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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Become a Coast Insider to hear the rest of this

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Speaker 1: fascinating conversation and check out recent shows where we learned

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Speaker 1: about scientific efforts to revive the Wooly mammoth, the latest

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Speaker 1: in military drone technology, and the mysterious Shroud of Turin.

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Speaker 1: a m dot com and signing up for Coast Insider.

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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome to Coast to Coast Dr Michael

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Speaker 1: Schermer with us. So, Michael, your own public relations company

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Speaker 1: for the book says that seventy of the Americans believe

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Speaker 1: that life after death is real. That's right, Yeah, well

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Speaker 1: most surveys, Yeah that those are stats from the book,

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Speaker 1: uh P gallop until on they always ask Americans and

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Speaker 1: there's other studies around the world. Americans are not necessarily

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Speaker 1: the most believers in the afterlife, but among the highest

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Speaker 1: and among the highest or Mormons and Evangelicals, lowest or

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Speaker 1: Jews amongst religious people. I mean and as I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: about a third of atheists believe in some kind of afterlife.

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Speaker 1: So it's definitely part of the human condition. It sure

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Speaker 1: is in you. That's that's huge. I think overall that's

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Speaker 1: a lot. That's well three quarters. Interestingly, there are differences

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Speaker 1: between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, for example, and what happens

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Speaker 1: when you die. There's great debates amongst theologians about like

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Speaker 1: when you're say, just among Christians, when you're born again

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Speaker 1: in heaven, what are you? Are you a physical body? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Is it you your body and your mind there with

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Speaker 1: Jesus and God and so on, or is it your

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Speaker 1: soul and your body is still in the grave. And

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Speaker 1: so there's some sexts. I think it's your actual physical body.

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Speaker 1: You're literally resurrected like Jesus was. And Okay, if that's

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Speaker 1: the case, then how old are you when you're there

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Speaker 1: in heaven? And so they actually, you know, they settled

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Speaker 1: this that you're about the age Jesus was when he

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Speaker 1: was crucified. You know, so you're, you know, in your

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Speaker 1: early thirties. You know, we're not exactly sure how old

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Speaker 1: Jesus was when he died, but something like early thirties

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Speaker 1: is the ideal age something like that. The problem with

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Speaker 1: this is that, um, say, I'm sixty three now, So

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Speaker 1: if if if you resurrected me when I was thirty, well,

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Speaker 1: I've just missed half my life, all the memories I have.

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Speaker 1: And if you say, well, when when you're resurrected, it

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Speaker 1: will be all of your memories. But the problem with

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Speaker 1: that is that the memories I have now of when

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Speaker 1: I was in my early thirties are very different from

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Speaker 1: the memories I had when I was in my early thirties.

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Speaker 1: You know, they take on new perspective, they change, they

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Speaker 1: get edited and so on, and and I see now

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Speaker 1: that the decisions I made when I was in my

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Speaker 1: early thirties, some of which were inconsequential, others were hugely consequential.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that until years later when they actually

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Speaker 1: had their consequences. So this is part of the kind

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Speaker 1: of the myth of the self that there's a single

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Speaker 1: enter he our unit that's you and is never changing.

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Speaker 1: That that's not the case. You're always changing. There is

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Speaker 1: no you that's you. Can take a snapshot and say

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Speaker 1: there you are, and that's who you are and always

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Speaker 1: will be. No you're always changing and so depending on

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Speaker 1: when you're resurrected. And so this problem exists for both

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Speaker 1: the religious people and the scientists who want to upload

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Speaker 1: our minds like the Bakers Wiles of the world when

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Speaker 1: the singularity comes. You've talked about this on your show

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Speaker 1: a lot. Uh and and we and we bring people

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Speaker 1: back to life and a computer and so on. Well,

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Speaker 1: what's in there? Um, you know what age are you

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Speaker 1: are if it's all your memories. But your memories are

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Speaker 1: not just a snapshot, you know, they're constantly changing. And

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Speaker 1: and one final problem with the mind uploading thing is

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Speaker 1: if we were able to do this while you're still alive.

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Speaker 1: Let's say we slide you into an f m R

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Speaker 1: I brain scanner and it's a hundred years from now,

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Speaker 1: and these are super sophisticated and they can scan every

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Speaker 1: synapse in your brain, and we have all your memories

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Speaker 1: and we put them into a supercomputer. And you know

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Speaker 1: Moore's law. The computers are now big enough we can

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Speaker 1: store brains and so on. Um, well, your point of

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Speaker 1: view is not going to transfer into the computer. You're

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Speaker 1: still standing there next to the f m R I going, well,

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Speaker 1: here I am, I'm not in the computer. That's just

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Speaker 1: a copy of me, and no more than a twin

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Speaker 1: looks at it's sibling and say there I am. You know,

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Speaker 1: each twin feels as an autonomous self. And and so

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Speaker 1: copying you and putting you in a computer doesn't give

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Speaker 1: you immortality. It's just a copy of you. You don't

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Speaker 1: go with it that you, that you, that's you know

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Speaker 1: was copied. Now the copying, they feel like it's you

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Speaker 1: and and and have that point of view, which is okay,

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Speaker 1: fine if we're able to do this, But you standing

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Speaker 1: there are not suddenly appearing in the computer or in heaven.

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Speaker 1: So I think the problem of the self is huge

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Speaker 1: for both the s and for a is do you

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Speaker 1: think of those seventy four percent of the people who

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Speaker 1: believe in life after death that it's real, how many,

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Speaker 1: if they pulled them, want to know if it's real? Well,

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Speaker 1: I do think that, Um, you know, Christians, believers do,

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Speaker 1: Muslims and so on. They grieve like like anyone else

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Speaker 1: would when they lose a loved one. And I think

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Speaker 1: it's not just missing the person, which of course is

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Speaker 1: real and painful, But I think there's always an element

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Speaker 1: of doubt like, you know, I don't know for sure

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Speaker 1: I'm going to see my loved one again. People say that, like, well,

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Speaker 1: he's in a better place and I'm gonna I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: see her again when I go. But no one would

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Speaker 1: offer themselves just to get there. I mean, people kill

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Speaker 1: themselves for mostly for reasons related to depression and severe

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Speaker 1: life crises, but not as a way like, Okay, my

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Speaker 1: my wife dies, I'm going to kill myself tonight and

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Speaker 1: join her. People don't do that. And I think they

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Speaker 1: don't do that because they don't know for sure, you know,

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Speaker 1: and life is for the living, and I'm still going biologically,

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Speaker 1: so I'm going to keep going as long as I can.

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Speaker 1: So I do think everyone has a little element of doubt.

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Speaker 1: I think I think so well, you might be right

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Speaker 1: about that, Michael. And as we were ready to take calls,

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Speaker 1: here as they line up for you. The title of

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Speaker 1: the book Heavens on Earth, the subtitle there is a

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Speaker 1: scientific search for the afterlife immortality in utopia. What's the

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Speaker 1: utopia portion? Oh, this is the attempt to create heavens

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Speaker 1: on Earth in the forms of ideal society. So we

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Speaker 1: have this idea that there's a perfect place to go heaven.

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Speaker 1: But we've also applied that to this world, like well,

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Speaker 1: we can engineer, socially engineered the perfect society, and these

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Speaker 1: are almost always disastrous. Some of them are relatively harmless,

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Speaker 1: like the nineteenth century communes in North America, where you know,

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Speaker 1: they never lasted very long um, and mostly it was

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Speaker 1: just sort of a cult where the leader had a

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Speaker 1: lot of free sex, but no one was killed. But

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Speaker 1: the Grand Immann. This experiments of the twentieth century were catastrophic,

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Speaker 1: tens of millions, perhaps as much as a billion people

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Speaker 1: dead killed trying to make the utopian come to life.

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Speaker 1: And the problem is is that there we ask what's

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Speaker 1: the ideal society? There is no answer to that. There

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Speaker 1: is no ideal society. That the problem is people have

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Speaker 1: such great variation of what they want that you can't

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Speaker 1: engineer it from the top down. And the attempts to

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Speaker 1: do so and then to eradicate the people that are

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Speaker 1: stopping us from achieving this ultimate perfect society with infinite

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Speaker 1: happiness forever um. That opens the door in this kind

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Speaker 1: of utilitarian calculus too, you know, kill the people that

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Speaker 1: are preventing us from achieving this perfect society. That's the

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Speaker 1: basis of genocide, so I am very critical of utopian

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Speaker 1: experiments as well. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM

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