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Heavens on earth : the scientific search for the afterlife, immortality, and utopia / Michael Shermer.

by Shermer, Michael.

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Henry Holt and Company, 2018.

Religion and science.

9781627798570 (hc.)

xii, 305 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-287) and index

Prologue : Memento mori -- Part I. Varieties of mortal experiences and immortal quests. A lofty thought : imagining mortality ; What dreams may come : imagining immortality ; Heavens above : the afterlives of the monotheisms -- Part II. The scientific search for immortality. Heavens within : the afterlives of the spiritual seekers ; Evidence for the afterlife : near death experiences and reincarnation ; Evidence for the afterlife : anomalous psychological experiences and talking to the dead ; Soul stuff : identity, replication, and resurrection ; Afterlife for atheists : can science defeat death? -- Part III. All our yesterdays and tomorrows. All our yesterdays : progress, decline, and the pull of pessimism ; All our tomorrows : utopias and dystopias in fiction and in fact -- Part IV. Mortality and meaning. Why we die : the mortal individual and the immortal species ; Imagine there's no heaven : finding meaning in a meaningless universe

"In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans' belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality by radical life extentionists, extropians, transhumanists, cryonicists, and mind-uploaders, along with utopians who have attempted to create heaven on earth. For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, the place where souls go after the death of the physical body. Religious leaders have toiled to make sense of this place that a surprising 74% of Americans believe exists, but from which no one has ever returned to report what it is really like. The author concludes with an uplifting paean to purpose and progress and what we can do in the here-and-now, whether or not there is a hereafter. Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine. He is the author of The Moral Arc and The Believing Brain"--Provided by publisher.

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