Heaven is a fairy tale, says physicist Hawking
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said in an interview published on Monday.
Hawking, 69, was expected to die within a few years of being diagnosed with degenerative motor neurone disease at the age of 21, but became one of the world's most famous scientists with the publication of his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time."
"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 Guardian 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."
When asked how we should live he said: "We should seek the greatest value of our action."
Hawking gave the interview ahead of the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London where he will join speakers including British finance minister George Osborne and Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Addressing the question "Why are we here?" he will argue tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe sowed the seeds of human life.
The former Cambridge University Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a post once also held by Isaac Newton, has a history of drawing criticism for his comments on religion.
His 2010 book "The Grand Design" provoked a backlash among religious leaders, including chief rabbi Lord Sacks, for arguing there was no need for a divine force to explain the creation of the universe.
As a result of his incurable illness Hawking can only speak through a voice synthesizer and is almost completely paralyzed.
He sparked serious concerns in 2009 when he was hospitalized after falling seriously ill following a lecture tour in the United States but has since returned to Cambridge University as a director of research.
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Comments
The mind of Mr. Hawking, though remarkable, is extremely focused on the finality of things. But not having solved or sufficiently considered if there is an efficient cause, science so conceived by him cannot fully explain the finality of things. Thus, he only regarded the brain as a computer which, having failed, also ends without clear finality because he did not exhaustively consider how things got to be.
Further, a "tiny quantum" is not the first "being" so to speak. One must further down trace the existence of that "tiny quantum" to be due to another, and to another, until one cannot conceive of any other being that is not caused by another and was responsible why there was a "tiny quantum" there in the first place. If his theory is correct, not conceded, then it begs for the existence of an Efficient Cause who is not created and who is the first "quantum" ultimately responsible for the movement of things that saw the realization of our beautiful world, multi-diverse and in which life in various forms, from the smallest ever to the more complex life forms reveal the majesty and power of this First Cause beyond whom no other life or power had existence or being.
Such depth of reasoning and crude mathematical genius thousands of years ago by Greek philosophers (and Oriental mystics) already asked about the mystery of life; how it came about on earth, and provided the answers. Revelation, speaking in a language understood in the time of the Old Testament (the First Book of the Bible) related the account of creation in popular, literary form. Thus, the biblical narrative of creation is a popular account, not a scientific treatise that should be critically judged by empirical evidence or data in our time; it appeals to pious response of faith from people at the time, The Greek philosophers, the scholars in their time, provided answers that grew into branches of science regarding the world (cosmology), man's existence (ontology/metaphysics), human knowledge (criteriology), human faculties and soul (psychology) and actions in relation to moral law (Ethics/Moral Philosophy).
The great minds of Christian scholars in the Middle Ages, among whom was St. Thomas Aquinas, philosophized, and strengthened by Christian revelation, arrived at the great five ways to prove the existence of God, among which arguments are: the First Cause and the Final Cause, we briefly discussed above.
The Christian, disciple of Christ, and the Catholic, drawing wisdom from divine revelation and living tradition, believes in the Creator who gives life and withdraws it by death. He believes that He is his Father in heaven who has power over everything on earth who invites him to be with Him after life on earth. St. Augustine poetically prayed about the direction of life to be with God, as our Final End: "... our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Faith makes the Christian different from Mr. Hawking whom we wish well and hope that his mind and heart will someday find rest from scientific research until they rest in God.
Had Hawking not wondered about the capability of his brain to conceive and understand the laws of nature? Had he not thought the improbability of this "tiny quantum" arranging all the wonderful network of his intelligent brain by itself, that gives him the capability to think. Even if simple machines like the bicycle are given considerable thought for design and manufacture, how much more biological beings with all its sets of DNA? For me science only reveals the Grand Design of an Intelligent Being, and whose designs human intelligence cannot fathom, we can only see glimpses of these intelligent designs as revealed by science. So for me there is God Who created the Heavens and the Earth. This is the logic of my faith and I have found light in it.
I found it very difficult to digest any theoretical scientific explanation in the existence of life based on our belief of the existence of the DIVINE PROVIDENCE.
Hawking will know that there is heaven when he knows he'll go to hell. He believes so much on the power of science and scientific knowledge which is incapable of reaching the ultimate truth. Until now, there's no scientific proof of how and why the universe exists. To say that the world exists by itself is scientifcally premature and devoid of meaning. There are millions of living and non living things that exist in the universe and outside the universe wich are still unknown to the power of the microscope and human knowledge. When ask the question "why are we here?" He asnwered it is because of" a tiny quantum". But where does that tiny quantum come from and why it is there capable of giving life? By itself( quantum) it has no power to exist and no power to give life. What other scientists see in him is his unrelenting appetite to search and research about the ultimate question of life and his contribution to science. I respect him as a scientist and I hope he knows that as a scientist he has a big moral responsibility and accountabiity all that he has taught and said about God and everything that relates to God.
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