Stephen Hawking on the Afterlife

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Interesting quote:

The story is here.

 

This, IMO, is the best part of his interview.

 

I particularly like how they broke the quote in it

Why is this news anyway?

 

This is why I can get so frustrated by religous people and religion. If you use the knowledge we have now and think things through there is no other reasonable conclusion to arrive to. To me it just seems willfully stupid to stick with a view of the world expressed by some shaman from a desert tribe a few thousand years ago.

I especially liked: "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible." What kind of petty creature would have any interest in the sexual life of beings whose entire planet exists for the tiniest fraction of time in the large scheme of things? It is like a gardener taking a keen interest in the goings on of the atoms on a grain of sand underneath the tiles of the path to the fountain.

 

Correct. But the science always has one "drawback": it cannot take into consideration the knowledge we do NOT have (more precisely, it can, there are models that include uncertainty as well, but I'm talking totally generally). And in reality, the closed-world assumption does not apply (i.e. that what is not known is considered to be false). So a LOT of things that science states cannot be proved at all; often, there are (well-confirmed and practical) suspicions only.

So nothing guarantees that something won't come up that changes on our current views.

 

Be that as it may but the classical concept of god is just an even older attempt at explaining everything based on even less knowledge than what science have now.

 

Also a good point, joacqin. Yet, there are still very many things that are dark for us, and nothing guarantees that in the future something will not change our current views; and thus, eventually, some older (religious) concept becomes true after all.

Of course, if something becomes true (e.g. that afterlife exists), it doesn't mean it will be true for the reasons given by some religious explanation. It is possible to come into correct conclusion based on an incorrect train of thought or incorrect considerations. In fact, religious explanations aren't based on (true) scientific facts. This doesn't mean science and religion cannot meet one day.

All in all, I don't consider science totally superior to the beliefs of our ancestors. It is superior to the science of the past, and yes, it is immensely important to our world and life. This still doesn't mean it is superior to certain old basic concepts by all means and in all ways.

 

I can't stand Stephen Hawking, he's such a pompous little twat. Born and bred in Oxford and puts on that fake American accent - prick!

 

That's the first thing Hawking has said that I think I understand. Everything else he talks about is gibberish.