Stephen Hawking: Heaven is "a fairy story"

[Hilander]

CBS News...Physicist Stephen Hawking believes there is no afterlife, and that the concept of heaven is a "fairy story" for people who fear death. In an interview published in the Guardian, Hawking - author of the bestselling "A Brief History of Time" - said that when the brain ceases to function, that's it. Read More Here

I don't agree with Mr. Hawking on this. Not that I know for sure there is a heaven and hell, I have had no near death experiences but because I have seen a ghost. If there were no afterlife that event would not of been possible. What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Random9]

I don't agree with Mr. Hawking on this. Not that I know for sure there is a heaven and hell, I have had no near death experiences but because I have seen a ghost. If there were no afterlife that event would not of been possible. What are your thoughts on this?

i don't follow a religion which believes in heaven and therefore i think he's right,i mean as someone who doesn't believe in such a religion what else can i think of heaven? i'd have to say his claims are rather trivial and this simply depends on you following such a religion or not.

 

[CaptainObvious]

I agree with Random in that he's a person with an opinion just like the rest of us. I can believe he's wrong and Random can believe he's right and that's the end if it. He think there is no afterlife and that's fine. He can't prove it anyway so his opinion basically means nothing to me.

 

[wooly]

In terms of what i personally think happens when we die, i agree with Hawkings 100%.

However, i don't think his description of people who believe in heaven is fair at all. In fact, the lack of acknowledgment of the importance of religion is kind of ignorant. Heaven isn't just for people who are "afraid of the dark". Heaven is a concept of rewards for doing good deeds in your life, something that morality was based on in every single culture before a lot of belief started to shift to science. In a lot of ways, religion WAS science before science, and in a lot of cultures still is.

I prefer to take the standpoint that just because i 100% don't believe in heaven, i think it's perfectly reasonable for other people to believe in heaven. Unless his quotes were just slightly taken out of context or spliced together in a certain way, it feels like he's taking a bit of an elitist atheist attitude here, which i don't really appreciate.

 

[Wade8813]

I more or less agree with Wooly. I'm unsure about my feelings on heaven, but Hawking sounds unnecessarily rude and condescending. And wrong - many of the people I know who believe in heaven include some of the smartest, most intellectually rigorous people I've met.

 

[Merc]

As it's been said, he's just a man with an opinion. None of us will know until we pass, right?

That being said, I've always tried to focus on living and not focusing on when and how it will end.

 

[semsemman]

If there is another life after death we will know. If there is not, we will never know.

The hard questions is not if you believe in the afterlife or not, but it is if you hope that or not !