A reader writes:
I’ve been wondering: 100 years ago we didn’t have many of the
life-extending medicines and surgical techniques that we do today, that
allow us to extend our lives. In the same manner, 100 years from now we
will (presumably) have many more extraordinary technologies that allow
us to treat and extend life spans. Suppose there is one that even lets
us extend it so far that we will never have to worry about death from
natural causes – only worrying about, say, car crashes, or massive
physical damage.
I think that would be really cool!
In fact, there are folks who think that this is achievable. There are individuals who are talking about an expoential growth in medical technology in the next few decades (through things like the nanotechnology to repair all kinds of bodily problems that currently can’t be fixed) that may allow for the indefinite prolongation of the human lifespan–and with better health than the elderly currently enjoy.
In fact, there are folks (like Ray Kurtzweil) who think that, if we play our cards right in terms of what technologies we invest in now, that if you are able to survive the next 25 years then the technology will begin to come online that will let you extend your life indefinitely.
I’m all for that!
But this isn’t the same thing as true immortality. Even with an indefinite lifespan, you WILL eventually die (if Jesus doesn’t come back first so that you are one of those still living at the time of the Second Coming). Either a car will hit you or a disease will get you or a gun will shoot you or an asteroid will squash you or a supernova will fry you or SOMETHING.
There ain’t no such thing as true immortality this side of the Resurrection. Tain’t possible.
But if we can have dramatically longer lives than we do now, with improved health, that’s really cool. (Maybe.)
This is not to say that ALL such life-extension techniques would be legitimate. Some might involve unacceptabale forms of cloning or embryo manipulation, for example. Others might not really result in the survival of you. F’rinstance: Some are talking about jettisoning our bodies and uploading our minds to machines.
That’s not you.
If there’s an upload of you then the upload is no more you than Max Headroom is Edison Carter, as shown by the fact that both you and the upload can be around at the same time.
On the other hand, if you get rid of your body then YOU die and something else that thinks and remembers like you takes your place. It’s a technological Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The impact of indefinitely long lifespans on society would also be enormous, and not all of the effects would be good. Studies have been done about that, too. I’ve seen scenarios suggesting the likely effects on society of an "immortality pill" at various numbers of years after the introduction of the pill. It’s all just speculation, though. Whether the good effects outweigh the bad effects is something that we’d have to figure out with time.
And we might conclude in the end that humans just aren’t meant to live indefinitely–that there are design features in the human critter that makes it unsuitable for such long term survival. There are all kinds of dystopian nightmares here, but we simply don’t know enough in this area to write off the entire project without getting more data about the effects of enhanced lifespans.
Thus if someone offered me today an otherwise moral medical procedure that would dramatically extend my life, I’d be very interested in it.
I’m just speaking for myself, of course.
And the question has yet to be asked of what God would think of all this. Because of the Fall, we all die, and no futuristic medical technology is going to change that. The question is: Does God mind us extending our lives?
The prima facie answer is no, he doesn’t. Scripture contains praise for the physician, whose function is to extend lives (read Sirach 38). Further, God gave us the gift of reason to figure out the world, and it gives him glory when we do that in a way that doesn’t violate moral law.
There doesn’t seem to be any barrier that we can discern from revelation where God says "Thus far shalt thou live, and no farther." We may be able to figure out such a line through reason, but revelation doesn’t give it to us.
Some have thought that 120 years is the max cap that God wants on our lives, based on Genesis 6:3 ("My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years") but this most likely refers to something else–to the amount of time God was giving man before the Flood.
This is evident from the fact that if you watch the lifespans in Genesis they don’t suddenly snap down to 120 after God makes this announcement. Noah, for example, lived for 350 years after the Flood, for a total of 950. Nor do the people born after the Flood have 120 year life spans. Noah’s grandson Arphachshad–who was born AFTER the Flood–lived to be 438.
The lifespans do drop off, but they don’t level out at 120, they drop right through that level. So Genesis 6:3 does not seem to mean that the max cap on the human lifespan will be 120. It more likely means that God determined 120 years before the Flood that the Flood would happen and determined to get Noah working on Project Ark.
Further, if one takes these early chapters of Genesis and the numbers in them literally then it would count as evidence that–at least in some circumstances–God does not mind humans having close-to-a-thousand-year lifespans.
Sounds boring to me. Besides, rumor has it that there’s a better life awaiting us after this one.
I take it that the key to this kind of life prolongation would have to involve artificially manipulating something so that the telomeres stopped shortening with each cell division. Or artificially manipulating something so that the telomeres’ shortening didn’t matter.
Given those assumptions, wouldn’t this kind of artificial manipulation to the natural way of things violate natural law? Or is death not a part of natural law–is it simply the result of The Fall and something we’re within our bounds to correct, like illness? If the latter is true, and the technology becomes cheap and unburdensome–i.e. is not any more extraordinary than taking antibiotics to cure something else–wouldn’t we then have a moral imperative to incorporate such a treatment into a normal healthcare routine? Basically you’d be saying, we’re all born sick, and since this is a little thing to correct, we’d all have to undergo this treatment, lest we commit a sin of omission and possibly even commit suicide by rejecting the simple treatment!
I’d like for a brain-in-a-jar kind of long life support system. I like my body well enough, but despite my good health I think I will have a different opinion in 80 years or so. Plus, sleeping is such a waste of time (1/3 of your life!)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but was the discovery of the germ and antiseptic really the only seriously life extending thing we’ve ever discovered? All other modern medicines haven’t really done much for us. Some forms of cancer are curable and whatnot, but it hasn’t created the leaps and bounds of extended life that regular use of soap has.
Ray Kurzweil’s ideas are kinda nuts. I know he’s been right in the past, but still.. People in California have been eating strange things and acting funny for years (sorry Jimmy), and they aren’t living longer then the rest of us..
This reminds me of an Orson Scott Card short story (found in his collection of stories of dread) about scientists who found a way to indefinitely prolong human life & did so on a male & female. Everything was wonderful for nearly 100 years (as I recall) & the couple had no disease, etc. The problem is, they lived so long their lives ceased to have purpose because they were in a controlled environment with no contact to humans on the outside. They were human lab rats, hermetically sealed off from everything (including the scientists, whom they outlived) & all they’d ever known was the sterile world they grew up in.
Now, that’s not what Kruzweil’s advocating. But, as cautionary tales to, it’s quite effective.
JMS addresses that issue in B5 as well with the first one.
It’s interesting that Tolkien’s writings (his letters etc)say that the #1 problem that made Gondor weak, and the #1 problem of the Elves, was their desire to hang on to life, their desire for what is not eternal life of the soul, but for dragging out mortal life endlessly. Some people who have only seen the movie thought the Elves were immortal, but they were not….they were to live as long as the world lasted (and whatever lay beyond that was not spelled out – it was a mystery, because, as Tolkien said, the world of Lord of the Rings was a pre-Christian world).
I’ve always wondered about the lifespans of the patriarchs, before and after the flood.
Are these to be understood in literal terms, or is there some literary key to understanding these numbers?
Any and all explanations/theories/etc. would be helpful. Thank you.
On a sci-fi note, I remember reading something similar to this in “Children of Dune” (the 3rd book in the Dune Chronicles) that Leto, son of Paul-Mu’adib Atreides, manages to make it so that he has an extraordinarily long lifespan, and thereby becomes “God-Emperor of Dune” (the title of the 4th Dune book).
Any ideas about the effects of just one or a few people having excessively long lifespans?
I’m kind of surprised nobody’s mentioned the Howard Families yet.