It is an eternal symbol of comfort and hope for billions of people around the world. Although there is no evidence that it would be somewhere in our universe, there are terrestrial locations that at least resemble it, the specialists say.
Heaven, abstract photo photo: shouterstock
In the Bible, heaven is described as a “the land from the sky above the earth ”, where the supreme peace and joy can be found in the presence of God. And in popular culture, he has long been described with “Pearls, fluffy clouds and bright, celestial clouds.”
“Most of us have a certain concept of heaven, even if it is one formed by movies like What Dreams May Come, The Lovely Bones, or we think it involves meeting Morgan Freeman in a white room“Robyn J. Whitaker, a superior lecturer at University of Divinity, said for Dailymail.
The photos in the cosmic space also sparked the hope that we could see the sky far above our heads.
For example, NASA entitled one of his photos with Saturn “The blue heaven ”while the European Space Agency called a distant nebula “The scale to heaven. ”
However, according to Professor Whitaker, the truth is that Heaven is a “utopian vision” in our minds, which have not yet been found physical evidence.
For Christians, the idea that the dead are in heaven or enjoy paradise often brings relief to the bereaved and hope to those who suffer or are dying.
But, in the Christian faith, heaven was initially more about the place where God lived, not about the final destination of mankind if he lives an righteous life.
NT Wright, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at St Andrews University, said the way people are talking about heaven is “deeply nebibly and deceitful ”.
“Basically, the whole Western tradition has taken a wrong turn imagining that the purpose of the game is to go to heaven when we die“, Said the teacher.
Lari Launonen, a philosopher at Helsinki University in Finland, said that many theologians do not like the word “heaven”because “It evokes the idea of an etheric reality with souls floating around.”
At the beginning of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, we are told that the sky is created by God together with the earth. This contradicts the theory of the Big Bang, generally accepted by scientists, according to which the universe exploded in one tiny point.
The authors of the Bible imagined their land as flat, with the land of the dead under us and a dome above the earth that separates it from heaven.
Of course, we know that the earth is not flat, and this “uNeedle with three levels makes no sense for a modern mind ”according to Robyn J. Whitaker, superior lecturer at Australia University of Divinity
But it contributed to the consolidation of the theory that the sky is in the stars, visible from the earth -a theory that continues to circulate in the modern era.
In 1994, news circulated according to which the Hubble Space Telescope surprised a photo of a bright heavenly city at the edge of the Universe -the Paradise prepaid.
However, the wonders of the cosmos returned by deep space telescopes like James Webb inspires faith in a kind of deity there.
Terrestrial locations that resemble heaven
Although there is no evidence that heaven is somewhere in our universe, there are terrestrial locations that at least resemble it.
In the Bible, the garden of Edenul-bye lived Adam and Eve before, is the terrestrial paradise that resembles the most with heaven.
According to Professor Whitaker, the Eden garden is “strikingly similar ” With the Persian Royal Gardens (Parida) in real life, dating from the year 4000 BC.
These ancient Iranian gardens had a rectangular or symmetrical design and were full of built enclosures, water wells and fruit trees.
The oldest Persian garden of which there is data belonged to Cyrus the Great, in his capital of Pasargadae, now a worldwide site northeast of Shiraz, Iran.
Among the Persian gardens built more recently and that still exists are the Garden Eram in Shiraz, which is believed to date from the 12th century. These remarkable sites will probably be as close as possible to be witnesses of heaven on earth.
“Heaven or paradise in the Bible is a utopian vision, designed not only to inspire faith in God, but also in the hope that people could embody the values of love and reconciliation in this world,” said Professor Whitaker.
Of course, the existence of heaven outside our universe depends entirely on your own belief system and the person from which you are looking for guidance.
Professor Stephen Hawking, the English physicist who died in 2018 did not believe in God or in a creator and called Heaven “A fairy tale.”
According to a theory, the fact that we all went from non-existence (before conception and birth) to existence (life) means that we could exist in one form or another after death.
