Atheism

Stephen Hawking Was an Atheist. Here’s What He Said About God, Heaven and His Own Death

https://time.com/5199149/stephen-hawking-death-god-atheist/

For more than 50 years, death was a poignant part of Stephen Hawking’s remarkable life.

The physicist, who died Wednesday at age 76, wasn’t expected to see his 25th birthday, after being diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative condition ALS at age 21. Though Hawking beat the odds for more than five decades, the scientist told the Guardian in 2011 that death was never far from his mind.

“I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years,” Hawking said. “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”

Here are some of Hawking’s most interesting thoughts about death, the afterlife and God:

He believed in an ‘impersonal God,’ but not a creator

“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” he wrote in The Grand Design. “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking didn’t believe in heaven

The scientist took a pragmatic view of what happens to the brain and body after death.

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail,” he told the Guardian. “There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Hawking considered himself an atheist

“Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation,” he said.