Imagine there's no heaven: Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, the man with perhaps the most active and analytical brain on the planet, has once again stepped beyond the bounds of his own reason. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper (excerpted on Fox News here and in full here), the renowned physicist declared

"I regard the 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."

Now you might consider me well outside of my intellectual bounds in declaring the doctor downright daffy, but wasn't it a child that exposed the emperor as having exposed himself? Consider me an intellectual child for the moment, if you will, for Mr. Hawking refutes his own assertion.

Huh? Consider. If our brain is nothing but a computer, how did it get assembled? If all is merely machinistic, who assembled this extraordinary machine that is the universe, much less the even more mind-boggling sentient machine that is man? In a universe marked by entropy, things do not move to a higher state of order, especially on the magnitude of the human brain.

Those who advocate for a material universe alone cannot explain the immaterial. From whence cometh consciousness? How does life spring from non-life? We can theorize until we are blue in the face and posit parallel quantum mashed potatoes, but when we look about us into tangible reality, does it make any sense whatsoever? How is it I can imagine a purple elephant when in my mind there is neither purple nor elephant? What of good and evil if all that there is merely is? For the pure materialist, there can be no good or evil.  We just are.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the preeminent existentialist and atheist, could not come to terms with why there was something rather than nothing. Not only could he not get to first base, he couldn't even get up to the plate for why there was a plate versus no plate at all?

In trying to make a play for some kind of morality, Hawking suggested

"We should seek the greatest value of our action."

One has to ask, why? If I'm just a machine, why should I not seek my maximum pleasure? Why should I not do that which makes my engine run the longest?  From whence cometh altruism and philanthropy? What is love? Why should I flop on a grenade to save my chums? That doesn't sound like a very good way to keep my computer running.

In direct rejection of what God has said in his word, Hawking stands upon the mountain and proclaims

"The universe is governed by science."

The choice becomes very stark. Those who try and dance the line between naturalism/materialism and theism find no room to stand.  Hawking makes plain the end of naturalism: there is no God, there is no heaven. God has revealed himself in the cosmos; His fingerprints are everywhere.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1, see also Psalm 148:3-6)

Perhaps the most troubling passage in all of Scripture for those who have stared into the wonder of the heavens or have looked at the miracle of a newborn and spit, indicates that God's wrath awaits those who have seen the wonder of creation and turned their backs.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened (Romans 1:18-21).

So I stand with my hand in my Father's hand, and as the emperor strides by, I cannot help but declare, "Papa, he's naked." I look into my Father's face and see a tear roll down his cheek.