Forever young...Do you really want to live forever, forever??

[Danielos]

Many religious people consider a materialistic worldview composed of just natural selection, evolution, life and death to be empty, cynical and depressing. The argument is often proposed that it leads to a selfish, merciless attitude where the strong prey on the weak, since it is just "the laws of nature".

However, in a materialistic, evolutionary worldview you don´t have any unique privilegies as a human. You share the world together with animals, that you are also related to in a giant web of life. Life, struggle and death is part of this world and this cycle of life repeat itself over many, many generations.

So what could be more arrogant and selfish than the religious worldview that you have a "soul" and are therefore blessed with eternal life? Instead of seeing the life you have as a wonderful, precious gift in itself, they aren´t satisfied with anything less than existing FOREVER! Never mind that birth, life and death is necessary in nature for new generations to replace the old ones.

Religious ideas about a soul and eternal life strikes me as the most ungrateful and disgusting idea of selfishness and human ego ever invented...

 

[Kraznaya]

Overlooking the rant OP, I'd only want to live forever if the one I loved could experience it all with me.

 

[Masada]

Many religious people consider a materialistic worldview composed of just natural selection, evolution, life and death to be empty, cynical and depressing.

Is 'a' (and not just your) materialistic worldview composed of just those things?

However, in a materialistic, evolutionary worldview you don´t have any unique privilegies as a human.

In your interpretation of a materialistic, evolutionary worldview.

You share the world together with animals, that you are also related to in a giant web of life.

So your materialistic worldview includes the implicit assumption of a web of life?

Life, struggle and death is part of this world and this cycle of life repeat itself over many, many generations.

Mine won't. And I doubt if anyone here's life will, either.

So what could be more arrogant and selfish than the religious worldview that you have a "soul" and are therefore blessed with eternal life?

How is having a soul arrogant and selfish? Surely, if everyone has a soul then it can't be by definition selfish. And how is the desire living eternally necessarily arrogant or selfish for the same reason?

Instead of seeing the life you have as a wonderful, precious gift in itself, they aren´t satisfied with anything less than existing FOREVER! Never mind that birth, life and death is necessary in nature for new generations to replace the old ones.

How does the existence or the non-existence of an eternal soul impugn on birth, life or death? The system seems to have rolled on fine even with implicit assumption that eternal souls exist.

Religious ideas about a soul and eternal life strikes me as the most ungrateful and disgusting idea of selfishness and human ego ever invented...

I declare this thread the most selfish and arrogant invention ever. Not only do you want to deny me eternal life but you want to deny everyone that chance.

 

[Cheetah]

Didn't care to read the OP, but yes of course, I will live forever!

Even 500 years would be pretty nice...

 

[Winner]

Of course

Provided that I'd be able to end my life when I get bored. Because being truly immortal would get pretty boring in the later stages of the Universe's evolution.

 

[Tani Coyote]

Of course. One man can only do so much in 70-80 years...

...Now 70-80 THOUSAND...

With age comes wisdom indeed!

I would also like for all those I hold dear to be able to share in it, of course.

I also want the ability to cancel my immortality in the event I discover an afterlife. Why continue to live with restraints when I can go to another plane of existence where I become omnipotent in my own little way?

 

[Lone Wolf]

The OP is a bit of a non-sequitur.

 

[Danielos]

Hahaha... Everyone gang up on me!

What I meant was, isn´t the desire that YOU are so important that you should conquer death and exist forever a rather arrogant idea? Shouldn´t you be grateful for the life you got rather than request it to last forever? Shouldn´t you value the precious life you got rather than see it as a preliminary for the eternal after-life? Why are humans so important that we should last forever when plants, animals and even stars are born, live and die?

 

[ArneHD]

Didn't care to read the OP, but yes of course, I will live forever!

Even 500 years would be pretty nice...

*SMAC*! Though you are probably more hurt by the pun.

In all seriousness, natural does not mean beneficial, to us or, ironically, nature itself. Eternal life, or rather eternal sentience, is something we ought to be aiming for.

 

[Winner]

We have self-awareness and intelligence, so we can waste time thinking about out inevitable death. We're also animals driven by the self-preservation instinct.

Mix these two things together and you have your answer why humans (generally) want to prolong their lives as much as possible.

Personally, I wouldn't like to spend eternity looking like an 100-year-old frail grandpa But if there was a technology that would keep my body physically healthy and reasonably young (30-40 years of age) and also keep me sane, and somebody offered it to me, I wouldn't hesitate for a second.

I am not happy with my current ~80 year life expectancy, it's way too short for someone of my intelligence and potential

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

What I meant was, isn´t the desire that YOU are so important that you should conquer death and exist forever a rather arrogant idea?

I would be doing other people a favour by existing forever, but I'll settle for a couple of thousand years. Then the universe has to learn to live without me.

 

[Danielos]

Bah, you are so full of bad puns and witty remarks to a serious subject that death seems almost like a temptation...

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

My bad puns and my witty remarks are my best features. And you know you love them.

You'd miss them when I'd be gone.

 

[Danielos]

My bad puns and my witty remarks are my best features. And you know you love them.

You'd miss them when I'd be gone.

Well, if we DO live for eternity, I might have to endure them for a VERY loooong time...

 

[Tee Kay]

Eternity sounds appealing, but it will suck.

I don't want to live forever, but I wouldn't mind another hundred or two years added to my current life expectancy, provided I get to stay young longer and stay healthy until the end of course.

 

[Masada]

With age comes wisdom indeed!

What's the saying: the Caliph was so wise that he couldn't remember half of what he knew.

What I meant was, isn´t the desire that YOU are so important that you should conquer death and exist forever a rather arrogant idea?

Why is it so arrogant. In all likelihood we will figure out a means of prolonging our lives to such an extent that death seems rather quaint. It hasn't happened yet, I don't doubt that it probably will.

Shouldn´t you be grateful for the life you got rather than request it to last forever?

That you might believe you have an immortal soul doesn't necessarily cheapen your life in the least. I don't see why you think its inevitable.

Shouldn´t you value the precious life you got rather than see it as a preliminary for the eternal after-life?

I don't see how the one has to lead to the other like you suggest.

Why are humans so important that we should last forever when plants, animals and even stars are born, live and die?

Why aren't we. Sentience alone differentiates us as species from all others -- well, most others.

 

[Danielos]

Eternity sounds appealing, but it will suck.

I don't want to live forever, but I wouldn't mind another hundred or two years added to my current life expectancy, provided I get to stay young longer and stay healthy until the end of course.

Youth is wasted on the young...

 

[Silurian]

Read "Time Enough for Love" by Robert A. Heinlein

Life can gets a bit boring once you have done everything

 

[Tee Kay]

Youth is wasted on the young...

No.

VCL

 

[Danielos]

This reminds me of a horror comic I´ve read:

A guy keep having terrible nightmares about dying in the desert and being eaten by vultures. The anxiety causes him to strike a deal with the devil. He wants to have eternal life, but if he ever changes his mind he must call upon the devil that will then take his soul. However, the devil warns him that he mustn´t wait too long before he call upon him. So he lives on and on and on... However, he forgot to tell the devil that he shouldn´t age, so he just gets older, and older and older. He gets so old, frail and hideous to look at that he becomes a recluse. He becomes a hermit living in the desert, and just wants to die and end this torment. He call upon the devil again, who appear. The man begs him to kill him, but the devil says he waited too long and that he won´t help him anymore. The exhausted old man fall down in the sand in the desert sun and he is now too weak to defend himself from the vultures that has been circling over him, waiting for a snack. However, this time death won´t release him from the pain of being eaten alive...