One has to have a big dose of sympathy for Stephen Hawking. He has worn the robes of global High Priest for decades now. He is the guy one goes to when one wants to hear about our sins and what needs be done to atone for them. He has also worn the garb of a Prophet, declaiming evil and charging us with obedience to a higher, true law. Moreover, he carries the aura of the divine about him: he is cerebral and brilliant--the kind of human being that, if we are honest is believed to be a demi-god.
These things are heavy indeed. They carry enormous responsibility. When folk come and ask for utterance which they regard as the effusions of a modern Delphic Oracle, the duty is onerous, to say the least. And even more so when the Oracle has become so discouraged at the prospects for humanity that he is counselling escape from the earth and setting up somewhere in the galaxy, or beyond, on another planet.
This appears to be Hawking's way of saying, "I give up". The bleakness of his vision should come as no surprise. After all, Hawking believes in the ultimacy of chance or randomness. In the end nothing makes sense. Existence has no significance. Moreover, as Hawking well knows, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entire universe is decaying and winding down, meaning that everything is integrating into the void. Therefore the Delphic Utterance of, "Give up and look for another planet" is about all the hope that our Prophet and High Priest can conjure up. But, even if another habitable planet were to be discovered, it would only delay the inevitable.
During a speech at the Norwegian Starmus event, a festival celebrating science and art, Hawking said Earth’s rapidly depleting resources and climate change will make the planet hostile to human life in the future. “Our physical resources are being drained at an alarming rate,” Hawking said, according to a report by the Evening Express (United Kingdom). “We have given our planet the disastrous gift of climate change. Rising temperatures, reduction of the polar ice caps, deforestation, and decimation of animal species. We can be an ignorant, unthinking lot.”
Hawking also said the people of Earth are “running out of space” and need to find other worlds to “save us from ourselves.” “We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds,” Hawking said. “It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth.” [The Blaze]
Doomsday cults are nothing new. What is singular in this case is that Hawking has been grandly celebrated as one of the most intelligent minds the world has ever encountered. In some ways he has become synonymous with human glory, power, wisdom, and sophistication. His celebrity status has been a case self-glorification of Modern Man by proxy. Hawking is the nearest thing our secularist culture has come to actual deification of humanity.
And what does our god, our High Priest, our Prophet say? "It's hopeless. Give up. Get out, Turn off the lights." But what does the Living God, our faithful High Priest, and true Prophet say? "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
The choice could not be more stark. Choose you, today, which prophet you will follow and serve.
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