Another book by Mary Roach

I recently read Mary Roach's newest book called Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. I really liked Stiff, her book about how human cadavars are used. But, I didn't like this book as much. Yes, the research she described was cooky, interesting, and crazy to read about. The scientific experiments she writes about that were and are actually being conducted to look for evidence of life after death included: weighing a person directly before and after death with the hypothesis that a slight decrease in weight suggests the departing of the soul; placing a computer facing the ceiling in a hospital room where a person undergoing a procedure that momentarily stops the heart (and thus causes the person to "die" for a very short time) to determine if the person can remember seeing the items on the screen, suggesting an out-of-body experience; she goes with a reincarnation specialist to investigate claims of life in another body; scientific explanations for ghost sitings; and on and on. In the end, she finds very little hard evidence that life exists beyond the here and now of earth.

She didn't attempt to answer questions of a spiritual nature about post-mortal existence. She was examining age old questions in a new light, and that makes her book novel and interesting. But, despite this, the age old answers are ultimately more satisifying. Even though we may be able to find scientific evidence for life after death, the true answers aren't to be found in such methods as these. Faith and personal revelation given by the Holy Ghost are in the end really the only way to find satisfactorily convincing understanding of these issues.