Wow! eBook
Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia
Author(s): Michael Shermer (Author)
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
- Publication Date: January 9, 2018
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 1627798579
- ISBN-13: 9781627798570
Book Description
A scientific exploration into humanity’s obsession with the afterlife and quest for immortality from the bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer
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.
Heavens on Earth 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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Thank goodness for Michael Shermer’s sound and inspired mindfulness and for this importantly useful volume. Truly a delicious read. Ten Goldblums out of a possible ten Goldblums!” —JEFF GOLDBLUM, actor
“Heavens on Earth is absolutely brilliant, filled with profundity, startling facts, and mind-expanding ideas. Michael Shermer somehow manages to be entertaining and scientifically erudite at the same time. He also brings some of history’s greatest thinkers to life and makes their ideas accessible. This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in a long time.” —AMY CHUA, Yale Law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and coauthor of The Triple Package
“I appreciate every evolutionary step skepticism takes toward openness. Heavens on Earth is an affirmation that other worldviews deserve respect and understanding. In this book science may actually be catching up with the world’s wisdom traditions.” —DEEPAK CHOPRA, M.D., coauthor of War of the Worldviews and You Are the Universe
“Michael Shermer is a beacon of reason in an ocean of irrationality.” —NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, director of the Hayden Planetarium, host of Cosmos and StarTalk, and author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
