Would you want to live forever?
It’s not an easy question. How long is forever? And in what form would you live? Would your friends live forever along with you, or would you be going into forever alone? And would that mean you had to work forever, too?
I’ll admit it: I’m a bit skeptical about the prospect of human immortality. Reading Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal” kind of put the issue to bed for me. So I was surprised when I stumbled upon an entire community that believes that achieving immortality is very possible - and almost imminent.
The Immortality Institute is an advocacy and research-based non-profit with the mission “to conquer the blight of involuntary death,” and they have a devoted membership who have given much time and thought to the quandaries of life extension. Their FAQ section easily dismisses my biggest concern about eternal life:
Won’t life get boring if I live for a long time?
It depends, does life bore you now? If life bores you now, then chances might be good that it will continue to bore you, but living a long time should not affect that. Many people have commented that given all they know about today, there is enough to keep them busy for 10 lifetimes (of current time spans). Think of all the wonderful things that you have yet to experience in today’s world. Can you honestly say that you have traveled everywhere, tried everything, and experienced life as much as you would want, just given today’s state of affairs? Wouldn’t you like to stick around to see a society of unlimited resources, energy, health and wealth? Think of anything and everything that you have ever wanted to do. Now, take into account anything and everything you will think of to do in the next 10, 100, 1000 years. Over a long enough time period, anything is possible. Imagine the possibility of private space travel, undersea exploration, few survival pressures, and anything else you can imagine. Society has been progressing faster and faster (think all the accomplishments in just the last 100 years), why is there any reason to believe that you will get bored if you live a long time? The answer is, there is no reason.
Okay, so there’s a pretty convincing argument for immortality. But what’s the science behind it?
Or more like, who is the scientist behind it? Aubrey de Grey is a British PhD working to find a cure for aging, or what he calls Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS). He’s identified seven causes of aging, or seven cellular functions that need to be fixed before the aging process can be stopped. Once we solve what makes cells get old, voila! Eternal life.
But these things are never as easy as they sound. To speed things up, de Grey founded the Methuselah Mouse Prize, modeled after the X Prize, to encourage research into life extension in mice. Once mice can live forever, de Grey believes much more attention and funding will progress advancements for humans. Pay Pal founder Peter Thiel has already pledged $3.5 million. But the even better news? de Grey says immortality is not just for the elite who can afford to freeze themselves - the anti-aging treatment will be free for everyone.
The only thing left to do is ask yourself if Earth is really where you want to live forever. On the Immortality Institute’s active discussion forums, immortality and space travel often go hand in hand.
You might be an immortalist if…
…you daydream about impressing women in a bar a million years into the future in some far off arm of the galaxy, by telling them you are one of the original Earth-born humans from the days of pre-immortality, back when men were real men with permanent death lurking around every corner and where your days were spent wrestling crocodiles and riding dinosaurs.
Anything is possible.
I’m not a mathematician, but I bet that if I were I could prove statistically that something would get us all sooner or later, even if we didn’t age. Anyway, a longer productive life span might be good as long as it didn’t involve outliving all the people that one cares about, and if it didn’t cause unsustainable population growth.
For now I think that maybe a better health care system might be enough.
I am definitely not an immortalist, since I tend to enjoy every day and not daydream about the future. I think that many who are so preoccupied with “aging” are simply afraid of death. If you life a full day every day of your life, you shouldn’t need an increase on your credit limit.
Wow, live forever. It might be enticing if I were given this chance 30 years ago. Living forever with an aging body in not an pleasant thought. It’s hard enough to think about living the next 50 years in this body. So, what would they do, only give this option to 20 somethings? What if you get stuck in a continual lifetime, does that mean there is nothing beyond life as we know it? I think I’ll take my life that I have and enjoy ever day that can. I’m happy enough to be able to let go of it.
I think the biggest problem, which David already hit on, is population. If everyone lived forever and we only had death by unnatural causes, we would only be able to have a kid when someone dies, or the population would surely spiral out of control. I’m really surprised he’s saying this would be free for everyone. I assume they won’t give it to people in prison, atleast not until they get out, if they get out. What if someone already has immortality and does something to get a life sentence in prison? I guess they’ll either get the death penalty or spend eternity in prison until they get killed or kill themselves. I know science is amazing and works miracles, but I think they’re wasting a lot of money they could use for something better, and I don’t think they’ll get anywhere.
I think when people are fantasising about imortality, they are really only thinking of about 50 - 100 more years added onto their lives. Because if one thought about things logically, they would see that there isnt enough, resources, land, and time left on this earth, to susstain everyone as it is for eternity. Also, with that much more time, people might be more inclined to experiment with crime. Why not? Whats serving time in prison for a few decades when you have eternity. It might be the mere fact that we dont have that much time to waste or take for granted that keeps most of us on the straight and narrow. I think it is the very fact that life is so fleating that makes us love it so, if we lived forever, we would destroy that fact!
Erin, I agree with your idea of immortality as part of a fantasy. I wonder where the idea of “a society of unlimited resources, energy, health and wealth” comes from. It seems like those things would be continually depleted rather than unlimited, yet that’s the assumption that needs to be made to hold up an ideal immortality. Another drawback would be the slowing of progress - if all the same people stuck around forever, so would all the same ideas and prejudices. Why would humans ever want to grow up if we were going to have forever to do it?
And I agree with Gretchie that immortality to a young person probably looks very different than the thought of immortality to someone in middle age or old age. Even if they could find a way to make our bodies stay forever young … live forever in this body? What a terribly limiting thought! What if there is, indeed, a whole realm of existence that we encounter when we leave this body? How awful to stay trapped here.
As one ages, one realizes that things are as they should be. This life - however beautiful, however rich, however marvelous - is long enough.
I know there are people who don’t feel that way. But part of living a good life, in my opinion, is being able to die peacefully.
Deborah
Final Destination
by Dr. John H. Roller
On the way home from a much-needed vacation trip, I listened to the flight attendant’s familiar phrase: “We hope you enjoy your stay in Orlando, or wherever is your final destination.” It got me thinking. Orlando definitely wasn’t my “final destination” that day. For reasons totally unknown to me, my ticket said I was only there to change planes for Washington, D.C., only to change again, this time for Charlotte, N.C. It would be several hours before I was “home” in Concord. But even Concord wasn’t my “final” destination! North Carolina is the eleventh state I’ve lived in, and there is no way to predict how many more times I may move before I reach my “final resting place.” Is it even over then? What will happen to me after I die? Where (if anywhere) is my absolutely “final” destination, forever?
For one-tenth of my life (during my teenage years), I was an atheist. I was absolutely convinced that all religions were wrong; God didn’t exist; the world and everything in it (including human beings) were nothing but atoms in various combinations; it had all come about by chance and evolution; and nothing would ever happen in the future that would change those basic facts (or my beliefs). I was certain that all talk of “afterlife” was nonsense and wishful thinking. I knew I would die someday, whether by accident, by violence, by disease, or by the decay brought on by old age, and at that moment, I would cease to exist and would never exist again. The only “comfort” in that belief is that I knew I would never even realize it had happened.
Religion teaches a different view. One of the oldest religions in the world (Hinduism) teaches that there are over 300,000,000 gods (and goddesses); the world and everything in it is permeated by them and their activities; everything that happens is under their influence; and the future will consist of endless repetitive cycles of what has happened in the past. For Hindus, every individual person has lived before and will live again, the soul migrating from body to body to body in an endless round of birth, life, death, and rebirth. Furthermore, this is not perceived as a “good” thing! It’s our punishment for not pleasing the gods and goddesses. If we please them, our next life might be somewhat better than this one; but if we displease them, it will certainly be worse. In this scenario, my “final” destination would be to suffer the punishment of living forever. I didn’t find this idea very attractive.
Buddhism, developed out of a Hindu background by Siddhartha Gautama, offers a solution to this problem: if one achieves enlightenment, one can escape the cycle of death and rebirth by being absorbed into the “World Soul,” thus having one’s candle of suffering (life) extinguished. The reward for living a good life would be to not have to live another one. To me, this sounded like we were back to atheism. My final destination would be non-existence. Enlightenment would literally gain me – nothing!
I had some Christian friends (you know who you are!), and over a period of a few months, they convinced me (in this order) that the life they were living was better than the life I was living, that the only way to have that life was to receive Jesus as my Savior, that God really does exist, and that after my death – which could happen at any time – my “soul” (the real me) would go to Heaven (if I was a Christian) or Hell (if I wasn’t). Deciding to act on that information was very difficult for me; it meant revising my entire worldview; but on December 29, 1968, I took that “leap of faith” and it was (as one of them predicted it would be) a decision I knew I would never regret.
Christianity is not a monolithic religion (not all Christians believe the same things), and I soon discovered that the picture of the afterlife my friends had given me was not believed by all the Christians I ever met. For example, Roman Catholicism (the oldest and largest “branch” of the Christian religion) was teaching that there are four possible places to which a person’s soul can go when death occurs: Heaven (for saints), Hell (for non-Catholics), Purgatory (for Catholics who aren’t saints), and Limbo (for children who die before being baptized). (Limbo has recently been eliminated, by a decree of Pope Benedict XVI, so it’s unclear to me, at this point, where those unbaptized babies are supposed to be going.)
The denomination I was saved in had simplified this complicated system somewhat. Everyone was either saved or unsaved; the saved went to Heaven, the unsaved went to Hell. Heaven was pictured as “real” place where people would recognize each other, have conversations, sing, eat delicious food, and enjoy life forever – though I was a little confused by this description, since it was taught that it was my “soul” (NOT my body) that would be going there. If the soul is immaterial, I thought, how can it enjoy all these material pleasures?
But it was the picture of Hell that bothered me the most. Hell was also a “real” place – a “lake of fire” – in which those who had never accepted Jesus would burn forever, in unbelievable pain, screaming, and “gnashing their teeth,” but would never burn up! Furthermore, all this was going to take place WITHIN EARSHOT of Heaven, as vividly described in the “true story” of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). No matter that it was also taught that it was “souls” (not bodies) that were going there: these “souls” had eyes (v. 23), bosoms (v. 23), voices (v. 24), fingers (v. 24), and tongues (v. 24)! As far as I could tell, the “soul” was nothing but a different kind of body: a kind that couldn’t be destroyed, even by an unquenchable fire.
I want to pause, at this point, to offer a suggestion. If this is what you believe, and if you are satisfied with believing it, and you don’t want to think about changing that belief, put this e-tract in a folder, and come back to reading it some other day. It’s not my purpose to upset you, or to get you to leave your church, or anything like that. But I want to warn you: if you keep reading, you’re going to have that view challenged. So don’t keep reading and then write to me to say you’re upset with me. I’m giving you a fair warning! I also want to say this: if this is what your church teaches, I feel very, very sorry for you. I vividly remember what it was like to believe that this was the fate of my unsaved loved ones – and to think that I would have to “spend eternity” listening to their screams.
Billy Graham, among many others, has (after several decades) quit preaching this view of the final destination of the unsaved. He still says, “You have a soul that will live forever somewhere” – and he still talks about Heaven as the final destination of the saved – but he now describes Hell as “eternal separation from God” and claims the “fire” is merely a figure of speech whose purpose is to describe the “mental anguish” of the realization that one has missed out on the joys of Heaven. But this view troubles me as well. Nearly every theologian I’ve ever heard of teaches that God is “omnipresent” – He’s EVERYWHERE. If He’s everywhere, then how can I be “separated” from Him? Psalm 139:7-12 asks (and answers) that very question. In the King James Version, verse 8 specifically states that Hell is NOT “a place where God is not.”
Furthermore, I also worry about the impact this kind of preaching will have on the unsaved. Had I heard Billy preaching this when I was a teenager (back then he was preaching the literal fire and brimstone), I might have responded, “Great! If I don’t accept Jesus as my Savior, I’ll get to live forever, in a place where there is no God. It sounds like you’re promising Heaven to the atheist and Hell to the Christians!” I don’t think any atheist will ever be drawn to faith in Jesus by the “threat” of being “separated from God.”
Another “modern” solution (though it’s really not modern at all; it was preached over 1,700 years ago) is to say that while it’s true that all souls live forever, and only Christians go to Heaven when they die, it’s not true that the souls of non-Christians burn forever in Hell. They burn only until their sinful natures are burned away (in a process that reminds me of the purification of gold or silver), then they are transferred to Heaven and enjoy eternal life right along with the saved. This process might take longer for some than for others, but eventually everyone (or, in some versions of this theory, ALMOST everyone) will be saved. This theory goes by the name of Restorationism, or, sometimes, Universalism. While it’s usually affiliated with the “liberal” wing of Christianity, it’s gaining more and more adherents among the “conservative” wing as well. It troubles me, too, though. It doesn’t seem to leave me much motivation for holy living here on earth. My final destination will be Heaven no matter what I do in this life! In that case, why not “live as the heathen do” – enjoying the pleasures of sin for this “season” of 70 years (or so) – knowing that Hell will be only another “transfer point” like Orlando or Washington, D.C.?
Not long after I joined the church where they described Hell as “25,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and not a drop of water in sight” I met some Christians who held another view, one I haven’t mentioned yet. When they first described it to me, I thought, “It sounds great, but it isn’t what the Bible teaches, so what good is it?” This new group didn’t try very hard to convince me they were right. They simply suggested, “Read the Bible and see for yourself.” So I did.
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY about my “final destination”?
For starters, the Bible doesn’t say that “souls” are immortal. The Bible doesn’t actually say very much about “immortality” at all. The word only occurs half a dozen times.
What it DOES say about “souls” is that they are MORTAL (capable of dying, and of being destroyed). Take a look at Ezekiel 18:4 (and 18:20), and Matthew 10:28, and I don’t see how you can come to any other conclusion.
The Bible speaks of “living souls” (Genesis 2:7), and it also speaks of “dead souls” (Numbers 19:13). This is not immediately obvious, unless you can read Hebrew. The word translated “body” in the latter verse is the same word (“nephesh”) that is translated “soul” later in the same verse!
Furthermore, the “soul” (in the Bible) is not a “part” of the human being (distinct from the “body”): it is simply a name for the human being himself (or herself). The same word (“nephesh”) is also used to describe non-human beings, such as fish (Genesis 1:20), cattle (Genesis 1:24), and God Himself (Matthew 12:18, quoting Isaiah 42:1). Saying “my soul” is just another way of saying “I.”
So what is MY final destination? It is the same as the final destination of my “soul.” Where does the “soul” go? What becomes of “it”? This is just another way of asking, “Where do ‘I’ go? What becomes of ‘me’?”
Hundreds of verses, throughout the Bible, make it perfectly clear that the final destination of the saved is eternal life in the presence of God, and the final destination of the unsaved is complete nonexistence. Here are just a few:
“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19) – “thou” (you), not “thy body” (leaving “thy soul” free to go somewhere else).
“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life (1 John 5:12) – “not life” at all, not just “not a blessed, happy life in Heaven.”
“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23) – the word “but” clearly shows that “death” is a different thing from “life,” not just life in a different place.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Here is the most-quoted verse in Christendom. It contrasts the destiny of the unsaved (“perish”) with the destiny of the saved (“life”). What could be plainer? The destiny of the saved is to live forever. The destiny of the unsaved is to not do so.
The final destination of the unsaved is always, in the Bible, described in terms such as “die,” “death,” “perish,” “destroy,” “burned up,” “consumed,” and so on. Such concepts as “ultimate restoration to Heaven,” “eternal separation from God,” “burning forever and never burning up” and “eternal life in hell” (which I found on a tract published by a prominent disciplemaking ministry) are never once hinted at in any of its 31,173 verses.
I don’t mean to brag, but the fact is, I’ve read the Old Testament cover-to-cover in 11 different translations, and the New Testament cover-to-cover in 19 different translations. It simply isn’t in there.
God certainly has a plan to punish those who refuse His generous offer of eternal life. The punishment consists of the fact that they will not get what they didn’t ask for. No harsher punishment than that is needed, and none is promised in the Bible. To me, this is a far more comforting belief than to think of my now-deceased, never-saved loved ones as burning forever, screaming in pain, within earshot of my heavenly mansion. How would I be able to enjoy eternity in a scenario like that? But that is precisely what most Christians believe. I’m glad I “discovered” what the Bible says!
I didn’t really “discover” it, though, and neither did the small denomination I now serve as a minister. It’s been there all along. Every Christian writer before the year 177 taught it (I’ve proved this in my doctoral thesis, which became my “book,” “The Doctrine of Immortality in the Early Church;” I’d be happy to send you a copy by email if you ask me to.) It was “buried” under the traditional view for several centuries, but there were always “heretics” who believed it, often at the cost of their lives. It “reappeared” during the Reformation and was held by such “greats” as Martin Luther, John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, John Milton, and others – though later rejected by the “mainline” churches they founded. It’s been preached in America, under the label “Conditional Immortality,” since at least the year 1795. I, myself, have held to it for 35 years now, and have never found a “flaw” in it, though many of my friends have shared with me the “flaws” they believe it has. I’ll be writing about some of those “flaws” in future e-tracts. I hope you’ll study them with an open mind. But I don’t ask you to believe ANYTHING unless you become convinced it’s what the Bible teaches.
For more information, contact:
Dr. John H. Roller
johnroller@faithbiblechristian.com
When compared to the classical Greeks at age 28, today’s life expectancy of 67 definitely adds some credence to the idea of our grandkids lighting a few hundred candles on the birthday cake. I wonder though if our biology is ready for this kind of thing. It seems as if, evolution-wise, we’re more geared for age 28. At least my achey breaky body says so.
Earthly immortality is inevitable. It is going to happen within the next hundred years. I am constantly amazed that even now people can’t see past current technologies. Immortality will be more a product of technology than biology, with our experiences and memories stored and accessed via biocomputer links. We will be as organic or inorganic as we choose. We will be male, female, or other as we choose. We will live or die as we choose. Please read Moravic and Kurtweil’s works. Transhumanism is coming. We will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. I doubt I will live to be a part of it, but I know my children’s children will be more than human, and I sleep, comforted by that thought.
Death is a part of living and I don’t think we should try and “tinker” with the system. Everything happens for a reason. We should enjoy each and every day and the sooner we understand that we are ALL growing older, uglier and more senile, the better.
Thanks for adding me to your network. I will be sure to recommend links to you if I find them.
On topic, I’ve always imagined immortality as a way to allow one to do more in life. I’ve read sci-fi books (e.g. “Boat of a Million Years”) and watch TV shows (e.g. “Highlander”) and dreamed of going places, meeting people, and doing things. Now, I feel rushed. For me, staying a week in another city never really cuts it. I’d like to live in a place for a year and then try another. But with such little time…
On the practical side of things, I see no reason humanity cannot live on reuse, recycling, and conservation. The problem is one of motivation. There are still so many non-renewable resources to take advantage of. And we’ve fine-tuned the engineering and market to make it cheap to do. If we could design things to be reused and recycled (even computers!) and change society to not throw everything away, it would simply work. But that’s a big IF, of course.
“death making me really undying” - Walt Whitman
I suppose you could qualify for the “immortality treatment” if you prove medically that you have eliminated your ability to reproduce. (That would keep the population from going out of control.) Imagine what a tough choice that would be!–To live forever, or pass the torch on to someone else? Sounds like a good theme to a movie. Or have they already thought of that one?
One of the things which makes the issue so fascinating is how it breaks down by gender. For whatever reason, without exception, when the topic comes up there’s almost a uniform agreement among women that repairing age related damage to extend life past the current average should be avoided. The reason I always find this so surprising is that the statistical breakdown of purchased products designed to mask the aging process would seem to point to the exact opposite conclusion.
I’m still puzzled by the assumption that unlimited life equals freedom. What’s the reason to think that the things which keep you in one place, doing the same things, will go away with immortal life? If everyone lives forever, your responsibilities (making money, time with family, repairing your house, etc) will stretch on forever. If you want to do something and aren’t doing it, you’ll probably continue to not do it, just as the FAQ says. Why would the prospect of living forever give you reason to change your nature? It seems it would give you more reason not to change. Any immortalists out there want to answer my new FAQ?
(JEmerson, that is definitely true!)
Hi Lindsay. Love the blog :). I had all the same questions you did at one point but I’ve gotten comfortable with the notion of lengthened lifespans, in fact I think it will help humanity overcome it’s many negative aspects.
>>I wonder where the idea of “a society of unlimited resources, energy, health and wealth” comes from. It seems like those things would be continually depleted rather than unlimited,
1. That big ball of gas in the sky produces enough energy to support trillions of human beings. I’m not exaggerating. The universe has billions of billions of stars just like our sun. Today we only harness a very small fraction of 1% of the suns energy. Even harnessing 10% would provide enough energy for the next 30,000 years at current energy consumption.
2. e=mc^2. Technology will eventually reach a point where we can recycle all energy and matter we can get our hands on.
Regarding health. Eventually we will be able detect and cure all diseases with extraordinary efficiency. Cancer, heart disease and diabetes will be gone within decades. Aging is just biochemical process that breaks down over time. Rejuvenating this process will be quite easy once we untangle the complexity of biology. This is happening at a very rapid pace now that biologists are applying supercomputing and high-throughput automation to the genomic and proteomic data. A few decades from now the average age will be 100 years old and those 100 year olds will be as vibrant as 50 year olds. A few decades after that those 130 year olds (yes the same ones) will be indistinguishable from a 30 year old thanks to our increasing ability to intervene in the process.
Wealth? The concept will eventually vanish once (nearly) unlimited energy and resources are available.
>>Another drawback would be the slowing of progress - if all the same people stuck around forever, so would all the same ideas and prejudices. Why would humans ever want to grow up if we were going to have forever to do it?
Progress will reach an inflection point where it will be simply “whatever we desire”. It might sound radical by todays’ standards but the future holds an infinite number of possibilities in regards to what we want to pursue as progress. Other than biology, most science has already reached a point where progress is simply obscure mathematics that only geniuses and artificial intelligence will be able to tackle.
I suspect that humanity will leave the planet and continuously splinter and regroup around different goals, believes, desires, etc. Some will want more progress, some less. Some will pursue spiritual goals, others technical.
>>I’m still puzzled by the assumption that unlimited life equals freedom.
Today we are not free because we are slaves to our biological needs and for no other reason. While we like to think we are in control we’re really not. We need to sleep, eat, reproduce, find food, maintain shelters and work on developing coping mechanisms. All of these go away in a transhumanistic world as our cognitive abilities and consciousness will far exceed what we’re straddled with today.
>>Why would the prospect of living forever give you reason to change your nature? It seems it would give you more reason not to change.
By gaining mastery over our own biology we will be able to enhance and improve things we don’t like about ourselves. Even those annoying biological underpinnings like fight or flight, fear, depression, anger, jealousy, hatret, etc. will be manageable. Changing our nature will be simply a matter of, yes, changing our nature
Much of this is very far off but that’s where things are heading. The health benefits will lead to longevity. Longevity will lead to longer engineering cycles that can tackle even more challenging problems. Progress is happening on so many fronts that it we couldn’t stop it if we wanted to. For me, that’s a good thing as we need to reclaim the world from the fundamentalists who are looking forward to and actively working to bring about humanity’s destruction.
Jim,
Thanks for illuminating your perspective for me. Immortality seems to be a very hopeful ideal, and the vision of the future you describe points to a kind of utopia. I’d love to live in a future where all of our problems, both global and personal, have been solved.
I have just one new question: Are immortalists worried about achieving the capabilities for extended lifespans, before we have the chance to have unlimited wealth, resources, and energy? Aubrey de Grey takes the position that immortality will be available for our grandchildren, whereas scientists tackling those issues are continually admitting that their work is a much longer term process. As I was asking before, what if the assumptions can’t be made?
(As an aside, there’s an article on Aubrey de Grey in the current AARP magazine, but it’s not readable online.)