Stephen Hawking has reached out from beyond the grave through a final book called ‘Brief answers to the big questions’. Among other things, the famed physicist tackled questions of whether there is a God, whether intelligent life exists out there in the universe and if time travel is actually possible. And in his opinion, there’s no such thing as the supreme being. It’s just wishful thinking.
‘We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God,’ he writes, according to The Telegraph. ‘No one created the universe and no one directors out fate. ‘This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in the afterlife is just wishful thinking.’ Ever the scientist, Hawking points out that the reason for believing there is no God is simply a lack of evidence.
‘There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science. I think that when we die we return to dust,’ he explained. ‘But there is a sense we live on, in our influence, and in the genes we pass to our children.’