Ok, it has been a couple days but I've finally decided to say something and this is the forum(both literal internet forum and in the general meaning for discussing ideas) I choose to speak in.
A short time ago Stephen Hawking stated that "The Afterlife is a fairy story for those who are afraid of the dark"... This offended me greatly for several reasons and had me mulling it over since I read it.
I have always been strongly interested in science, being on of the first students in my school to learn about and accept evolution(and having been picked on for it), had spent a short time considering myself atheist, and looking up to Stephen Hawking. Events in my life however, have led me to believe in more that the face value that science allows.
The mythology that science teachers have built up was one of the first things that began to annoy me. As someone who also was very fascinated by history, I was disturbed at how in every science class I took throguh High School and College would talk about how the ignorant Catholic Church, this oppressive agent of religious dogma, excommunicated Galileo... which never happened! Infact Pope Urban VIII was a friend of Galileo and had allowed him to defend his view on heliocentrism as long as it was told in the form of a dialogue. What happened was that Galileo put the Pope's words into the mouth of a character called "Simplicio" and was sentenced house arrest. Not completely fair, but certainly not excommunication.
Also I found the statement "Religion is the cause of all wars" to be among the most ignorant in existence. The reason being that when I heard an individual make such a statement I would ask them to produce evidence... which none ever could. In all my seraching, I have not found a single war, even the Crusades, that I could say religion was the definitive cause. It would be more accurate to blame culture for wars since the English and French had a long history of warfare even before England went Protestant.
*Now I know it seems I went a bit off track, but there is a reasoning behind it. My point is that I felt slightly betrayed that a man that I had respected so made the same type of dogmatic blanket statement that his faith(Science if you will) has condemned. He does not know if an afterlife exists or if there is a God, yet while criticizing religion for making claims without solid evidence backing it, he turns about and does the same. I suppose he has lost atleast one follower(for lack of a better term).