The Immortalists - can science defeat death?
In his new book Heavens on Earth, founding editor of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer explores humanity’s obsession with the afterlife and the quest for immortality – find out about the extraordinary people he met trying to cheat death.
6th February 2018
Michael Shermer
The Future
Demographers estimate that before our generation roughly 100 billion people lived and died, and not one of them has returned to confirm the existence of an afterlife, at least not to the high evidentiary standards of science. This is the reality of the human condition. Memento mori, as medieval Christians reflected—Remember that you have to die.
Why do we have to die? Theologians and religious believers have long had a ready-made answer: death is simply a transition from this stage to the next in a cosmic proscenium. In the religious worldview death needs no explanation other than “God wills it†as part of a deific design that will be disclosed once we get to the other side, usually involving a cosmic comeuppance for one’s actions and a settling of all moral scores.
http://www.sciencefocus.com/article/future/immortality-science-death-michael-shermer-heavens-earth
