“When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.”
― Stephen Hawking
It's with gratitude for his contributions to science that I respect Hawking in his passing. But it's important to note that this quote is an anachronism in the field of physics, and that new models that might turn Einstein's theory of relativity on it's head are on the table for discussion. For one thing, it could be that rather than time being finite and space being infinite, the exact opposite is true, and there is evidence to support this, which also supports the notion of an oscillatory universe. Anyone who is familiar with conceptions of the yugas, ages, aeons, or epochs of time will appreciate this alternative model, as it proposes that time itself is infinite, and it is space that is finite (and oscillatory). Criticisms of monotheistic faith with it's linear progression and purported inevitable ending of time are one thing, but mystics and gnostics were grappling with these ideas before modern science was a glimmer in the eye of Isaac Newton.
With that said, I honor Hawking on his netherworld journey. May he find his next incarnation with an able body and even stronger mind.
Also, hail Abraxas! Father of all divinities, the cosmos, and this planetary chain we know as samsara.
If we can't honor the divine, then we're nothing but living corpses marching to an inevitable state of nothingness. I can't help but to say that this belief is a limitation that separates a genius from a truly gifted luminary. It's nothing other than resentment toward that which the gifted mind could not comprehend. Abraxas is above all, beyond all, but within all. To deny him is to deny the very spark of divinity that created life.