Posted on 03/13/2005 4:25:11 PM PST by saquin
"Do you want to live forever?"I don't know. Ask me again in 500 years.
VietVet
I'll try to remember, but remind me if I forget, okay? (laugh)
I'm going to be with my loved ones who have passed on. And I'd rather be with them than with most of the ones I'm here with now.
When I die, you will all cease to exist.
It is believed that the references in the Bible to ages in the many hundreds are actually references to months, not years.
Interesting observation, and as I think about it, you're right. But an eternal existence striving for tedium?....Ack.
I don't wanna think about how many National Geographics I'll have stacked up by then.
- In 1900, the average life-span for a human-being was 40 years of age. In 1900 if you had told someone that people would, on average, live to the age of 80, you would have been laughed at.
- In 1950, if you had told someone that you could replace a human heart, or liver, with another donated human heart or liver, you would have been mocked and ridiculed (just like how some of you are mocking and ridiculing this article.)
- Technology expands on an exponential curve, not a straight one. Technological advances come faster, and more frequent with each passing moment.
Sometime in the future (its impossible to know for sure), humanity will create the technology to stop people from dying. Its inevitable. I hope I am around for it.
Some of you claim it would be boring. Some of you think 80 years is enough for you. It damn well isnt enough for me! We live in a wondrous universe. I want to experience and learn everything I can before I check-out.
So, you religious nuts who keep quoting scripture, as if you are making some kind of profound point...get over it. Humanity keeps expanding its life-expectancy, and this expansion will only increase faster and faster.
Let me put it this way...if you lived 1,000 years instead of 80, then imagine all of the things you could do to help God's creatures within those 1,000 years. Anyone who is truly focused on carrying out God's will should try to live longer. It gives them more time to help everyone else. This world would be a wonderful place if the saints of this world (like Mother Theresa for example) could live 1,000 years.
[Technology expands on an exponential curve, not a straight one. Technological advances come faster, and more frequent with each passing moment...Humanity keeps expanding its life-expectancy, and this expansion will only increase faster and faster.]
This is unlikely to be accurate because periods of exponential growth in many types of living systems (such as what we're talking about) typically reach a point where the rate of increase levels off or even begins to decline. To expect the rate of increase for technology (or life spans that depend on it) to continue to increase exponentially forever does not seem justifiable.
Yeah especially when you consider what that'll do for social security costs! ; )
CC
There would be serious stagnation problems in the progress of science. Those who have tenure based on whatever theory was current at the time of their matriculation would stay in position and never yield to the young ones. There wouldn't be all that many young ones anyway. The old theories would never be overthrown, which, if it happened 300 years ago would have given us the theory of phlogiston forever.
Everyone will live forever, spiritually. For some it will an intense joy, for others it will be sheer agony.
Bookmark for further investigation....
Childhood's End was probably Clarke's best IMHO, but also his darkest. My problem was the "enlightened" kids seemed almost satanic in the end, caring nothing for those lesser humans and instead just doing pontless tinkering of the stars. Didn't enjoy his rips on religion either. I have more respect for a human fool than those "higher consciousness" children.
I don't mind dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens. (Woody Allen)
As for those evolved kids, how much respect do we show for the "lower" forms of life from which we supposedly evolved? Clarke views the present human form as inadequate and ultimately expendable.
I'm a huge Arthur C. Clarke fan, and yet, is his rejection of the human condition based in part on his homosexuality? Not a difficult leap to make.
At the age of twenty-four, Jesus Christ miraculously delivered me from drug and alcohol addiction after three rehabilitation centers failed to do so. I know Jesus Christ personally, speak with Him on a regular basis, and am very well of aware of who saved me both physically and spiritually. That was twenty-six years ago, what I believe has withstood the test of time, and millions of others can testify to the same. Yes indeed, "Whom the Son sets free, is free indeed."
No church, organizaton, association, or doctrine can perform such marvelous works. As the Apostle Paul so aptly stated, "I know in Whom I have believed, and am fully persuaded that He is able to keep that which has been committed to Him."
Proponents of evolution make similar claims concerning transitions among species and populations. That is, evolution just as technological progress is an uneven thing.
Are they right? I do not know, but the parallels are interesting between the 2 areas.
We are about the same age it seems.
I have never been ordained nor practiced as a minister or a pastor.
On the other hand, I read a lot and I do not consider myself to be an authority before any man. I just like to chat and stuff.
Here is a favorite verse of mine, among many.
Exodus 4:10
Imagine the potty runs at 1000.
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