The John Templeton Foundation has awarded a three-year $5 million grant to University of California Riverside philosopher John Fischer to research aspects of immortality, including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior, according to a UCR report. The Immortality Project will solicit research proposals from scientists, philosophers and theologians whose work will be reviewed by respected leaders in their fields and published in academic and popular journals. "We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death," said Fischer, principal investigator of the Immortality Project.

"Anecdotal reports of near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences and past lives are plentiful, but it is important to subject these reports to careful analysis," Fischer said.

"We will be very careful in documenting near-death experiences and other phenomena, trying to figure out if these offer plausible glimpses of an afterlife or are biologically induced illusions. Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous."

One half of the $5 million grant will be awarded for research projects. The grant will also fund two conferences, to be held respectively at the end of the project’s second year and third year.