Did anyone notice Stephen Hawking contradicted himself?

Thanks for indulging me LF..one other question, when you say the concept of 'saved' is essentially misunderstood or perhaps more nuanced than is traditionally thought, you seem to understand 'saved' as having more of an understanding of yourself and your place in a reality that your God created. The moral aspect is secondary to this primary idea. There is a lot more in that, so I won't go into that, but lets accept it prima facie..

With that in mind, the obvious other question, the other side of the 'saved' coin if you will: Is it a good assumption that you don't believe in a fiery place where people who haven't come to understanding that reality are 'thrown' for all eternity? What is your view of where we 'go' after we 'die'?

Note that I do have room to understand where you are coming from. I have long since noted there is a wide variety of religious experience and religious interpretation that doesn't all fit into what is widely recognized as 'fundamentalist'. I was a Christian once and was once repelled by the term, 'religious' preferring 'relationship'.

Thanks for your continued indulgence..

Glad to do so.

That was a good summery of what I think of 'saved'.


Yes, a good assumption. Not even the bible says that unless you understand that the fiery place is just metaphor for 'the end', the second death; not eternal suffering. That death is for eternity though.

I have to add that I do not know what the passing grade is for understanding that reality. We live in a society where it is considered impolite to discuss the struggle to understand it. It's like being naked in public. So almost no one has any idea of anyone else's struggle. No one can fully appreciate the success or failure of anyone else which is what I think you were also saying below.

Edit: I misread what you said the first pass through. I thought you said you did not have the room to understand where I was coming from.


Most significantly, it is a place where no one would fear having every thought immediately manifested into reality.


I don't have the space to understand your journey fully. Maybe if you answer these:
What did you mean by 'relationship'? With who or what?

When I was a Christian, it was more fundamentalist than not. Though certainly there were aspects of it that were very liberal. They preferred to say they had a personal relationship with Jesus, almost like any earthly relationship except that Jesus was your ticket to 'Heaven'. I viewed Christianity as just that.

Now, as an outsider to that religion and much older, my views have changed. Not sure I accept the relationship part - or at least the idea of it is very different than in my youth. I can dig that there is something that people connect to that they converse/commune with, but I don't know what that is. I am apt to believe it is ourselves, though I confess I have no idea and with all due respect to you and your experiences, I don't think anyone knows. I think its because I don't view these experiences in the same manner as our physical senses. We have pretty good agreement amongst people about sensating, but not much in the manner of meta. And although there is agreement among many in regards to some kind of transcendental experience, it is not at all clear that this is external to us. It might be self generated, a part of our brain functioning.

And that's not to demean it. It is what it is and if it is perceived as powerful, then it is..I get a kick out of people saying we are just or merely atoms/molecules in motion. First of all, we don't know exactly what that is and secondly we are what we are and 'we are' before the idea of atoms. That idea is provincializing relative to us and so perhaps saying we are merely atoms in that sense is true if you reduce us to a necessarily incomplete idea. However, I don't think the argument should be against folks saying we are merely atoms, it should be against the non-sequitur-ishness of that phrase..

Thanks for returning the favor, I think I recognize the path you came through. It may have been much like mine except for the religion. I might have taken the same curve as you but I didn't have religion to blame for my apparent delusions, so I may have kept them longer.

There were a couple of other reasons why I still hold on to them. Like you (I think), reality was my highest value and to know it was the first thing I asked for. So far, it has made more sense than anything else I've been offered, but that wasn't enough reason to keep it either. If reality is that my thoughts and experiences are delusions, I would want to know and accept that, even if reality was that there is nothing but randomness in the universe. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing one's situation, even if it's not good.

I guess the biggest reason I keep them and the proof for me that they are not from 'me' is the unlikelihood of the reality I was eventually shown. I don't believe I could have come up with something that good. But getting there was not without difficulty.

As I was guided further into it, it violently destroyed the previous version of reality that I had been taught by society and had grown to love. For awhile I hated God for doing that. There was too much 'design' behind that destruction so I knew God was still there, I just thought he was the evil God that some see in the bible and I hated him. It was at that point when I wanted to die. That's when I heard him say - 'I will tell you'. That was the only audible delusion I've had.

He didn't literally tell me but he did soon guide me to the point where I could figure out the key thing I'd been missing. I really appreciated that, but only after the fact. When I saw how it all fit together it was a thing of such beauty that I did just as that bible story said, I 'sold' everything I had to buy that new reality. I think when I saw all that he had done to get me to that point was when I fully fell in love with God and his son. I had that relationship you mentioned.

No offence at thinking that no one knows. I wouldn't have believed me either.

Yes, thank you for sharing as well. You're journey is interesting, nuanced, perhaps more sublime than most..


I don't view this as believing you or not believing you in terms of your own experiences which, for what its worth, I believe are real. How can they not be unless you are just trolling! But you don't have that tenor..

And related, I don't view these things as 'delusion' as such. I think there is a place for delusion, but I see that as more of an active psychological activity (whether conscious or subconscious) whereas I see spirituality as a natural part of our makeup. It is honesty that keeps 'delusion' out of any given belief. Its stronger, more cohesive in some, less so in others.

Spiritual 'reality' is a non-issue in so much as it doesn't try to extend itself beyond the personal and into an empirical world, where there are much better explanations for a given subject or perhaps better evidential explanations.

And I view the empirical with the same constraints, just reversed. A mechanistic view of the universe is fine for things that lend themselves to that kind of knowledge, but break down at some level and where that stops..what starts? Who knows?

Also, in this 'non material' light, this concept of randomness you mentioned doesn't make sense. This concept is really a shortcut to saying my brain cannot go any further in understanding the world from a mechanistic/rational/logical view (take your pick). We give it a symbol we call 'random'. It is a place holder for when we've reached an apparent limit of our knowledge and consonant concepts break down.

It is in this sense I don't believe in 'randomness'. Like concepts like 'eternity' it is an idea that has its use as a marker for logical termination. This also relates to what you said about the unlikelihood of your experiences. From a spiritual stand point I find it difficult to understand what exactly is unlikely and what isn't. To me, that concept only has a home in what lends itself to mechanistic evaluations. As soon as you leave that domain, there are no comparative features to discern what is likely or unlikely. It may be very true that some spiritual thing is unlikely, but it could be equally true that it is inevitable!

Thanks catbeasy, I appreciate the honesty and the conversation.


I think everyone knows that at some level but most kind of suppress it as noise or distraction. We can only begin to know when we start to pay attention to that 'noise'.