Hollywood, FL 5/17/2011 5:44:11 AM
Stephen Hawking: Heaven "Is a Fairy Story for People Afraid of the Dark"
Renowned Physicist Explains His View on Afterlife
World-renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking said in an interview published on Sunday that the belief in an afterlife is pretty much nothing but wishful thinking.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," said Hawking during an exclusive interview for The Guardian. "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
Hawking explained in the interview that "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in."
And in his latest book, The Grand Design, he writes, "Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to ... set the Universe going."
In other words, science explains things in a way that does not require a belief in God. And, by extension, there is no reason to suppose that there is some kind of afterlife created by a God.
In a 2010 interview, Hawking told Diane Sawyer that "What could define God [is a conception of divinity] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God. They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."
Hawking also told Sawyer that "science will win" in a battle with religion "because it works."
When asked by Guardian writer Ian Sample if there is anything that he fears about death, Hawking said, "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."
And when asked what humans should do, given his lack of belief in God and an afterlife, Hawking replied, "We should seek the greatest value of our action."
(Sources: Yahoo News, guardian.co.uk)
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