Campbell was an atheist. He didn’t believe in a personal god or a personal afterlife. He makes this very clear in his writings and in the widely seen “Power of Myth” interviews with Bill Moyers filmed in the late 80s but shown regularly on PBS to this day, usually during pledge drives. However, many many people (especially ‘New Age’ enthusiasts) somehow misinterpret Campbell as one who believed in reincarnation and all sorts of other superstitious nonsense; he didn’t.

Campbell’s basic philosophy was that all religions were initially intended to be understood metaphorically, not as claims of a supernatural reality. In Campbell’s view, all religions are actually attempting to convey a message more or less comparable to Eastern Philosophy, or at least, the rather charitable Western academic interpretation of Eastern Philosophy, concerned with such things as the ‘mysterious unity of the cosmos’ and meditating on the enigmatic weirdness of the situation we find ourselves in as conscious beings with a finite lifespan.

I found Campbell very interesting, though most of what he said was highly speculative and I think he was naive to think that the originators of the world’s myths never intended them to be taken literally. They were pre-scientific, superstitious primitives graphing at straws to explain their existence. His assertion that the ancients had the intellectual sophistication of 20th century professors of comparative religion and did not hold primitive, superstitious beliefs, however interesting, is not backed by any evidence whatsoever and is ultimately unconvincing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_MacDougall_(doctor)

Man some people are incredibly naive. The ‘dead weight experiment’ from a gazillion years ago has no credibility whatsoever. There were no tight controls, no peer review of the claims, and no one has ever been able to replicate it. This is real P.T. Barnum. carnival barker silliness folks.

The author seems very confused. Persinger’s ‘God Helmet’ for example is evidence AGAINST an afterlife, not for it; it demonstrates that so-called ‘near death experiences’ are generated by the brain and can even be brought about by

stimulating the brain (that’s what the helmet does).