霍金：“天堂只是个童话故事”
多年前，史蒂芬·霍金在接受《卫报》采访，与读者们分享了他对死亡以及人类存在之目的和偶然性的看法。
霍金表示，“我不害怕死亡，但是我并不急着去死。我还有很多想做的事情没有做。”
天堂和来世，只是那些害怕死亡的人的一个‘童话故事’。他说，生命的最后时刻除了大脑的颤动以外，什么也不存在。
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Stephen Hawking: What the professor said about his own death
Professor Hawking had lived with the expectation of an early death for much of his life. When he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21, it was expected to take him in just a few years – but he lived for more than 50, continuing to reveal the universe's darkest secrets and becoming a medical miracle at the same time.
霍金21岁时被诊断为肌萎缩性侧索硬化症。医生预测他只能存活2-3年，但是霍金却顽强地多活了50多年，不但在科学界创造了种种传奇，也同健全人一样结婚生子，打破了医学的预言。
Professor Hawking said that living with the disease and the prognosis[1] that came with it had given him a philosophical[2] approach to his own death. But there was always plenty more he wanted to get out of the way before it happened.
[1]prognosis [prɒɡ'nəʊsɪs]
an opinion, based on medical experience, of the likely development of a disease or an illness（对病情的）预断，预后
[2]philosophical [.fɪlə'sɒfɪk(ə)l]
1）If you are philosophical in your reaction to something that is not satisfactory, you accept it calmly and without anger, understanding that failure and disappointment are a part of life. 豁达的，达观的；泰然自若的
2）relating to the study or writing of philosophy 哲学的；研究哲学的
philosophical writings/essays
哲学著作／论文
"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he told The Guardian in 2011.
霍金：过去49年我一直生活在会早死的预期下，我不害怕死亡，但是我并不急着去死。我还有很多想做的事情没有做。
In the same interview, Professor Hawking dismissed the comforts of belief in the afterlife, and said that he expected nothing to greet him after he died.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," he said. "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
霍金，我把大脑看成是一台电脑，当它的部件出现故障时，它就会停止工作。对于坏掉的电脑来说，没有天堂和来世，这些只是那些害怕死亡的人的童话故事。
But he said that there was no need for there to be life after death to make people behave well while they were alive. "We should seek the greatest value of our action," he said, when asked how we should live.
问：因此我们诞生了。那么接下来我们应该怎么做？
霍金：我们应该寻找我们的行动的最大价值。
Just the simple fact of being alive at all was unlikely, given that it relied on tiny changes in the very early universe that spawned[3] the world around us today. "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in," he said.
问：你曾说过，我们没理由调用上帝点燃蓝色的导火纸。我们的存在是不是只是一种偶然？
霍金：科学预言显示，很多不同种类的宇宙会从无到有，自然产生。我们出现在这里只是一个偶然。
[3]spawn：to cause something new, or many new things, to grow or start suddenly （使）产生，（使）突然增长
The new economic freedom has spawned hundreds of new small businesses.
新的经济自由催生了上百家新的小企业。
Professor Hawking has long been a critic of ideas of the afterlife or an all-powerful god. He said it was natural to believe in the divine before we understand science – but that science had now provided a better explanation.
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剑桥大学发布纪念霍金教授视频
Before then, some religious advocates had used his own work as a suggestion of the belief in a god. Professor Hawking closed his famous A Brief History Of Time* by writing "It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God".
*在1988年出版的畅销书《时间简史》（A Brief History of Time）中，当写到“万有理论”对于科学家来说意味着什么时，“那将是人类理性的终极胜利——因为到那时，我们就能洞晓上帝的思维，”他在书中这样写到。
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霍金生前的最后一条微博，也停留在了此刻。