Stephen Hawking Is Not So Smart

The physicist Stephen Hawking said in a famous quote, “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.”

I find this an extremely odd statement, especially from a scientist.  It completely ignores what powers the computer, namely electricity.  Yes, collections of computer components will not go to heaven. But if a computer dies, does electricity cease to exist?

Whatever “life” is, it has more in comm0n with electricity than with circuitry.  When the human body is no longer animated by life, a person dies as surely as the computer on which someone has cut the power.  But electricity still exists even when the computer breaks down.  When a person dies, isn’t it only logical that life still exists?

Maybe the fairy story is that we are just a collection of organic components.