Immortality Studies Centered at UC Riverside Get $5-Million Gift

Immortality Studies Centered at UC Riverside Get $5-Million Gift

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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 centered at UC Riverside, may 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 sciences, philosophy and theology, he said. Reports of near-death experiences with visions of an afterlife may be an important subject for psychologists and neuroscientists, Fischer said