File this under “I could have told you for free and immediately“!
Turns out, University of California in Riverside is getting a $5 million grant to study ‘immortality’:
Anecdotal reports of glimpses of an afterlife abound, but there has been no comprehensive and rigorous, scientific study of global reports about near-death and other experiences, or of how belief in immortality influences human behavior. That will change with the award of a three-year, $5 million grant by the John Templeton Foundation to John Martin Fischer, distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, to undertake a rigorous examination of a wide range of issues related to immortality. It is the largest grant ever awarded to a humanities professor at UC Riverside, and one of the largest given to an individual at the university.
That’s right – a philosopher was given $5 million grant to get to achieve a “comprehensive and rigorous, scientific study“. So, now philosophy does science? How is this whole thing going to get peer-reviewed?
And of course it had to be Templeton throwing money into the trash can. It’s not like there are kids out there, starving to death in this very real-finite life or something.
