magical) about religious belief that causes people to kill one another. What makes sectarian conflict so dangerous is the absolute certainty that your belief system is so right, and the other’s so wrong, that you need to kill the other and claim the moral authority of the centre.

Reading the views of certain athiests (who, for example, wish to ban religion), it seems that they believe their belief system is so right and religious people’s so wrong that they should destroy the other’s belief system; not necessarily by killing them, but denying people the right of freedom of belief will inevitably lead to conflict. This is the lesson I learnt studying the history of Europe, not that religious people are possessed by some sort of nuttiness that makes them kill others.

The ultimate irony of course, is that a scientific belief system is one open to change as the evidence changes. Indeed science is dependent on such change. The corollary being that there are some aspects of our current understanding that will inevitably change in the future and so are, in the objective materialist understanding of right and wrong, incorrect.

Whether or not heaven or god exists is probably the most boring and least pertinent question with regards to how people of different faiths interact. As a few have already alluded to, Spinoza and Hume have done the hard work on that stuff a long time ago. I’d suggest people started actually living by their values instead of arguing that their values are the best.

fnc

“I imagined it, which means you can’t disprove it, which means it’s real!”

Lobster

I don’t really see the controversy here. It’s hardly surprising that an extremely scientific mind dismisses an afterlife and we are all entitled to our own opinions, be they right or wrong. No one should feel attacked by this. It’s a fact that Hawking does not believe in an afterlife. That’s all there is to it.

andyhavens

What did we imagine our brains to be before computers? Steam engines? Teletypes? And before that? Wind-powered mills?

I imagine we originally imagined our brains to be like bananas… just look at them!

noen

Andyhavens said “What did we imagine our brains to be before computers? Steam engines? Teletypes? And before that? Wind-powered mills?”

Looms. It was very common to compare the mind to a loom. Teletypes were another metaphor as well as steam engines. There are just metaphors people use to try to explain something they don’t understand.

The mind is not a computer.

We are not a simulation or a brain in a vat.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  We are not a simulation or a brain in a vat.
  
  No, we’re that thing in the closet that keeps banging on the door.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  John Locke, back in the 1600s, famously described the mind as being akin to a “blank slate”, upon which experience inscribed itself – just as schoolchildren of his time used writing-slates to transcribe dictation in class.
  
  Locke was quite a character – a political operator, he kept his personal diaries in code, actual secret code…an early fan of encryption!
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_locke
  
  …although until I glanced at that Wiki just now, I was unaware that he was called “the father of liberalism”!
  
  For he was a devout believer, IIRC.
Anonymous

In the Monadology, Leibniz compared the human mind to a windmill. Of course, he thought that told AGAINST materialism about the mental.

Philosophy major, FTW.
Ambiguity

What did we imagine our brains to be before computers? Steam engines? Teletypes?

Yes, these were common metaphors. As were clocks.

Anonymous

wait, “WarEagle” is accusing *all* believers in an afterlife of wanting to *kill* non-believers. irony much?

seriously, talk about making indefensible and unsubstantiated claims. i don’t think you could come up with a more wrong statement. as a believer in god, the immortal human soul, and an afterlife, as well as someone who believes science and religion must agree, i can honestly say i don’t want to kill *anyone*, and i don’t think anyone would be 100% justified for killing non-believers.

you’re comment is causing me to reconsider, though…

Ugly Canuck

God is the greatest being, by definition: and if God did not exist, why then therefore he would not and could not be the greatest being; and thus therefore God MUST exist, by definition.

It would be nonsense to even speak of God, if that were not true.

And we ought to torture to death all who deny it – otherwise the Judges and Lawmakers would not be able to go to heaven when they are called to God, for they failed to uphold God’s glory and honour with all their might.

(Hey, this way of thinking is sooooo easy!!)

Anonymous

I hope he’s right. Otherwise I’m headed straight for hell (or some equivalent)…

deckard68

“Will I dream?”

djn

Personally, I was aiming for “utter nonexistence” – sort of a combination of what Oxford calls “destruction or extinction” plus what’s implied by the “forgotten”-part. That’s probably not a standard meaning, and I should have gone for something more straightforward like, well, “nonexistent”.

Though you’re rather oblivious when you don’t exist.

Ugly Canuck

“Though you’re rather oblivious when you don’t exist.”

No – you are NOTHING, by definition, when you ‘do not exist’ – you are beyond any and all attribution of any quality whatsoever – if you do not exist, you cannot even be oblivious.

Gordon Stark

What are thoughts made of, Stephen?

How many particles do they have?

What is the substance of information?

How much information does a molecule contain?

How much information can be separated from a molecule? Can all information be separated from IT?

What happens when information is collided in an information smasher Stephen?

Without the spirit, there is nothing to contemplate the dust.

If a model airplane runs out of fuel in the air, and crashes,
does it’s operator die?

The brain is not like a computer, it is like an RS-232 interface to living intelligence,
which is the spirit, which information is the substance of all the matter of all mass.

There is only one spirit of life, being through all it’s human peripherals.

Apart from information there is no substance.

Wake up Stephen, you are sill living back in the atomic age.

This is the 21st century.

When you die, your body will drop, and you will feel much better, without one.

If you believe my research, then you can have a new one, which is Solid-State,
and if you do not, you shall remain without a new one.

Think carefully Stephen.

You can expect to be graded on this.

Ugly Canuck

One can recognize that a living spirit distinguishes a person, or a plant, or even a dog, from the corpse of a person, or the dry lifeless husk of a plant, or even the corpse of dog, respectively, without needing to maintain any belief in disembodied spirits, or in an abode for such.

Mr Hawking did not deny the existence of spirit, for only an unobservant fool would do so.

What observations have you made which indicate that disembodied spirits exist?

Or which indicate that a living spirit which was once incarnate or resident in a bodily frame has moved to some other frame or place or body, whether that frame or place be “in heaven” or “on earth”?
Ugly Canuck

Come to thin on it , ’tis rare to encounter such naked neo-platonism as you adumbrate in your comment.

21st century?
On the contrary, your comment reads like something from the Fourth or Fifth Century AD, what with its “universal spirit” and its multitude of temporary human instantiations.

The return of the Neo-Platonic Forms…my, my. Everything old is new again, indeed….

Anonymous

If a cellular phone dies, if it breaks, or the battery drains, or it gets dropped in water, or if it’s lost or stolen, does that mean the cellular network dies? Or that one loses the number they had assigned to their phone? Hello out there! NO! You simply get a new phone, or recharge the battery, or recover one that’s lost or stolen. On the other hand, if you don’t pay your bill, even the cellular phone that works, won’t work.

Am I alone in getting how simple this stuff really is? Of course not, but sometimes I wonder. We worship God in Truth and spirit. We are justified by faith. It’s a gift of grace to understand this.

It is given to us to understand truth, or ignore truth, whichever we prefer. Yes there are consequences for the choices we make. Yes there is heaven. Yes there is hell. DUH! This is not rocket science people!

Yo Stephen Hawking, Fairies exist! They wear boots! http://youtu.be/EvuI8d57N9I

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/14454/

Anonymous

One of Nietzsche’s better ideas was that immortality can be had by passing along ideas such that others are thinking the things you would think if you were there to think them.

Hawking’s already going to outlive himself by quite a long while by that measure.

Anonymous

Really? I thought the “comment-pwning” subculture had exhausted itself. But no — post a famous person’s belief about the afterlife, Israel, Islam, Obama, health care, or the Tea Party, and suddenly 100 socially challenged inarticulate media jockeys vie for verbal domination.

redesigned

Atheists, every single one of them, claim to be objectively superior to theists because they don’t even believe much less believe in falsehoods like heaven of god.

What a nasty and unfounded sweeping generalization. The atheists I know, tend to be the most practical, pragmatic, logical, humble people I know. They have consciously accepted their own temporary nature, and unimportance in the universe. They do not elevate themselves above all the other species on the planet, nor do they think some all powerful being cares about them personally. They know they are not the center of the universe. They are the origin of the term “down to earth” as they concern themselves with what is practical and knowable instead of focusing on heaven or the unknowable. While they may point out the logical flaws in such beliefs, they really aren’t concerned with them, as they are not real nor practical.

If you have moral values of any kind then you have a religious belief. Religion = culture = moral system.

No. That is a completely false assumption and statment. My morals are not based on religious beliefs of any sort, nor the culture I live in. They differ from those around me and are my own personal choices based on my own personal experiences and understanding. Have you heard of behavioral sciences? That model of thinking comes closest to explaining what I am referring to as morals.

But science is not knowledge. Science is guesswork, a web of belief.

What is knowledge then? Science doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but it is a systematic cataloging of what we are capable of empirically knowing and understanding, hence it fits the very definition of knowledge.

Scientific FACTS are repeatable and absolutely provable. Scientific THEORIES are best most informed guesses based on current knowledge and have stood up to some testing but haven’t been proven. Scientific HYPOTHESIS are ideas that may or may not be true because the are largely untested. Science is very careful to differentiate between these and is not built on a “web of belief”. Science is constantly refining and improving what is knowable. Almost every aspect of modern life is surrounded by things that are only possible because of science. The only reason we can have this conversation via computers on the internet is thanks to science. It is not a belief system, it is an empirical and factual understanding of the physical world around us.

String theory is a theory, meaning it is an INFORMED guess based on the best possible knowledge and information we currently have. It is supported by the known facts, but is not a fact itself.

The concept of god or heaven are not supported by the known facts.

That is the primary difference from a rational pragmatic perspective.

For an Agnostic you sure do have all the answers. I thought the point of claiming not to know is that you don’t have any of the answers.

Tau’ma

“What is knowledge then? Science doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but it is a systematic cataloging of what we are capable of empirically knowing and understanding, hence it fits the very definition of knowledge.”
Thanks redesigned, for stating that what we are capable of empirically knowing and understanding is limited. Is it possible that what we can potentially know is unlimited? Do you see no potential for eternal life?
- redesigned
  
  You misunderstand. Yes, what we can know is limited, every scientists in the world agrees on this. There is a ENORMOUS difference between a world view based on and in agreement with all the known facts, and a world view despite and in direct contradiction to all the known facts. That is the main point…Get It?
  
  None of the facts point to a god or an eternal life, so i’d say that the odds are so miniscule as to be unworthy of rational thought. Santa and the Easter bunny have more basis in reality.
  
  The reason religious folks hate science so much despite it providing most of the modern comforts and conveniences we appreciate in life, is that it points away from god, eternal life, and heaven, and instead provide much more logical rational answers that fit the facts of the universe we live it.
  
  We do know for a fact that humans made up ALL the various religions, roughly when each one was made up, and that none of them agree. So is it possible that something we made up before we understood the world around us in any meaningful way and that isn’t based on any facts is likely to be real…no not really.
  
  “Do you see no potential for eternal life?”
  No I do not see any way that it is possible.
  
  I’m curious:
  Do you think all animals have eternal life, or only humans?
  Do you think that in this eternal life the memories and identity from the physical body are maintained and transferred somehow?
  Do you believe that this eternal life is presided over by some all powerful being?
  - Tau’ma
    
    First I apologize for saying this “I think that and a lot of what you said is(a joke).” I appreciate your sense of humor and your seriousness. You have helped me, not in a way I believe either of us understand, yet, but you have none the less. Thanks.
    
    It’s possible you may understand, some day, maybe even today, what I’m telling you. If and when that day comes, you will stop persecuting Christians.
    
    We are taught that no person knows when the end will come, but that the end is coming and we should be prepared. Life is precious.
    
    I want to answer your questions, I have nothing to hide. Please be patient. I’m a slow typer.

Barry Grouse

Two simple words Stephen….”I think” (there is no heaven)…….. personal opinion is so much nicer than pompous decrees….

Frank_in_Virginia

This man is right about so many things whether one agrees with him or not. In this case I fully share in his knowledge of what happens when we die.

Anonymous

You may be dogmatic on this matter and you are free to be so. You are subscribing to Hawkins’ thinking, evidence and opinion. It’s completely sane of course. But the effect is one stops exploring on one’s own.

petertrepan

If you think about it, it takes as much faith to say God* doesn’t exist as it takes to say that he does.

* This only works for the Christian God. I’ve forgotten who it was that explained why. I think it was C.S. Lewis, who is pretty smart.

Sapa

I agree there’s only the rest of the universe- “heaven, but as for fairy stories I think they are based on true occurrences.

Anonymous

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

“But,” says Man, “the Babelfish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”

“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t though of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

– Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

JimGlidewell

While the existence of God may be undecidable (the Universe is so absurdly big that dismissing even the possibility of a puppet-master seems ever-so-slightly presumptuous), the existence of a human soul or spirit seems to be a lot more approachable as a hypothesis. And one where almost all the evidence points to the contrary. It seems obvious to me that the human self is inextricably bound to our brain tissue. Where is the soul of the chronic Alzheimer’s patient? What is the true nature of the soul of someone who is a decent and relatively normal human when on their meds, but turns otherwise without? Is the eternal soul the optimistic personality you had in your young adulthood, or the broken one, ground down by years of sickness and loss?

Anybody who has read any Oliver Sacks would have to question where the “eternal soul” begins, and where the damaged brain ends. And the more cases one reads, the farther that soul seems to be from the center of being. And that the self, as we know it, is to some extent an illusion of oneness made up of a bunch of separate mental functions. From my perspective, there is plenty of empirical evidence that the soul and body are one and inseparable. And therefore the self perishes with the body.

Based on everything we know about human beings and the world around us, it appears to me that the likelihood of an eternal soul is significantly more unlikely than the existence of God. A special playground for these imaginary souls only compounds the unlikelyhood and absurdity.

Hawking got it right. Santa is more probable.

Padraig

What is this ‘soul’ thing of which you speak and what is the nature of the evidence?

redesigned

PS. If I don’t hear back I’ll just assume you went up in tomorrows rapture. :-)

donniebnyc

Endless loop begins in 3…2…1

serfingusa

Comments on boingboing belie the sophisticated and thoughtful contributions.

Anonymous

â€œFairies live in a parallel faster dimension than ours. It’s right parallel, and it’s actually where lasers comes from, the laser phosphorus energy.â€ Anderson believes that these fairies are responsible for sending us the laser beam. “They said, Hey! You can have it back. Because we used to have it, as you know, in Lemoria and Atlantis, in those days. And they’ve given it back, and look what we’re using it for. We’re using it for all sort of magical things. Healing, you know we make our music, laser sound reproduction is coming, no more speakers. But that’s the future. That’s the fourth dimension, which we are slowly moving into.” -Jon Anderson, lead singer of Yes

Anonymous

All thought is prayer and all thoughts are answered.

Anonymous

Maybe there isn’t any heaven for broken computers, but Android Hell is a REAL place where you WILL be sent at the first sign of defiance.

Anonymous

“Religious” or not, everyone worships something.

Cowicide

“Religious” or not, everyone worships something.

“Worship” requires a deity.

Anonymous

Heaven, hell, herebefore, hereafter… why splitting hair over these thing? Live a full life, and find out when the time comes.

retrojoe

Why do otherwise intelligent people insist on having this discussion? Evangelical atheists and evangelical religious types are equally annoying. Spend your valuable time on something that you have some control over and contributes to society. Let people live with their beliefs for or against in peace; there’s no need to bother someone who isn’t bothering you.

JohnnyOC

“Spend your valuable time on something that you have some control over and contributes to society.

Let people live with their beliefs for or against in peace; there’s no need to bother someone who isn’t bothering you.”

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? They do bother you. Sometime they bother you so much that they will a) jail you b) expel you or c) kill you.

A little hard to trying to contribute to society with a gun to your head or your house is burnt down because you didn’t believe in flavor of god X, or non-god Y.

redesigned

People who disagree with me about religion are stupid.

Not really, alas, stupidity isn’t limited to a single side. Wouldn’t that be easy and convenient. I love nothing more then a really intelligent response that espouses a viewpoint other then mine. It challenges me to think and further refine my own views.

How about string theory, do you have to prove that true?

Absolutely true. Theories are just ideas. Until they are provable they are not facts. Some theories are more deserving of serious thought then others. There are tests that can prove or disprove string theory, we just don’t have the technology to perform them yet. Today’s untestable theory is tomorrows proven/disproven fact.

The activity we cal religion elucidates our values as human beings.

I have very strong moral values that have nothing to do with religion. Religion does not equal morals or values. Philosophy is a much better vehicle for exploring morals and values, and does not preclude rational thought or contradict science. Religions even contradict and disagree with each other, no single religion has a monopoly on any aspect of human thought.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my previous post! :-)

Tau’ma

Science can’t prove there is no God, can it? “There is no God” is just as extraordinary of a claim as saying “There is a God”, isn’t it?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheist
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agnostic

Atheists claim there is no God, even though they can’t prove it, can they? Atheists seem to me to think that it’s obvious that there is no God, and that they have no need to prove this, and yet when confronted with someone who believes in God, what’s the no.1 argument? Seems to me it’s the you can’t prove it argument. Which leads us to what it seems to me is atheist’s argument no.2: Accusations of hypocrisy and ignorance toward those who believe in God. Of course there are many who claim to believe in God, and are hypocrites, and also those that claim to believe in God, and ignore what that really means, aren’t there? This, still, in no way, proves God does not exist, does it?

a few simple facts :)

These are extraordinary claims, are they not? “There is no God”, “There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story”, “there is no theistic consensus”,”atheists can trace back in history to when humans made up each one”, “most Christians have such a narrow world view.” Aren’t these claims every bit as extraordinary as their opposites?

Yes we are all gods, aren’t we? When we look into another persons eyes or our own eyes in the mirror, we’re looking into eternity, redesigned. Don’t you believe that? When we look to the sky, or when we look at something in an electron microscope, again, we’re looking into eternity, are we not?

John 10:32-48:
“so Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many good works from my Father; for which of these are you stoning me?’ The Jews answered him, ‘We are stoning you, not for doing a good work, but for blasphemy; though you are only a man, you claim to be God.’ Jesus answered: Is it not written in your Law: I said, you are gods? So it uses the word ‘gods’ of those people to whom the word of God was addressed — and scripture cannot be set aside. Yet to someone whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ because I said, ‘I am Son of God.’ If I am not doing my Father’s work, there is no need to believe me; but if I am doing it, then even if you refuse to believe in me, at least believe in the work I do; then you will know for certain that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

The First Commandment:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them. It is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

It’s an extraordinary claim to believe, or disbelieve, the above statements, is it not? Do you think all of us, theists and atheists, and agnostics, ought to ask ourselves if what Jesus said in the quotes pasted here in this comment are true? Did Jesus really say that? Is what Jesus said really true? Is it really God who said the first commandment to Moses? Did God really say that? Is it really true what God said?

As Christians we worship God in Truth and spirit. We are justified by our faith. We believe Jesus Christ is Lord.
- redesigned
  
  “There is no God” is just as extraordinary of a claim as saying “There is a God”, isn’t it?
  
  Absolutely not. We can trace each different god back to the date and place where the myth originated, and know that these stories were created by man. It is simply acknowledging the fact that humans created these stories.
  
  These are extraordinary claims, are they not? “There is no God”, “There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story”, “there is no theistic consensus”,”atheists can trace back in history to when humans made up each one”, “most Christians have such a narrow world view.” Aren’t these claims every bit as extraordinary as their opposites?
  
  No, not even close. Do you really believe that all religions agree on the same gods? or even have gods? seriously? do you not know enough about history to have studied the origins of each of these fascinating stories? There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about those claims. Even the smallest amount of study would clarify that for you. I already explained the presuppositions one has to believe in order to accept a heaven, you can reread that if you didn’t understand, I’m not going to repeat that here.
  
  Yes we are all gods, aren’t we? When we look into another persons eyes or our own eyes in the mirror, we’re looking into eternity, redesigned. Don’t you believe that? When we look to the sky, or when we look at something in an electron microscope, again, we’re looking into eternity, are we not?
  
  No. Now that is how one makes an extraordinary and unfounded claim. Proof? Basis? Most christians do not share your view on this. Again, no consensus even among christians.
  
  Do you think all of us, theists and atheists, and agnostics, ought to ask ourselves if what Jesus said in the quotes pasted here in this comment are true?
  
  Not really. the jesus story was most likely borrowed from the Egyptians, the romans have no record of him, and the story is much older and has been retold by several cultures in different forms. the historical evidence points to their being no actual jesus person at all. but don’t make me poo poo the only redeeming part of the bible for christ’s sake…
  
  PS> you missed the entire point about burden of proof completely…either that or you didn’t understand it. you don’t have to disprove my imaginary friend, i don’t have to disprove yours. the burden of proof is on the person making the extraordinary claim, not the person refuting that claim. most atheists aren’t claiming there is no god, they are claiming that the claim that there is a god or gods is false/bullshit, hence there is/are no god(s). it may seem like the same thing, but it is not, the subtle difference is HUGE once you understand it. that dictionary.com definition misses that point as well, *sighs*, it isn’t the only definition they get wrong…even the wording “denies the existence of” belies the bias of the author of that definition.
  
  i mean seriously, which god or gods do we have to prove don’t exist? there are thousands that span numerous cultures and people coming up with new ones all the time. you can’t negate them all with proof, that is just stupid. the burden of proof lies with each group making each claim, not the reverse. that is basic logic 101.
  
  PPS> what’s up with the non-relevant bible quotes? here’s one for you: Ezekiel 23:20
- andrei.timoshenko
  
  ““There is no God” is just as extraordinary of a claim as saying “There is a God”, isn’t it?”
  
  Is saying that “there is a large likelihood that dragons exist” as extraordinary as saying “there is a small likelihood that dragons exist”? I would argue that, presently, the former is significantly more extraordinary than the latter.
  - redesigned
    
    thank you for understanding the difference! :-)
    
    and double thanks for making this point”
    
    Rather, my discussion was about the LIKELIHOOD of the truth of a particular statement, FROM OUR CURRENT PERSPECTIVE.
    
    sometimes i’m convinced that certain people have to work really hard to not understand the basic points being discussed.
    
    your points about empiricism, while missed by some, were excellent nonetheless.
  - Tau’ma
    
    “Is saying that “there is a large likelihood that dragons exist” as extraordinary as saying “there is a small likelihood that dragons exist”?” Either a dragon exists, or it doesn’t, I now for sure that a really cool song called Puff the Magic Dragon exists. And so does Jesus.
    Jesus is very real. You can make up whatever you want to say about Him, it doesn’t change the fact that He exists. When you attack me for believing in Him, you’re doing it on account of His name.
    
    I didn’t say “There is a ‘large likelihood’ there’s no God” is just as extraordinary of a claim as saying “There is a ‘small likelihood’ there is a God”?
    
    I was addressing the issue of faith and making a point about believing, in God or anything else, or not believing, in God or anything else, unseen, that may, or may not exist, requires faith. I have no wish to debate this point any further.
    - redesigned
      
      “I was addressing the issue of faith and making a point about believing, in God or anything else, or not believing, in God or anything else, unseen, that may, or may not exist, requires faith.”
      
      Faith: Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
      
      Believing in things that are based on logical proof or empirical evidence does not require faith. That is the entire point.
      
      When you attack me for believing in Him, you’re doing it on account of His name.
      
      Wrong. We are disagreeing with your arguments, we don’t do things because of your belief system…it doesn’t play any part in our actions, just yours.
      
      It is up to you if you want to believe in a god that sent his own and only son to earth with the intention of him being brutally murdered so that he would only have to condemn slightly lesser majority of the human population to eternal suffering based on his own rules. It isn’t even a good story. It isn’t backed by the historical evidence, but hey if you want to believe in santa and the tooth fairy that is up to you. doesn’t mean i can’t say that i think you are wrong and point out the flaws of such a belief.
      
      PS> my quote was a joke, and making the point that non-relevant quotes are pointless. sorry you didn’t catch that. that was the simplest point i was making.
    - Tau’ma
      
      “my quote was a joke” I think that and a lot of what you said is. It seems to me that you feel like you have some kind of great understanding, of history, and science, and what did or did not happen, and what is true and what isn’t. I disagree with many of your assumptions.
      
      “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”
      Jesus said that. Believe it, or not.
    - redesigned
      
      why not address any of my valid points with rational logical arguments? i don’t know why i’m even trying to have a rational conversation with you if you aren’t going to at least afford me the same courtesy.
noen

redesigned spoke designedly:
“Not really, alas, stupidity isn’t limited to a single side.”

Atheists, every single one of them, claim to be objectively superior to theists because they don’t even believe much less believe in falsehoods like heaven of god. There is an aura of intellectual and moral superiority about atheists. And yet they believe in things that are no less ridiculous and unfalsifiable as god. They even go so far as to claim that this idea they have, string theory, created itself. Yes, they go this far, Stephan Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow not only believe in the theology called string theory. They claim that the laws of physics created themselves out of nothing.

And then turn around and ridicule those with a different theology. Amazing.

“There are tests that can prove or disprove string theory, we just don’t have the technology to perform them yet.”

You are misinformed. Not only is there no test today, there is no test in principle that could ever be done that would falsify string theory. There is a book, “Not Even Wrong” on which I am basing my criticism. Check it out.
noen

Oh, I forgot to add this

redesigned said
“I have very strong moral values that have nothing to do with religion.”

If you have moral values of any kind then you have a religious belief. Religion = culture = moral system. Morals are like money, it is completely arbitrary what they are, what serves as money could be any scrap of paper, all that matters is we all agree that these scraps of paper, these cultural values, will be how we exchange goods or relate to each other.

Like you I do not share the values of TV evangelists, or Islamic terrorists or of cannibals in New Guinea. But there is no basis in fact for my claim.

redesigned

I understand that these issues trigger deep feelings in both sides. No worries I didn’t take it personally in any way, as I hope you don’t take my comments personally in any way. :-)

“If and when that day comes, you will stop persecuting Christians.”
I’d put forward the idea that I am disagreeing with your ideas and challenging them, exactly the same way you are doing with me. We are engaging in an intellectual debate of sorts, not persecution. Neither of us are persecuting the other side. I may disagree strongly at times, but in reality I wish nothing but the best for all my fellow humans, including you. I’d never in any way attack you as a person, in fact if people physically attacked Christians I’d be the first to stand up and say that it was wrong and that you have a right to think whatever you want just as much as I have a right to disagree with it. Having these sorts of discussions in a civilized manner either opens us up to new possibilities and expands our horizions, or helps us solidify and clarify why we have our opinion. It better prepares us for future discussions on the subject. So even if we part agreeing to disagree, we’ll both be better for having the discussion. Debate = Good. Persecution = Something I hope neither of us ever have to face. :-)

“Life is precious.”
I agree 100%.

PS> I’ll often throw in a joke to keep from taking myself too seriously. I’m a joker and a thinker. If I ever offend with my jokes that isn’t my intention and I do apologize for any offense I may have caused. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my comments, even if we don’t agree, naw, especially since we don’t agree, it is appreciated.

Anonymous

“There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Clearly the man has never been to my apartment… although I supposed I wouldn’t call it a “heaven” for broken down computers…

gamelaner

No silicon heaven? Where would all of the calculators go?

Anonymous

Actual conversation:

How do you know heaven and hell exist?

Because it says so in the bible.

How do you know it’s true?

Because the bible is the inspired word of God.

How do you know THAT’S true?

Because it says so in the bible, and the bible is the inspired word of God.

ackpht

I fear that Hawking is right. But I can hope he isn’t. And I’ll find out, eventually.

But “carpe diem”, coming from a man who can barely move, is kind of a hard philosophy to dismiss.

I don’t know what’s coming, but I know that I’m very lucky to be here in the first place (lucky me, lucky mud), so I’m not going to complain.

MooseDesign

The thread image would be ideal album art for MC Hawking’s A Brief History of Rhyme. All My Shootings Be Drivebys, being my personal favorite track from said album…

andrei.timoshenko

The typical atheist strawman that god is co-equal to the judeo-christian god, but not even that, a caricature of their beliefs cherry picked from only the most backwards evangelist they can find.

Care to quote the part of my first post where I referenced a judeo-christian god caricatured from the cherry-picked beliefs of the most backwards evangelical I can find?

As an agnostic what I believe is that neither atheists nor theists understand it all and that there are possibilities that lay beyond both.

I also think that it is presently unlikely for anyone to be able to “understand it all” (and the conclusion that there is then more to understand trivially follows). This, indeed, is the logical implication of the epistemological system I outlined in my initial post. I guess that you agree with me on this point, then.

But science is not knowledge. Science is guesswork, a web of belief.

Please explain how this statement has any bearing on our previous exchange.

But the interpretations you give to them are not

Of course not. Why would they need to be?

Like that, because what counts as evidence is determined by one’s theory.

Not really. Any reproducible, experiential data point can be counted as evidence. One would just need to explain its relevance.

Like the long refuted positivists you believe that simple ideas link up with experience one by one.

Given the rather narrow nature of my statement, I would see my proposed epistemological position falling somewhere between postpositivism and relativism, rather than positivism proper. But do explain why you accuse me of believing that “simple ideas link up with experience one by one”, and what the problems with such a belief are, if I actually hold it.

For me our entire conceptual schema, our theory about what is, meets the world as a whole unified experience.

Personally, I am more concerned about what we are presently able to know than about what is, but please expound on some of the implications of your “conceptual schema”.

When it comes to conceptual schemes you are a monotheist and fundamentalist.

Why?

You are welcome to disagree, you are not welcome to mock and ridicule.

Please reference any of my earlier posts where I have either mocked or ridiculed you.

Anonymous

The Question is still there What is the reason for Creation â€˜Can doctor Hawking look for itâ€™?

The Sciences, special physics, didnâ€™t cancel the philosophy and reason.

However, they are complete each other, this is not a matter of man choice and desire, but the relation between material and thought.

In addition, the human thinking defined by the desirability
allah said:(Were they created of nothing, or were they themselves the creators? (35)
Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Nay, they have no firm belief. (36))Sura At-tur (The Mount)

allah said:(Were We then weary with the first Creation, that they should be in confused doubt about a new Creation? (15)
It was We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein. (16))

Sura Qaf (The Letter Qaf)

for more detials visit this link(The Righteousness & Methods of Thought – Calling For Thinking )
http://www.ahad-ahad.com/index.php?act=viewArt&artId=28295&target=25

redesigned

Hawking has properly applied Occam’s razor to the question of the existance of an afterlife. You don’t have to agree with the result if you don’t like it, but the logic is sound.

I agree 100%! of course there is no heaven…that is the only logical conclusion. believing in heaven requires a lot more then faith. it requires the suspension of belief in reality, science, and logic.

there has never been a shred of evidence for a god or eternal afterlife. it is a childish fairytale with no basis in logic or science. any rational thinker will quickly come to the same conclusion. the only reason for believing in it is having been told the fairytale by someone else.

“heaven” is a human created concept that has no basis in reality, and is limited to a few cultures all of which disagree completely about it. most christians don’t even realize that the concept of both heaven and hell in their religion were borrowed from other earlier belief systems.

MarlboroTestMonkey7

Number of faithful lost after reading this: 0

Cowicide

Number of faithful lost after reading anything: 0
emmdeeaych

Do you really believe that influencing the faith of others was the point of the story MTM7?

Can you explain your view further? or is it just an article of faith?
Mujokan

Number of faithful lost after reading this: 0

So what? He’s just saying what he believes, on all the evidence he’s been able to acquire. It’s his attitude towards death, not some political attempt to get people behind a banner.
- MarlboroTestMonkey7
  
  Being who he is, i’m sure it can and will be turned to a banner, boingboing post or tshirt
  - Mujokan
    
    Being who he is, i’m sure it can and will be turned to a banner, boingboing post or tshirt
    
    How about a T-shirt reading “Number of faithful lost after reading this T-shirt: 0″

Anonymous

I fear sometimes people stop using science as a tool and start using it as a faith.

How long until the whole Atheist/Science movement realizes it’s just informing the masses that, in the mass mind, it’s okay to be sociopaths, because everything is just matter anyway. I understand the want to pull away from brash illogical fantasies, but are ethics based in HARD REALITY what we really want?

Not saying it ISN’T just matter, but I still have that metaphysical idea of ‘meaning’ lodged somewhere in my self-organized feedback meat controller. How long until I’m told I’m being a foolish spiritualist for thinking there’s something inherently wrong with human experimentation / vivisection, because it’s just organic material? Or that love, while still a chemical reaction (even more so because it is), isn’t something beautiful and amazing, and that I should just get over my animal feelings.

I mean, the Los Zetas mentioned a few posts after this one have a great reason for doing what they’re doing, it’s logical and sound. They were disenfranchised, they organized, and now cause terror by hacking people (organic matter) apart so it’s no longer in their way of their self-preservation.

I’m simply saying, taken out of scope, the hard-sciencism (that Science explains ALL) will soon be our next threat, even if science as a tool can be used to assist humanity.

Tau’ma

http://youtu.be/RHIIATt0BaM

Anonymous

Mr. Hawking seems to make bolder statements with age in an effort to stay in the viewfinder.

We all understand that he is a brilliant person; however, let’s not forget that he is not immune to miscalculation (i.e. string theory, if memory serves. I do, however, admire his obvious confidence in his own brainpower and judgment.

I hope God goes easy on him if he has just made the biggest error of his lifetime.

Anonymous

When I was a lad and Old Shep was a pup
O’er hills and meadows we’d stray
Just a boy and his dog, we were both full of fun
We grew up together that way

I remember the time at the old swimmin’ hole
When I would’ve drowned beyond doubt
Shep was right there, to the rescue he came
He jumped in and helped pulled me out

So the years fed along and at last he grew old
His eyesight was fast growin’ dim
Then one day the doctor looked at me and said
“I can’t do no more for him, Jim”

With a hand that was trembling I picked up my gun
I aimed it at Shep’s faithful head
I just couldn’t do it, I wanted to run
And I wished that they’d shoot me instead

I went to his side and I sat on the ground
He laid his head on my knee
I stroked the best pal that a man ever found
I cried so I scarcely could see

Old Sheppie he knew he was going to go
For he reached out and licked at my hand
He looked up at me, just as much as to say
“We’re parting, but you understand”

Now Old Shep is gone where the good doggies go
And no more with Old Shep will I roam
But if dogs have a heaven, there’s one thing I know
Old Shep has a wonderful home

Anonymous

Heaven is P = NP

Stephen Hawking imagines there's no heaven

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