Stephen Hawking’s final book: ‘There is no God’

You want to bet a Canadian penny?  

I've sometimes thought that one might be able to go back in time as an observer with no ability to interact with the scene (and therefore would presumably be invisible to the true inhabitants of that time).  A sort of "write once read many" scheme.  I believe that would resolve the grandfather paradox.

If I were cornered into placing a bet, I would go against backward time travel being possible.  But if a Nobel Prize winning physicist of Hawking's stature expresses the opinion that it might be possible, I'd consider the opinion to be well thought out.

    No, I do not want to bet. I very much doubt time travel is possible as much you or more. I do enjoy science fiction about time travel though. It's partly because I enjoy science fiction way too much. It's mostly because I enjoy the opportunities fiction gives writers to address problems in a way that gets past preconceived notions. That gets them to think about things in different ways from different angles. On my website I warn people that fiction can deliver more truth than the evening news.

    Looking at it that way it addresses religion and politics as much or more than any science, which becomes a mere backdrop. Twain's Connecticut Yankee ... is not as much about any science as a dream that accomplishes the same thing. Quite many science fiction stories with time travel are interesting because they are opportunities to examine historical figures and how they would interact with people from different phases in history.

    Of course it can be very important to make the backdrop of science as believable as possible otherwise it interferes with acceptance of the story's politics or religion. If I write about time travel it will be mostly to address some issue in religion or politics in a way that gets past poorly examined notions, but it will also be as believable as I can make it.

    One thing I should make clear about going back in time and doing whatever things is that one still can't kill one's grandfather before he meets one's grandmother, I had merely implied that. You might travel backward in time with the intention of killing him but change your mind, or be unsuccessful as he survives, or kill someone you thought was your grandfather but wasn't.

   If anything is possible it's a very well guarded secret. Still, in the interests of advancing science the frontiers of knowledge should be seriously addressed.

That's pretty much how I look at it.  Backward time travel seems very unlikely to me too, but by what we've learned from 20th century physics we know the universe has some surprising and unfamiliar properties.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

You win the RFS' 'MOST BORING PREDICTABLE AND ASININE'

post award.

We know that you believe implicitly in God and Jesus and all the other flummery, without reason, excuse or argument.

Well done you. Great.  Good luck to you.

If the existence of God is the truth, then it shouldn't be a problem to prove it, right?

Go ahead. Provide proof, if you can.