One of the world’s better-known atheists is having his ashes interred at one of the world’s great churches, Westminster Abbey.  It appears science has replaced God in some religious circles.

Stephen Hawking, theoretic physicist and cosmologist literally became the Oracle at Cambridge –  he spoke through a voice generator due to his paralytic condition that confined him to a wheelchair. Professor Hawking described how his voice synthesizer worked to produce his spellbinding machine-like voice.

His proclamations and prophetic utterances were like those of the Oracle at Delphi the Greeks consulted for answers to important questions of their day.  The oracle was a sunken place in a temple floor where a female visionary was placed in a chair on a tripod over the pit.  Escaping gases from the pit threw her into a trance and altered her voice as she spoke, much like someone breathing helium and then speaking.

Likewise, it was Hawking’s voice synthesizer that entranced audiences and conferred high intellect upon his utterances.  He held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the same chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663.

How Cambridge University will replace this icon is unknown but it will likely use video and audio technology to “bring him back to life again.”

Among Hawking’s predictions:

• Hawking once predicted that the earth would turn into a giant ball of fire by the year 2600 and humans would need to colonize another planet or face extinction.
• He also claimed that the advent of artificial intelligence could be the “worst event in the history of our civilization.”
• He said humanity would not survive another 1000 years.
• When speaking to the Radio Timesbefore his BBC Reith Lecture, Professor Hawking stated, “We face a number of threats: nuclear war, global warming and genetically engineered viruses,”  the latter threat being the furthest outside his primary base of knowledge of theoretical physics and mathematics.

Hawking: a victim of a vaccine-related virus?

And it may have been a virus that confined Hawking to a wheelchair rather than that motor neuron disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) that befell him, beginning at age 21.  He lived too long (76 years) for him to have ALS, which has a 2-year survival rate.

Stephen Hawking may have been misdiagnosed and was actually a victim of polio, a US medical expert has suggested.

Christopher B Cooper, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the likelihood the physicist’s debilitating condition was in fact amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was “low.” Hawking’s young age at diagnosis and 55-year survival is not typical of ALS.

There is speculation that Hawking may have developed his nerve paralysis as a side effect from a genetically engineered virus which “possesses significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards,” says a published report.

He may actually have been a victim of vaccines.

Non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) is a condition that became a widespread problem in India following mass vaccination against polio.  The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME) explains that NPAFP is indistinguishable from polio paralysis.

Vaccine-induced polio is now the predominant form of polio in the world now.  For example, approximately eight people acquire poliomyelitis in the U.S annually and virtually all of these cases are vaccine-related.  As early as 1936 vaccine-induced polio was reported.

Vaccine-related polio is said to emanate from “rare strains of poliovirus that have genetically mutated from the strain contained in the oral polio vaccine.”  It is possible Hawking discovered this himself, but only after he had become a poster boy for ALS.

An even more hidden trigger of polio may be vaccination of any kind.  In 1948 as documented in the Archives of Pediatrics, susceptibility to polio was associated with immunization for typhoid-paratyphoid vaccine.  In 1952 it was reported polio was associated with any form of injected medicine.

A study published in 1952 found a relationship between inoculation for tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and diphtheria with the development of paralytic poliomyelitis.

Hawking on the existence of God

Regarding the existence of God, Hawking was quoted to say: “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God. Which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”

Hawking said Einstein used the word “God” as a form of shorthand to the laws of physics.  “However, this is not what most people mean by God, so I have decided not to use the term.  The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a God.”  To Hawking, once all knowledge is gained, there is no need for the concept of God.

He added: “Religion believes in miracles, but these aren’t compatible with science.”

He offered an explanation of how the world came into being without God.  He tersely asked: “What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?”

Yet Hawking did refer to the existence of God.  Hawking was once asked: Can God intervene in the universe as He wants or is God too bound by the laws of science?

He quipped: “that is like saying, can God make a stone that is so heavy he can’t lift it?”

“I don’t think it is very useful to speculate on what God might or might not be able to do… All of our observations suggest that it operates according to well-defined laws.  These laws may have been ordained by God,  but it seems that He does not intervene to break the laws, at least not once He set the universe going.”

Hawking said the human race has no future if it doesn’t emigrate to outer space.  He said he was convinced “humans need to leave the earth.”  “Humanity only has 100 years left before doomsday.”

Hawking said eventually robots will replace humanity completely.  “It will be a new form of life that will outperform humans.” But will it have a conscience, a soul?

Yet even Hawking was stumped to explain how something as intricate as the human eye evolved by chance or random selection.  Hawking said: “Some look at, for example, the human eye and wonder how that exciting ball of jelly could have come about scientifically.”

Hawking went on to expound on the nature of things.

“The conclusion… is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.

Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them.”

However scientific schemes to date the age of the cosmos and the Earth are based upon a constant speed of light, or a given rate of decay.

But Hawking and the scientific community have problems with their own science.  In about 15 billion years light traveling at 186,320 miles per second would have only traveled part way across the cosmos. But photons of light have traversed the entire universe. Then light must have traveled much faster than 186,320 miles per second in the distant past. How much faster? About 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, times faster. That means not nearly as much time has passed.

The Bible explains “in the beginning God” rather than the big bang.   Then, “Let there be light.”  Light existed before measurable time.  Next, time began.  When the celestial clock was created, the earth completing an orbit around the sun in 365 days and the earth completing a revolution on its axis in 24 hours.  We know when measurable time began, Hawking didn’t.  Since the only definition of a day is a 24-hour revolution of the earth, according to the Bible, the events of creation took six 24-hour days.

When man knows everything is God dead, as Hawking claims?  The scientific method can only eliminate that which is not true.  It cannot prove what is true since there is always unknown knowledge that could change what is believed to be true.

Of course, we could all attempt to come up with the answer to the question “is there a God?” by using logic rather than any body of scientific facts.  To deal with the above question we might consider Pascal’s wager:

If God does not exist, it does not matter how you wager, for there is nothing to win after death and nothing to lose after death. But if God does exist, your only chance of winning eternal happiness is to believe, and your only chance of losing it is to refuse to believe.

As Pascal says, “I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true.” If you believe too much, you neither win nor lose eternal happiness. But if you believe too little, you risk losing everything.