CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

PROLOGUE: Memento Mori

PART I: VARIETIES OF MORTAL EXPERIENCES AND IMMORTAL QUESTS

CHAPTER   1.  A Lofty Thought: Imagining Mortality

CHAPTER   2.  What Dreams May Come: Imagining Immortality

CHAPTER   3.  Heavens Above: The Afterlives of the Monotheisms

PART II: THE SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR IMMORTALITY

CHAPTER   4.  Heavens Within: The Afterlives of the Spiritual Seekers

CHAPTER   5.  Evidence for the Afterlife: Near Death Experiences and Reincarnation

CHAPTER   6.  Evidence for the Afterlife: Anomalous Psychological Experiences and Talking to the Dead

CHAPTER   7.  Soul Stuff: Identity, Replication, and Resurrection

CHAPTER   8.  Afterlife for Atheists: Can Science Defeat Death?

PART III: ALL OUR YESTERDAYS AND TOMORROWS

CHAPTER   9.  All Our Yesterdays: Progress, Decline, and the Pull of Pessimism

CHAPTER 10.  All Our Tomorrows: Utopias and Dystopias in Fiction and in Fact

PART IV: MORTALITY AND MEANING

CHAPTER 11.  Why We Die: The Mortal Individual and the Immortal Species

CHAPTER 12.  Imagine There’s No Heaven: Finding Meaning in a Meaningless Universe

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Also by Michael Shermer

About the Author

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