Is philosophy dead?

[wittgenstein]

There are countless unanswerable questions (such as your example of an oxygen atom on Pluto), so it doesn’t seem unreasonable in principle to discard them all as meaningless, otherwise we’d waste all our time on them and never get anything done.

At issue would be the criteria by which the answerable/unanswerable decision is made. Hawking presumably excludes any appeal to a priori knowledge.

Is there a God?
It makes a huge difference if the question is meaningless. If the question is meaningless, then the statement “I believe in God” is like saying," juilty creates moultgy". Also, " I do not believe in God " is like saying " juilty creates moultgy". In other words gibberish! There would be no theists, atheists and agnostics! To say " I am a Theist" would be like saying " I am a gkunli". In other words gibberish! Similarly, if one said “I am an atheist” would be like saying, " I am a gkunki".
If the question is not meaningless, than God either exists or does not exist. Either Theists would be correct and their belief system would be the best or atheists would be correct and their belief system would be the best.

 

[wittgenstein]

Even saying, " I am an agnostic" would be meaningless. It would be like saying, " I am not sure hygdcr" exists.
If X is an undefined term, does it make any sense to ask, " does X exist"?
I respect agnosticism, theism and atheism. However, I do not respect logical positivism. It is silly. The question, “is there a God” is a meaningful question!
Logical positivism is remembered as the only philosophy that refuted itself.
Logical positivism is the belief that if a proposition is not analytical and it is not empirical, it is meaningless ( gibberish).
Is the proposition, " any proposition that is not analytical and not empirical is meaningless " analytical? Nope!
Is it empirical? Nope! Therefore, the foundational belief of logical positivism is gibberish by its own definitions!

 

[wittgenstein]

I have tremendous respect for Hawking as a physicist. Unfortunately, his philosophical musings are facile. His being a logical positivist causes him to utter silly philosophical pronouncements.