In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans' belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality by radical life extentionists, extropians, transhumanists, cryonicists, and mind uploaders, along with utopians who have attempted to create heaven on earth.

For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, the place where souls go after the death of the physical body. Religious leaders have toiled to make sense of this place that a surprising 74 percent of Americans believe exists but from which no one has ever returned to report what it is really like.

Heavens on Earth concludes with an uplifting paean to purpose and progress and what we can do in the here and now, whether or not there is a hereafter.