Heaven is the Better Bet
As widely reported, Stephen Hawking announced in a recent interview with the Guardian newspaper that there is no heaven, and that any such notion is simply a fairly tale.
At the same time Mr. Hawking holds this negative thought in his mind, he also concludes that the body is a machine, the brain is a decaying computer, the universe mysteriously arose from background vibrations, and our universe is simply one of roughly 10500 other ones. The only distinguishing feature of our universe is that it just so happens to possess exactly the right conditions and physical laws to support life. The other 10500 – 1 universes are not so lucky.
So Mr. Hawking, like so many materialists, trades a world of hope for one of dire speculation. What evidence does Mr. Hawking have for the multiverse? None. What evidence does he have for universes popping out of spatial fluctuations? None. Does your mind feel like a computer, your body, a machine?
To Hawking this does not matter: he does not think he can be scientific and at the same time leave the slightest room for spirit, God, or hope. But are science and God mutually incompatible? If Hawking spent more time trying to reconcile science with humankind’s deep belief in God perhaps he would not need all those extra universes to explain the one standing before us.
If our universe is instead special and not one of 10500 other ones, then perhaps there is a designer behind the scenes; if it did not arise from quantum fluctuations out in space, then perhaps it came from us; if we do not feel like robots, then maybe we are not. If God is real, then heaven can be real. Where should we place our bets? On God and heaven, or all those other universes? At the end of the scientific investigation into our world of endless order perhaps we will find not death and gloom but real hope, and a vision of a better world that only we – with unrelenting optimism — can make come true.