Religions > Atheism > Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science
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Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Leon R. Kass
You don't have to be Jewish to drink L'Chaim, to lift a glass "To
Life." Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that
death is bad. But Jews have always had an unusually keen appreciation
of life, and not only because it has been stolen from them so often and
so cruelly. The celebration of life-of this life, not the next
one-has from the beginning been central to Jewish ethical and
religious sensibilities. In the Torah, "Be fruitful and multiply"
is God's first blessing and first command. Judaism from its inception
rejected child-sacrifice and regarded long life as a fitting divine
reward for righteous living. At the same time, Judaism embraces
medicine and the human activity of healing the sick; from the Torah the
rabbis deduced not only permission for doctors to heal, but also the
positive obligation to do so. Indeed, so strong is this reverence for
life that the duty of pikuah nefesh requires that Jews violate the holy
Shabbat in order to save a life. Not by accident do we Jews raise our
glasses "L'Chaim."
Neither is it accidental that Jews have been enthusiastic boosters of
modern medicine and modern biomedical science. Vastly out of proportion
to their numbers, they build hospitals and laboratories, support
medical research, and see their sons and daughters in the vanguard
wherever new scientific discoveries are to be made and new remedies to
be found. Yet this beloved biomedical project, for all its blessings,
now raises for Jews and for all humanity a plethora of serious and
often unprecedented moral challenges. Laboratory-assisted
reproduction, artificial organs, genetic manipulation, psychoactive
drugs, computer implants in the brain, and techniques to conquer
aging-these and other present and projected techniques for altering
our bodies and minds pose challenges to the very meaning of our
humanity. Our growing power to control human life may require us to
consider possible limits to the principle of L'Chaim.
One well-known set of challenges results from undesired consequences
of medical success in sustaining life, as more and more people are kept
alive by artificial means in greatly debilitated and degraded
conditions. When, if ever, is it permissible for doctors to withhold
antibiotics, discontinue a respirator, remove a feeding tube, or even
assist in suicide or perform euthanasia?
A second set of challenges concerns the morality of means used to seek
the cure of disease or the creation of life. Is it ethical to create
living human embryos for the sole purpose of experimenting on them? To
conceive a child in order that it may become a compatible bone marrow
donor for an afflicted "sibling"? Is it ethical to practice human
cloning to provide a child for an infertile couple?
Third, we may soon face challenges concerning the goal itself: Should
we, partisans of life, welcome efforts to increase not just the average
but also the maximum human life span, by conquering aging, decay, and
ultimately mortality itself?
In the debates taking place in the United States, Jewish commentators
on these and related medical ethical topics nearly always come down
strongly in favor of medical progress and on the side of life-more
life, longer life, new life. They treat the cure of disease, the
prevention of death, and the prolongation of life as near-absolute
values, trumping most if not all other moral objections. Unlike, say,
Roman Catholic moralists who hold to certain natural law teachings that
set limits on what are permissible practices, the Jewish commentators,
even if they acknowledge difficulties, ultimately wind up saying that
life and health are good, and that therefore whatever serves more of
each and both is better.
Let me give two examples out of my own experience. Four years ago, when
I gave testimony on the ethics of human cloning before the National
Bioethics Advisory Commission, I was surprised to discover that the two
experts who had been invited to testify on the Jewish point of view
were not especially troubled by the prospect. The Orthodox rabbi,
invoking the goodness of life and the injunction to be fruitful and
multiply, held that cloning of the husband or the wife to provide a
child for an infertile couple was utterly unobjectionable according to
Jewish law. The Conservative rabbi, while acknowledging certain
worries, concluded: "If cloning human beings is intended to advance
medical research or cure infertility, it has a proper place in God's
scheme of things, as understood in the Jewish tradition." Let someone
else worry about Brave-New-Worldly turning procreation into
manufacture or the meaning of replacing heterosexual procreation by
asexual propagation. Prospective cures for diseases and children for
infertile couples suffice to legitimate human cloning-and, by
extension, will legitimate farming human embryos for spare body parts
or even creating babies in bottles when that becomes feasible.
The second example. At a meeting in March 2000 on "Extended Life,
Eternal Life," scientists and theologians were invited to discuss the
desirability of increasing the maximum human life span and, more
radically, of treating death itself as a disease to be conquered. The
major Jewish speaker, a professor at a leading rabbinical seminary,
embraced the project-you should excuse me-whole hog. Gently
needling his Christian colleagues by asserting that, for Jews, God is
Life, rather than Love, he used this principle to justify any and all
life-preserving and life-extending technologies, including those
that might yield massive increases in the maximum human life
expectancy. When I pressed him in discussion to see if he had any
objections to the biomedical pursuit of immortality, he responded that
Judaism would only welcome such a project.
I am prepared to accept the view that traditional Jewish sources may be
silent on these matters, given that the halakhah could know nothing
about test-tube babies, cloning, or the campaign to conquer aging.
But, in my opinion, such unqualified endorsement of medical progress
and the unlimited pursuit of longevity cannot be the counsel of wisdom,
and, therefore, should not be the counsel of Jewish wisdom. L'Chaim,
but with limits.
Let us address the question of L'Chaim and its limits in its starkest
and most radical form: If life is good and more is better, should we
not regard death as a disease and try to cure it? Although this
formulation of the question may seem too futuristic or far-fetched,
there are several reasons for taking it up and treating it seriously.
First, reputable scientists are today answering the question in the
affirmative and are already making large efforts toward bringing about
a cure. Three kinds of research, still in their infancy, are attracting
new attention and energies. First is the use of hormones, especially
human growth hormone (hGH), to restore and enhance youthful bodily
vigor. In the United States, over ten thousand people-including many
physicians-are already injecting themselves daily with hGH for
anti-aging purposes, with apparently remarkable improvements in
bodily fitness and performance, though there is as yet no evidence that
the hormones yield any increase in life expectancy. When the patent on
hGH expires in 2002 and the cost comes down from its current $1,000 per
month, many more people are almost certainly going to be injecting
themselves from the hormonal fountain of youth.
Second is research on stem cells, those omnicompetent primordial cells
that, on different signals, turn into all the different differentiated
tissues of the body-liver, heart, kidney, brain, etc. Stem cell
technologies-combined with techniques of cloningout the promise of an
indefinite supply of replacement tissues and organs for any and all
worn-out body parts. This is a booming area in commercial
biotechnology, and one of the leading biotech entrepreneurs has been
touting his company's research as promising indefinite prolongation
of life.
Third, there is research into the genetic switches that control the
biological processes of aging. The maximum life span for each
species-roughly one hundred years for human beings-is almost
certainly under genetic control. In a startling recent discovery,
fruit-fly geneticists have shown that mutations in a single gene
produce a 50 percent increase in the natural lifetime of the flies.
Once the genes involved in regulating the human life cycle and setting
the midnight hour are identified, scientists predict that they will be
able to increase the human maximum age well beyond its natural limit.
Quite frankly, I find some of the claims and predictions to be
overblown, but it would be foolhardy to bet against scientific and
technical progress along these lines.
But even if cures for aging and death are a long way off, there is a
second and more fundamental reason for inquiring into the radical
question of the desirability of gaining a cure for death. For truth to
tell, victory over mortality is the unstated but implicit goal of
modern medical science, indeed of the entire modern scientific project,
to which mankind was summoned almost four hundred years ago by Francis
Bacon and Ren=E9 Descartes. They quite consciously trumpeted the
conquest of nature for the relief of man's estate, and they founded a
science whose explicit purpose was to reverse the curse laid on Adam
and Eve, and especially to restore the tree of life, by means of the
tree of (scientific) knowledge. With medicine's increasing successes,
realized mainly in the last half century, every death is increasingly
regarded as premature, a failure of today's medicine that future
research will prevent. In parallel with medical progress, a new moral
sensibility has developed that serves precisely medicine's crusade
against mortality: anything is permitted if it saves life, cures
disease, prevents death. Regardless, therefore, of the imminence of
anti-aging remedies, it is most worthwhile to reexamine the
assumption upon which we have been operating: that everything should be
done to preserve health and prolong life as much as possible, and that
all other values must bow before the biomedical gods of better health,
greater vigor, and longer life.
Recent proposals that we should conquer aging and death have not been
without their critics. The criticism takes two forms: predictions of
bad social consequences and complaints about distributive justice.
Regarding the former, there are concerns about the effect on the size
and age distribution of the population. How will growing numbers and
percentages of people living well past one hundred affect, for example,
work opportunities, retirement plans, hiring and promotion, cultural
attitudes and beliefs, the structure of family life, relations between
the generations, or the locus of rule and authority in government,
business, and the professions? Even the most cursory examination of
these matters suggests that the cumulative results of aggregated
decisions for longer and more vigorous life could be highly disruptive
and undesirable, even to the point that many individuals would be worse
off through most of their lives, and worse off enough to offset the
benefits of better health afforded them near the end of life. Indeed,
several people have predicted that retardation of aging will present a
classic instance of the Tragedy of the Commons, in which genuine and
sought-for gains to individuals are nullified or worse, owing to the
social consequences of granting them to everyone.
But other critics worry that technology's gift of long or immortal
life will not be granted to everyone, especially if, as is likely, the
treatments turn out to be expensive. Would it not be the ultimate
injustice if only some people could afford a deathless existence, if
the world were divided not only into rich and poor but into mortal and
immortal?
Against these critics, the proponents of immortality research answer
confidently that we will gradually figure out a way to solve these
problems. We can handle any adverse social consequences through careful
planning; we can overcome the inequities through cheaper technologies.
Though I think these optimists woefully naive, let me for the moment
grant their view regarding these issues. For both the proponents and
their critics have yet to address thoughtfully the heart of the matter,
the question of the goodness of the goal. The core question is this: Is
it really true that longer life for individuals is an unqualified good?
How much longer life is a blessing for an individual? Ignoring now the
possible harms flowing back to individuals from adverse social
consequences, how much more life is good for us as individuals, other
things being equal? How much more life do we want, assuming it to be
healthy and vigorous? Assuming that it were up to us to set the human
life span, where would or should we set the limit and why?
The simple answer is that no limit should be set. Life is good, and
death is bad. Therefore, the more life the better, provided, of course,
that we remain fit and our friends do, too.
This answer has the virtues of clarity and honesty. But most public
advocates of conquering aging deny any such greediness. They hope not
for immortality, but for something reasonable-just a few more years.
How many years are reasonably few? Let us start with ten. Which of us
would find unreasonable or unwelcome the addition of ten healthy and
vigorous years to his or her life, years like those between ages thirty
and forty? We could learn more, earn more, see more, do more. Maybe we
should ask for five years on top of that? Or ten? Why not fifteen, or
twenty, or more?
If we can't immediately land on the reasonable number of added years,
perhaps we can locate the principle. What is the principle of
reasonableness? Time needed for our plans and projects yet to be
completed? Some multiple of the age of a generation, say, that we might
live to see great-grandchildren fully grown? Some
notion-traditional, natural, revealed-of the proper life span for a
being such as man? We have no answer to this question. We do not even
know how to choose among the principles for setting our new life span.
Under such circumstances, lacking a standard of reasonableness, we fall
back on our wants and desires. Under liberal democracy, this means the
desires of the majority for whom the attachment to life-or the fear
of death-knows no limits. It turns out that the simple answer is the
best: we want to live and live, and not to wither and not to die. For
most of us, especially under modern secular conditions in which more
and more people believe that this is the only life they have, the
desire to prolong the life span (even modestly) must be seen as
expressing a desire never to grow old and die. However naive their
counsel, those who propose immortality deserve credit: they honestly
and shamelessly expose this desire.
Some, of course, eschew any desire for longer life. They seek not
adding years to life, but life to years. For them, the ideal life span
would be our natural (once thought three-, now known to be) fourscore
and ten, or if by reason of strength, fivescore, lived with full powers
right up to death, which could come rather suddenly, painlessly, at the
maximal age.
This has much to recommend it. Who would not want to avoid senility,
crippling arthritis, the need for hearing aids and dentures, and the
degrading dependencies of old age? But, in the absence of these
degenerations, would we remain content to spurn longer life? Would we
not become even more disinclined to exit? Would not death become even
more of an affront? Would not the fear and loathing of death increase
in the absence of its harbingers? We could no longer comfort the widow
by pointing out that her husband was delivered from his suffering.
Death would always be untimely, unprepared for, shocking.
Montaigne saw it clearly:
I notice that in proportion as I sink into sickness, I naturally enter
into a certain disdain for life. I find that I have much more trouble
digesting this resolution when I am in health than when I have a fever.
Inasmuch as I no longer cling so hard to the good things of life when I
begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, I come to view death with
much less frightened eyes. This makes me hope that the farther I get
from life and the nearer to death, the more easily I shall accept the
exchange. . . . If we fell into such a change [decrepitude] suddenly, I
don't think we could endure it. But when we are led by Nature's
hand down a gentle and virtually imperceptible slope, bit by bit, one
step at a time, she rolls us into this wretched state and makes us
familiar with it; so that we find no shock when youth dies within us,
which in essence and in truth is a harder death than the complete death
of a languishing life or the death of old age; inasmuch as the leap is
not so cruel from a painful life as from a sweet and flourishing life
to a grievous and painful one.
Thus it is highly likely that even a modest prolongation of life with
vigor or even only a preservation of youthfulness with no increase in
longevity would make death less acceptable and would exacerbate the
desire to keep pushing it away-unless, for some reason, such life
could also prove less satisfying.
Could longer, healthier life be less satisfying? How could it be, if
life is good and death is bad? Perhaps the simple view is in error.
Perhaps mortality is not simply an evil, perhaps it is even a
blessing-not only for the welfare of the community, but even for us
as individuals. How could this be?
I wish to make the case for the virtues of mortality. Against my own
strong love of life, and against my even stronger wish that no more of
my loved ones should die, I aspire to speak truth to my desires by
showing that the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human
individual, whether he knows it or not.
I know I won't persuade many people to my position. But I do hope I
can convince readers of the gravity-I would say, the unique
gravity-of this question. We are not talking about some minor new
innovation with ethical wrinkles about which we may chatter or regulate
as usual. Conquering death is not something that we can try for a while
and then decide whether the results are better or worse-according to,
God only knows, what standard. On the contrary, this is a question in
which our very humanity is at stake, not only in the consequences but
also in the very meaning of the choice. For to argue that human life
would be better without death is, I submit, to argue that human life
would be better being something other than human. To be immortal would
not be just to continue life as we mortals now know it, only forever.
The new immortals, in the decisive sense, would not be like us at all.
If this is true, a human choice for bodily immortality would suffer
from the deep confusion of choosing to have some great good only on the
condition of turning into someone else. Moreover, such an immortal
someone else, in my view, will be less well off than we mortals are
now, thanks indeed to our mortality.
It goes without saying that there is no virtue in the death of a child
or a young adult, or the untimely or premature death of anyone, before
they had attained to the measure of man's days. I do not mean to
imply that there is virtue in the particular event of death for anyone.
Nor am I suggesting that separation through death is not painful for
the survivors, those for whom the deceased was an integral part of
their lives. Instead, my question concerns the fact of our finitude,
the fact of our mortality-the fact that we must die, the fact that a
full life for a human being has a biological, built-in limit, one
that has evolved as part of our nature. Does this fact also have value?
Is our finitude good for us-as individuals? (I intend this question
entirely in the realm of natural reason and apart from any question
about a life after death.)
To praise mortality must seem to be madness. If mortality is a
blessing, it surely is not widely regarded as such. Life seeks to live,
and rightly suspects all counsels of finitude. "Better to be a slave
on earth than the king over all the dead," says Achilles in Hades to
the visiting Odysseus, in apparent regret for his prior choice of the
short but glorious life. Moreover, though some cultures-such as the
Eskimo-can instruct and moderate somewhat the lust for life, liberal
Western society gives it free rein, beginning with a political
philosophy founded on a fear of violent death, and reaching to our
current cults of youth and novelty, the cosmetic replastering of the
wrinkles of age, and the widespread anxiety about disease and survival.
Finally, the virtues of finitude-if there are any-may never be
widely appreciated in any age or culture, if appreciation depends on a
certain wisdom, if wisdom requires a certain detachment from the love
of oneself and one's own, and if the possibility of such detachment
is given only to the few. Still, if it is wisdom, the rest of us should
hearken, for we may learn something of value for ourselves.
How, then, might our finitude be good for us? I offer four benefits,
first among which is interest and engagement. If the human life span
were increased even by only twenty years, would the pleasures of life
increase proportionately? Would professional tennis players really
enjoy playing 25 percent more games of tennis? Would the Don Juans of
our world feel better for having seduced 1,250 women rather than 1,000?
Having experienced the joys and tribulations of raising a family until
the last had left for college, how many parents would like to extend
the experience by another ten years? Likewise, those whose satisfaction
comes from climbing the career ladder might well ask what there would
be to do for fifteen years after one had been CEO of Microsoft, a
member of Congress, or the President of Harvard for a quarter of a
century? Even less clear are the additions to personal happiness from
more of the same of the less pleasant and less fulfilling activities in
which so many of us are engaged so much of the time. It seems to be as
the poet says: "We move and ever spend our lives amid the same
things, and not by any length of life is any new pleasure hammered
out."
Second, seriousness and aspiration. Could life be serious or meaningful
without the limit of mortality? Is not the limit on our time the ground
of our taking life seriously and living it passionately? To know and to
feel that one goes around only once, and that the deadline is not out
of sight, is for many people the necessary spur to the pursuit of
something worthwhile. "Teach us to number our days," says the
Psalmist, "that we may get a heart of wisdom." To number our days
is the condition for making them count. Homer's immortals-Zeus and
Hera, Apollo and Athena-for all their eternal beauty and
youthfulness, live shallow and rather frivolous lives, their passions
only transiently engaged, in first this and then that. They live as
spectators of the mortals, who by comparison have depth, aspiration,
genuine feeling, and hence a real center in their lives. Mortality
makes life matter.
There may be some activities, especially in some human beings, that do
not require finitude as a spur. A powerful desire for understanding can
do without external proddings, let alone one related to mortality; and
as there is never too much time to learn and to understand, longer,
more vigorous life might be simply a boon. The best sorts of
friendship, too, seem capable of indefinite growth, especially where
growth is somehow tied to learning-though one may wonder whether real
friendship doesn't depend in part on the shared perceptions of a
common fate. But, in any case, I suspect that these are among the rare
exceptions. For most activities, and for most of us, I think it is
crucial that we recognize and feel the force of not having world enough
and time.
A third matter, =AD beauty and love. Death, says Wallace Stevens, is the
mother of beauty. What he means is not easy to say. Perhaps he means
that only a mortal being, aware of his mortality and the transience and
vulnerability of all natural things, is moved to make beautiful
artifacts, objects that will last, objects whose order will be immune
to decay as their maker is not, beautiful objects that will bespeak and
beautify a world that needs beautification, beautiful objects for other
mortal beings who can appreciate what they cannot themselves make
because of a taste for the beautiful, a taste perhaps connected to
awareness of the ugliness of decay.
Perhaps the poet means to speak of natural beauty as well, which
beauty-unlike that of objects of art-depends on its impermanence.
Could the beauty of flowers depend on the fact that they will soon
wither? Does the beauty of spring warblers depend upon the fall
drabness that precedes and follows? What about the fading, late
afternoon winter light or the spreading sunset? Is the beautiful
necessarily fleeting, a peak that cannot be sustained? Or does the poet
mean not that the beautiful is beautiful because mortal, but that our
appreciation of its beauty depends on our appreciation of
mortality-in us and in the beautiful? Does not love swell before the
beautiful precisely on recognizing that it (and we) will not always be?
Is not our mortality the cause of our enhanced appreciation of the
beautiful and the worthy and of our treasuring and loving them? How
deeply could one deathless "human" being love another?
Fourth, there is the peculiarly human beauty of character, virtue and
moral excellence. To be mortal means that it is possible to give
one's life, not only in one moment, say, on the field of battle, but
also in the many other ways in which we are able in action to rise
above attachment to survival. Through moral courage, endurance,
greatness of soul, generosity, devotion to justice-in acts great and
small-we rise above our mere creatureliness, spending the precious
coinage of the time of our lives for the sake of the noble and the good
and the holy. We free ourselves from fear, from bodily pleasures, or
from attachments to wealth-all largely connected with survival-and
in doing virtuous deeds overcome the weight of our neediness; yet for
this nobility, vulnerability and mortality are the necessary
conditions. The immortals cannot be noble.
Of this, too, the poets teach. Odysseus, long suffering, has already
heard the shade of Achilles' testimony in praise of life when he is
offered immortal life by the nymph Calypso. She is a beautiful goddess,
attractive, kind, yielding; she sings sweetly and weaves on a golden
loom; her island is well-ordered and lovely, free of hardships and
suffering. Says the poet, "Even a god who came into that place would
have admired what he saw, the heart delighted within him." Yet
Odysseus turns down the offer to be lord of her household and immortal:
Goddess and queen, do not be angry with me. I myself know that all you
say is true and that circumspect Penelope can never match the
impression you make for beauty and stature. She is mortal after all,
and you are immortal and ageless. But even so, what I want and all my
days I pine for is to go back to my house and see that day of my
homecoming. And if some god batters me far out on the wine-blue
water, I will endure it, keeping a stubborn spirit inside me, for
already I have suffered much and done much hard work on the waves and
in the fighting.
To suffer, to endure, to trouble oneself for the sake of home, family,
community, and genuine friendship, is truly to live, and is the clear
choice of this exemplary mortal. This choice is both the mark of his
excellence and the basis for the visible display of his excellence in
deeds noble and just. Immortality is a kind of oblivion-like death
itself.
But, someone might reasonably object, if mortality is such a blessing,
why do so few cultures recognize it as such? Why do so many teach the
promise of life after death, of something eternal, of something
imperishable? This takes us to the heart of the matter.
What is the meaning of this concern with immortality? Why do we human
beings seek immortality? Why do we want to live longer or forever? Is
it really first and most because we do not want to die, because we do
not want to leave this embodied life on earth or give up our earthly
pastimes, because we want to see more and do more? I do not think so.
This may be what we say, but it is not what we finally mean. Mortality
as such is not our defect, nor bodily immortality our goal. Rather,
mortality is at most a pointer, a derivative manifestation, or an
accompaniment of some deeper deficiency. The promise of immortality and
eternity answers rather to a deep truth about the human soul: the human
soul yearns for, longs for, aspires to some condition, some state, some
goal toward which our earthly activities are directed but which cannot
be attained in earthly life. Our soul's reach exceeds our grasp; it
seeks more than continuance; it reaches for something beyond us,
something that for the most part eludes us. Our distress with mortality
is the derivative manifestation of the conflict between the
transcendent longings of the soul and the all-too-finite powers and
fleshly concerns of the body.
What is it that we lack and long for, but cannot reach? One possibility
is completion in another person. For example, Plato's Aristophanes
says we seek wholeness through complete and permanent bodily and
psychic union with a unique human being whom we love, our "missing
other half." Plato's Socrates, in contrast, says it is rather
wholeness through wisdom, through comprehensive knowledge of the
beautiful truth about the whole, that which philosophy seeks but can
never attain. Yet again, biblical religion says we seek wholeness
through dwelling in God's presence, love, and redemption-a
restoration of innocent wholeheartedness lost in the Garden of Eden.
But, please note, these and many other such accounts of human
aspiration, despite their differences, all agree on this crucial point:
man longs not so much for deathlessness as for wholeness, wisdom,
goodness, and godliness-longings that cannot be satisfied fully in
our embodied earthly life, the only life, by natural reason, we know we
have. Hence the attractiveness of any prospect or promise of a
different and thereby fulfilling life hereafter. The decisive inference
is clear: none of these longings can be answered by prolonging earthly
life. Not even an unlimited amount of "more of the same" will
satisfy our deepest aspirations.
If this is correct, there follows a decisive corollary regarding the
battle against death. The human taste for immortality, for the
imperishable and the eternal, is not a taste that the biomedical
conquest of death could satisfy. We would still be incomplete; we would
still lack wisdom; we would still lack God's presence and redemption.
Mere continuance will not buy fulfillment. Worse, its pursuit
threatens-already threatens-human happiness by distracting us from
the goals toward which our souls naturally point. By diverting our aim,
by misdirecting so much individual and social energy toward the goal of
bodily immortality, we may seriously undermine our chances for living
as well as we can and for satisfying to some extent, however
incompletely, our deepest longings for what is best. The implication
for human life is hardly nihilistic: once we acknowledge and accept our
finitude, we can concern ourselves with living well, and care first and
most for the well-being of our souls, and not so much for their mere
existence.
But perhaps this is all a mistake. Perhaps there is no such longing of
the soul. Perhaps there is no soul. Certainly modern science doesn't
speak about the soul; neither does medicine or even our psychiatrists,
whose name means "healers of the soul." Perhaps we are just
animals, complex ones to be sure, but animals nonetheless, content just
to be here, frightened in the face of danger, avoiding pain, seeking
pleasure.
Curiously, however, biology has its own view of our nature and its
inclinations. Biology also teaches about transcendence, though it
eschews talk about the soul. Biology has long shown us a feasible way
to rise above our finitude and to participate in something permanent
and eternal: I refer not to stem cells, but to procreation-the
bearing and caring for offspring, for the sake of which many animals
risk and even sacrifice their lives. Indeed, in all higher animals,
reproduction as such implies both the acceptance of the death of self
and participation in its transcendence. The salmon, willingly swimming
upstream to spawn and die, makes vivid this universal truth.
But man is natured for more than spawning. Human biology teaches how
our life points beyond itself-to our offspring, to our community, to
our species. Like the other animals, man is built for reproduction.
More than the other animals, man is also built for sociality. And,
alone among the animals, man is also built for culture-not only
though capacities to transmit and receive skills and techniques, but
also through capacities for shared beliefs, opinions, rituals,
traditions. We are built with leanings toward, and capacities for,
perpetuation. Is it not possible that aging and mortality are part of
this construction, and that the rate of aging and the human life span
have been selected for their usefulness to the task of perpetuation?
Could not extending the human life span place a great strain on our
nature, jeopardizing our project and depriving us of success?
Interestingly, perpetuation is a goal that is attainable, a
transcendence of self that is (largely) realizable. Here is a form of
participating in the enduring that is open to us, without
qualification-provided, that is, that we remain open to it.
Biological considerations aside, simply to covet a prolonged life span
for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open
ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose. It is probably no
accident that it is a generation whose intelligentsia proclaim the
death of God and the meaninglessness of life that embarks on life's
indefinite prolongation and that seeks to cure the emptiness of life by
extending it forever. For the desire to prolong youthfulness is not
only a childish desire to eat one's life and keep it; it is also an
expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with
devotion to posterity. It seeks an endless present, isolated from
anything truly eternal, and severed from any true continuity with past
and future. It is in principle hostile to children, because children,
those who come after, are those who will take one's place; they are
life's answer to mortality, and their presence in one's house is a
constant reminder that one no longer belongs to the frontier
generation. One cannot pursue agelessness for oneself and remain
faithful to the spirit and meaning of perpetuation.
In perpetuation, we send forth not just the seed of our bodies, but
also the bearer of our hopes, our truths, and those of our tradition.
If our children are to flower, we need to sow them well and nurture
them, cultivate them in rich and wholesome soil, clothe them in fine
and decent opinions and mores, and direct them toward the highest
light, to grow straight and tall-that they may take our place as we
took that of those who planted us and made way for us, so that in time
they, too, may make way and plant. But if they are truly to flower, we
must go to seed; we must wither and give ground.
Against these considerations, the clever ones will propose that if we
could do away with death, we would do away with the need for posterity.
But that is a self-serving and shallow answer, one that thinks of
life and aging solely in terms of the state of the body. It ignores the
psychological effects simply of the passage of time-of experiencing
and learning about the way things are. After a while, no matter how
healthy we are, no matter how respected and well placed we are
socially, most of us cease to look upon the world with fresh eyes.
Little surprises us, nothing shocks us, righteous indignation at
injustice dies out. We have seen it all already, seen it all. We have
often been deceived, we have made many mistakes of our own. Many of us
become small-souled, having been humbled not by bodily decline or the
loss of loved ones but by life itself. So our ambition also begins to
flag, or at least our noblest ambitions. As we grow older, Aristotle
already noted, we "aspire to nothing great and exalted and crave the
mere necessities and comforts of existence." At some point, most of
us turn and say to our intimates, Is this all there is? We settle, we
accept our situation-if we are lucky enough to be able to accept it.
In many ways, perhaps in the most profound ways, most of us go to sleep
long before our deaths-and we might even do so earlier in life if
death no longer spurred us to make something of ourselves.
In contrast, it is in the young where aspiration, hope, freshness,
boldness, and openness spring anew-even when they take the form of
overturning our monuments. Immortality for oneself through children may
be a delusion, but participating in the natural and eternal renewal of
human possibility through children is not-not even in today's
world.
For it still stands as it did when Homer made Glaukos say to Diomedes:
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind
scatters the leaves to the ground, but the live timber burgeons with
leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of
man will grow while another dies.
And yet it also still stands, as this very insight of Homer's itself
reveals, that human beings are in another respect unlike the leaves;
that the eternal renewal of human beings embraces also the eternally
human possibility of learning and self-awareness; that we, too, here
and now may participate with Homer, with Plato, with the Bible, yes
with Descartes and Bacon, in catching at least some glimpse of the
enduring truths about nature, God, and human affairs; and that we, too,
may hand down and perpetuate this pursuit of wisdom and goodness to our
children and our children's children. Children and their education,
not growth hormone and perpetual organ replacement, are life's-and
wisdom's-answer to mortality.
This ancient Homeric wisdom is, in fact, not so far from traditional
Jewish wisdom. For although we believe that life is good and long life
is better, we hold something higher than life itself to be best. We
violate one Shabbat so that the person whose life is saved may observe
many Shabbatoth. We are obliged to accept death rather than commit
idolatry, murder, or sexual outrage. Though we love life and drink
L'Chaim, we have been taught of old to love wisdom and justice and
godliness more; among Jews, at least until recently, teachers were more
revered than doctors. Regarding immortality, God Himself declares-in
the Garden of Eden story-that human beings, once they have attained
the burdensome knowledge of good and bad, should not have access to the
tree of life. Instead, they are to cleave to the Torah as a tree of
life, a life-perfecting path to righteousness and holiness. Unlike
the death-defying Egyptians, those ancient precursors of the quest
for bodily immortality, the Children of Israel do not mummify or embalm
their dead; we bury our ancestors but keep them alive in memory, and,
accepting our mortality, we look forward to the next generation.
Indeed, the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply, when rightly
understood, celebrates not the life we have and selfishly would cling
to, but the life that replaces us.
Confronted with the growing moral challenges posed by biomedical
technology, let us resist the siren song of the conquest of aging and
death. Let us cleave to our ancient wisdom and lift our voices and
properly toast L'Chaim, to life beyond our own, to the life of our
grandchildren and their grandchildren. May they, God willing, know
health and long life, but especially so that they may also know the
pursuit of truth and righteousness and holiness. And may they hand down
and perpetuate this pursuit of what is humanly finest to succeeding
generations for all time to come.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----
Leon R. Kass, M.D., is the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the
Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of
Chicago and author of The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfection of Our
Nature. This article is adapted from a lecture given in Jerusalem in
May 2000 under the auspices of the Shalem Center.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0105/articles/kass.html
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| User: "Ray Fischer" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 10:55:39 AM |
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<wordsoftruth114@email.com> wrote:
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
~Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky
--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net
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| User: "Elf M. Sternberg" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 01:10:32 PM |
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writes:
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Leon R. Kass
You don't have to be Jewish to drink L'Chaim, to lift a glass "To
Life." Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that
death is bad.
Man, does Leon Kass have to go wash his hands after writing
something so ridiculous? Kass believes that death is a good; that the
lessons taught to others by the painful death of one are edifying and
morally uplifting.
But even if cures for aging and death are a long way off, there is a
second and more fundamental reason for inquiring into the radical
question of the desirability of gaining a cure for death. For truth to
tell, victory over mortality is the unstated but implicit goal of
modern medical science...
Oh, if only that were true! Sadly, "modern medical" scientists
seem abashed by the prospect of immortality.
We could no longer comfort the widow by pointing out that her husband
was delivered from his suffering. Death would always be untimely,
unprepared for, shocking.
Death is *always* untimely. It is not a "release," a "letting
go." Is is the destruction of a human life, the burning of a library
however small, the loss of companionship. Anyone who says otherwise is
inhumane.
Kass is minimizing the pain of those who suffer the loss of a
child or a parent or a loved one in a sudden accident to make his
rhetorical point.
Could longer, healthier life be less satisfying?
No. Death is the denial of choice, and the satisfaction of
choice is central to human existence. If we conquer death, we will also
have a solid grip on what constitutes satisfaction, and how to acheive
that state of mind. Bring it on.
To praise mortality must seem to be madness. If mortality is a
blessing, it surely is not widely regarded as such. Life seeks to live,
and rightly suspects all counsels of finitude.
Hmph. All of the ancient dire tales about infinite life make a
virtue of a necessity. Kass would keep the virtue by demanding its
obligation even when it is no longer necessary. Not only is it cruel,
it is tyrannical.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/
"The apocalypse may be closer at hand than even John Derbyshire thinks:
what the hell is Elf Sternberg doing reading Derb's columns?"
-- Charles Murtaugh
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| User: "theBeaver" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life ThroughScience |
03 Aug 2005 08:43:03 AM |
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wrote:
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Something close to immortality IS possible with artificial intelligence:
Machines that think for themselves, building smarter machines, which
ultimately can solve virtually any imaginable problem. But that is far
in the future. Near-term, the best you can hope for is that aliens who
have already perfected artificial intelligence pay Earth a visit and,
being kindly, bestow near-immortality upon us. These are the only
realistic options. Near-immortality would consist of living for
millions or billions of years, but only if you were extremely lucky at
avoiding your enemies and natural cataclysms. So -- "immortality" is a
remote possibility, but the emphasis should be on "remote".
--
Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development, and is not compatible
with mental maturity. -- Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, as opposed to science, springs from a kind of
self-assertion: a belief that our purposes have an important relation to
the purposes of the universe, and that, in the long run, the course of
events is bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish. -- Bertrand
Russell
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human
Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman,
and published by Princeton University Press.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should
be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how
despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than
be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under
the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." [Albert Einstein]
"I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there
is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small
way or a large way." -- Mark Twain
"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there
can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as
God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is
exactly of the same nature as the Indian's view, that the world rested
upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they
said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the
subject.' The argument is really no better than that." -- Russell
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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| User: "Conspiracy of Doves" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 09:16:54 AM |
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How exactly would artificial intelligence grant us immortality?
Creating something that is immortal is not the same as us being
immortal.
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| User: "Mickey" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 09:42:54 AM |
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"Conspiracy of Doves" <mark_dp73@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1123078614.458441.53580@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
How exactly would artificial intelligence grant us immortality?
Creating something that is immortal is not the same as us being
immortal.
Bah, you don't watch enough sci-fi. We transfer our conciousness to the
artificial human.
Mickey
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| User: "Conspiracy of Doves" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 10:21:11 AM |
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I watch VAST amounts of sci-fi. Copying memories and personality into a
computer is one thing (read Permutation City or Diaspora, both by Greg
Egan). Consciousness is another thing. Even if the computer were to
become aware it would not be us, it would merely be a copy of us. If
the copy lives on for millions of years, I'm still dead a century from
now.
There is however, another option. A little bit at a time, replace small
parts of the brain with computerized components, waiting long enough
for each peice to become integrated into the brain's functions between
each replacement. Eventually, the entire brain is converted to machine.
This is also why I wouldn't want to use a matter transporter unless it
was wormhole-based (like Stargate). It seems all the Star Trek
transporters do is create an exact copy of you while destroying the
original. Unless there is some kind of continuity, there is no survival
of the self.
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| User: "Mickey" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 11:06:52 AM |
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"Conspiracy of Doves" <mark_dp73@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1123082471.302008.229820@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
I watch VAST amounts of sci-fi. Copying memories and personality into a
computer is one thing (read Permutation City or Diaspora, both by Greg
Egan). Consciousness is another thing. Even if the computer were to
become aware it would not be us, it would merely be a copy of us. If
the copy lives on for millions of years, I'm still dead a century from
now.
There is however, another option. A little bit at a time, replace small
parts of the brain with computerized components, waiting long enough
for each peice to become integrated into the brain's functions between
each replacement. Eventually, the entire brain is converted to machine.
This is also why I wouldn't want to use a matter transporter unless it
was wormhole-based (like Stargate). It seems all the Star Trek
transporters do is create an exact copy of you while destroying the
original. Unless there is some kind of continuity, there is no survival
of the self.
Hey, if it means I can work in New York and live in Florida, beam me up,
Scotty.
Mickey
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 12:42:55 PM |
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"There is however, another option. A little bit at a time, replace
small
parts of the brain with computerized components, waiting long enough
for each peice to become integrated into the brain's functions between
each replacement. Eventually, the entire brain is converted to machine.
"
That doesn't make any sense, "waiting long enough" doesn't change
anything. Do it all at once or one cell at a time, same thing.
"This is also why I wouldn't want to use a matter transporter unless it
was wormhole-based (like Stargate). It seems all the Star Trek
transporters do is create an exact copy of you while destroying the
original. Unless there is some kind of continuity, there is no survival
of the self."
Using a matter transporter is no different then going to sleep and
waking up (lack of continuity).
For all you know your brain could of been replaced with a computer
brain last night by aliens, and it
wouldn't make any difference to you unless you knew about it.
And that's the key, the "self" or consciousness is whatever you want
it to be, whatever you can convince your brain it is, nothing more. I
could say, for instance, that when I went to sleep last night I died
and the person who woke up is just a copy of me, same memories but
different consciousness (the continuity stopped when I went to sleep),
and you couldn't prove me wrong because the only proof is what my brain
(e.i., self, consciousness) thinks.
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| User: "RyanT" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 03:53:32 PM |
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Just apply the laws of entropy, and any sort of possibility of
immortality just fades away. You can augment your biological clocks
all you want, but it's not much use if you get hit by a bus the next
day. We may prolong our life, but the number in itself will always
remain finite.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 08:15:08 AM |
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theBeaver wrote:
Something close to immortality IS possible with artificial intelligence:
Machines that think for themselves, building smarter machines, which
ultimately can solve virtually any imaginable problem. But that is far
in the future.
Yes it is. There is not a machine on Earth that has an I.Q. of
anything greater than zero.
Atheists have such high self-esteem, that they consider themselves
nothing more than future worm food. Can't say I wholeheartedly
disagree.
--
Cliff
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 09:52:08 AM |
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wrote:
theBeaver wrote:
Something close to immortality IS possible with artificial intelligence:
Machines that think for themselves, building smarter machines, which
ultimately can solve virtually any imaginable problem. But that is far
in the future.
Yes it is. There is not a machine on Earth that has an I.Q. of
anything greater than zero.
Oh, I dunno. It's hard to measure these things, but I would say that
the smarter computers are at least as smart as a cockroach. They'll get
smarter. Anyone who understands even a little brain science, however,
knows that it's going to take longer than the AI people first
anticipated. But there's no reason to think there is some ultimate
barrier preventing it. There is, perhaps, reason to worry about the
conclusions and motives of self-aware and self-directing learning
machines. I hope they are apathetic or friendly.
Atheists have such high self-esteem, that they consider themselves
nothing more than future worm food. Can't say I wholeheartedly
disagree.
Are you saying that if we had higher self-esteem, we would believe
things for which there is no evidence? Why would psychological states
determine the nature of reality? Within normal limits, why would
psychological states determine what some people believe? It seems to
happen to some folks, but I find it mind-boggling.
This sort of statement (of yours) is why I sometimes think atheists and
theists are two different species...
--
Cliff
Kermit,
who has plenty of self-esteem, thankyouverymuch, and will go to medical
school after *he dies.
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| User: "Dubh Ghall" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 11:51:06 AM |
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On 5 Aug 2005 06:15:08 -0700, wrote:
Atheists have such high self-esteem, that they consider themselves
nothing more than future worm food. Can't say I wholeheartedly
disagree.
I can't say that we give a syphilitic *****.
--
Puck Greenman
The spelling, Like any opinion stated here,
is purely my own
#162 BAAWA Knight.
Plonked by Rob Duncan
Na bister 500,000
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 11:00:53 AM |
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theBeaver wrote:
wordsoftruth114@email.com wrote:
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Something close to immortality IS possible with artificial intelligence:
Machines that think for themselves, building smarter machines, which
ultimately can solve virtually any imaginable problem. But that is far
in the future. Near-term, the best you can hope for is that aliens who
have already perfected artificial intelligence pay Earth a visit and,
being kindly, bestow near-immortality upon us. These are the only
realistic options. Near-immortality would consist of living for
millions or billions of years, but only if you were extremely lucky at
avoiding your enemies and natural cataclysms. So -- "immortality" is a
remote possibility, but the emphasis should be on "remote".
--
Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development, and is not compatible
with mental maturity. -- Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, as opposed to science, springs from a kind of
self-assertion: a belief that our purposes have an important relation to
the purposes of the universe, and that, in the long run, the course of
events is bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish. -- Bertrand
Russell
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the
unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our
science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human
Side , edited by Helen Dukas (Einstein's secretary) and Banesh Hoffman,
and published by Princeton University Press.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should
be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how
despiceable an ignoreable war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than
be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under
the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." [Albert Einstein]
"I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there
is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small
way or a large way." -- Mark Twain
"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there
can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as
God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is
exactly of the same nature as the Indian's view, that the world rested
upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they
said, 'How about the tortoise?' the Indian said, 'Suppose we change the
subject.' The argument is really no better than that." -- Russell
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only
unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American
public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
I dunno. I think repairing my body and keeping it young for a couple of
hundred years is a pretty good start. Being able to shoot green chi
bolts from my eyes would be bonus.
I can see some folks alive now having their lives seriously extended,
for many centuries. They may be surrounded by descendants who are
radically transformed. Hopefully the kids will let us stuffy old
codgers linger in peace.
Nothing which is physical would be eternal, of course. This observation
is not intended to imply there is anything which isn't.
Kermit
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| User: "Conspiracy of Doves" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 11:22:21 AM |
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wrote:
Nothing which is physical would be eternal, of course. This observation
is not intended to imply there is anything which isn't.
Scientists are pretty sure that there won't be a Big Crunch, but that
means that entropy will eventually take over and result in the heat
death of the universe (a homogenous spread of atoms, the same at every
point in the universe)
However, what if we could escape into other universes, if they exist?
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| User: "Paul Anderson" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 04:15:26 PM |
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On 3 Aug 2005 09:22:21 -0700, "Conspiracy of Doves"
<mark_dp73@yahoo.com> wrote:
unrestrained_hand@hotmail.com wrote:
Nothing which is physical would be eternal, of course. This observation
is not intended to imply there is anything which isn't.
Scientists are pretty sure that there won't be a Big Crunch, but that
means that entropy will eventually take over and result in the heat
death of the universe (a homogenous spread of atoms, the same at every
point in the universe)
However, what if we could escape into other universes, if they exist?
Nothing capable of change can be eternal. In all of eternity it will
eventualy make a change incompatable with further existence.
Life is change.
Eternal life is impossible.
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| User: "Ian Braidwood" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 10:38:51 AM |
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theBeaver wrote:
wordsoftruth114@email.com wrote:
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Something close to immortality IS possible with artificial intelligence:
Machines that think for themselves, building smarter machines, which
ultimately can solve virtually any imaginable problem. But that is far
in the future. Near-term, the best you can hope for is that aliens who
have already perfected artificial intelligence pay Earth a visit and,
being kindly, bestow near-immortality upon us. These are the only
realistic options. Near-immortality would consist of living for
millions or billions of years, but only if you were extremely lucky at
avoiding your enemies and natural cataclysms. So -- "immortality" is a
remote possibility, but the emphasis should be on "remote".
Doesn't this rest on the asssumption there there is such a thing as a
personality, which can be implanted or accurately simulated?
If as seems likely given current knowledge, the illusion of
consciousness is a product of the totality of the nervous system, then
there is nothing which can be implanted and any simulation would depart
from what the original nervous system would do very quickly; making it
not the same consciousness at all.
Also, be it through machinery or Brian Stableford's Zamen
transformation, this would still tend to wear out and so all that has
been achieved is longevity, not immortality.
Regards,
(-: Ian :-)
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| User: "Conspiracy of Doves" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 10:56:29 AM |
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There is a difference between personality and consciousness.
Personality is the characteristics of how a person behaves.
Consciousness is awareness of the self. I agree that consciousness can
not be transferred, but personality and memories might be able to.
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| User: "Ian Braidwood" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
04 Aug 2005 04:25:42 AM |
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I accept your distinction on a semantic level, but that doesn't prove
that there are two seperate things, one of which can be removed or
simulated. After all they've never been seperated in a living subject.
Also, if you work with personality being the characteristic way people
behave, wouldn't knowing that you are imortal change that and wouldn't
imortality be something for which personality would be unsuited for?
Regards,
(-: Ian :-)
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| User: "Shawn Hirn" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 12:06:05 PM |
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In article <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wrote:
L'Chaim and Its Limits:
Why Not Immortality?
Leon R. Kass
You don't have to be Jewish to drink L'Chaim, to lift a glass "To
Life." Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that
death is bad. But Jews have always had an unusually keen appreciation
of life, and not only because it has been stolen from them so often and
so cruelly. The celebration of life-of this life, not the next
one-has from the beginning been central to Jewish ethical and
religious sensibilities. In the Torah, "Be fruitful and multiply"
is God's first blessing and first command. Judaism from its inception
rejected child-sacrifice and regarded long life as a fitting divine
reward for righteous living. At the same time, Judaism embraces
medicine and the human activity of healing the sick; from the Torah the
rabbis deduced not only permission for doctors to heal, but also the
positive obligation to do so. Indeed, so strong is this reverence for
life that the duty of pikuah nefesh requires that Jews violate the holy
Shabbat in order to save a life. Not by accident do we Jews raise our
glasses "L'Chaim."
Where does this long article refer to atheists? I know many atheists,
and none of them hopes for eternal life through science, including me.
In fact, you raise an interesting question. As I understand it,
Christians believe in Heaven and Hell. If most Christians truly believe
in their faith and feel they deserve to be admitted to Heaven, why they
keep trying to postpone their own death through science? Why do most
Christians refer to death as an undesirable experience, rather than an
opportunity to get to their fabled state of existence? Why isn't an
early death by either by disease, natural causes, crime, or accident
much desirable to a Christian than a long healthy life? The longer
Christians postpone their own death through medical science and/or
maintaining a healthy life style, the longer it takes them to reach
Heaven, so why the delay?
I am serious. Why do Christians fear death and meeting their maker?
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| User: "rugged indivduals" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
07 Aug 2005 01:08:06 AM |
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"Shawn Hirn" <srhi@comcast.net> wrote in message
I am serious. Why do Christians fear death and meeting their maker?
Read how Stonewall Jackson died. Or J.E.B. Stuart.
They were Christians. Like anyone, they would have preferred to live, but
they were resigned to their fates at the end, and (yes it's true) welcomed
them.
"It will be an infinite blessing to be translated." General T.J. Jackson
Judging from Stonewall Jackson's famous last words, there is a heaven. He
spoke them in contentment with a smile on his face, like the sun breaking
through clouds after a storm. ("Let us cross over the river, and rest under
the shade of the trees.")
Compare that scene of peace with any account you can find of the miserable
death of Voltaire.
The believer does not escape the anguish and pains of death. Therefore,
rationally, he does not desire a premature encounter with his fate.
But when the time arrives, he does not despair. He has hope to sustain him,
and the confidence that he is about to be translated to a place prepared for
him by his Savior.
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| User: "Conspiracy of Doves" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 01:26:32 PM |
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I'm an atheist and I hope for immortality throught science.
I'm just not counting on it.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 09:44:42 AM |
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Conspiracy of Doves wrote:
I'm an atheist and I hope for immortality throught science.
I'm just not counting on it.
Ditto.
Seriously prolonged life looks like a simple (for appropriate values of
"simple") bioengineering problem. It should be solvable Real Soon
Now(tm). Whether that means 20 years or 120 is, however, a pretty
significant difference for me personally.
Note that "immortal" in this sense means living indefinitely - not the
"eternally" as expected by Western theists. Christian doctrine is not
incompatible with living longer, even seriously longer. Yeah, yeah, I
know what some of you biblical literalists will say: "The bible said
that noone would live longer than Methuselah". Well, maybe that means
your second coming will arrive before anyone reaches that age, right? A
prophecy is not a behavioral rule. So you guys outghta be on our side
on this issue. <sigh> But they've fought medical advances before; I am
not optimistic.
Kermit
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| User: "RyanT" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 04:04:37 PM |
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These people arn't exactly the most secure people in the world, you
know. Most of them can't even muster the courage to rid of themselves
of the fear of judgement of others, what makes you think they'll gladly
march toward judgement day?
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 12:18:55 PM |
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Well the answer is most Christians don't really believe in God, 99.999%
of the population are true atheists, whether they want to believe it or
not. A suicide bomber probably probably belongs to the other .0001% .
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 10:05:20 AM |
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In episode <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wordsoftruth114 burst into the room and exclaimed:
Why Not Immortality?
Why not?
Though, in practical terms, it sounds like it could get boring after a few
thousand years...
--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
Alt-atheism website at: http://www.alt-atheism.org
--------------------------------------------------
"Come to think of it, there are already a million
monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet
is NOTHING like Shakespeare!" -- Blair Houghton
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| User: "Therion Ware" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
04 Aug 2005 06:53:20 PM |
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On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 10:05:20 -0500 in alt.atheism, Mark K. Bilbo
("Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster>) said, directing the
reply to alt.atheism
In episode <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wordsoftruth114 burst into the room and exclaimed:
Why Not Immortality?
Why not?
Though, in practical terms, it sounds like it could get boring after a few
thousand years...
Maybe so, but it'd be interesting to have the opportunity to find out.
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| User: "Dubh Ghall" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 05:10:01 AM |
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On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 23:53:20 GMT, Therion Ware <autodelete@city-of-dis.com>
wrote:
On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 10:05:20 -0500 in alt.atheism, Mark K. Bilbo
("Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster>) said, directing the
reply to alt.atheism
In episode <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wordsoftruth114 burst into the room and exclaimed:
Why Not Immortality?
Why not?
Though, in practical terms, it sounds like it could get boring after a few
thousand years...
Maybe so, but it'd be interesting to have the opportunity to find out.
But not immortality. That implies the inability to die.
--
Puck Greenman
The spelling, Like any opinion stated here,
is purely my own
#162 BAAWA Knight.
Plonked by Rob Duncan
Na bister 500,000
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| User: "Therion Ware" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 07:06:31 AM |
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On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:10:01 GMT in alt.atheism, Dubh Ghall (Dubh
Ghall <puck@pooks.hill.fey>) said, directing the reply to
alt.atheism
On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 23:53:20 GMT, Therion Ware <autodelete@city-of-dis.com>
wrote:
On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 10:05:20 -0500 in alt.atheism, Mark K. Bilbo
("Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster>) said, directing the
reply to alt.atheism
In episode <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wordsoftruth114 burst into the room and exclaimed:
Why Not Immortality?
Why not?
Though, in practical terms, it sounds like it could get boring after a few
thousand years...
Maybe so, but it'd be interesting to have the opportunity to find out.
But not immortality. That implies the inability to die.
Yes, I suppose it does, though I imagine things'd get a tad difficult
when the protons that make up whatever passes for ones body in deep
time start to decay.
--
"Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You."
- Attrib: Pauline Reage.
#442. Want food NOW? Then try http://www.rtios.com/
- Yep, currently under test... Your opinion welcome.
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| User: "Dubh Ghall" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
05 Aug 2005 12:03:56 PM |
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On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 12:06:31 GMT, Therion Ware <autodelete@city-of-dis.com>
wrote:
On Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:10:01 GMT in alt.atheism, Dubh Ghall (Dubh
Ghall <puck@pooks.hill.fey>) said, directing the reply to
alt.atheism
On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 23:53:20 GMT, Therion Ware <autodelete@city-of-dis.com>
wrote:
On Wed, 03 Aug 2005 10:05:20 -0500 in alt.atheism, Mark K. Bilbo
("Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster>) said, directing the
reply to alt.atheism
In episode <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wordsoftruth114 burst into the room and exclaimed:
Why Not Immortality?
Why not?
Though, in practical terms, it sounds like it could get boring after a few
thousand years...
Maybe so, but it'd be interesting to have the opportunity to find out.
But not immortality. That implies the inability to die.
Yes, I suppose it does, though I imagine things'd get a tad difficult
when the protons that make up whatever passes for ones body in deep
time start to decay.
Given such a life extension, I wonder just how long curiosity, would keep you
going.
Would/could your desire, or need, to know, keep you going, just to experience
the decay of the very protons that compose you?
--
Puck Greenman
The spelling, Like any opinion stated here,
is purely my own
#162 BAAWA Knight.
Plonked by Rob Duncan
Na bister 500,000
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| User: "Mickey" |
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| Title: Re: Why Not Immortality? The Atheist Hopes For Eternal Life Through Science |
03 Aug 2005 10:06:24 AM |
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"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-atheism@org.webmaster> wrote in message
news:xZmdnZ2dnZ2wLSD_nZ2dnd1Abd-dnZ2dRVn-yJ2dnZ0@megapath.net...
In episode <1123074997.174591.162070@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
wordsoftruth114 burst into the room and exclaimed:
Why Not Immortality?
Why not?
Though, in practical terms, it sounds like it could get boring after a few
thousand years...
Sooner, I'd think.
Mickey
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