Well Said, Stephen Hawking

Ah, good. Stephen Hawking also looks upon the nonsense of an afterlife and heaven as fairy-tales. I've been saying this for years and not only about the afterlife, so now that someone with a mind as great as Hawking has dared to say it, perhaps it will be taken a bit more seriously.

How anyone in the twenty-first century can believe in such medieval (and earlier) baloney goes beyond me. No doubt they also believe that there is a great big giant at the top of a beanstalk somewhere, just waiting to eat up little boys.

Accept it: we are just the packages that are used by genes to propagate themselves. Our afterlife, such as it is, rests solely in the continuation of our genes in further generations: the package is burnt up and thrown away, usually after having lived for far longer than is really necessary. Be happy with that and forget all the claptrap about heavens and paradises and whatever else you have been told. Such rubbish is just a load of tales made up to satisfy the fears of ignorant people in the past, yet perpetuated today in an attempt by organised religions to keep the masses under control. Fear is a wonderful controlling mechanism.

Stephen Hawking spoke out against the afterlife in a recent interview with the Guardian . His illness prevents him from speaking very much, so everything he "says" (he uses an electronic device to produce his words) is carefully weighed in order to make as big an impact as possible with very few words. Yet by saying so little his great mind manages, in fact, to say an awful lot.

Photo attribution.