Heaven is a Fairy Story, says Stephen Hawking
Posted on: May 16, 2011 - 7:36pm
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Heaven is a Fairy Story, says Stephen Hawking
British scientist Stephen Hawking has branded heaven a "fairy story" for people afraid of the dark, in his latest dismissal of the concepts underpinning the world's religions.
The author of 1988 international best-seller A Brief History of Time said in an interview with The Guardian published on Monday that his views were partly influenced by his battle with motor neurone disease.
"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he told the newspaper.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
Hawking's stance on religion has hardened significantly in the nearly quarter century since the publication of his seminal work on the cosmos.
In A Brief History of Time he suggested that the idea of a divine being was not necessarily incompatible with a scientific understanding of the Universe.
But in his 2010 book The Grand Design he said a deity no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the universe in the light of a series of developments in physics.
Hawking has achieved worldwide fame for his research, writing and television documentaries despite suffering since the age of 21 from motor neurone disease that has left him disabled and dependent on a voice synthesiser.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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this story won't take a double spaced paragraph in notebook - must be something in there I can't find.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
for the full article. Thanks for the post. His opinion is very important and carries weight in the media.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
I fixed it.
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Not really, most christians just say he is misguided and the rest of them will hate him. The media just likes things that can stir shit they are not on our side by any means and will usually crater to the religious in the end.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
i don't know why, but i always get a subtle feeling from the tone of hawking's writing that he's a bit irritated having to comment on subjects like this at all.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Dunno what I did wrong.
he's been getting more pointed for a while. He's not likely to have failed to notice the profound theistic stupid of the past decade.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I feel like its rather frustration based on the fact that even our brightest are still beneath him when it comes to a real deep understanding of the realm which we inhabit and the fact that some of us refuse to even acknowledge some of the simplest facets of logical thought and science.
That is how I look at it. I sense that he has grown less patient with the theists over the years, due to their stubborn refusal to accept empirical evidence and cling to nonsense claims.
I know how angry that I get, when I hear the local preachers on the news, angrily insisting that evolution is false and creationism needs to be taught in the classroom ( an ever brewing controversy where I live). There is a part of me that just wants to SCREAM : How can you be SO ignorant ?
I think that Hawkins is going to be another addition to our previous Four Horsemen. I think he is just as fed up as all the rest of us, with the people that depend on science for all of their modern conveniences and medicine, but wish to reject the parts of it they do not like.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
I agree, I respect intellectual honesty above everything else. He sets a very good example for scientists.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
I can't help thinking he should now officially retract the famous closing phrase in "A Brief History of Time": ' for then we would know the mind of God.'
He considered deleting it at the proof stage.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Seeing his newest statements, I almost have a feeling that a "new" edition might emerge with that last line absent. At least, I hope so.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
So have a lot of the rest of us. One can only take so much religious nonsense until we say "Enough already! Stop with your invisible friend, and say something worthwhile."
I was for a long time a believer in a minority religion, stopped taking it seriously a long time ago, and finally admitted my true lack-of-belief. I suspect that others are looking at their own beliefs in light of the extreme ones out there, and admitting that they don't believe either. Eventually, I expect a strong backlash from the current US religious fervor - I just don't know how long it will take. Probably something between a few months and a few centuries.
But.... tell me what's more dangerous than a nation of nuclear-armed fanatics, with intercontinental missile capability, who are eagerly awaiting the rapture and Armageddon? If it takes a few centuries, I don't think the world will last that long.
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Beth
Angie the Anti-Theist has had a fun bit of Twitter drama with a bloke named @English103 over this. Dude thinks he's an intellectual equal to Dr. Stephen Hawking, and has been totally smacked down by plenty of folks as a result.
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