Heaven on earth. Scientific view of the afterlife, immortality and utopia

What drives people in the afterlife? In this book, Michael Shermer, a popularizer of science and a well -known critic of dogmatic thinking, addresses the eternal and mysterious topics of death and immortality. This is a bold attempt in a concise form to cover huge historical and psychological material - from a dream of immortality characteristic of people with the origin of civilization, to a purposeful solution to such tasks of modern medicine and science as the reversibility of aging processes and an increase in life expectancy. The author analyzes the ideas about the afterlife, expressed in the Abrahamic world religions, gives the views of representatives of various fields of science-from physics of particles to molecular biology-to riddles of aging and the possibility of victory over death, and also considers the utopian theories of constructing paradise on Earth. The common denominator of many interesting historical and scientific facts that Shermer bring down on readers is a tense search for the meaning of existence in meaningless, as a tended to consider modern pessimistic consciousness, the universe