Damn.

Hawking before...

Tenacity. He did not give the fuck up.

I wonder if the stairway to heaven has a wheelchair ramp?

Stannah Stairlift?

Isn't that the law?

Yeah but Congress has made it so nobody has to build one until there's a complaint filed, so Stephen will be sitting at the bottom of the stairs for a while. To be fair, it's only been the law for 25 years so who'd expect to have to make heaven accessible.

and if your eye gets poked out in this life...
will it be waiting up in heaven with your wife?

Reflecting on this, my gut says all these Hawking in heaven memes floating around the net are pretty disrespectful of the confirmed atheist.

I see your point, but I think I disagree. he's dead and gone, he doesn't care, so it'snot disrespectful. He didn't believe he'd be able to see what happened after he died.

Or do you mean to the family? in which case, maybe..

I guess I see it as the believing public appropriating his life... I often don't get stuff so maybe I don't get this.

well and I'm not in the best place to be an impartial judge either. Beest was also an ardent atheist and because he believed he would not have any knowledge of what happened after his death, he didn't care. He expressed that he had no wishes about anything that happened to his body or in his name. Do what we like. He didn't care. He vehemently did not give a shit, and I kind of feel SH would have felt the same. But I never knew him, so it's just speculation based on my experience and beliefs. I understand it is very hard for people to be irreverent about death. I've made so many people uncomfortable already. Beest would have been proud.

Enough about me, back to you regular celebrity death programming.

The Hawking memes making me a little uncomfortable are the machines mourning based ones, tbh. That man fought so fucking hard to conquer a terrible terrible thing, and the world was an infinitely (;) ) better place for it.

I felt pretty well disrespected when he said my God didn't exist.

If Hawking finds out that there really is a life hereafter, the first thing he will do is seek out Albert Einstein and Max Planck to compare notes.

And ask what they thought of 'A Brief History of Time'. ;)

but you were still able to defend yourself/your beliefs. The dead can't. I think that's where the respect aspect comes in. And also his loved ones are not responsible for his actions during life, but could be hurt by people being "disrespectful" after death.