Stephen Hawking is a genius physicist and “one of the most important scientists and public intellectuals of our time, if not all time.”
But despite being a top ranked scientist among scientists, Stephen Hawking does not base his choice of belief system on evidence.
Note carefully that Stephen Hawking’s choice of belief is made to resolve his emotional response to the concept of an afterlife. As he states, he is grateful to conclude that there is no afterlife.
This is understandable, since he spent his entire adult life struggling with a severely debilitating physical disease, experiencing, in essence, the misery of a disembodied soul as postulated to be the condition of the afterlife.
But is someone’s emotionally disturbed coping mechanism a viable basis on which to base belief directing your own life’s choices and plans for your own soul’s fate after death?
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From Rev. Michael Schuler, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin, an atheist yet incongruously a religious leader who explicitly presents himself as an authority on a God he doesn’t believe in:
From a religious naturalist point of view, it seems obvious to me that we “go” to the same place we came from before we were conceived—the same “place” that trillions of other animals and plants have gone throughout Earth’s history when they died. Some speak about it as “coming from God and returning to God”. Others talk about it as “coming from mystery and returning to mystery”. Still others as “coming from nothing and returning to nothing”. All these I sense as legitimate and emotionally satisfying ways of thinking and talking about what happens at death.
Any supposed “faith” which doesn’t include trusting that whatever happens on the other side of death is just fine is, in my view, really no faith at all. Fear of a terrifying, hellish after-death scenario, OR hope of a blissful, heavenly after-death scenario are just that: fear or hope; not faith, not trust.
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Seriously? Accepting what he says is not faith or trust, both of which are based on acquired knowledge. This is the very coping mechanism he accuses his opponents of using. This minister is using classic Orwellian newspeak. Anyone who accepts this man’s unresearched, uneducated, inexperienced opinion shares what the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual describes as his disorganized thought process.
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Contrary to the words he uses, equating God with nothing is obviously an emotionally satisfying solution for this individual who can therefore justify making himself the ultimate authority and recipient of blessings from the people in his congregation.
But what about his followers?
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Watch the multitude of Unsolved Mysteries if you think trusting your life to a total stranger is sure to end well.
Likewise, people who claim to be rational by believing in the purely materialistic model that science has “discovered” are actually trusting in the scientists.
Which ones? They can’t prove what they claim to be reality.
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Traditionally, death has been determined by the medical profession using…either a heart or lung functioning criteria for death…However, as medical technology developed…respiratory and circulatory bodily functions can now be performed artificially…
key functions of the brain such as memory, consciousness, and personality are what make us a person, and since those functions originate in the cerebral hemispheres, it is the death of those portions of the brain that count as death of the person…
‘each of us is essentially a mind’…The organism is the physical body, the ‘housing’ of the person…In a person the self is the mind…we are connected to, but not identical with, our organisms/bodies…
It is possible to define life in terms of consciousness – the soul with its thoughts and intents.
Electrical impulses in the brain encode protocols for behaviors.
Neuroscientists have long been perplexed by how our brains encode thoughts, including memory loss and awareness, on the cellular level. Findings have revealed that groups of neurons symbolize every distinct segment of information, however, it is unknown what these groups of neurons look like or how they develop.
This phenomenon is drawing extensive investigation and research as computers afford parallel modes of intelligence.
This possibility leads to functionalism—the theory of mind that ‘what makes something a thought, desire, pain (or any other type of mental state) depends…solely on its function …’The brain, then, is not what matters – what matters are certain functions the brain performs.
In February 2011, a much-anticipated school trip went disastrously wrong for a group of Danish students. The dragon boat carrying the pupils across Præstø Fjord capsized, plunging the passengers into the icy water below. By the time paramedics got there two hours later, seven of the students’ hearts had stopped and they were pronounced dead at the scene.
But once the teenagers arrived at the hospital in Copenhagen, doctors made a last-ditch attempt to revive them, even though the group had been technically ‘dead’ for two hours…Six hours after the incident, all seven teenagers had come back to life.
The active electrical circuits in the brain’s neuronal pathways comprising the memories, thoughts and other characteristics of personalities of persons revived from comas and death-declared drownings are proof that the electrical energy component of the brain’s neuronal pathways survives even when control by the physical brain ends.
Where does it go? “electricity seeks to return its electrons to “ground”—that is, to discharge its negative energy and return to equilibrium. In a house, the current returns to ground through the neutral wires in the electrical system.
So physical science validates the biblical report that the electrical energy comprising the personality, emotions and thoughts of the soul follows the deceased body to ground as it decays slowly to dust or rapidly to ashes.
The prevalence and persistence over thousands of years of world-wide multicultural beliefs validate the biblical report describing a dreary existence for a soul once absent from a body providing stimulation and expression.
“he that goeth down to the grave…purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart…my hope” (Job 7:8-10, 17:15-16)
“in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments…have mercy on me…for I am tormented in this flame.” (Luke 16:20-25)
Bear in mind that, as the soul is immaterial, so is surely the condition of hell – extreme pain of a soul without a physical casing – all nerve endings exposed.
Likewise, the common use of the term pit or bottomless pit represents an imaginable state of an unimaginable hyper dimensional condition of the lack of stabilizing dimensions. Nightmares of flailing down a dark bottomless pit may presage this true condition.
Like a newborn just catapulted from the womb, the soul just released from the body is unable to identify his new environment. The soul can only be horrified by the lack of any orienting sense of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste, conceivable only in science fiction portrayals of alternate realities. 
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But consolation is offered to believers who put their trust in I AM / Infinite YHVH / Source of Life.
“And it came to pass, that the beggar [Lazarus] died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:20-25)
In that time and culture the bosom was the overhanging fold of a draped garment worn in warm climates. This was, logically, the equivalent of the pockets current sewn in to more structured garments, used to safeguard belongings. You don’t allow strangers to get close to your wallet in your pants pocket, do you? Likewise, only those persons enjoying a blessed state of intimacy and familiarity were allowed to get that close to one’s chest.
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What we need to understand is that the Bible is not a guidebook to a lifestyle. It is a guide to life itself. As with any other subject, only those who develop wisdom and understanding from studying the subject recognize and know how to respond with life sustaining power when confronted by death-dealing forces.
“The Endless” is proof…this is a movie that plays with our perceptions of time, space, and reality, and sketches the outlines of unimaginable [endless] terror…
Things become unmoored from scientific…truth…effectiveness comes from comparing what we’re told would happen against what actually does happen.
“No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father,” (John 1:18)
“the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake. Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved [was united in mind and spirit, like the Son with the Father]. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake. He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, He it is…” (John 13:22-26)
Father Abraham’s torso drapery pictures for us a parent swaddling a newborn just abruptly departed from the all-embracing womb into a hostile environment. As a parent cradles a swaddled newborn close to the breast to lull to sleep, so Father Abraham provides the ability to rest in peace.
As the designated Father of all who believe, Father Abraham harbors the souls of believers from all time who put their trust in YHVH to save them from their sins’ consequence of death. In this way their souls, although consigned in Sheol with all the other souls, are able to rest in peace for an indefinite time until released from Sheol when YHVH’s Savior defeats death (the process) and hell (the place) on all mankind’s behalf.
And only the Bible provides the way to reunite the soul with a transformed body.
“If a man die, shall he live again?
[Yes!] all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come / Resurrection!. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” (Job 14:14-15)
The entire message of the entire Bible is that the God of the Bible want to reunite whole entire humans with him!
“God speaketh…He keepeth back his soul from the pit….his soul draweth near unto the grave…he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit…He will deliver his soul from going into the pit…bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light [energy, spirit] of the living.” (Job 33:14-30)
“them also which sleep in YHVH’s Savior / Jesus will God bring with him [from heaven]...For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the [bodies of the] dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (I Thessalonians 4:13-17)
We have free will. We choose to be connected through a relationship with the Creator and Sustainer of life – or not. That is the essence of good vs evil.
“when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left…And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him…But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God…we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:30-43)
“the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” (John 5:28-29)
Kingdom Come 