Physicist Stephen Hawking just had his final publication revealed, and in it, he declares that “there is no God.” In what could be considered his last “profound realization” he also says that there is no afterlife.
With the publication of his final book, Professor Stephen Hawking has revealed his answers to 10 “fundamental questions” he was constantly being asked. According to The Daily Mail, he states there is no afterlife once we die and no God either. The questions Hawking attempts to answer in the book range from whether or not there is a God, time travel, and the existence of intelligent alien beings.
“We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God,” Hawking said, according to The Telegraph. “No one created the universe and no one directors out fate. This leads me to a profound realization: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking,” he said. “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 is a sense we live on, in our influence, and in the genes we pass to our children.”
Hawking also envisioned a world of “superhumans” in his final prediction before he died seven months ago, according to The Guardian. The world-renowned physicist suggested that genetic engineering would create a new race of humans that could destroy the rest of humanity. A collection of articles and essays left by Hawking warning about the dangers of manipulating DNA will also be published in a posthumous book. He said genetic editing could create a species that would wipe out the rest of humanity.
Hawking, the author of A Brief History of Time, who died in March, made the predictions in a collection of articles and essays. He presented the possibility that genetic engineering could create a new species of superhuman that could destroy the rest of humanity. The essays, published in the Sunday Times, were written in preparation for a book that will be published on Tuesday.
“I am sure that during this century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence and instincts such as aggression,” he wrote.
“Laws will probably be passed against genetic engineering with humans. But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as memory, resistance to disease and length of life.” –The Guardian
Hawking’s book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, will be on sale today, Tuesday, October 16. The book is bound to be controversial and polarizing since he’s taken a fairly firm stance on the existence of a supreme being.
