Earth bound immortality and Religion.

Articles like these got me thinking about the possibility of immortality and certain questions arose in regards to religion.

Is earth bound immortality something exclusive to those of non-religious faith... or rather since a lot of religions make it a "goal" to go the the afterlife, does avoiding said afterlife (since you won't die) go against the religion?

Thoughts.

When I was a Christian (now atheist) going to catholic school I was taught the reason I existed was to, more or less, spread God's word and then go to heaven. So it kind of conflicts with the ideology, E.G. If I'm immortal, what would i need heaven for.

So what are your thoughts?
Should we have immortality?
Does it go against Religion?
If something like this does happen, would you do it?

What do you mean by saying immortality is exclusive to non-religious faith? If there is something that can make people immortal it wouldn't be something that distinguishes religion, as that's simply a person's choice. It's like saying immortality is just for those who don't like chocolate.

Otherwise, if you mean religions and the concept of immortality would conflict in interests. Well, that depends on which religion you are talking about. Catholiscism doesn't have one mandament "Thou shall not become immortal" don't see exactly why it would be conflicting (though I'm not catholic anymore so yeah).

Regarding the possibility of immortality: don't really see that as the main aspect of the article anyway but, "should we have immortality?" is a weird question in itself. Do we deserve immortality? I don't think immortality is the way to go for us, with how the population has been alarmingly growing. Also the renewal of the way of thinking is important, old people with old ideas should leave and let fresh ones come in.

As for the article, the premise that computers are getting faster and that their speed is increasing faster each time: my quantum chemistry course has thaught me that computers are only evolving at the speed they are because companies decided to follow someone's prediction that computing power (transistor density) would multiply by 10 every X years, just a market decision. Moreover, he also showed that such development is insustainable, we would need to completely change the way transistors work to keep up with the rate because once they get too small we leave the domain of classical physics upon which all computers are based now and we'd enter on the quantic domain. At this point transistors would no longer work because of some quantic phenomena.

Finally, to match the abilities of our brain we would need to go WAY farther than just making faster computers. First step would be to actually understand the brain and according to my sister who's studying medicine the brain is the part of the body we know the least. We understand pretty much nothing of the brain (or else there would be no psychologists and we would be doing brain surgery to cure alzeimer).

Obviously, immortality would give those religions which include an afterlife and/or reincarnation a headache.

While they depict the afterlife as something wonderful (for the righteous, anyway), they do require that one do whatever one can to delay that afterlife as much as possible (barring dying for a worthy cause, i.e. martyrdom).
If it becomes possible to delay it indefinitely... they'll have a problem. However, I'm not worried. Religious leaders will have answers for their followers, whether from God or from their own minds. They always have answers.

Immortality would be the bane of Earth.

Think of it : If immortality became a reality, with an ever-growing population, all of Earth's resources would be eaten up at extreme rates and if you think the streets of Tokyo or New York are crowded... That'll be normal for any small town in the world.

Immortality is too unrealistic and it doesn't mesh well with our reality.


I don't think religions could do anything, nor would they care, really. They may just call it an abomination, since they think that would mean Humans have obtained a power of a god. I mean, if they see Heaven as the perfect kingdom (at least as far as Christianity goes), they wouldn't want to take part in the immortality thing. However, that also depends on how that would work.

Depends what kind of immortality you are talking about.

Would you still need to eat, breathe? Would you be immune to diseases, wounds, etc?
It's hard to define where you put the bound for "non-aging" but still die when cut in two for example.

Dam I thought it was Earthbound Immortal from YuGiOh with the racing motorcycles.

*should make a useful comment now*

*nah*

I should say i imagine a "Matrix" style immortality. Our "souls" are put into computers or a digital world and we survive in there as a mental conscious separate from our body and its needs.

True immortality doesn't exists (or is unattainable) unless you're able to make your "self" into... I don't know. Matter with intelligence? The universe had an origin, and will probably have an "end" and be reborn again (universe shrink backs, big bang V2? ensues (discovery channel, herp)). So you either survive the universe's forces or turn yourself into a being of a higher dimension. Remove your "self" from this dimension to another one where the forces of your original dimension are unable to affect your "self" (including the sense of time).

Anyway, unless you do something like that you can't really call yourself immortal.

Even if you become immortal by that article's standards, you will still die in time. So if you believe in heaven and hell, I see no reason why the believer shouldn't keep his faith in the face of this kind of immortality. The concept of death still exists for the individual, so heaven or hell should still exist regardless of how much time it takes for the subject to die.

Also, the God portrayed in most religions are akin to a being of higher dimension (immortality (to our eyes), omniprecense, etc). Surely something stupid like achieving immortality by putting our brains into a computer is not able to hold a candle against such a being.

Oh, BTW, I'm not religious or anything. Just posting some nonsense.

Edit: A more pressing question for (christian)religion would be the definition of "self".
Would the death of your organic "self" be the same as the death of your "computer" self? What exactly is the soul? etc.