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kkerwin1
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The most-complete quote that I was able to find attributed to Hawking is the following, without buying the book:
www.thesun.co.uk
But back to the philosophy, Hawking states specifically, “it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God”. Essentially, this is Occam’s Razor applied to the question of God’s existence. Implicit in the full quote is an element of uncertainty in Hawking’s speech. Hawking didn’t say, “there is no God”, but rather, “it is my view … that there is no God”. He is quoting only himself as the authority, not some philosophical treatise nor scientific workup.
In short, the headlines as written at Sun et alia are a tad bit more sensational than the truth here. Although, not by much.
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Stephen Hawking's final book reveals whether he believed in god and time travel
THE LATE Professor Stephen Hawking revealed his answers to 10 “big questions” he was often asked in a new book published six months after his death. In ‘Brief Anwers to the Big Qu…
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Sadly, that’s not much context to judge Hawking’s meaning. Hawking has long been, broadly, an anti-theist of some repute (whether that be agnostic or atheist), so this is hardly news."Do I have faith? We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God.
"No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.
"This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either.
"I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science.
"I think that when we die we return to dust. But there’s a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children.
“We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.”
But back to the philosophy, Hawking states specifically, “it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God”. Essentially, this is Occam’s Razor applied to the question of God’s existence. Implicit in the full quote is an element of uncertainty in Hawking’s speech. Hawking didn’t say, “there is no God”, but rather, “it is my view … that there is no God”. He is quoting only himself as the authority, not some philosophical treatise nor scientific workup.
In short, the headlines as written at Sun et alia are a tad bit more sensational than the truth here. Although, not by much.
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