stephen hawking: the afterlife does not exist

I'm OK with not knowing whether there is an afterlife, I waste little time contemplating it, and I don't feel compelled by fear or family ritual to pretend to know (Faith!) there's such a thing. I'm just here for the moment.

 

With that said, I hedge my bet by giving a dollar to the homeless guy out in front of the Bank of China on Madison Avenue most mornings.

 

Yes.

If you think this Earth in this entire massive universe is the start and finish of everything for us and the living creatures on it, then I will disagree.

It's like the World Trade Center was built just to open a gift shop on the second floor and keep the rest of the place empty.

I honestly don't think we are meant to understand what the next step to life is. Are we the first? Are we the last?

To me there is no doubt after death we move onto something else. And I am pretty convinced what we think of as God has nothing to do with it. What ever created all of this is out there. My question is what is it and will I remember what I did while I am here?

It would be pretty damn depressing a cruel if after I died and I moved on to something else that I did not have any memories of that little girl in my avatar, my wife or my family.

And what about all those dogs waiting on the Rainbow Bridge?

 

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy in a system will increase over time (or, alternatively, nature will proceed from order to disorder). In short, everything — atoms, molecules, cells, living beings, planets, galaxies, even the universe itself — will eventually break down because no transfer of energy is 100 percent efficient.

Please explain, then, why conservation of energy works in your idea of the hereafter but entropy does not.

 

Where did I say one works and one doesn't it?
I also never stated anything about the conservation of energy, merely it's transfer.

The transfer of energy is not 100 percent efficient. Ok... But that doesn't violate the law regarding the transfer of energy does it? Energy is still transferred? So I guess I am failing to see how the two can not exist. And I don't see how my belief can not exist based on the second law thermodynamics.

I am not trying to be obtuse or anything, but I don't see where you think I'm cherry-picking through the laws of nature.


You and I and Hawking and everybody else with an opinion on the afterlife are on a level field as far as knowledge, because nobody knows for sure. It's all speculation and opinion.

 

I already knew this. When your heart stops beating, it's over. All over. Only religious enthusiasts believe otherwise.

 

Boy, I think I'm logging on to SportsJournalists.com and I find a bunch of people getting stoned during finals week in the dorm!

FWIW, astronauts as a rule have a deep abiding faith in God. "To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me impossible," John Glenn said. So they have found a way to square it with the absense of scientific proof, at least.

 

O.K. It's the year 17,051 A.D. You have been dead (from earth) for 15,000 years. Does it make any sense that memories from those brief 70 years would still have significance in whatever form you exist in now?

To believe in an afterlife you pretty much have to separate it from everything you know here. Hard to do, I know, because what we have here is all we know.

But we are talking about an eternity. And it's incredibly naive to think that these 70something years on earth can still hold any weight 10,000 or 50,000 years in the future.

Or what if you or your family fell victim to the Nazis in 1942. Would you still want those memories?

 

Why aren't we meant to understand? Who said so? What else are we not meant to know?

In the cosmic equivalent of a microsecond, we've gone from muddling about in caves and merely subsisting to exploring our solar system and wrapping our collective mind around the inner workings of the universe. Saying we're not "meant" to understand something suggests there is some party that does not wish us to know said thing. To whom are you referring?

 

In the absence of empirical knowledge, why is it necessary to invent something to fill the void?

 

To keep people sane.

Serial killer butchers your 9-year-old daughter. You damn well are believing "She's in a better place" or you'll condemn yourself to a life of misery and regret and rage.

And frankly, it's one of the paradoxes we deal with every day.

"Pray for X! Pray for X! X is getting better; prayers are working! Oops, X is getting worse; pray for X! X died today. But at least she's in a better place."

If she's in a better place, what exactly were we praying for?

 

"If you really believe that death leads to eternal bliss than why are you wearing a seat belt? Because you're just not sure."