Needless to say Stephen Hawking is one of the brightest minds currently living.

From his interview with the Guardian:

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark".   :o

I'm shocked and confused... Please, your comments ladies and gentlemen...

SL

"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
— Stephen Hawking


"Not only does God play dice but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen."
— Stephen Hawking


" You cannot understand the glories of the universe without believing there is some Supreme Power behind it."
— Stephen Hawking

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark".

Who's claiming that there's afterlife for brains?  ::)

Thanks for bringing this up still_living, I never even noticed how stupid this statement is before.

The brain, being a physical organ, dies with the body.
But we all have a spiritual counterpart, of which the brain is a replica.
There is massive evidence to support this view
www.nderf.org/

Interesting, if you look at the statement again.
'There is no afterlife for broken down computers' (he's stating his regard of the brain as a computer).
Notice how he's not actually saying WE are our brains.
Either he's changed a lot since the earlier quotes in his life, or someone's got to him, or he's being rather oblique, knowing that the 'this is all there is' crowd will take him literally.

Of course, I may be over speculating, but his statements might bot be as daft as they seem on first sight, and let's face it, The Guardian as a newspaper is just as gullible as the rest of them on certain subjects........... ;D

Best wishes,

Dave
:)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven

I am of the opinion that the guardian itself has an agenda with this story, as with all newspapers etc.

They knew it would be a big story, I wonder how much profit they made from Hawkings opinion?

@dave, good point he doesn't say we are our brains does he?

I haven't got a clue what he's saying tbh  ;D, but the "this is all we have" crowd have taken him literally, look at the comments on the article.

Are they the same sort of people as they who "knew" the world was flat? I think it's highly likely from my experience.

Having said that, if that makes them happy then so be it.

Andy

What does he know about the afterlife? Hes an astronomer.

  There are a few things that strike me about this that I think we as people of faith/belief/experience should be aware of.
  First off, this is an appeal to authority, which is a basic philosophical fallacy.  Just because it's Stephen Hawking's opinion doesn't make it true.  Yes, he is considered possibly one of the smartest people alive, but that is probably also a result of his condition and the field he works in, theoretical physics (and the fact that he is brilliant).  I teach Physics and Chemistry and can say that while what he does is difficult, it is not beyond the reach of a talented and very smart human being.
  Secondly, this appeal to authority could be turned on its head, as many, many of our scientists have also been theists.  Einstein was probably the smartest man alive around 100 years ago and was something of a deist.  There are many other examples, but I maybe shouldn't even mention it, as the fact that someone who is smart thinks it is true is independent of whether the idea is true or not.
  Third, his conclusion makes sense if you consider everything from a bottom up causality or materialism, but not if you come with an open mind to the problem of existence.  Meaning that if he assumes everything in existence has a naturalistic, bottom up causal explanation only then of course when we die that's it, because the brain dies which ends our mental, caused existence as well.  I'd argue that something like a consciousness is almost impossible to explain using a bottom up causal mindset, but experience shows that we have consciousnesses.  So its reasonable to postulate there are top down causal laws as well as bottom up causation that affect our lives.  I'd suggest consciousness and life itself as two examples of this.  In other words we are alive and kicking because there is a higher power that has enabled our brain (and other organs and organ systems) to work.  I do concede bottom up causality but there can also be top down causality to consider as well.  I'm arguing that I am alive not just because I have working parts but something greater than myself has allowed it/willed it to be.
  Lastly, if reason and science is important to you (as it is to me), I'd highly recommend listening to debates from a philosopher named William Lane Craig who does an excellent job debating various academic, philosophical or popular leaders who are antiChristian or antitheists.  There is no reason to be ashamed to be an intelligent believer in the afterlife as this man demonstrates.  God/creation/whatever you want to call it is the greatest scientist and put these laws into effect; we have nothing to fear from embracing science as well.  In fact some of the strongest arguments (philosophically speaking) for the existence of God are through science (Kalaam's Cosmological Argument and the Anthropic Principle).  Here is the link to William Lane Craig's debate with Christopher Hitchens - well worth your time, I promise, if you are interested in science and religion/spirituality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuB7KMfVems

Pratekya,  thanks for posting that debate from Youtube .  It's good to see you posting here again. 

hi i beleive in the afterlife,i think stephen hawking could be angry with God because he's stuck in that chair,probably he asks God why he was given such a brilliant brain,and had to be stuck in that chair.

it must be hard for someone who has to live that way,i know someone who's in a chair all the time and she cried, because she said she would just like to stand up and wash the dishes.

he will find out when he passes to the spiritworld,why he was put on the earth this way,i think myself that he is a very old soul, who is on his last reincarnation.

if he could have walked on this earth,he would have ventured where no man has gone before.

i don't agree at all with his opinion of the afterlife but he's like a lot more out there in the world,he will find the truth when he dies.

he will be happy in the spiritworld, there he can walk as far as he wants to and see as much as he wants to,no more a prisoner in his physical shell but a free spirit.

love and god bless  love juditha x

If Stephen Hawking says there is no afterlife people take notice and come to a conclusion based on his assumption but if the same people hear Bruce Moen says that there is an afterlife and has been 'there' with his own personal experience most people would scoff and still take the Hawking assumption as a truth. All this points to is the belief our society has and which people are regarded as important. Comes down to the general 'quality' of our society at this stage in time.
Take no notice of intellectual theories and find out through personal experience for solid proof  :)

Picking up the thoughts of Pratekya, I say brains and computers are just a part of what we are experiencing. Our environment. It involves a lot of concepts, nowadays the physicalistic-reductionistic concept (bottom-up-causality) is, at least in western countries, a very strong concept. Nonetheless, while it might have been, and still is, useful in the sense of technical development, it doesn't explain what really is, or what the truth is. It is based on data which are easy to objectify, ignoring those which aren't. So, it is merely a cutout of the full reality. It is not possible to first ignore the majority of real phaenomenons, and then to reconstruct this full reality using these reductionistic concepts.

It's all in our minds. The brain and it's functions, the computer, the universe.

Spooky

Hi

Regarding your term "a cutout of reality."  That is really neat, Spooky.  Did you 'coin' this term? It's perfect!

When I was a child, paperdolls were  very popular.  Small booklets were printed with people in their underwear, and pages were filled with their clothing, just waiting to be cut out and placed over each figure in the right positions, and then stories about them were imagined.  What a great metaphor/analogy for reality!

Any concept is just 'a cutout' of the true full meaning behind it!
Thanks, Spooky!

Betson

I haven't read his books but have only seen some of his cosmos programs, but does he ever consider that not all that exists is physical?  When I heard him explain that there was nothing before the big bang, not even time, therefore it proves there is no God and no afterlife and that this physical life is all we have, I was surprised.

Quantum mechanics and cosmology are all based on energy and what exists "before" the structure of physical reality.  But the terms in which he speaks of the energy of things is only about the physical mechanics of them, but nothing about the energy of consciousness.  So he doesn't believe we have a consciousness?  Surely he can't be serious in believing that physical reality is all there is.  I completely love watching the explanation of the big bang, but to me it has nothing to do with disproving consciousness or the afterlife.  I just don't see how he comes to that conclusion. 

The universe is part of physical reality, but you'd think that someone like Stephen Hawking would be able to understand there is more to reality than just what our human minds can see, study, and measure.  We are limited by our human condition, so to believe that the human condition is capable of ever discovering all there is is false logic.  It's like a fish swimming to the side of the fish tank and thinking that nothing else must exist because he can go no further.  Just because Stephen Hawking has explained that time doesn't exist before the big bang doesn't mean nothing else exists outside of what he's been able to measure.

Even without scientific, measurable proof, I'd much rather continue believing that we can never know everything there is to know.  Anytime we learn something new, discovering some new frontier, we must always continue looking for more because there's just no possible way to be capable of knowing everything from just one, quite limited, perspective. 

It seems to me that Stephen Hawking thinks that the only possible way for him to experience reality is from the perspective he's in of his physical perpsective.  That's quite a limited viewpoint, to think that the physical constructs of our world, including space and the universe, is all there is.