Tag: Heaven

“Growing Pains” actor turned Christian film star Kirk Cameron is taking issue with comments famed physicist Stephen Hawking made about the existence of heaven.

There really is such a thing as American exceptionalism: we are more gullible than the public in the rest of the developed world. Sitting pretty at No.1 on The New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list is a secondhand memoir, Heaven Is For Real , describing a four-year-old boy’s visit—when he nearly died from a burst appendix—to a heaven complete with clouds, winged inhabitants, and a baby sister his parents had lost to a miscarriage. Only in America could a book like this be classified as nonfiction.

81 percent say they believe in heaven—an increase of 10 percent since a decade ago. Of those, 71 percent say it is “an actual place.” America’s branch of heaven is crammed full, even as the European and Asian wings are long since dissolved by the brisk winds of reason and skepticism.

Research conducted by Andrew Newberg, University of Pennsylvania, in Near-Death Experiences (NDE), explores why some people have “spiritual, out of body experiences” when having a NDE and why it is not necessarily a glimpse into a transcendent event.

Two Harvard economists conclude that certain religious beliefs correlate with faster economic development.