Afterlife

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Best Essay on the Afterlife Gets $500K

Aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow is convinced we live on, offers contest

(Newser) - Aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow is so sure that human consciousness lives on after death that he's willing to pay top dollar for a convincing essay on the subject. The New York Times reports that the 76-year-old Bigelow is offering $500,000 for the best essay on the subject, plus...

Woman Found Buried With Husband's Heart on Her Coffin

In a 'phenomenon that had until now not been noted'

(Newser) - Love never fails, and now researchers say they've discovered a burial ritual ostensibly designed to allow a couple's love to persist forever. Reporting in the journal PLOS One , they say that French noblewoman Louise de Quengo, who died at the age of 65 in 1656, was buried in...

Hawking: Life After Death Possible—in Computers

But he still thinks heaven is a 'fairy tale'

(Newser) - Life imitating Futurama? Stephen Hawking, owner of one of the world's finest brains, now says he believes it is possible to keep a mind running without a body—though he expects the technology will be too late for him, the Telegraph reports. "I think the brain is like...

Teen Recalls 'Big Light' in Videos Before Death

'It was the BEST feeling,' Ben Breedlove says of near-death experience

(Newser) - A Texas teen reveals his near-death experiences with a beneficent "big, bright light" in a crushingly poignant double video he made just days before his death on Christmas Day. Ben Breedlove, 18, recounts years of battling his progressively worsening hypertrophic cardiomyopathy heart illness and his three near-death experiences in...

'Dead' Pastor: I Saw Heaven
 'Dead' Pastor: I Saw Heaven 
Aug 4, 2011 4:44 AM CDT

'Dead' Pastor: I Saw Heaven

Minister reports magnificent gates, spectacular music, old loved ones

(Newser) - A Baptist minister who was declared dead says he "saw heaven" during that time and details meeting dead loved ones, smelling aromas he had never experienced before and hearing music "beyond spectacular." It was the "most real thing that ever happened to me," Pastor Don...

Heaven Is a Fairy Tale: Stephen Hawking

Strive to achieve now, urges famed physicist

(Newser) - In his most dismissive views on an afterlife to date, famed physicist Stephen Hawking has declared the idea of heaven a "fairy story." There's nothing for individuals beyond the brain's last flicker of life, Hawking tells the Guardian . "I regard the brain as a computer...

Americans See Many Stairways to Heaven: Poll

70% say chance for eternal life isn't unique to their religion

(Newser) - Reaching the afterlife is possible through more than one religion, 70% of Americans believe, according to a new poll. Surveying 36,000 people, the study confirms that while 92% of Americans believe in God, the country is growing more secular, the Dallas Morning News reports. Seven in 10 also agreed...

Bishop: Heaven a Place on Earth
Bishop: Heaven a Place on Earth
Feb 9, 2008 6:34 PM CST

Bishop: Heaven a Place on Earth

He says common Christian view of afterlife is a misconception

(Newser) - There is no heaven—or at least not the way most Christians think of it, according to Episcopal Bishop N.T. “Tom” Wright, who lashes out at the common angels-and-clouds view of the afterlife. “That’s a very damaging distortion,” the prominent theologian tells Time magazine. “...

Mormons Ponder ‘Big Love’ in the Hereafter

2d marriages may cause trouble in paradise

(Newser) - "'Til death us do part” sounds like enough of a commitment, but a loophole has Mormon women wondering if they’ll spend eternity with their husbands … and their second wives. Mormon marriage “seals” a couple, binding them and their children together forever in heaven, but widowed men...

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