In his Mind, Language, and Society, John Searle tells of a dinner he attended at which Bertrand Russell spoke. Periodically, every two years or so, the Voltaire Society, a society of intellectually inclined undergraduates at Oxford held a banquet with Bertrand Russell---the official patron of the society. One the occasion in question, we all went up to London and had dinner with Russell at a restaurant. He was thing in his mideighties [sic], and had a reputation as a famous atheist. To many of us, the question seemed pressing as to what sort of prospects for immortality Russell entertained, and...