Do you want immortality?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So I just got myself a good reaming on Skepticsrock for suggesting, nay, insisting that immortality would soon become horrifically boring and people would opt out of it. Some folks were claiming that they would like to live forever. I was insistent that it would become unbearable.

People got angry with me for claiming to know their feelings on the matter better than they did. Fair enough. But we also touched on the idea that the thought of immortality is somehow comforting. I don't understand this. I asked why, but I don't think I got an answer.

I brought up god and "ultimate purpose," too, but people claimed that had nothing to do with the matter. However, I noticed that peoples' picture of this immortality seemed all nice and happy and limitless (they mentioned exploring new worlds and such). This sounds like some sort of heaven to me, not mundane immortality. It was as if immortality would be cool as long as it was also perfect.

I apologize if I have misinterpreted anyone's statements here. You can certainly correct my misapprehensions.

So, what do you think? Immortality? Or death?

~~ Paul

 

[Tricky]

When I am dead, I hope it is said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read'.
Hilaire Belloc

 

[Vagabond]

I think the question isn't whether you would prefer life or death. It's the nature of that life or death that is the real question.

If that life was being able to explore the entire universe. Being able to form reality in any manner I might choose. It would be great. Never ending life in the state it exists on this planet would become unbearable before long. Primarily, because just the nature of your immortality wouldn't allow you to live properly. If everybody else was also immortal and thus you being only one was no longer a factor that would make a huge difference.

 

[ThisIsMe]

I would definately opt for immortality. I love life. Even if I were incapacitated to the point being just a thinking brain, at least I exist. If I don't exist then what do I got then? Nothing, no chances to go back.

And if there is a heaven, heaven is immortality so live/die/whatever it doesn't make any difference - the conscious lives on. Then again, if heaven's a better place then why am I bothering to be alive in the first place? It kind of makes life a little pointless. A place to wait until we find a way to die that still gets us into heaven... So if there's a heaven then I guess I'd opt for immediate death. Otherwise, immortality.

And I wouldn't call life mundane. In fact, anything but. There's so much to learn.

-Me

 

[El Greco]

Immortality. With a functioning brain. And a functioning penis. How can you possibly get bored ? If it was possible, I would already have.

 

[H3LL]

I'm with Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged.

Can I start now?

"Paul C. Anagnostopoulos? You're an idiot!"

 

[Iacchus]

Why not heaven? Isn't it impossible enough that the world exists in its current state of affairs? How much more impossible would it be for God to exist in such a context? And if you think about it, didn't the Universe pretty much usher itself in on a whim?

 

[Kiless]

Nup.

My partner thinks the eventual goal is to live forever and certainly thinks we're all heading that way via the progress of science.

Personally? I just think of the film Highlander. I want to die. I don't mind. Maybe I'll finally get some sleep as my body shuts down.

And as you said - how certain that we get to choose the sort of immortality? Just think of Tithonus...

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East;
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
(Tennyson)

 

[Darat]

I like Brian Stableford's word "emortality" - in other words whilst develop the potential for immortality by "defeating" death and as Stableford explains: "captures the nature of endless life still subject to fatal accidents better than "immortality.""

Whether emortality would be bearable is really dependent on the society that it is set in - imagine facing nothing but the same 9-5 job at the insurance office for eternity....

 

[Iacchus]

To live forever as a mortal? Nope, not for me. That would be way too limiting, not to mention boring.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

A few observations:

If you get immortality with the ability to opt out, that's not immortality. Of course immortality would be fine if I could choose when to end it.

Immortality in a perfect "heaven" certainly sounds better than immortality in a life like we currently have. Particularly if one of the jury-rigged aspects of this heaven was that somehow I never got bored to tears with the relentless and never-ending perfection.

Immortality. With a functioning brain. And a functioning penis. How can you possibly get bored ? If it was possible, I would already have.

I do not think you are contemplating the difference between 50 years and forever. But saying so is what got me reamed last night, so I'll shut up about that now.

It's interesting that no one so far has mentioned that the idea of immortality gives them comfort. That came up in the conversation last night, but I didn't save a transcript, so I might be misremembering.

~~ Paul

 

[Complexity]

Death, in a few decades.

Constraint, a limited lifetime, in this case, energizes and motivates.

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with a rainy Sunday afternoon."
Susan Ertz

 

[Iacchus]

Well, if the difference between life and a life after life, were like the transition of a caterpillar into a butterfly, there might be hope.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The only way I can figure this would work is if I was on some sort of "live for the moment" drug that just made me giddily happy all the time. But what would be the point of that?

Consider the oppression of your own memories after a billion years or so.

~~ Paul

 

[kedo1981]

Allow me to point out that the fundys believe everybody ends up being immortal, some are immortal in heaven, and some are immortal in “H E double toothpicks”.
It might be great to live a few billion years and fly around space, exploring different worlds, having profound truths revealed to you. I actually heard a tv preacher say that this is why there is so much of the universe, that each Christians will be given a vast area of space to rule as their kingdom.
“Pop!” goes your bubble, that ain’t biblical.

Heaven is described as mostly consisting of a new city of Jerusalem, peopled by those whose names are in the book of life and are given a new resurrected body.

That might be fun for a few billion years but if you still have free will what will (could) happen to your heavenly life in such vast amounts of time.

What happens if you remember your saintly grandpa, “boy he was great, he took me in when my own mother rejected me, it was just me and him against the sinful world.”
“You know, that old man knew more about the bible than ten God called preachers, taught me to love Jesus with all my heart, reckon that’s why I’m here today.”
“Boy, I’ve been up here a long time, you’d thought I’d run into him by now, oh, now I remember, I was there, at his death bed, the pain from the colon cancer sapped his faith, he cursed God on his dying breath; I guess he’s been roasting in hell all this time.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Iacchus]

The only way I can figure this would work is if I was on some sort of "live for the moment" drug that just made me giddily happy all the time. But what would be the point of that?

Consider the oppression of your own memories after a billion years or so.

Regarding the notion of Time in Heaven ...

169. The natural man might think that he would be deprived of all thought if the ideas of time, space, and material things were taken away; for upon these all the thought of man rests [18.3]. But let him know that so far as thoughts partake of time, space, and matter they are limited and confined, but are unlimited and extended so far as they do not partake of these, since the mind is in that measure raised above bodily and worldly things. This is the source of wisdom to the angels; and such wisdom as is called incomprehensible, because it does not fall into ideas that are wholly made up of what is material.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

As I said, Iacchus, if this immortality was rigged up to be unceasingly pleasant and fun, I suppose I'd go for it. But it would have to be a serious rig job.

~~ Paul

 

[Dogdoctor]

I think there are a couple considerations in my choice. Of course what quality of life would you have (healthy functioning normally etc)? The other thing would be is everyone else immortal too? If everyone else was immortal I would probably choose to not be immortal since it would eventually get boring. If I was the only one then perhaps depending on the quality of life.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If you're going to be immortal while everyone else is dropping dead, you better have a thick skin when it comes to the accumulation of memories of those you have lost.

(Did I just mix metaphors or something?)

~~ Paul

 

[Seismosaurus]

Just how immortal are we talking? True immortality would meant that you'd be the last thing to exist when the entire remainder of the universe had died out and turned to dust. A trillion years floating in a universe alone, nobody to talk to, nothing to do? No thanks.

Give me a million years or a billion years, that I'd like. But forever? No thanks.