Hawking is a brilliant man.  Yet nowhere in this article does he discredit the afterlife, other than to call the brain a wonderful computer which makes consciousness and ceases to be when we die. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20063168-503543.html?tag=exclsv

Being really smart isn't necessarily the same thing as being brilliant.

I figure that somebody with a much lower IQ than Hawking and an inner understanding of spirit self is more brilliant.

As smart as Hawking is, he hasn't been able to find a way to understand that he has an internal soul.

Sometimes it's a negative to be really intelligent because one might use such intelligence to fortify a false belief system. One might become so enamored with one's intelligence level that one won't be able to question one's fallibility.

Hawking is a brilliant theoretical physicist but I don't think that being 'good at the math' necessarily means seeing the bigger picture. Other equally brilliant people in his field and others have thought differently ...

Hawking, like many scientists, equates the spirit (or soul) with the conscious, rational brain he uses when dealing with science. He also makes some major assumptions:

1. What he knows now about the universe is all there is to know.

History teaches us there will always be groundbreaking new data changing the entire picture. As much as Hawking knows, I seriously doubt it is everything.

2. Spirit = rational front lobe consciousness = end at death

This may be true, but many things point to a view where this isnt true. In an extremely scientistic view of the world, this would mean babies and demented people do not have a spirit (and some scientists indeed claim so). Caregivers, Lovers and family know different. Personally I think people who believe babies and brain-impaired people do not have a spirit need their attitude and heart AS WELL AS THEIR BRAIN adjusted.

3. What you see is all there is.

The fact that we do, indeed, NOT see all there is (think: infrared and ultraviolet) seems to elude people believing in this concept.

So, all in all, he may be right, but in a nutshell it is no more than one man`s opinion which also may be very wrong. It is not "worth" more because he is Stephen Hawking.

This is response to Hawking's remarks.  Admittedly from a Christian perspective, but it seems to apply.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/stephen-hawking-what-he-doesnt-understand-about-heaven/2011/05/16/AFrHg64G_blog.html

Hmmmmm, a fairy story? Now, how do I know that Stephen Hawking, himself, is not a 'fairy story'?

I've never seen him in person. For that matter, if someone came up and introduced himself to me as 'Stephen Hawking', how do I actually know that 'Stephen Hawking' exists?

Does he show me his birth certificate? How do I know that is 'real'?

If I have an experience of 'heaven' in my own mind, and I have real emotions and memories of vivid, even 'sensual' experiences there, who is to say it is 'real' or it is a 'fairy story'?

If it is 'experienced' after death, or what we call death, who is to say it is nothing but imagination? What is imagined is our entire lives, as it is, as what we perceive is taken in through our senses and interpreted by what we 'perceive' as our selves.

So, I am not convinced, Mr. Hawking. But, have a nice day, and have a nice life, too, Mr. Hawking. What you think of your 'afterlife' is your business, but who knows who you will meet there?

:)

Consider that Hawking has an illness (ALS) that most people only live 3 years with. Hawking has had his illness for 40 years.

He has had a lot of time to think about his situation. I respect his opinion.

He still gives lectures in physics.

http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00413/snf03tvc280_413068a.jpg

I just hope that not too many people give up on finding out if there is more than this physical world because it is priceless to know that there is.

Some people might make the mistake of taking Hawking's word for it. When you're a high profile person and you might influence others, it is important to be responsible about what you say. A day might come when Hawking will regret that to some degree he persuaded people to not find out that there is more than this physical world.

The fact of how many people are caught up in a belief system created by others shows that we do influence each other.

Im not surprised of his beliefs. Hes trapped within a deformed and crippled physical body. He probably blames God for his condition. He will learn soon enough. Wonder what hes going to think then?

hi all of you       I read somewhere that scientists that pass to the spiritworld are trying to prove that there is no physical world,they dont beleive anything that isnt black and white,when they are on the physical plain they wouldn't beleive,even if a spirit bit them on the arse...

im not saying all scientists are like this but the majority are

love and God bless  Love Juditha

Hawking may be incredibly intelligent, but his views on afterlife and heaven are nothing more than his latest bid for attention.

There are, I believe, two issues here. I think for someone (like Hawking) who has consciously faced the prospect of imminent death for so long, resorting to any sort of belief in an afterlife would smack of an emotional cheat—as if he didn’t need the courage of facing his actual physical condition (courage which he obviously has in abundance). I think he’s wrong about this,
by the way—that is, I don’t think that such a belief must necessarily be viewedin such a way, as an emotional crutch signifying immaturity or weakness—but I can see his point, even if I don’t agree with it.

The second point is that, formany professional or academic intellectuals (scientists, philosophers, etc.), terms like “God” and “afterlife” are viewed as being embedded in an archaic monotheistic religious framework in which “God” is worshipped as a kind of Cosmic Emperor (“Lord” and “King”) who created the world for mankind’s benefit a few thousand years ago, stands in moral judgment over humanity, promises heaven for His minions and Hell for his enemies, etc.

But from the standpoint of the sophisticated, truly mind-blowing Infinities of quantum physics, the old-time religious worldview pales in comparison—it is a childishly simple fairy tale, fit only for a kindergartener. And with this point I am deeply sympathetic.

When you read, for example, what people like Robert Monroe and many Near-Death Experiencer have discovered about the non-physical reality through their own direct experience, their accounts more closely match the quantum physicists’ multitudinous Infinities than they do the simple old textbook religious bromides. I think Hawking and many others are, of course, wrong to conflate belief in non-physical reality with only one version of that belief--and here they are almost certainly guilty of not having examined the actual mountains evidence provided by experiencers, or the arguments of fellow scientists like David Bohm or Pim van Lommel--but their distaste for words like "God" and "afterlife" is at least intelligible to me to the extent that those terms are identified with outmoded meanings. The magical multiverse of the contemporary physicist is just far more fascinating than the claustrophobic, tinker-toy world of folks like Harold Camping.    

Lakeman,
I completely agree with your insightful post. I would add one possible dimension to Hawking's refusal to consider the abundant evidence of an afterlife. Just beyond the fairy tale label attached to the christian view of heaven, lies the dangerous fringe of the New Age, a place rife with charlatans and very short on credibility, a currency that mainstream scientists, even one as pre-eminent as Hawking, rely on for success and self-respect.  To admit the existence of an afterlife would be to invite Cayce and Monroe into the fold.

Bardo,

Many thanks for your comments. I agree that many mainstream intellectuals are loathe to be "tarred" with the "New Age" brush. Fear of ridicule by one's peers proves to be a powerful taboo. But I would also say that things have changed significantly over the past decades.

Back in 1975, 186 scientists--including Nobel Prize-winning astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers, and others--signed a statement, published in the Humanist journal, denouncing the "pseudo-science" of astrology and those who might take it seriously. But when a BBC interviewer went to talk to some of the Nobel Prize Winners who had signed the statement, they refused to be interviewed after admitting that they literally didn't know what they were talking about, since they had never studied astrology and had no notion of what it was really about and why it was irrational, pseudo-scientific nonsense. What could be more irrational than condemning something out of ignorance?

But David Bohm started off his career as Albert Einstein's protégé and went on to write one of the standard textbooks of modern physics. It was hard for other scientists to call him a flake for accepting the validity of the mystical experience, or for rejecting the view that consciousness is just a byproduct of neurons firing way (brain-piss). Similarly, van Lommel's study of near-death experiences was published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet. And while some physicians attacked van Lommel as a dangerous "cultist", that kind of ad hominem attack just reveals the desperation of the attackers, who can't criticize the research on its merits.

So I would say that there are rays of hope. Charles Tart recently published a book in which he argued that the materialist dogma of science cannot last. Disentangling the 17th century materialist creed from the idea of science as a method of inquiry will be the first, crucial step in a transformation of the sciences that will even dwarf the Copernican revolution.

In honour of Bob D : ' The Times They Are A-changin' .

S.H. is smart by most definitions, but what is intelligence? It seems to me the components are wisdom and cleverness. One might have a huge amount of intellectual candlepower and be considered very smart, but without wisdom the person is merely very clever. I don't know Hawking, but he would seem to fit into this category.

On the other hand, one may have a lot emotional wisdom, for example, but not be very clever and thus not considered conventionally "smart." I had an aunt who was very wise and could always figure out solutions for interpersonal dilemmas. No one in the family considered her all that smart (nor did she, and often said so), but any of us with an intractable personal problem would call her, not the "smart" ones in the family, and almost always get a usable solution.

There actually is a huge body of scientific evidence for the paranormal and an afterlife, but materialists dismiss or ignore it. I suspect Hawking has done both. This is not a judgment, but he sounds like a future retrieval case if he is not at least open to the notion of life after life.

JB

I want to emphasize a thing which Lakeman already approached. There is a sort of predominant scientific view, often named as the opinion of the "scientific community". And this is, simplified and channeled through the media, the brain-religion.

I am, at least through my academical education, a member of the scientific community, but I can only shake my head about this naive and childish worldview which some of my "colleagues" are uttering.
Obviously, when someone has gotten the diploma in physics, this one feels to be competent as well in philosophy, and most of the media seem to share this opinion. Probably because it's much easier to repeat the common phrase "you are your brain" than to think about if this makes sense at all. It doesn't.

First, I have no clue what my brain does. Nonetheless I'm able to think.

Second, there are correlations between what we experience and activities within our brains. But correlations are not causations. Most natural scientists, when it comes to the brain, forget their proper education and declare experiences to be caused by activities within the brain. When confronted with the question how this mystical causal process is taking place, to transmute chemo-electrical activities into experiences, they fly to another phrase: They avoid causation, and start to identificate these physiological activities with experiences; because it spares them to explain how this causation would work; but this then is nothing else but mysticism in the bad meaning. To explain a correlation by an identification negates the correlation, as how can there be a correlation between one and the same thing? Some of the smartest of those scientists see this impossibility and therefore deny any correlation; saying our experience is an illusion, and there are only physiological processes. And this then is the end-point: Total delusion with a scientific diploma. As when experiences would be illusions, then their scientific work, together with it's objects, would be illusions, too.

Third, the brain is one of many objects in the world. When someone says that the world is nothing but a representation within the brain, then it is to ask how this one then could know anything about the world? Then the brain itself, and all theories about the brain would be themselves nothing but a representation, an image, within the brain. Therefore, we only could conclude either that there is no brain (or that we don't know anything about it and it's just an empty term), or that the brain is the brain. Congratulations!

Spooky

Spooky correctly noted that, “Then the brain itself, and all theories about the brain would be themselves nothing but a representation, an image, within the brain.” Exactly! One of the points that Bohm emphasized was the symbolic nature of ALL of our representations, including our best scientific theories (and, of course, our religious theologies as well). Even these are only metaphors, despite science’s own tendency (born of intellectual laziness?) to treat them as literal descriptions of what is “out there”. Bohm was fond of citing the Polish-American philosopher Alfred Korzybski (and this is just a paraphrase) that reality is always something more and other than what we think it is, because our thoughts are not just transparent descriptors, they are in effect creative, artistic products—part of what Bohm called “the dance of the mind”.

Lakeman

Hi,

Hawking said 'there is no place for heaven in the cosmos'

I thought heaven was outside the cosmos?

Spooky, as a psychologist I like your logic very much  :)

Very Nice Spooky! I love what you've written here. I am finishing up The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot and that is the only reason I can completely follow what you are getting at here. Magnificent! A pleasure to read a well thought out, to the point, and brief too, post. Awesome.

Yours,
--beau

Thanks!
It's better to be here than on some intellectual coctail-party, where such topics are discussed, and I couldn't hold back and tell them what I think about it, to the only result that they repeat their opinions without getting anything of what I've just said. I would then have some more coctails  ;) .

Oh, there is another fine invention. It's called "epi-phenomenon". Our mind (our experiences) is, so they say, an "epi-phenomenon" of the brain. Now, a phenomenon, in my book, is a part of our experience, which we can more or less well discerned from the whole of our experiences, and which is not filtered by a rigid theory. So then they say the brain is a phenomenon, and our experiences are an offspring of it? Or what? Don't ask me, I don't know the answer. But you know what? No one knows what is meant by that  ;) .

Spooky

Another tactic a la Blackmore, is to go further and deny the mind even exists ...

Praise the Lowered! They are finally beginning to see something that forces them to reexamine the data.

just chiming in quickly that this is the best discussion I have read in a long time, it`s great! Thank you all so much for your wise, intelligent and insightful statements!

Btw, also I`ve yet to read a good scientific, convincing explanation of the qualia issue.

All in all, I fully agree to the correlations statement and would like to add that if you combine correlation and any thesis you wish to see proved, you can pretty much proved anything (and such experiments have been made). Simple example, which happens to be true: In one federal state in Germany, there are a lot more storks than in the other federal states. Also, there have been more newborns in the years that extra many storks appeared. Therefore, it is clear that storks bring the newborn....

Anyone can see that although A and B may both be true, the thesis is still plain wrong.

.... big Ben chimes five times and workers leave their factories in Sheffield (200 miles north) every day thus Big Ben must cause the worker's exit...

Oh yes, and another variant is most of Heroine/Cocaine addicts smoked pot before they started with the hard stuff, ergo pot is the cause for consuming hard drugs! But they never asked how many of them consumed coffee before...

Chrwe, yes exactly, the qualia problem is essentially the same issue. As long as we live in a subjective world (here, me, I, having experiences) it will remain a fact that we don't know how others do experience; we only can conclude by their behaviour, that there are some similarities. What is so strange with scientists who deny that there is any kind of problem is that they don't see the reality of their own subject, for them everything is objective; information, represented as data encoded in material form. That every objective fact stems from a richer, subjective fact (which then is reduced to an objective fact by intersubjective/scientific standards) is something they don't see. The subjective experience is needed to establish the reality.

Spooky

My good friend, the athiest scientist, says that God (or spirit or afterlife or tooth fairy etc) doesn't exist, because there is no scientific evidence to support it. When pressed, he says that he lives in a world governed by facts. When further pressed, he says facts are articles of knowledge. Upon cross-examination, he asserts that knowledge, is defined (as it has been for millenia) as "justifiable true belief".
Leaving aside the "justifiable", because it is an entire branch of enquiry all it's own, he asserts that a true belief is a belief (agreement with a proposition), that is true (!). Under duress, he declares that if it is true, that it actually exists. That is, it stands up to the scrutiny of the scientific method. Under threat of torture, he declares the scientific method to be the systematic observation of or experiment with a system (usually of or in nature).  So finally, after some gentile waterboarding, he blurts out that his world is based on his "agreement with a proposition" that is based on  his "observations" of the world.

Now that is hard evidence, if I ever saw it.

apart from the fact that more PUL is recommended even when dealing with scientist hardliners :) :), this seems to be the standard scientific method as efficiently demonstrated by the double slit (not sure about translation) experiments in quantum physics

Indeed the Double Slit is very cool to say the least. You would think that alone would make science a little more willing to open up beyond their Dogma.

A interesting response to some of Dawkins' arguments in his latest book.

http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2011/05/dawkins-on-fatima-by-robert-perry.html