Skeptic Stephen Hawking on the soul, heaven, and how we should live

In an interview with the Guardian, Stephen Hawking dismissed the notion that humans have a soul, stating that "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

Hawking's materialistic view that the mind is a naturally evolved computer is rooted in modern science. Since the cognitive revolution of the 1950s, many neuroscientists, psychologists, and computer scientists have used the "mind as a computer" metaphor to guide their investigations of how the brain engages in complex information processing, such as the symbol manipulation that is an integral part of  language. 

In previous interviews, Hawking has also expressed skepticism about the existence of God. When asked by the Guardian how we are supposed to live if there is no God to provide us with guidance, Hawking gave a simple but I think brilliant answer. "We should" he said, "seek the greatest value of our action."

The reports of Freud's death have been greatly exaggerated

For years, academic psychologists have proclaimed that Freud is dead, but recently, new findings have come to light that undermine the conventional wisdom about his legacy. For example, Mark Solms has presented evidence that supports a number of Freud's ideas, including his assumption that dreams are not meaningless psychic phenomena, but motivated, wishful states. Additionally, Jonathan Shedler published a study in American Psychologist last year that showed that Freudian therapeutic treatments are just as effective as newer, so-called "evidence-based" approaches to psychotherapy.

Here is a link to an article by Mark Solms: 
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0im1v/donettesteelepsychology/id19.html

Here is a link to the APA page that describes Shedler's study:
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/01/psychodynamic-therapy.aspx