Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'

The psychology in this thread has really surprised me.

Who has actually given an eternal afterlife much thought?

The boredom would be incredible. After you've seen everything there is to see a thousand times, done everything there is to do a thousand times, then what? You're still not even through 1% of your eternal sentence.

If your idea of heaven is getting whatever you want whenever you want, how long will that keep you amused? A hundred years? A thousand years? 50 billion years? Before long you will want a surprise or a challenge. When you get bored with that you will want to up the stakes a bit. Make the surprise, challenge and danger feel more and more real. Before long you find yourself in a scenario which feels so real, and plays out with the up and down drama so similar to what you are experiencing right now in your real life.

Originally posted by laiguana
Zero evidence for heaven or an after life
Zero evidence for your god(s)
Zero evidence for the tooth fairy...

If you postulate something that doesn't satisfy the scientific method, it's probably just BS...Sorry, kiddos, but science doesn't bend that way. A theorem, unlike an axiom or postulate, exists only if a proof can be given for the statement

There's an old joke ...


Modern M-Theory is about as testable as the God hypothesis. Yet the physics PhD's parade it around like it's some revelation from on high. Hopefully the irony isn't lost on them.

reply to post by Azp420


Novelty.

That's "heaven" imho.

It will be fresh and new with lots of thing to do, and many lives to live, and it all starts right here right now.

Hawking's just bitter.... he's forgotten what an orgasm feels like.

Everything begins and ends on the Astral Plane.

Originally posted by DuceizBack

Originally posted by Spencer1989
My first reaction is.... So what? Why does his opinion matter any more than any other atheist or Christian or whatever on this subject?

This is not news worthy, no more than if a random homeless man gave you his opinion.

When he develops a theory based on complex physics and math to back it up, get back to me. Until then, this is no more important or meaningful than him announcing he prefers chocolate ice cream over vanilla.

edit on 16-5-2011 by Spencer1989 because: (no reason given)

Well.
He's smarter than the average person, has a deep background in science, and I'd trust him any day and his logical rants than an idiot religious person.


Religion is racist anyway lol.

That's debatable.
Communism is also racist as well when you see how it sneaks in under the guise of socialism

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by LiveEquation

 

Look around. The kingdom of heaven is spread out before your very eyes.

"Have you not seen, have you not heard, have you not been told since before the very foundations of the Earth?!"

You're right that it's a gnosis, not a "belief in", not a faith per se.

there is no kingdom of the sky....Jesus himself said he was not of this world...that he was not of this earth. What did Jesus predict? that he would come AD 70 at the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem to get his people and to take take up the sky to wherever he is from.

Now up to this day his followers call him a liar and they wait for him and sing him songs every sunday and saturday.

Someone posted earlier that living and thinking spiritually was ridiculuous. I can see this point of view if one is not a spiritual minded person. Seeing god in all things is a matter of being attentive. I could regurgitate scripture in an attempt to convince people of god's existence. But if the reader does not recognize the credibility of the source of the information...what's the point?

Most people who believe in god don't need proof from an outside, earthly source. I personally see god at work in my life everyday. He is at work in your life too...like it or not. Sometimes it takes a significant, life-changing event to open one's eyes.

God bless Stephen Hawking and all of you. When Stephen's resperator cuts off and his time is up he won't be meeting paradox theory or mathmatical equations.

Btw...the soul weight "medical" experiment was exposed as a fraud log ago.

The interesting thing about his statement, is that it is what he BELIEVES. IE life after death can neither be proven or dis proven. God can also neither be proven or dis proven either. So I where I get lost is how somehow his not believing in a supreme being is somehow more credible than someone else choosing to believe in one. I once heard that an all powerful God could have created the universe just as it is 5 minutes ago, including us, our memories, and our perceptions, and there is no way to disprove this. It all boils down to what we choose to believe.

Originally posted by mantisfortress
Btw...the soul weight "medical" experiment was exposed as a fraud log ago.

It was unrepeatable and therefore worthless as science, but what proof is there it was deliberate fraud?

reply to post by Azp420


You are thinking about the concept from a very mortal perspective. Once you are seperated from your body and find yourself in heaven (hopefully), the human concepts you hold so close to conciousness will be set free. Ideas such as time in our frame of understanding, desire "to do things" and "go places", will be completely changed. Applying natural ideas to a supernatural world is irrelavant.

I used to think about heaven and think: finally...I'll find out who was really behind killing Kennedy or what really happened on 9/11. Truth is, I won't care anymore. Much like when I was a child, surely there was a puzzle or a game I couldn't figure out and was really important to me then. Now, I couldn't care any less. Why? Because I have had a change in conciousness and I have more interesting and important things to concern myself with (Grand Turismo 5?!? lol). Imagine a change in conciousness a million times greater and there ya go.

I agree with him completely. When you die, you end up the same place you were before you were born. nowhere. Why do humans think their alignment of molecules is so special? Makes me laugh.

Heaven is a real place, spirit prison is a real place, hell is a real place, spiritual warfare is real, spirits in a state of waiting is a real place, where God of this earth resides is a real place, God left a spiritual entity to watch over earth and dwell in the hearts of men and that is real. God used a series of achitypes to teach men certain principles up to and including Christ

reply to post by spacedonk


If you (or anyone else here) think there is no spiritual component to our humanality, then you are gravely mistaken.

Originally posted by Azp420
The boredom would be incredible. After you've seen everything there is to see a thousand times, done everything there is to do a thousand times, then what? You're still not even through 1% of your eternal sentence.

This again?

Come on man, we have this conversation every few million years.
What we do is what we always do...we simply squeeze back into some lifeform on some physical realm, re-experience the mortality of living, pass through the stages into death, and everything is brand new again..eternal suprises.

Listen, if you want out, you want out, but its been 38 sextillion years now where you are constantly stating the same thing...let it go, you were wrong when you initially said it, you are wrong this life around, and in the next universal creation you will be wrong then.

Just pay up the 200 quaznarks...face it...you lost no matter now many billions of years you wait for any one of us to get bored.

this way god made this guy a vegetable

Where Hawkings homely notions of religion and philosophy
break down, actual science now has found the God Particle
which falsifies Hawkings in his central tenet.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Well said.

Originally posted by Jax27
I agree with him completely. When you die, you end up the same place you were before you were born. nowhere. Why do humans think their alignment of molecules is so special? Makes me laugh.

How then do two nowheres make a somewhere sandwich? Eh? Answer me that!

reply to post by SaturnFX

Congratulations on Stephen Hawking becoming omniscient. He's just two steps away from godhood now.

This is the problem I have with many scientists. Because they categorically declare that something is true/untrue without being able to prove/disprove it, it limits their ability to explain reality. I think to be a scientist, you should be open to possibilities and follow the evidence where ever it leads.