Stephen Hawking and God, again

Stephen Hawking, famous scientist, and best-selling author, has said, in an interview, that 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story.' He believes, as many do, that human existence ends with death.

Perhaps Hawking is right. I can't prove that he is not.

But statements such as this are not scientific. Hawking has not proved, by experiment, that there is no heaven. He presents no firm scientific evidence for this assertion.

It is interesting that the reason for interviewing Hawking was a lecture he recently gave on M-theory. M-theory is one version of a so-called Theory of Everything, an attempt to explain the physical laws that undergird our universe in one unified scheme. As the Wikipedia article on the theory says, so far, M-theory lacks experimental proof, and ". . . the tangible success of M-theory can be questioned, given its current incompleteness and limited predictive power, even after so many years of intense research."

That doesn't prove that M-theory isn't right. It may be. But perhaps its predictive power is roughly equivalent to assertions about the existence (or not) of a heavenly afterlife. (I would guess that the establishment of M-theory, should that take place, would neither prove or disprove the existence of God.)

For more on Hawking's religious beliefs, see this paragraph in the Wikipedia, or go here.

Thanks for reading.