Heaven or heaven?

You are all wrong. You all are using logic. But in fact the words heaven and hell, regardless of usage, are not to be capitalized. I was taught this in Christian school as a child. I believe In the third grade. Read the bible. You'll see that they are not capitalized there either.

In Genesis 1.1 God creates heaven, but in verse 8 he names it 'Heaven' - then it reverts to being heaven at least in the Authorized (King James) Version.

I suppose as there is only one heaven and one hell the lower case is appropriate.

The word 'city' is not capitalized but the British refer to the old part of London (now the financial quarter) as 'the City'. That's because a particular place is being referred to. Titles are the same. One says 'sergeant' but 'Sergeant Jones' - a particular person.

Percy - thanks for your post. It's an interesting point about there being only one heaven and hell and thus the need for lower case. On the other hand there's only one 'Earth'.

How does there only being one heaven and hell mean that they should be lowercase? How do you logically go from the former claim to the latter one? I don't understand. And that's not true, by the way; there are different variations of heaven and hell in the many different myths that humanity has come up with throughout history, Christianity only being one of them. In a way, you could say that there are many "heavens" and "hells" that you can find in mythology, which would actually be good reason for them to be lowercase, since, in that case, they would NOT be proper nouns. For example, Valhalla is just one version of heaven, hence making heaven like "city" or "country." Buddhism has its heaven: Nirvana. Now take a look at this statement: "There is no heaven or hell awaiting you when you die." In that sentence, it is being stated that no heaven or hell of any kind exist, making them both common nouns. And most biblical translations do, in fact, have "heaven" and "hell" as being lowercase.

I was wondering about what Ross Eiry was saying about there being many different myths with versions of heaven and hell. And I thought, yes, but these words surely have their roots in the Christian Heaven and Hell. But it turns out that both words seem to have existed in Anglo-Saxon before the Anglo-Saxons adopted Christianity.

Heaven apparently comes from Old English "heofon" - "home of God," earlier "sky, firmament," probably from Proto-Germanic

Hell comes from Old English "hel, helle" - "nether world, abode of the dead, infernal regions," from Proto-Germanic *haljo "the underworld"

(Online Etymology Dictionary)

Checking with Google Ngram, in the expressions: "go to heaven", "down from heaven" and "heaven-sent", lowercase predominates in published books, but something quite interesting happens: the gap between the instances of lowercase and uppercase versions was much higher in the nineteenth century than it is today.

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=to+heaven%2Cto+Heaven%2Cfrom+heaven%2Cfrom+Heaven&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

And according to both the Collins Gem English Dictionary (New Edition for the 21st Century) and the Oxford Dictionary of Current English (Third Edition), "God" and "the Devil" are to be capitalized, presumably because they are the names of beings, just like "Zeus" is, but "heaven" and "hell" are, in fact, lowercase. Furthermore, in my psychology text book on death and dying, entitled, "The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying (Eighth Edition)" "Purgatory" is capitalized (as there is only one Purgatory), whereas "heaven" and "hell" are lowercase. This all makes perfect sense to me in accordance with the argument that I have given above.

Only one Heaven exists.

Two Heavens do not exist.

Two heavens may exist, if and only if each heaven is not the true Heaven.

For the reason that there is only one true Heaven, and there are not two true Heavens, the true Heaven is a proper noun.

If you believe that every proper noun should be capitalized, and if you are referring to the one true Heaven, then you must spell the English word which is spelled with the English letters h, e, a, v, e, n, in that order, as Heaven, with an uppercase H, in order to be consistent with your own beliefs.

If you do not believe that every proper noun should be capitalized, why are you asking whether or not to capitalize Heaven?

If you are not referring to the one true Heaven, what are you referring to, and why would you refer to another heaven that is not the one true Heaven? Are you trying to tell me something false? If so, you had better not tell it to me! May the Lord God, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, Yehoshua Ha-Mashiach Ben Yehovah Elohim, be with you! Amen.