Stephen Hawking's Disbelief in the Afterlife

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why would anyone believe in anything they can't measure?; it's inconsequential, if true at all. Anyone who claims to know the unknowable is a liar, and is clearly guessing.

Oh I see, Well that's what I meant. We just die and thats it.

What is the logical possibility or case for the existence of an afterlife? I've always pinned the assumption of an afterlife to faith in one, not the actual belief in one based on facts. Which I have no problem with.

We don't know either way as no dead person has been able to testify to such.

Lets assume materialism is true. There will still be something that it is like to be human. It only tells part of the story.

The things ruveyn cannot see

Would not exist - thank God there's me.

You originally stated that If God doesn't exist, then of course there is not afterlife. I was merely trying to make the point that that is not true.



A problem which annoys me deeply. I think a deep enough theory of consciousness would explain how our subjective qualities arise in a satisfactory manner; after that, it's a problem of "why something rather than nothing". No theory will ever tell you what it is like to be a bat, but thats an epistemic limit, not Scientific.

True, but some hypothesize about phenomenon they experience or observe that they don't have the ability to measure and form beliefs and theories around that hypothesis. So, the belief in something that someone can't measure is not necessarily inconsequential. Many times phenomenon that was believed to be supernatural has later been proven through scientific measurement as a occurence that is natural.

People believed the world was flat along time after it was proven by scientific evidence and people still don't believe in evolution or that the earth is more than 6,000 years old, so we have to also be careful not to think that we have measured all that has yet to be discovered; and just because we think something is unknowable doesn't mean it will be determined as scientifically measurable in the future.

I relate this to the Neanderthral theory of Autism; based on inference and observance of traits among people today and relating it to hypothesized behavior thousands of years ago. It is clearly not knowable whether or not those traits were valuable to Neanderthrals because we only have the fossil record; but it also can't be disproven because all we have is the fossil record.

I wouldn't call the guy a liar, just another person with a theory based on observation and hypothesis. He clearly believes in his theory and even thinks it can be proven with genetic testing; but that still won't prove that the traits today in autistic people were valuable to Neanderthrals thousands of years ago.

For a long time Hawkings wouldn't neither assert or deny the existence of God. Then came up with the statement that God wasn't needed for the creation of the Universe, and then came up with the statement that, this wasn't proof that there was no God, just proof that one was not needed. A cautious response by a thoughtful scientist because, he knows he has no way of measuring what "God" might be.

He's echoing Einstein, who called the bible primitive and childish. It's not uncommon for scientists to lack faith. Educated people in general are less likely to believe.

But when the educated do believe, they are more likely to attend church regularly than the less educated. That may be a function of the social pressure within their class or reflect that they have more leisure time.

Well come up with a tool that can measure or detect the super natural. It could also be possible that that instrument exists as the human being, and no creation of the human being is yet as advanced as its creator (which is true.)

Interesting changes.

People used to complain about increased specialization. Nobody dares express an opinion, they would say, except a certified expert.

Don't ask your neighbour about Yiddish - which he talks with his grandparents four times a week. You have to wander down to Professor Libero's office on the third floor of Gamaliel Hall at the college. His Sicilian accent is a little thick, but he knows all about Indiscriminate Bonding in Open Clauses in the Yiddish of Anatevka. Wrote his dissertation on that, he did.

But seems we have left that horrible era. We do not have to ask experts anymore. Today, we can ask celebrities.

Want to know about life after death? Ask Hawking. He is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist and academic celebrity. NO! Do NOT ask him about physics, you fool. Ask him about life after death.

Want to know about the ethics of abortion? Try Chomsky. He is a professor of Linguistics - charismatic though lousy - so do NOT ask about his linguistic theories. He's your man on abortion.

Religion? Ricky Gervais. Climate? Al Gore. Nutrition? Michell Obama.

So let's find out what the Pope has to say about architecture. Maybe Clinton will tell us about cinematography. What celebrity can we find who knows nothing about Econ.

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Philologos' Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:

Put a mike in front of a celebrity and he will generate a volume of hot air inversely proportional to what he knows about the subject.

Translation: You disagree with him.

Presumably you consulted L Ron Hubbard or his acolytes before deciding that $cientology was bunk? Apologies if you are a Scientologist.

No, I actually do believe that part, but it takes a while to explain so I didn't try to make that case. You just happened to write the other half of my belief which is without a God, there is no objective meaning to this existence and when you die, that's it - and science supports that, and couldn't help agreeing. I'll write it out so my assumptions for that opinion so that it can be better understood.

I was defining "measure" as "observe", not in any mathematical sense. If I did that, I might describe the content of my thought as non-existent. If something is detectable, then it exists, otherwise, we have no reason to assume it does.



The phenomena that validify those theories were always observable; an invisible hash-smoking Unicorn is not. If said Unicorn left footprints, or raided my fridge, it would be observable. As soon as a phenomena is observable, we can tell if it exists. If it is not observable in some sense, it doesn't do anything of consequence.



Inference is always based on evidence, although it may not be falsifiable.



My point is that such a man would be a lier because his claims aren't based on observation", only hypothesis sold as "Truth" (a word often used to sell the opposite...."



Hawkins took the natural view for a claim that cannot be falsified. He is right in saying that Science is proving a deity seems to be unnecessary in creation.

.)

The claimants job is to demonstrate the existence of something. Besides, "natural" phenomena are those that can be detected or percieved, so "supernatural" implies non-existence. If it exists, it is potentially detectable, though it might be a while



I've never met a man who had the power to say "hello. here is your meaning". It seems indistinguishable from being given orders, or being built for someone else's whims.

There is no objective meaning, just as there is no objective "enjoyable". Yet we don't all sit in the gutters, utterly frozen with pain; enjoyment is enjoyable, even though it is subjective, and meaning is the same. Science doesn't say anything about meaning, but perhaps you can extrapolate it from the fact we have no evidence for objective meaning

No. It has NOTHING to do with disagreeing with him. Celebvrities step up and say things I agree with too. WHO BLOODY CARES IF SCHWARZENEGGER OR MADONNA AGREES WITH MY VIEWS ON BASQUE?

As for Scientology:

I do not know why you would apologize for dissing my views on Scientology if I were a Scientologist. You just dissed the opinon I DID express by suggesting it means less that I said.

I am not a Scientologist. Did I consult Hubbard? Close enough. I gor approached by people hoping to suck me in, I read about the theories and practice in scientologic and other sources. I said this is bunk.

I did NOT go on TV and broadcast, Internationally Known [I am] Comparative Linguist Philologos announces Scientology is Bunk.

By the way - I am not a celebrity by any realistic definition, but after a lifetime in academia I AM competent to make expert pronouncements about idiots, blowhards, and knownothings.

As a scientist, he probably makes this analogy because the similarity is overwhelmingly supported by empirical evidence.


Evidently, it can, hence this thread topic.


Why? That's exactly what you are- preferring to personally romanticize the processes of the brain and biological life has no bearing on what they actually are.

Hawkins took the natural view for a claim that cannot be falsified. He is right in saying that Science is proving a deity seems to be unnecessary in creation.

The fact that the earth was round was always potentially observable until someone actually found a way to measure it. Before then with the unaided eye, it could only be observed as flat. The same thing applies too much of what we have learned through science in the natural world. Many of the observations wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for scientific developments. I personally don't believe in Unicorns, but it doesn't have to be a Unicorn, in question, that we can't presently measure. It doesn't mean we won't be able to do it at some point in the future.

We haven't always been able to observe many things that have consequences in our lives. Just because we can't observe something doesn't mean it doesn't has real consequences in our life. We might be not be able to observe what is causing it but, the consequence still has a real impact on us. I guess bacteria are a good example, before we could observe bacteria, we had no idea that they were the source of infection. They were always there, we just couldn't see them.

At which point, the Unicorn will be both considered as a natural being, and we will have a good reason to assume it exists. But something that is defined as supernatural supposedly does not manifest itself in reality (in which case it would be natural), is inherently non-existent.



We could observe their effects; bacteria poison food, and air fills a balloon. A theory could eventually be constructed, because the phenomena underlying it were observable/existent.