For those of you who missed it, the extremely intelligent British physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out last week that “A belief that Heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a ‘fairy story’ for people afraid of death.” He also said, “I regard the human brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark” What I find particularly odd is how many people are giving credence to Dr. Hawking’s silly opinions. Let’s do a quick fact check.
1. Is Stephen Hawking a Catholic? No
2. Is Stephen Hawking a Christian? No
3. Is Stephen Hawking a theologian? No
4. Is Stephen Hawking a Bible scholar? No
5. Is Stephen an expert in any way, shape, or form in the worlds largest religion? No
6. Is Stephen Hawking a physicist? Yes
7. Does his area of expertise lay in a completely different field from religion? Yes, as long as heaven isn’t supposed to be on the moon or in a black hole.
You can see my problem. If I suddenly went out into the streets of Wenatchee and called a press conference to show that I had discovered a new area of theoretical physics showing how everything we have thought we have know about mathematics for the last 3000 years has actually been a big lie for people who were afraid that the earth was round and they would fall off, I would be laughed at. No one would come; no one would care. I would just be a big idiot. Everyone would know that I know absolutely nothing about physics or string theory, and they would tell me to just stick the whole “God thing” and leave science up to the scientists. Yet no one seems to question the amazing Stephen Hawking. After all, the man did redefine how we look at black holes. Obviously he must know what he is talking about with end of the world matters and the like. I draw your attention once again to my 7 point check list. Unless heaven is inside a black hole or on a different planet (or moon) then why in the world would we think Stephen Hawking is any more credible when it comes to matters of faith than I am when it comes to matters of math and physics. If this is the case, why do people allow him to affect their faith? He is not an emerging philosopher of the twenty first century, he is just a physicist. A very good physicist, but just a physicist nonetheless. I think the answer lies in his fame. For some reason we really want to believe famous people. Not only do we want to believe what they say, I think we actually want to believe IN them. We want them to represent all that is good and true and wholesome in this world. Even when they are bad, we still want to hold them up as role models in some way, shape, or form. Just have a look at the magazine rack near the checkout line next time you hit the supermarket. Everything is about celebrities and the intimate details of their lives (or sex and weight loss). We are surrounded by the media telling us what is important and who we should put our faith, and this week it was Stephen Hawking, an atheist physicist who can find no mathematical or scientific evidence for the existence of heaven. Why is this even news? Did I miss something where someone else claimed to have found heaven in a black hole and Stephen Hawking needed to smack them around? When has our faith ever been based on the opinions of physicists? Why does anyone care whether or not Steve believes in heaven? You should, because you need to pray for him.
I think you're on to something when you suggest that we want celebrities to be right. Because they are good at a particular thing that we respect, we allow them to embody as many of our ideals as we can. But I think it's also an instinctual reaction: he's really good at this, maybe he knows about this, too. Respect seems to be primarily a spiritual reaction, in the same way that love is a spiritual reaction to the good, the true, and the beautiful; this person has proven themselves to me in some way as capable, so I feel secure in listening to and giving weight to what they say. And, as with so many other things, we often allow the emotional part of that spiritual reaction to carry us away, without allowing the intellect its say.
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