A new movement has emerged from California's Silicon Valley. It's a combination of philosophy, faith, and science known as transhumanism. An article in The Futurist magazine describes transhumanism as "radical life extension and life expansion." Those devoted to the movement "perceive the human body as a work in progress." They believe that "evolution took humanity this far…and only technology ...

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.

—Woody Allen, comedian and filmmaker

Atheist Penn Jillette is one half of Penn and Teller, a duo that has been headlining Vegas shows for years with comedy and the art of illusion. Penn has never been shy about his disbelief in God, often writing about his conviction in articles and best-selling books. Yet in an on-line video blog that can be found on YouTube, Penn shares a story about the time a gracious Christian businessman gave him ...

Remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, ...

In January, 2008, a story made the rounds about a 15-year-old girl in Australia named Demi-Lee Brennan. Brennan became the world's first known transplant patient to change blood types from O negative to O positive, taking on the immune system of her organ donor. At first the doctors assumed someone had made a mistake, because it's always been assumed that a change like that can't happen. Now they ...

A 2007 survey conducted by the American Association of Retired Persons suggests that a majority of people 50 years old and older believe in life after death.

Of the people surveyed, 94 percent claimed to believe in God, while 87 percent considered themselves "spiritual" and 82 percent acknowledged being "religious." Over half—66 percent—agreed that their "confidence in life after death ...

The January 29, 2007, issue of TIME magazine was all about the brain. The lead article, "The Mystery of Consciousness," was by Dr. Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard. While marveling at the workings of the brain, Pinker clearly thinks we have only the brain—no eternal soul. At the end of the article he writes:

And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come ...

Retirement is nearing for about 77 million baby boomers and the anti-aging industry is trying to keep them young. Their doctors are prescribing large doses of supplements that they believe prevent the decay of the body's organs. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine reports the industry has an annual income of $56 billion. At least $79 billion of income is expected by 2009. Over 1,500 doctors ...

The sense that we will live forever somewhere has shaped every civilization in human history. Australian aborigines pictured Heaven as a distant island beyond the western horizon. The early Finns thought it was a distant island in the far away east. Mexicans, Peruvians, and Polynesians believed that they went to the sun or the moon after death. Native Americans believed that, in the afterlife, their ...

In 2006, David Copperfield, the famous illusionist who made the Statue of Liberty vanish, purchased four tiny islands in the southern Bahamas. He paid $50 million, but he thinks he got a bargain. He believes that one of the islands contains the fountain of youth.

According to Reuters, "Copperfield is coy about his reasons for the fountain of youth claim, but the man best known for entertaining with ...