THERE is no God, according to the late physicist Stephen Hawking’s final damning assessment of the afterlife.
The famous theoretical physicist died in March this year at the age of 76 but left behind some truly astonishing predictions in his final book which has just been released.
One of his bold predictions in his book titled Brief Answers To The Big Questions was that God does not exist.
He described his claim there is no afterlife or higher power as a “profound realisation”.
Professor Hawking wrote in the newly-published book: “We are free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God.
“No one created the universe and no one directs our 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.
“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.
“But there is a sense we live on, in our influence, and in the genes we pass to our children.”
One of the other predictions that Prof Hawking revealed is his belief a generation of super-humans will one day inhabit the Earth.
The late physicist suggested a new race of super-humans could develop from wealthy people editing their and their children’s DNA.
He wrote: “I am sure that during this century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence and instincts such as aggression.
“Laws will probably be passed against genetic engineering with humans.
“But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as memory, resistance to disease and length of life.
“Once such superhumans appear, there will be significant political problems with unimproved humans, who won’t be able to compete.
“Presumably, they will die out, or become unimportant. Instead, there will be a race of self-designing beings who are improving at an ever-increasing rate.”
Professor Hawking died at the age of 76 in the early hours of March 14 following a long battle with motor neurone disease.
He suffered from a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neurone disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963 at the age of 21.
Doctors expected him to live for only two more years, but he had a form of the disease which progressed more slowly than usual.
