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A review by socraticgadfly
Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia by Michael Shermer
4.0
Solid overall but nothing spectacular.
As a secularist, I of course knew the arguments against religious-based afterlives, whether heavens as a one-time thing, or heavens via a process of reincarnation or something else.
The better part of the book comes after that.
Shermer shows that atheists’ hope for a secular afterlife, whether through mind downloading, Kurzweil’s singularity, or cryogenics, are all hogwash at this time. (The mind-downloading angle also applies to reincarnation in its traditional forms; how does a human soul map on to an animal brain?)
He also shows that medical claims we’re near the point of immortality through medical life extension are also hogwash.
There are a few errors. Most are minor, but still need noting.
First, not all ontological monists are materialist monists. Good Buddhists certainly are not.
Second, psilocybin is not LSD!
Third, the brain is probably not as modular as Shermer claims, and more recent actual neuroscience has refuted some of these claims. In addition, the idea of subselves is more complex than these ideas of brain modularity.
Nietzsche did not go mad. The best evidence indicates he has a brain tumor that changed his mind.
Fifth, the rhetoric is nice, but with the partial exception of Henrietta Lacks, our genes aren’t immortal, and even there, it’s as much rhetoric as reality. Per issues of mutability of a personal self, “our” genes aren’t ours after enough generations of offspring.
As a secularist, I of course knew the arguments against religious-based afterlives, whether heavens as a one-time thing, or heavens via a process of reincarnation or something else.
The better part of the book comes after that.
Shermer shows that atheists’ hope for a secular afterlife, whether through mind downloading, Kurzweil’s singularity, or cryogenics, are all hogwash at this time. (The mind-downloading angle also applies to reincarnation in its traditional forms; how does a human soul map on to an animal brain?)
He also shows that medical claims we’re near the point of immortality through medical life extension are also hogwash.
There are a few errors. Most are minor, but still need noting.
First, not all ontological monists are materialist monists. Good Buddhists certainly are not.
Second, psilocybin is not LSD!
Third, the brain is probably not as modular as Shermer claims, and more recent actual neuroscience has refuted some of these claims. In addition, the idea of subselves is more complex than these ideas of brain modularity.
Nietzsche did not go mad. The best evidence indicates he has a brain tumor that changed his mind.
Fifth, the rhetoric is nice, but with the partial exception of Henrietta Lacks, our genes aren’t immortal, and even there, it’s as much rhetoric as reality. Per issues of mutability of a personal self, “our” genes aren’t ours after enough generations of offspring.