I was referencing hawking's latest statement about the afterlife being a fairy tale. I mean I think that for some people, coping with hardship means telling yourself that things will get better COMPLETELY in the end. "I'll go to heaven, I'll get a resurrected body, I'll get my legs back, my sight back, my hearing back etc, because I put up with it in THIS life." instead of accepting an irrational hope like "karma" or something to make up for the bad hand he was dealt in life, he has found value in his internal analyses of the universe and the act of sharing it with the rest of humanity. he doesn't expect tit for tat cosmic justice. he's just moving past it like it's beneath him, he's got work to do. but I could be acting overly presumptuous here, about spirituality being applied to personal disabilities, but I don't think I could be so rational about the hard facts of an indifferent universe, if I found myself paralyzed and had lost these abilities I have known all my life up to now.