stephen hawking: the afterlife does not exist

Personally, I believe Hawking's view is a lot less likely than the afterlife. I just posted a vague statement because any discussion of religion tends to get people riled up. On a message board, that's multiplied. It's not a battle I felt like fighting, and I still don't feel like fighting it. That said, I think Hawking is absolutely incorrect.

 

Unless her last name
Has, strangely, one syllable
This haiku is fail

 

I think it's funny that most people think there are only two options - nothing or God.

We use 10% of our brains right now and are a speck of sand in a vast beach of a universe. Tell me why these two things came about with their only purpose of spending a few years on this single planet.

 

Why does there have to be a purpose?

 

Also, the 10% thing isn't true, either.

 

Then explain the size of the universe or where it came from.

 

Explain why if we can put a man on the moon that I can't get my socks to be their whitest.
In other words, whether or not we only use 10% of our brains (we don't - we use all of it) has precisely squat to do with the size of the universe, what its origins are, whether there's a purpose to it, or whether there's an afterlife.

edit to add: Nor do any of the answers to the last four questions necessarily have anything to do with each other.

 

I've seen it multiple places. It's a common myth.

 

This is a common misconception.

There are degrees of atheism. You're basically right about agnosticism. But the flip side of agnosticism is gnosticism, not atheism. Gnosticism is taking a conclusive stance against the existence of gods.

There are gnostic atheists, who say they have knowledge that there is no god, but they're by far the exception rather than the rule. Almost all atheists are agnostic atheists, which is to say they are taking a provisional position that god does not exist, in lieu of evidence that shows the contrary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism

This is spoken of a lot in religious/creationist circles, but it really doesn't hold much weight.

Unless all the "energy" for all past and future living beings is all contained on the earth/in the universe at all times forever, this philosophy falls apart. And if that were the case, then we're basically talking about an endless, infinite amount of "energy," which is, quite literally, impossible.

Also, unless you're suggesting this "afterlife" is actually contained within the universe itself (which seems an odd claim, indeed), then that "energy" would be leaving anyway.

We aren't "energy." We're a complex pattern of energy and matter, precisely arranged molecules that are constantly moving. That can quite easily be destroyed, in the same way any other molecule structure can be destroyed. That, in no sense, means this "energy" is somehow "us" and hangs around disembodied-like because physics tells it that it has to. Were this energy to stay, that's all it would be -- energy. Not consciousness. Not brain activity. Just empty, mindless energy.

The universe is indifferent to our existence or lack thereof. There's no place for us to go once we die, and there's no one to go there. We are our brain. When it dies, that is all the "us" there is.