Is There a Heaven?

Steven Hawking, the brillant physicist, recently shared some of his thinking about heaven. Bottom line.....IT AIN'T THERE AND NEITHER IS GOD! He contents that the need for life after death is for those who are "afraid of the dark". Dr. Hawking is an Astrological Physicist. He theorizes,calculates and pontificates on matters related to the Cosmos. Hawking has some authority to speak of Heaven since we are always pointing upward into his "field of study", the sky, when we talk of Heaven. So, he says if we are looking for a place called Heaven in the world he studies, we are not going to find it.

My question is not weather Hawking's is right or wrong, but how he arrived at his conclusions?
Although I have never met him, I do know that Hawking's is a scientist and scientists follow the scientific method. His thinking about Heaven comes from his belief in his calculations, theories and general wealth of empirical data gained from his scientific research. So there, I've answered my own question.

Do you believe in Heaven? If you are a believer, what are your concepts of Heaven? What is it? Where is it? Your beliefs about anything have some point of genesis. You believe BECAUSE....You have reasons for your beliefs/thinking. What are your reasons? That is my point in this Blog. Think about why you Think the way you think.You may find that there are credible reasons why you believe. Then again, you may find some of your reasons rather incredible.

Our first step toward becoming the person we want to be is to discover how we got to be the person we are. And that involves a through investigation of our thinking, our beliefs. Then we can go a step further and investigate why we believe those things.

So, what do you believe about Heaven? What about Hell? What about God? What about creation? What about evolution? Now ask yourself why you believe all that?

You Could Think Differently

     We learn how to think and we learn what to think. Our thinking is augmented by a language(s) that helps us name and define objects and interpret our experiences. Influential people are a large part of the paperwork of our thinking. They tell us this or that about that or this, and we, for the most part, believe everything they tell us. What child thinks his parents are lying to him about the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy or Santa Claus? Mom and Dad are right. Grandad knows everything about everything, or so we think, and Grandma is simply the wisest person ever. Our ministers know God on a first name basis, and they tell us what to think about Him or Her or Whatever. They also tell us what God thinks of us. Almost without exception we believe everything these God authorities say. Teachers, of course, are right up there with other "know-it-all's". 
     We respect all these pervayors of information, and rightly so. They are conceived to be bearers of truth, albeit their truth. Sometimes their truth is synonomous with the very teachers who taught them. Their truth is not something that Dad told them, it is Dad or Mom or grandma or grandpa or reverend or teacher encapsulated in ideological or conceptual form. Rejecting their truth is like rejecting the very people who taught them that truth.

Then, around the time of pubic hair and pimples, something dangerous begins to happen inside us. As we enter into our adolescent  phase of development, we begin to arrive at some conclusions that are different from our revered teachers. Our newfound conclusions often create quite a "stir" among the previously uncontested enlightenment, or establishment (as we called them in the 60's). We may feel as though we have become the enemy or vice versa. And the "stir" often results in verbal battles and punishment for thinking differently. There can be ourbursts of violence, spanking, hitting and killing. (See Kent State).

*****That kind of rigid thinking and combative behavior is what I refer to as the "Spirit of Fundamentalism", which I will write about in a future blog.*****

     Let it be known that you CAN and you SHOULD change your thinking when old ideas are not working, or old truth begins to make no sense, or when new ideas and truth comes to you. It is always prudent to examine your thinking making sure that it is based on truth, your truth, and not just hearsay or someone else's ideas. You might experience chastishment or resistance from those who may feel threathened by your change. You can be assertive in your resolve to be a Critical Thinker. You can also be gentle and patiently mindful that those resistors have been taught to think certain ways, and perhaps have never considered any other way of looking at it. They may consider their ideas sacredly synonomous with their former teachers.