Michael Shermer, “Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia” (Henry Holt, 2018)

New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

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. In the book we are looking at today, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018), Dr. Michael 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. From radical life extension, to cryonic suspension to mind uploading, Shermer considers how realistic these attempts are from a proper skeptical perspective and concludes with an uplifting tribute to purpose and progress and a word on how we can live well in the here-and-now, whether or not there is a hereafter.

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101.

Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Universite Laval in Quebec City.

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