Professor Stephen Hawking will be fired into space for his heretical beliefs.

When I heard that they were going to launch Professor Stephen Hawking into space, I was appalled! What has this man done other than expand our knowledge of complicated scientific principles, and give inspiration to those looking to unlock the mysteries of the universe?!

To think that after all of Professor Hawking's contributions to the science community, and his brilliant theories on the cosmos, we would still deem it necessary to charge him with heresey, conduct some bogus heretical trial, then stuff his frail wheelchair-bound body into a rocket and fire him into the heavens is preposterous!

Has society not evolved at all, not progressing beyond its simple existential views? Have we not learned from the ignorant fears of our ancestors and the Church? Must we still conduct these farcical Inquisition-style witch hunts, denouncing cosmologists and other prominent scientific figures who challenge the origins of space and time, casting them all into the cold empty vacuum of space?

We should all be ashamed.

In this modern day and age, we shouldn't need to act out of fear and moral panic. Yes, it was regrettable what had happened in the times of Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton. But their scientific discoveries helped shape our world--for the better.

People, please! We just can't go around judging scientists based on confused canonical doctrines, and firing every quantum-gravity-talking academic into space.

That Professor Stephen Hawking should be castigated based on the same superstitious fears of other great men of science, is despicable. I had thought by now that we would have accepted science as a valid branch of knowledge, not as some hokey voodoo magic practiced by charlatans and tricksters.

Although ironic, blasting theoretical physicists into the great void of space will not solve anything. Remember what happened to Carl Sagan and that particle accelerator? Not only will you end up making a martyr of Professor Hawking, students will renounce their other studies, and go underground, taking up the fields of general relavity, black holes, and string theory.