After learning today, that he has publicly denied God and any notion of an afterlife however, I feel a bit less inclined to keep him on elevated hero status. Dad 's battle with ALS has been unimaginably hard, given our economic circumstances. The disease easily devoured our lower middle class resources within the first and second year. Without the unlimited resources (surely that the famous Dr. Hawking has to sustain his bodily functions) we have been reduced to relying on small miracles from God to get us through each day. It's been our faith in the notion of God that's been getting my Dad, my Mom and I and my siblings through this living hell called ALS.
I feel that, as a public figure and someone who is a living icon for ALS patients, Dr. Hawking should've emphasized that it was only his personal opinion the God doesn't exist, instead of trying to lay out a scientific case for it.
Dr Hawking declared,
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
Dr. Hawking, making a comparison between computers and the human brain sees the relationship between brain and body as purely mechanical. He fails to make a juxtaposition, choosing rather a simple comparison that ignores the complex disjuncture between the human brain and the computer. The brain is far more complex than any computer that has ever been developed and the human spirit, perhaps because it is not quantifiable in scientific terms was ignored by Dr. Hawking.
When Dr. Hawking makes his way fearlessly into the "dark"and comes face to face with God, I hope that he'll be able to explain his theory of a Godless, heavenless universe. Despite this though, I think he's a brilliant scientist and respect his work and contributions to science and the world, and his fortitude to keep thinking and working.
See the story here:
