World famous cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking declared “there is no heaven”. Whether he is correct or not is not something anyone can know for sure. We can believe as we choose, but we cannot “know” as a matter of fact, either way.
Having made that claim, I will probably annoy both some of those who are believers and some who are not. The believers may object to my distinction between knowledge and belief. The non-believers may object to my assertion that they cannot know if in fact they are correct. Sorry, but that just that way it is.
To be sure, there is no scientific, fact-based, evidence for the existence of heaven. The inability to know that something exists however is NOT evidence that it does not exist. It simply reason, for those who limit there understanding of the world to purely rational and scientific ways of knowing, to explain why they do not believe in the existence of heaven.
On the other hand, those who believe in heaven would do well to admit that theirs is in fact a belief, a knowledge that comes from sources other than the rational and scientific worlds. Ironically the discomfort with admitting this, as is often the case with believers, evidenced by their claims that there “really is” such evidence, is that their obsession with “proving” the existence of heaven simply suggests that they believe more in scientific rationality than they do in their own professed faith.
Personally, I am agnostic about the whole “heaven thing”, or perhaps cautiously believing, would be a better way to describe what I believe. It just seems narrow-minded to me to declare that the years we spend here are all that there is. It also seems arrogant to assume that a relatively new and still un-testable belief, the idea that this is all that there is, is definitely correct. But that’s me.
What do you say? Is Stephen Hawking correct? Is there really no heaven? Let the conversation begin!
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
posted May 16, 2011 at 3:32 pm
I would think that Heaven is whatever you believe it to be… for Mr. Hawking, whatever he thinks heaven is supposed to be is something he believes does not exist. Oh well.
It’s like G-d… people will tell you they do not believe in G-d, and if you ask them to describe “god” chances are you don’t believe it what they’ve described either.
posted May 16, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Lucifer once spoke to me years ago…he told me we are brothers…that i was an angel the wrote music…he asked me to join him and together we would rule the world…he had a very childish sense of humor…i asked him to show him self to me..he did…he started crying saying why was he the one that always got in trouble and not me…he said he once was beautiful now he looks horrible…he had a triangle shaped…grey skin…little black eyes that reminded me of mice eyes…years later i realized the space aliens are really Lucifer and his fallen angels….god speaks to me but doesn’t tell me everything i want to know…god tells me i am his son…god tells me we share the same spirit…god tells me everyone are my toys….he has shown me how my thoughts and what i say are him so there’s no reason to ask him anything…he told me there is no free will…he is everything and we are playing a game and when this game is over we will go play another…in this game there is Lucifer and his brother Jesus Christ…the messiah the Jews killed…don’t be afraid…you have no free will… i am playing with my self…you are all my toys
posted May 18, 2011 at 10:05 am
As a position of belief I assume that things without verifiable consequences are irrelevant to how I should live my life day to day. So I should be moral because it leads to a better life in the hear and now, and not for some ethereal possible future reward.
As a position of knowledge I would say that consciousness is poorly understood subjective phenomena. So it’s not really possible to discuss it scientifically at the present time.
posted May 18, 2011 at 12:52 pm
First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Genesis 1:1
God created the Heavens. The following verses are the 7 Heavens he created. Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five, day six, day seven. Yes, I know there is a Heaven, all 7 of them.
posted May 18, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Sue, checkmate atheists!
posted May 19, 2011 at 9:14 am
Lucifer created religion…the messiah the jews killed came to free the jews from religion…all everyone ever needed to know is love eachother and god….god never stopped walking with man, a lie Lucifer told the hebrews that created the old testament..so Christ never had to be a sacrifice to open communication with god…a lie Lucifer told the Romans while creating Christianity…religion is the work of my brother Lucifer…
posted June 7, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Whoever made me gets my vote and wherever he is that is heaven and I’m good to go.I don’t care what others believe because that’s a choice. God just is and I like Him just the way He is. Hawkins is just a man. He probably has never even boiled an egg and we all know in part.