Heavens on Earth

A scientific exploration into humanity's obsession with the afterlife and quest for immortality from the bestselling author and skeptic Michael ShermerIn 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 along with utopian attempts to create heaven on earth. For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, and though no one has ever returned from such a place to report what it is really like-or that it even exists-today science and technology are being used to try to make it happen in our lifetime. From radical life extension to cryonic suspension to mind uploading, Shermer considers how realistic these attempts are from a proper skeptical perspective. Heavens on Earth concludes with an uplifting paean to purpose and progress and how we can live well in the here-and-now, whether or not there is a hereafter.

Prologue: Memento Mori 1 Part I: Varieties of Mortal Experiences and Immortal Quests Chapter 1. A Lofty Thought: Imagining Mortality 11 Chapter 2. What Dreams May Come: Imagining Immortality 33 Chapter 3. Heavens Above: The Afterlives of the Monotheisms 48 Part II: The Scientific Search for Immortality Chapter 4. Heavens Within: The Afterlives of the Spiritual Seekers 69 Chapter 5. Evidence for the Afterlife: Near Death Experiences and Reincarnation 84 Chapter 6. Evidence for the Afterlife: Anomalous Psychological Experiences and Talking to the Dead 107 Chapter 7. Soul Stuff: Identity, Replication, and Resurrection 120 Chapter 8. Afterlife for Atheists: Can Science Defeat Death? 131 Part III: All Our Yesterdays and Tomorrows Chapter 9. All Our Yesterdays: Progress, Decline, and the Pull of Pessimism 161 Chapter 10. All Our Tomorrows: Utopias and Dystopias in Fiction and in Fact 178 Part IV: Mortality and Meaning Chapter 11. Why We Die: The Mortal Individual and the Immortal Species 221 Chapter 12. Imagine There's No Heaven: Finding Meaning in aMeaningless Universe 238 Notes 255 Acknowledgments 289 Index 291