Even a multimillion-dollar donation does not ensure a spot in heaven. Or at least that's what most religions believe.
But a $5 million academic grant, to be centred at the University of California, Riverside, might go a long way toward gaining insights into the possibility of an afterlife and delving into what science and culture say about immortality.
The Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation - founded by the late Wall Street mutual-funds pioneer to help explore spirituality - has announced the award and said it will be paid out over three years.
UC Riverside philosophy professor John Martin Fischer will receive $1 million of that to host conferences on campus about the afterlife, to support post-doctoral students and to run a website for research on the topic. Then Fischer will administer competitions to dole out the remaining $4 million to researchers worldwide in the sciences, social sci-ences, philosophy and theology.
Reports of near-death experiences with visions of an afterlife may be an important subject for psychologists and neuroscientists, Fischer said from Germany, where he has a fellowship until December.
"It doesn't mean we are trying to prove anything or the other. We will be trying to be very scientific and rigorous and be very open-minded," he said. Fischer described himself as skeptical about an afterlife but said he believed that "endless life without death could be a good thing."
