Kirk Cameron responds to Stephen Hawking's comments on heaven

May 19, 2011, 11:41 by R.E. Christian

Kirk Cameron, former "Growing Pains" actor turned evangelical Christian, has responded to UK physicist Stephen Hawking's comments about the existence of an afterlife, the Washington Post reports.

Hawking told the Guardian newspaper Monday that, "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers. That is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

Cameron, a Christian evangelist who still stars in Christian-themed films, wrote on his Facebook page Wednesday: "to say anything negative about Stephen Hawking is like bullying a blind man. He has an unfair disadvantage, and that gives him a free pass on some of his absurd ideas." Cameron was referencing Hawking's debilitating motor neurone disease that has left him paralyzed in a wheel chair.

The actor continued: "Professor Hawking is heralded as 'the genius of Britain,' yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life."

"John Lennon wasn't sure. He said to pretend there's no Heaven. That's easy if you try. Then he said he hoped that someday we would join him. Such wishful thinking reveals John and Stephen's religious beliefs, not good science."