 Today we welcome science historian best-selling author and One of the world's best known skeptics Dr. Michael Schermer back to Skepticoe He's here to talk about his new book heavens on earth the scientific search for the afterlife immortality and utopia Dr. Schermer, it's always fun to talk to you. You are one of my favorite Skeptic frenemies and it's good to have you back Right here in in a hotel room as you can see in beautiful San Francisco The lighting is really funky here. It should get a little. Oh, that's better a little a little warm glow on my face How's that? Yeah, that's better Great, you know, yeah, I was just thinking before as I was kind of doing the introduction stuff like a man I Wonder if there'll be another Michael Schermer I mean, I think you captured a certain Time and you found your own lane and you found a voice. I just wonder with you know things change I wonder if that'll ever come again. Oh Yeah, no for sure. There's lots of skeptics doing what I do You know, I never wanted to be called the personality for Skeptic magazine and Skeptic Society when I'm gone You know moving on to the great iCloud above where my connectome will live forever But my physical body is done the Skeptic magazine will continue the Skeptic Society will continue there, you know, there's You know plenty of funding for You know continuing the organization. It's not based on me at all really I'm the currently driving force But and then in terms of my books, you know, I just try to do what you know, right about what I'm interested in that I think is you know relatively important but There's certainly nothing special about that. There's a lot of great science writers I was just at a book event last night with Leonard Millad now and you know He's one of the great science writers Steve Pinkers one of my good friends as the Sam Harris Richard Dawkins You know a lot of people writing about science and reason and skepticism So I think it's a big movement now and in fact my latest column I just that just came out and cited to American is on the rise of atheism that there's a lot more Atheist than not not just the rise of the nuns the people that tick the box for no religious affiliation but because those people may be going to be supporting Deepak Chopra or something, you know just the You know the New Age movements or whatever not necessarily becoming atheist, but But I think a lot of them now are now the rise of atheism, you know We are a powerful voting block. So I am just one voice among many Along with yourself. Well, that's no no I'm on the other side But you're a you're a humble guy. I appreciate I appreciate humility because I think you really have made more of an impact But that's great, you know, and I'm so glad you're here I talked with you a couple years ago about your book the moral arc a book that I really liked We had a good conversation on but this time around your latest book is kind of much closer to the skeptical swing zone Tell folks a little bit about what you set out to do With heavens on earth Well, it was sort of a Part of it is an extension of my previous book the moral arc talking about utopias for example The attempts to create a heaven on earth and and why that always fails But of course, that's not what most people believe most people believe that That there's some place to go after the death of the body and brain That the mind or soul or you know some incorporeal Ethereal essence that represents who we are moves on to some other place. So I just decided to take a swing at you know looking at the Scientific aspects of that, you know to what extent is that true? What is it that different religions claim? And so right off the bat for example, there's a history to heaven And this is not like to say the history of cosmology where there's a sense of a growing Yeah, but I think heaven really takes us in another direction, which is a direction that you've covered and covered well in terms of religion, but You know, I think it's kind of a tricky word when you get into heaven I mean what I really wanted to focus on because like I say this has been a topic of mind an interest of mine I've probably interviewed Have a hundred interviews with some of the top consciousness researchers names that you would recognize near-death experience researchers Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, sure. I guess where we might start where I thought we might start because heaven's on earth One of the areas you get into is near-death experience because I think when you look at science And you look at what's going on and what's made an impact in the culture Certainly this idea of okay Does this consciousness thing survive bodily death has been one place where we can kind of put our attention and really answer that question And I don't know. We need to dig into that. I don't know that you really did a very comprehensive job of looking at that research And that's I guess the longest chapter in the book Uh, I'll tell you I have written about that before I know all about the the topic and I I didn't want to ramble all about the topic You think you pretty well versed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah that read reincarnation Anomalous experiences and so on so the the idea is that You know, most of us are dualistic by nature. So we have a feeling that Uh, there's something floating around up there beside, you know, better thoughts that are not just our brain and chemicals And that and that essence that sense we have is what leads us to think that you know This floats off the brain and goes off into somewhere else. So the near-death experience then is Alleged to be an example or evidence of how this can happen And but of course, we you know, we have to start right off by pointing out that the people Are not actually dead. It's near-death. It's called near-death for a reason. They're not dead They're they're near-death and that's very different that that is your brain your consciousness is still going At some level even if you're you're you're unconscious at the moment There's still some part part of your brain operating that generates these experiences So I talk about that'd be a good topic to get into because that's And and I want to go there because I think that's kind of misunderstood and misconstrued by a lot of people We have a whole bunch of neuroscience that says these are the conditions under which a brain is able to Function in terms of memory in terms of conscious experience So this idea of neth death versus near-death, you know, we'll get into that in minutes Certainly when someone is completely comatose from every measure we have we don't believe there's any conscious experience going on So I don't know Let's talk about hold up on ebbon because I want to talk about him later But the first thing I wanted to hit you with is just that the first thing I did when I got the books I went to the index and I said, okay, here are all the near-death experience researchers I've talked to are they in there? No name after name after name, none of them in there. You know a couple years ago I interviewed Jan Holden from the University of North Texas Who along with Bruce Dr. Bruce Grayson from the University of Virginia two of the most prominent names in near-death experience research They compiled this book the handbook of near-death experiences mainly for People in the medical community so that when they encounter someone who comes up out of a cardiac arrest and said Hey, I had this incredible experience They can be at least Familiar with what to tell them at the time they published this book Michael in 2009 They had over a hundred peer reviewed papers that they included in their book by now There's over 200 peer reviewed papers. I don't see any of that in your book I think it's a part we'll make it well Look, yeah, I don't have to cite everybody that's ever written on the subject But you don't cite any of them. You don't cite Oh, yes, I do. Penvun Lommel, Sam Parnia, who else? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You misrepresented both of them, but you you at least cited them But anyway, uh, let's back up for a second and and um, this I I'd have to say, you know Evan Alexander, I want to talk about him, but technically he's not a near-death experience researcher He's a harvard neurosurgeon that had a near-death experience and wrote a book about it, right? That's right, but he knows a lot about it. He knows as much as you do As much as I do because he hasn't published peer reviewed papers. I'm looking at the science A peer reviewed paper thing is a that's a red herring. I'm not denying that people have real experiences You're you're treating this as if the experiences represent some other dimension A heaven a place to go and that is not at all what these peer reviewed papers indicate all they say is that the people that have the experiences have very real experiences Which I agree the experiences these people have are very real The question is is do they represent? just neural activity or neural activity and Something else and I claim that none of the research I've read none of the stories none of the papers Uh are evidence of an afterlife you do claim that and and michael look you're a science guy And you love science you're poured on science and you do a good job And the other thing you do a good job on and has been one of your strong points with christian apologist is you've called them on Cherry picking right say taking bible scripture and cherry picking out pieces that they want in order to make their point I got to say I think that's what you've done here with the near-death experience research and I'd give you just one example So you're a medical historian You're not a medical doctor right you don't claim to be a medical doctor I'm not a medical historian. I'm just a historian of science So but go ahead and give me your best example of what you think Not not not neural activity that produces a powerful experience People can get that from ayahuasca from ecstasy From deep meditation and so on we know this you can get it from brain stimulation. You can get it from oxygen deprivation I I mean you think you seem to think it's something beyond that Well, here's where I would focus on is on the research On the science I don't think peer review is a red herring per se. I think when you look It's the best means we have right now in science for policing science finding out if people are doing good work What what papers are you talking about? I'll get to that. Okay, so I'd say you're not a doctor So when we get into medical fields I like to look at doctors. I like the near-death experience research from a guy named Jeff long Radiation oncologist, right? So this is a guy who works with death and dying patients all the time He also happens to be a near-death experience researcher Compiled the largest database of near-death experiences Analyzed it scientifically with a scientific survey and here's what he says I'll pull that up for you right now So I guess the question is for the average person who's trying to sort through this idea of near-death experience science research How do they sort through it? How do they know what research really holds up out there? The key thing is to know a few of the consistently seen elements of near-death experience That are the strongest evidence for their reality For example When you're under general anesthesia, it should be impossible to have elucidic organized Remembrance at that time In fact under anesthesia, you're typically so far under with general anesthesia. They often have to breathe for you I mean, you're literally brain shut down to the level of the brain stem And at that point in time some people have a cardiac arrest their heart stops and of course that's very well documented They monitor people very carefully that are having general anesthesia So I have dozens and dozens of near-death experiences that occurred under general anesthesia And at this time it should be if you will doubly impossible to have a conscious remembrance And yet they do have near-death experiences at this time and they're typical near-death experiences They have the same elements and a period of have them in the same order as near-death experiences occurring under all other Circumstances and in fact a critical survey question I asked was what their level of consciousness and alertness during the experience was well Even under general anesthetics under those powerful chemicals to produce sedation If they had a near-death experience under general anesthesia Their level of consciousness and alertness was identical to near-death experiences occurring under all other circumstances There's absolutely no way the skeptics can explain that away. It's impossible Well, we have a skeptic here Explain it away. He's wrong. Uh, not every single one. He's wrong. Let's make sure we understand. He is a medical doctor He is a full-time radiation oncologist. He works with people who are under anesthesia Every day, but he's wrong Tell me how you are Tell me how your expertise would lead you to believe that he's wrong about his medical understanding of the state of consciousness There is a phenomenon of a small percentage of the population when under general anesthesia They become aware of what's going on. It's well known. Well known. I've interviewed An anesthesiologist more than one on this show. So there you go. That's it. That does not that does not explain It's a well known phenomenon that that they they work around Alex you seem to be missing my point It isn't denying that people have powerful neural experiences under different conditions Oxygen deprivation sleep deprivation They have these floating out-of-body experiences in the uh, james wintery's research with the pilots that are accelerated and centrifuges stimulating um Part of the temporal lobe during these epileptic great. You're really making my points here. So Uh that you can you can replicate all of the Um experiences that people report in in these through drugs through conditions through neural stimulation Not true, but you're still making you're still making all of my shows that 100 of the Experiences they have are neural related. They're they're related to the brain Now maybe you want to argue that at some point The consciousness lifts off the neurons and floats out into space. Is that what you're arguing? I'm arguing that i'm just going to repeat to you what dr Long told me don't repeat to me what dr Long says Tell me what you think Do you think that the connectome or your memories or your thoughts float off of the brain? They're they're no longer connected to the neural tissue and go somewhere else. Is that what you think? I'm happy to answer that and you can grill me with all the questions But I didn't want to return to one thing because I think Alex we're having a conversation. Tell me what you think happened Let me close the window here. We're getting the uh, that's a great san francisco sound. We got to have that in there though Yep. So what do you think? What do you think happens? I again? No, you want to talk about red herring? I think that's a red herring because again, you're a science guy. You know what? So we can falsify Paradigms, we can falsify theories without substituting another theory So i'm not sure how consciousness works What I think the evidence strongly points to is that our current model of consciousness being 100 percent tied to neural activity Doesn't fit and that's where I'd return you to dr Long's statement because I think there's some subtle points in there that folks who are hell bent on Dismissing near-death experience data miss. So do you remember the point where he says? That not only are these people having this experience under general anesthesia But their experience is consistent with other people that are having it under different medical situations Rains are structured the same way with the same neural chemistry But Michael Michael, let me just finish let me just finish my point because you're really not you're really not I just you're just not quite correct there because what we know from Neuroscience what neuroscience this tells us it's the basics is that different medical conditions different Physiological conditions create different situations in the brain like you mentioned that they also produce similar experiences and not But they shouldn't be producing the people that describe heaven They're different heavens if they were actually going to a real place The place should look the same, but that doesn't it varies considerably. So how do you explain that mr. Non-skeptic? You know what? I cannot you got an actual place that should look the same. Why doesn't it look the same you got me on that? I cannot explain that I don't see the same people, you know christian see jesus, but others that are not christian. They don't see jesus You got me you got me on that too. That's a that's a question. I don't have an answer for well, okay? So one answer is that Do you want to I want to I want to get another researcher to the table because in your book one of the points you make Is okay the transformative power and near-death experiences. I'm not denying that they're transformative But that's not that's not what her clips is but her clips speaks to specifically Specifically this is right out of your book, which Is you make the point that hey people when they're resuscitated? They claim to have seen things that they shouldn't be able to see well, they've seen it on tv. They make it up Here's a researcher who asked that question with the control group I had then patients who had been successfully resuscitated, but they didn't have a near-death experience or they didn't have the outer body component And I asked them if they could describe what they thought that we had done to them and And they were like, what do you mean? I don't I was dead. I don't remember anything, right? Exactly. That's right. And they were saying why are you asking me this? I have no idea what you did to me at all I and The majority of them couldn't even guess They couldn't make a guess as to what we'd done And then a few of them then did make a guess and it was based on tv hospital dramas That they've been watching and what I found is that there were errors and misconceptions in what they thought we had done to them And so some of them thought that they had been dc shocked with the paddles And they hadn't those people had just had the resuscitation the cpr and drugs administered such as adrenaline or noradrenaline And then some of them made educated guesses But the place where they thought that we put the paddles onto their body Was completely erroneous. It was wrong. It was incorrect So data data, you know, this is great stuff Yeah So it just you know, it just goes to show that the people who did report the near-death experience Describe their experience with with accuracy whereas the control group weren't Wants accurate and they most of them couldn't even hazard a guess Okay, so first of all Full disclosure. You didn't know about that research Uh, I know about similar research to this that What are the objective criteria by which they decide whether a narrative account is a hit or a miss of what they did? How many details have to get correct for you to say? Yes, that's accurate for what we were doing to you No, you must have gotten that from a tv drama because that's not what we did to you This is a basic basic No, no, this is super in science. You have to I'm glad you're back to science. She wrote and published a peer reviewed paper What what what was the criteria for deciding if a narrative was a hit or a miss? Well, the the narrative was the survey that they did which was a professional scientific survey, right? Do you understand? I mean, I don't want to Sound condescending of course you understand that medical surveys are really the backbone of science So if someone takes a medication, we go in and we ask them. How did you feel? You know, it's supposed to help you with the pain is your pain reduced. How does this? What is this sensation? So people were calling experiences and calling things are a part of it So she did a profession because if the person is floating up at the ceiling and looking down at the Operating table or whatever right and that they're getting details Beyond what somebody would from their imagination, okay? You surely know about the experiment where this has already been done where they set up Platforms up by the ceiling with photographs facing up such that if somebody does this in an er You're referring to dr. Sanparnia. Who is a colleague? And they've never had any hints, okay? Why not? But again, you're misrepresenting that The more you the more you hone down and fine-tune the objective exact opposite is true Opposite appears it's just like with esp as sue blackmore Always pointed out also with nde's the tidy you make the controls the weaker the effect gets I don't think that's true at all and as a matter of fact That's kind of my main point that i'm coming at you with is I just don't think you've Fairly looked at the near-death experience research like you just referenced dr. Sanparnia been on the show multiple times dr. Penny sartory been on the show multiple times skeptics of near-death experience science interviewed many of them Sanparnia and dr. Penny sartory Along with dr. Peter fennec We're a group that has researched together. They started out in the uk Uh all this different stuff. Dr. Sanparnia is one of the leading experts in the world on Resuscitation so again, these are medical experts their conclusions matter They matter more than someone just casually looking at it. Dr. Parnia's conclusion is exactly consistent with Dr. Penny sartory dr. Peter fennec dr. Jeff lone Every near-death experience researcher has come to the same conclusion What do you suggest that consciousness survives death? No one's ever reported seeing one of the photographs accurately never not one So what are you talking about? We can talk about the conclusions that the guy has from his research And you have to be careful with this because as we talked about before and we can talk about again You you can't misrepresent Someone's position you can pick apart their research and say why you think it's wrong But you can't say they're saying one thing when they're saying another that I can't take Your book and say oh I shall give you an example Okay, you remember this one, right? Yeah So Dr. Penn von Lommel writes this paper Michael Schermer scientific american says hey, this thing strikes a blow against Yeah, in my opinion No, yeah, you can't you can't Alex the god when you have when you write a science paper I'm sorry I'm saying that he thinks that it supports the uh, that you know the modus position of Of holy brain and no mind. I didn't say that I said that's my opinion No, what you said is right up on the screen You said that this study delivers a blow to the idea that mine Did I read the study I said it delivers a blow. Yeah, that's right That would be like me saying your book heavens in earth heavens on earth Delivers a blow against the Neurological model that consciousness is tied. No, I would be I could do that. I could do that I could do that, but I would be misrepresenting Your position. I wouldn't be fair to my audience if I told my audience Hey, Michael Schermer thinks that's not the case, but I think that's the case That's one thing but to say that that his book Without putting into context delivers a pull and and the evidence of this is clear I mean you have dr. Penn von Lommel coming at you saying hey, this is This is completely wrong. My research argues exactly the opposite, but I don't want to go He may argue for that, but I think his research points in the opposite direction It does not point to consciousness beyond life It points to powerful neurological experiences that people Misrepresent as floating off into the ether somewhere So let's get at that. Let's tell me what you think in your opinion since you studied this extensively When the person is up by the ceiling looking down What is the medium or platform that holds the Thoughts and memories and and how do you see something without a without a visual apparatus without a break? How does an ethereal spirit see anything? Again and and I repeat myself, but I really feel strongly about this is that I don't think we have to to falsify the existing Model of mind equals brain and we should never look beyond that Is a huge step and to take that step allows us to then begin to answer those questions I don't think we have to have those questions answered in order to say this is what the data is telling us This is what the scientists are telling us Alex that's not where we're talking about it's clear from this conversation and the books And papers you're showing me that you and these other researchers Definitely think this is evidence of the continuation of consciousness. All right, so Curious minds want to know how does consciousness continue without a break? But again, that's the question that's the question We need a man on the moon effort to answer But you know the the one point that you'd make That that you kind of no one knows. Okay, right. That's right. No one knows it. It's a mystery So one thing that isn't a mystery That I think we can't misrepresent. Go ahead. I'm sorry Neurological activity or it's neurological activity and something else. Okay, so I compile a lot of evidence that And not just with the NDE say in my chapter with Deepak Chopra He thinks consciousness continues beyond death not because it floats off the brain and is hovering somewhere else But because consciousness is well, I'll use his words the the the ontological primitive It is the ground of all being you can't get underneath consciousness You can't drill into the atom down to strings or quarks and find consciousness It is in a sort of panpsychism way. It's everywhere. And so when your Conscious mind lifts off the that the brain it doesn't go anywhere. It's just it's just still part of consciousness That's pervasive throughout the universe. So it's the same question with with Deepak that I say to him Well, what's more likely that the research we have a neurology points to The brain the mind equals the brain and nothing more or the mind equals the brain and something more and in my opinion The evidence points to just brain in his opinion if there's enough to go in the other direction Okay, so we don't have a part of the problem you and I and everybody else has is we don't have a code theory of consciousness. We don't know how Brains produce what we're doing right now that is experiencing life. And so without that theory of consciousness We're not going to have a code in theory of altered states of consciousness. So we have a collection of of accounts and experiments of unusual things that happen not just mds There's there's many many more unusual. I have a whole chapter on anomalous psychological experiences that people have including my own And you know, I've written about You know the sense presence that people have alpine climbers and solo sailors and and solo flyers and so on where they sense a presence in the room Very powerful. Okay. There's whole books on anomalous psychological experiences like Stanley Kripner studies I know all about this research the question is what does it represent? Well, we don't know for sure because we don't understand consciousness yet So all's we can do at this point and say well in my opinion The lines of evidence all point to No brain no mind But there's enough anomalous weird things and we don't have a good theory of consciousness that it allows you and others to say Well, no, I think i'm gonna I'm think i'm gonna say it can go this other way and that consciousness survives death. Okay, maybe On that last part, I don't know that that's really the direction where things are going You know the last time we talked to you a couple of years ago One of the guys you brought up on your team was Uh, dr. Kristof Koch, right a guy I've spoken to interviewed on this show. Hey, man. He's moved over He switched yours, right? Okay, sort of moved over the position has shifted these guys are no longer holding to the mind equals brain thing You know another clip i was gonna play for you, but i played enough Very nice to do it. But the deep box says you need a brain. Well, hold on sam See I heard I could play for you the clip of sam harris and david chalmers, right? So sam harris, I don't think much of sam harris, but he's the name everybody knows David chalmers one of the leading researchers in consciousness for a number of years and they're they're talking they say, you know, uh Dan Dennett, you know the consciousness is an illusion. Come on. You don't really think he believes that do you? I mean, we're not still stuck there, right? So this idea that you're putting forth this kind of militant Uh materialism mind equals brain. We've moved past that all the leading players have moved past that michael That's just they haven't oh, no, no. Well, christof. Koch has moved past it david chalmers has moved past it sam harris has moved past it Who are you going to point to? I know sam. I know sam quite well. He he has to move past anything. What are you talking about? He's he's not a strict materialist. He's not a strict mind equals brain guy. No he's totally in the panpsychism spirituality something other than strict mind equals brain materialism Get a public event together in austin that he's gonna post in a week or two that you can listen to where you know, he Uh, you know, we ask him bring him on. I'll have both you guys on at the same time and I'll invite the people that talk to you But anyway, all right, so Obviously, we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this point And it's not going to be resolved. You know today, you know, it's a hard problem And you know, that's why charmers calls it the hard problem. I'm not sure I've talked to pinker about this Who's a good friend? Steve thinks it may not be a soluble problem because we're we're phrasing it the wrong way. We're asking Uh science to do something it can't do in terms of you know, what first of all, what do you even mean by consciousness? Now I what sam means I think and most people would agree is what it's like to be something like what it's like to be a bad Or what it's like to be a dolphin now on stage We kind of disagreed on on the next point which is in my opinion If to find out what it's like to be a dolphin say You know, I strapped on flippers and I put on some sonar equipment And I reprogram my brain to process sonar instead of visual and Whatever instead of human apparatus and I just kept morphing a lot I could hold my breath for 10 minutes and And so on and so on at some point I would just be a dolphin And I wouldn't even be I wouldn't even know that I was a human asking what it's like to be a dolphin Now now sam disagrees with that. So I'm not sure actually what that means in terms of your pens Like I don't think it means that but but that what it's like to be something To to get at that you have to kind of be that You know what it's like to be a glass of water, you know in deep pocket pens like is the glass of water is conscious It's just very simple consciousness And you know what it's like to be a dog. I can kind of envision what it's like to be a dog Uh, but it's hard to do because I'm so trapped in my own human brain, all right, so You know, we've focused a lot on this extended consciousness and consciousness thing. What are some of the other Key findings or points that you were trying to get across in the book heavens on earth because you do have It's we did focus on a small part of it. What what else do people need to know like even at the very beginning I kind of pulled you off this thing of the history of heaven which I think is an interesting point Well from the very beginning We can't even imagine what it's like to be dead because to imagine something you have to be alive and conscious So it's like imagine being under general anesthesia. You can't imagine Because to imagine something you have to be awake. All right, so unless you have this condition where You you wake up under anesthesia and you're aware, but you can't move and it's terrifying and all that But I'm not talking about that All as it is is, you know boom boom lights out And then you wake up and you have no sense of how much time is gone and so on it's just You know you can't we don't have the words to describe it darkness nothing emptiness And so, you know to ask them well, where do you go when after you know after death? You know the same place you were before you were born. You just don't exist Well, I can't conceive of what that would be like. It's it's literally inconceivable So this sets up something of a paradox I cannot conceive of not being alive and yet I see death all around And the hundred billion people that lived and died before us are gone and they've they've never come back Short of the handful of near-death experience type things or the claims of resurrection of jesus and things like that or in the case of You know hinduism reincarnation Okay, so I mean you're focused on nbe's but there's lots of other versions of this That have nothing to do with that and and the people believe as strongly as you do, you know that something continues after consciousness. Okay In my book I I conclude that no one knows including me. I don't know that there's no afterlife I don't know that you know when I close my eyes for the final time. I won't wake up in some place and there's My friends carl sagan and christopher hitchens and steven j. Gould and my parents and you know people that I have known and loved And are gone. Maybe they're gonna be somewhere and I'm gonna be there with them I'm good with that. I think I find i'm quoting christopher hitchens description of the christian heaven is celestial north korea You know, we you have this dictator that knows all your thoughts and controls everything and you're there to worship Him, you know the dear leader that doesn't sound very heavenly to me But you know his point is that What are we talking about when we're talking about the continuation off into someplace else? So This is not a light problem. You know with christian groups, for example I said well when I'm when I die and i'm i'm reborn i'm a christian So i'm in heaven with jesus. What's up there? Is it this physical body? And some of them go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like jesus was physically resurrected The empty tomb the tomb is empty. So his body it's not just like it With your examples of nde consciousness lifts off the brain and floats off somewhere No, for christians jesus, you know left the tomb the empty tomb So the physical resurrection of the of the whole body and brain is what goes to heaven for for some sex now To that I say well, how old am I then? Uh, well you're 30 because that's the age jesus was when he was crucified He was 30. It's like well i'm 63 now. So what happened to the 33 years? You know that doesn't that go with it, you know all the memories and the stars and whatever else has happened to me And I say well no you'll be made whole again You know the blind shall see the deaf shall hear and the you know handicapped or whatever will be made whole again And so here I quote my friend julia sweeney that sent her to that live to meeting and her monologue letting go of god Where the marvin boys come to her house in hollywood and knock on the door and they're pitching their mormon religion you know everybody gets a planet and so on and And the you know the blind shall see in the deaf shall hear and so because well, I had uterine cancer So I don't have my uterus anymore. Do I get my uterus back when I go to heaven? If you imagine these 18 year old boys and their starts white shirts going uterus I don't know. Yeah, you get your uterus back. She goes. I don't want it back Because what have you had a nose job and you liked it? so, I mean so there's all kinds of Logistical issues here. What are we talking about when you're up there? Okay, maybe it's not the physical part It's just your memories. Okay, but which memories? Because there's no such thing as a fix you Your memories change throughout your life. They're like a wiki. They're edited constantly And they're upgraded and changed depending on new circumstances We know that we were biased and we back engineer into our Memories The consequences of what we did and so we justify and rewrite our memories to justify our actions and so on So all this happens in the course of a lifetime There's no like if we took a snapshot of your connectome as it's called the analog of your genome And copied it and put it in the cloud this scientific version of Of what we're talking about here that I write about I call it the afterlife for atheists Because this is what a lot of people are trying to do copy the connectome Which would presumably be all your memories and float it off into you know stored in a computer Put it in the cloud or something and turn it on so first of all Which memories because that's just a snapshot of me at that particular moment And then if it continues those memories are going to keep changing But but worse is the point of view self the point of view of being looking at through the world and experiencing life Now which there's a continuation from day to day Interrupted by sleep and anesthesia or whatever, but but there's a continuation To turn it off You know copy it turn it off kill me and then put the copy into the cloud I don't think my point of view self would go with it Any more than if we say copied you alex right now with the sophisticated fmri brain scanner copied your connectome And uploaded the digital file of all your memories into the cloud while you're still alive and you're still sitting there In your podcast room there Alive and awake and fine and we turn the copy on up in the cloud Your point of view self wouldn't suddenly leap there. You'd be still sitting there going. No, no, no This is me alex that is the copy now the copy is not you It's just a copy now the copy may think it's you when he's running a podcast from somewhere else, but it's not you okay, so all of this is Sort of the a deeper philosophical problem the problem of identity, you know, who are you? We know for example that our bodies are recycled every seven to ten years You're not the same man. You were a decade ago as i'm sure your your friends tell you Okay, come on that that's funny. No, no You you're funny You're a good, you know one of the things that when I when I talk to people About michael schermer and I talked to people are kind of On the other side of the camp the friend of me kind of camp, you know Everybody likes you You're just you're just a good guy or a good guy to talk to you're the other thing is you're a very open guy You know not a lot of people Do these interviews you probably forgot what the show is about which is okay, too But you know you are an open guy you are a guy who's willing to get on stage with Deepak Chopra or whoever it is and hash these ideas out and I think that's why what I was alluding to at the beginning is that I Haven't seen anyone else do it quite like schermer does it and you think there's going to be other people They're going to step in there and do it, but I don't see him on the horizon. So I think it's pretty cool um I'm not in agreement with heavens on earth, but i'm sure glad that you're out there Doing what you do you're in san francisco. You're going full speed ahead trying to Communicate these ideas you're on stage talking about it. What what are you doing for this book and then what are you doing? You know, what's yeah Book events, but actually I'm on stage with Deepak on tuesday in new york city for the intelligent square debate I don't know when you're going to air this, but uh tuesday march 27 It's livestream people can watch it that the resolution is the more we evolve the less we need god Okay, so he's going to argue. I'm not sure what he's going to argue, but I don't know what he's going to argue. You know, I've never a long time listening you and I thought you had a great point, but it was kind of a Weary point about when you were doing the evolution thing with the discovery What discovery institute? Oh, yeah You kind of said look after a while, you know, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to wheel out my stuff And they're going to go out there and they're going to wheel out their stuff And you know, it's kind of predictable not a lot, but you said it in a way that is like truly, you know almost like a Theater actor a stage actor who has to do it still You know, I mean that person came to see Michael Schirmer to see that debate to see that played out And that's important too So it doesn't to mean the fact that people might have heard both sides of this argument before right? Yeah, and so and again, I mean we have to have some epistemic humility You know, we don't even know what we don't know And there's a lot we don't know That we don't even know we don't know about things like consciousness So it's entirely possible that someone like Deepak or yourself or whoever on or or christians talking about The afterlife or or jews or muslims, you know, there's lots and lots of different versions of this out there that I write about um, and you know, I guess you know, one of the one of the appealing things about cryonics would be that That you come back in a thousand years to see what people think then about consciousness black holes or you know, whatever, you know, the science moves on and You know, it's just hard to like we're like fish in the water. You know, we don't even know that the water is there I don't I don't know You know, this is why I like Steve Pinker's point about This question of consciousness, you know the hard problem consciousness It may be that's being phrased in a way That will never be able to answer it the way we're thinking about it Now we need to think about it in some completely different way And that may be the case, you know, there's a group of people called the mysterians Martin Gardner was one of these that you know, there's there's certain mysteries That it's not just that we haven't solved them yet. We just have to you know, improve our technologies of experiments or whatever It's that they're insoluble Like sam sam erison, I disagree on free will he's a he's a strict determinist. I'm a compatibilist I agree we live in a sermon universe, but that we're part of the causal net and we can tweak it and change it Volitionally, but at some point we just run into a brick wall of words, you know, what do you mean by determined? What do you mean by free or volitional or compatibilist or whatever and like for example, I say I said to sam What's it? You know, so we have a we have a an opioid Addiction crisis in the country now You know, it appears that there are some people that really cannot control themselves They just go down a path and they can't stop and they overdose Now I don't have this problem. I know people that are alcoholics My father was an alcoholic. I can have a couple drinks and stop. He couldn't I know people that cannot stop Now what's the if we all live in a determined universe and we're all determined What's the difference between that guy who can't stop and me who can't stop? That he's more determined and I'm less determined. I mean what you know, this is why dan denic calls this degrees of freedom You know, there's certain amounts of things you can control or can't control depending on A lot of different factors. So but at some point I'm I told this to sam and sam says no, no, no, no You're still determined. You're just determined in a different way. Okay, maybe You know, but what are so what do we mean by that word determined? You know, so And we're kind of this with the point dickenstein made that we're We're restricted by the words we use because we have concepts The only way for being you to share our concepts is to talk and use words And the words have certain meanings and maybe you mean something slightly different than what I mean So we have to operationally define the words we're using So when we measure it and I look at it point and you point at it and look we're talking about the same thing That's not always easy to do In science and I think consciousness is especially difficult Uh problem. Anyway, so that's that's my piece there. Good. It's a good piece So again folks, the name of the book is heavens on earth the scientific search for the afterlife Immortality and utopia our guest has been the one and only dr. Michael schermer. Thank you so much for joining me I really do appreciate it Keep up the good work. Ha ha ha ha. You're the skeptic skeptic Somebody's got to do it. Hey somebody, you know, it's like the fact checker said we've got to fact check the fact checker The dr. Seuss who's watching the watchers, right? Okay, buddy. Thank you again. Take care. Yep. Be good