Stephen Hawking's Disbelief in the Afterlife

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My point is, will you demean the opinion of a famous christian who mentions their faith in an interview? Or is this just when they disagree with you? They mentioned that he had a health scare and asked him if he feared death. He gave them an answer about heaven being a fairy tale.

If he had said, "My lord and saviour Jesus will be waiting with hugs and kisses", would that make you feel better?

Well, I beg his pardon. I do not follow the gent for whose condition I feel nothing but sympathy and for whose handling of that condition I have nothing but admiration. I saw the big fluff headlines and [bad of me] assumed that like some people at various times he had been spouting pronouncements. If it is as you say, I retract any criticism of him on this point and once more spit at the newspapers who make that kind of statement into a big deal headline - JACKIE KENNEDY CHOOSES DECKLE-EDGED STATIONERY FOR THE WHITE HOUSE!! !! !! !

BUT : If Billy Graham or the Pope were to go to press endorsing Cladistics or Acupuncture, yes, ikt woukld bother me. And - I had though I said this, but maybe I just meant to say it - it does not matter if I agree with what is said. I simply do not think an idea is headline worthy if a celebrity says it, when it would not get a millimeter of type if an non-celebrity expert came out with it.

Again, I personally don't agree with the supernatural. I think it is a common mistake to assume something is 'super'natural when someone can't come up with a way to measure it. Before Bacteria were observed people had all kind of strange ideas what caused infection. Before the cause of Epilepsy was discovered people thought seizures were an indication that someone was demonically possessed. There was observable phenomenon there, theorized to be caused by a supernatural effect.

Here's another example: A person sees two people across a crowded room. A person observes one of those individuals touching the other individual on the arm. The person that observes the couple feels someone touching their arm, but there is no one there. Can somone else provide evidence of that person's experience of someone touching their arm, when their is no one there to touch it?

Actually they can, studies have recently shown that an individual that experiences this have overactive mirror neurons that allow one to vicariously feel a sensation that someone else feels, by visually seeing it. Without evidence of this what would one think. Some might attribute it to that person being crazy. Another person might attribute it to psychic abilities or other supernatural phenomenon. But then the question becomes which of our other senses can be affected by mirror neurons in a case like this?

Can a blind person sense the angry intentions of another person without seeing or hearing them. If mirror neurons impact this phenomenon, how does it work? While we currently can't pinpoint the cause of this, with brain studies, we probably will come up with somekind of evidence for how it works.

These kind of studies show that our experience of what we observe in life can be very different from others depending on structural components of our brain. Just because you or I don't experience it, doesn't mean that it is not a real experience, for someone else caused by a structural difference in the brain.

I think we have discussed it in length before, but many of what people experience as religious experiences may be explained by structural differences in the brain. But, just because it may not be supernatural in cause doesn't make it any less of a powerful influence in someone's life.

One day much of this will probably be measured by science; at that point the rituals that people practice associated with religion, might not prove out to be as foolish as some see them. And it's not just related to religion, much of what we understand as psychic phenomenon, may also one day be measurable.

While there is no hard evidence of an afterlife, there are some pretty compelling observations of what people have experienced after technically dying on an operating table. Much of it has been explained by science, but just how far does it goes is an interesting question that hasn't been fully explained to this point.

When people talk about the supernatural, I like to think of it is what is not understood about the natural, not what is beyond the natural. I think it is the experience of life that makes the difference, and we would not be effective scientists if we took some of the things others experience as not possibly real, just because we don't experience them or have a way to measure them ourselves.

To SPKx:

The answer is simple. Stephen Hawking states outright in his book that Philosophy is Dead: Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. And pondering one's existence after this life isn't a scientific question that can be proved with scientific modes of measurement.

If it cannot be explained by the limited knowledge of science, it therefore does not exist. I find it odd that if one were to put that same mind frame into play at any point over the last 5000 years, what modern developments would we be robbed of.

That one saved me a mouthful.People keep forgetting that if love is never having to say you are sorry, science is always having to realize how little you knew just last year.

I further illustrate...


Scientific Question: Can the laws of physics explain what happened at the beginning of the universe?

Philosophical Question: Why is there a world for the laws of physics to explain anyways?

There is room for both. I can see both being arrogant in their ways to define our parameters of thought, but it is hubristic in every meaning of the word.

That and any other silly comments about Hawking not being an expert on the supernatural are about as valid an argument as if your 8 year old told you that you aren't qualified to tell them Santa doesn't exist because you're not a magical flying reindeer expert.

There are no such experts, in either case. Guess why.

Pretty, pretty pwnage.

Bzzzzzt! Bad question. That presumes a beginning.

ruveyn

Naturally not, as the very notion of a "beginning" is your personal concept.

It is counter to thermodynamics,
ignores the fact that the supposed "Cosmological Constant" representing dark energy is nearly a googol times smaller than the energy needed to propel universal expansion at an accelerating rate,
uniform radiation rings thought to pre-date the Big Bang found throughout the universe as opposed to evidence of a single gravitational energy burst as would be expected in such an event-
all of which taken together form a quite conclusive body of evidence that the universe is in fact cyclical.

Do you mean "the beginning of the universe as we observe it now"?
That's explained by inertia following the last event of a seemingly-infinite number of events.


Oh, and


GOD OF THE GAPS FAIL.

If'n it ain't in the Book, 'tain't true.

That one WAS sarcasm, folks. Ah, the ironies of partisanship.

He was referring to the fact that philosopher's pontificate about the biggest mysteries in life, usually getting no where, while there is a myriad of evidence we could use to solve these issues. Some philosophers keep up with the Sciences; Daniel Dennet being one. Many do not.

Good thing nobody but you is taking that position then.

Nobody is saying the supernatural doesn't exist because it can't currently be explained by science. People are saying the supernatural doesn't exist based on a couple thousand years of human experience of people constantly trying to claim it exists but never ever being able to back it up with anything whatsoever. People (at least people who know what they're doing) are also rejecting further consideration of the hypothesis that the supernatural exists based on the good and solid reason that it is an unfalsifiable proposition and, as such, WORTHLESS and a complete waste of time to consider.

On the subject of *rational* things science just can't currently explain however things are still ticking along nicely as always... seeing as the entire scientific method is built around constantly investigating those things. Which I'm fairly confident Hawking went right back to doing after finishing the interview in question.

As a scientist, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant theoretical astrophysicist.

As a theologian, Stephen Hawking is a brilliant theoretical astrophysicist.

Do you then disagree with the current understanding of cosmology - that the universe came into being some 13 to 14 billion years ago, after the singularity in which it existed suddenly "exploded" (for lack of a better term) for no readily explicable reason (possibly having to do with theoretical vacuum energy), and for a short period of time was too hot and chaotic for any laws of physics to apply? (Which leaves open the possibility that the initial expansion may have occurred at some multiple of what later became the speed of light, meaning that it's possible that the universe is larger than we can ever possibly observe, because photons emitted from those regions won't be able to reach us within any sort of rational span of our existence as a species. See "inflationary theory".)

In short, no, physics cannot explain why the universe came to be, nor does it attempt to do so. That's not even a question in physics - we don't ask "why", we ask "how". Why electrons can only occupy certain energy states in an atom is unimportant - what matters is how atoms hold together, and how they can bond together given the energy-state limitations. In physics, there are no reasons, only results. "Why" is an anthropomorphic question.