Last week, high priest of atheism Stephen Hawking said there was no Heaven. He couldn't find it, and couldn't prove it was there. Therefore, there isn't any.
Good.
Why good? Well, before I answer that, I should point out that Hawking also said that he couldn't prove Heaven wasn't there, which is honest of him. Considering that Heaven, should it exist, is a metaphysical location, should Dr. Hawking find anything resembling Heaven, I would be seriously worried.
It's sort of like if someone could point to a box and say "There's God."
I'm sorry, but for something to claim to be my deity, it would have to be unlimited in scope... ie: God doesn't fit in a box.
Besides, Hawking is not in the religion business, no matter how many ways he tries to interject himself into the matter. Were he to fall back on a supernatural explanation for anything, that would be bad science. God doesn't fit into an equation, can't be experimented on, tested, retested, or submitted to any version of any scientific method.
For example, there's the Big Bang. There is evidence for such an explosion to kick-start the universe. Communications satellites have picked up signals that are, in essence, "echoes" of the Big Bang. However, the amount of things that we know about the big bang aren't accurate; most of what we know about it is supposition. People have theorized about what happened based on the results: as in "in order for X to have happened, Y must have occured at Z seconds within the event itself."
If any scientist says "We think there's a God, because we can't figure it out otherwise," that is a cheat. That isn't science. The best a scientist can get away with is "It looks like a bloody miracle, but give us time, we'll figure it out." Using God as a placeholder in a theory is cheating.
However, in the case of Hawking, I object when he injects his atheism into his science.
Hawking has come up with several theories on how the universe started; from what I can recall, all of them throw out the Big Bang. I think the simplest way for me to explain it would be to say that the universe is a self-sustaining temporal loop where the Universe simply goes and starts itself repeatedly...
I think I heard that theory on Star Trek once, only they made it sound more believable.
Good.
Why good? Well, before I answer that, I should point out that Hawking also said that he couldn't prove Heaven wasn't there, which is honest of him. Considering that Heaven, should it exist, is a metaphysical location, should Dr. Hawking find anything resembling Heaven, I would be seriously worried.
It's sort of like if someone could point to a box and say "There's God."
I'm sorry, but for something to claim to be my deity, it would have to be unlimited in scope... ie: God doesn't fit in a box.
Besides, Hawking is not in the religion business, no matter how many ways he tries to interject himself into the matter. Were he to fall back on a supernatural explanation for anything, that would be bad science. God doesn't fit into an equation, can't be experimented on, tested, retested, or submitted to any version of any scientific method.
For example, there's the Big Bang. There is evidence for such an explosion to kick-start the universe. Communications satellites have picked up signals that are, in essence, "echoes" of the Big Bang. However, the amount of things that we know about the big bang aren't accurate; most of what we know about it is supposition. People have theorized about what happened based on the results: as in "in order for X to have happened, Y must have occured at Z seconds within the event itself."
If any scientist says "We think there's a God, because we can't figure it out otherwise," that is a cheat. That isn't science. The best a scientist can get away with is "It looks like a bloody miracle, but give us time, we'll figure it out." Using God as a placeholder in a theory is cheating.
However, in the case of Hawking, I object when he injects his atheism into his science.
Hawking has come up with several theories on how the universe started; from what I can recall, all of them throw out the Big Bang. I think the simplest way for me to explain it would be to say that the universe is a self-sustaining temporal loop where the Universe simply goes and starts itself repeatedly...
I think I heard that theory on Star Trek once, only they made it sound more believable.
