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, 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.

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?

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.

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

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.    

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.