{"id":53139,"date":"2018-10-28T05:13:07","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T09:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=53139"},"modified":"2018-10-28T08:35:23","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T12:35:23","slug":"big-answers-to-the-brief-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2018\/10\/big-answers-to-the-brief-questions.html","title":{"rendered":"Big Answers to the Brief Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>\"\"I\u2019ve been seeing lots of mentions of Stephen Hawking\u2019s posthumously-published book,\u00a0Brief Answers to the Big Questions<\/em><\/a>, and thought I would comment. Getting particular attention is Hawking\u2019s more direct statement<\/a> of his atheism<\/a> in comparison with earlier publications. Hemant Mehta<\/a>\u00a0and Rob Picheta<\/a>\u00a0shared brief quotations:<\/p>\n

We are each free to believe what we want, and\u00a0it\u2019s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.\u00a0This leads me to a profound realisation:\u00a0there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It flies in the face of everything we know in science.\u00a0I think that when we die we return to dust.<\/p>\n

But there is a sense we live on, in our influence, and in the genes we pass to our children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God. I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It will be a pity if the focus of attention is on Hawking\u2019s view of religion, and not the scientific work that he was engaging in right up until the end<\/a>. But his view as someone who experienced the unfairness of the universe, the reality of human suffering, as well as studying its mysteries in depth and detail, is deserving of consideration, even when he opines about theology.<\/p>\n

If the options were to believe that those who suffer are cursed by God, or that the term \u201cGod\u201d does not denote anything meaningful, then the latter would indeed be the way to go. But there is a much wider array of theological options, just as there are multiple possible understandings of the origin and history of the cosmos.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been seeing lots of mentions of Stephen Hawking\u2019s posthumously-published book,\u00a0Brief Answers to the Big Questions, and thought I would comment. Getting particular attention is Hawking\u2019s more direct statement of his atheism in comparison with earlier publications. Hemant Mehta\u00a0and Rob Picheta\u00a0shared brief quotations: We are each free to believe what we want, and\u00a0it\u2019s my view […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":53142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,85],"tags":[870,871,4005,11867],"class_list":["post-53139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism-religion","category-science","tag-atheism-religion","tag-atheist","tag-god","tag-stephen-hawking"],"yoast_head":"\nBig Answers to the Brief Questions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've been seeing lots of mentions of Stephen Hawking's posthumously-published book,\u00a0Brief Answers to the Big Questions, and thought I would comment.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2018\/10\/big-answers-to-the-brief-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Big Answers to the Brief Questions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've been seeing lots of mentions of Stephen Hawking's posthumously-published book,\u00a0Brief Answers to the Big Questions, and thought I would comment.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2018\/10\/big-answers-to-the-brief-questions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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