A news column by Malcolm Kushner in the net version of the Huffington Post reports:

John Martin Fischer doesn't believe in an afterlife. But "the University of California, Riverside philosophy professor just received $5 million to study the afterlife.

The money, provided by the John Templeton Association, will go to a three-year interdisciplinary investigation of immortality by scientists, philosophers and theologians.

Called the Immortality Project, it will use scientific methods to study what happens after you die -- everything from near-death experiences to the effect of brain structure on belief in an afterlife. Well, not everything. "We're not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports," said Fischer.

Too bad. Cause we're talking big bucks here. Much of the $5 million will be used to provide researchers with grants of $100,000 to $250,000....”

Then the article got silly and included no further information on how to apply, etc.

Betson

This is phase one of what happens every time.

Phase two is the first published book by the author/scientist in which he shows his "results"

Phase three is when the author/scientist branches out with even more books with wild afterlife claims.

( Look at Gary Schwartz whom has several books that become less scientific one after another. )


Victor Zammit of course sank his teeth into this one as well, because, well, as far as afterlife related news is concerned this is one of the most recent major posts since Dr. Jeffery Long's book and news claims or perhaps Steven Hawkings comment.

Of course, Victor Zammit rampages on about how a scientist cannot ignore the "mountain" of existing afterlife evidence and must take that into consideration.... which I concede yet only to a point.

Zammit would have the scientist accept every ghost and NDE claim as fact right off the bat.

I disagree with this but would simply suggest that the scientist take the obvious "afterlife evidence claims" and attempt to place them in a controlled laboratory environment for testing.

I.E. NDE's, mediums, ghosts, astral projections, etc.