Would Immortality Be A Sin?

[Starwynd]

If humanity were to actually achieve true immortality, through whatever kind of technological miracle, that is to stop our aging, would the Church consider it a sin, even if immortality restored health youth and vitality?

 

[CapaxDei]

It smacks of hubris, to put it mildly. And it’s impossible anyway. On the last day, the only human bodies we will see will be resurrected ones – either to eternal life, or eternal death.

 

[Contarini]

If humanity were to actually achieve true immortality, through whatever kind of technological miracle, that is to stop our aging, would the Church consider it a sin, even if immortality restored health youth and vitality?

I’ve thought about this question from time to time. It seems to me that it would not be a sin to discover a way to stop aging. I am skeptical that this would happen, but if it did there would be nothing intrinsically wrong with taking advantage of it, in my opinion.

However, in the unlikely case that such a “cure” for aging was found, there would be a lot of hard questions. Would this treatment be available to everyone? If it was only available to some, should Christians try to be among the favored few? What about overpopulation? What would be the implications for questions of contraception and abortion?

Furthermore, one can legitimately question whether Christians ought to be part of the push to find such a cure. Should a Christian scientist work on such a cure? Should Christian politicians vote for funding for such research? What if finding a cure for aging involved using means that were morally questionable (the destruction of human embryos, for instance)?
What is clear is that for Christians immortality in this body and this present life is not the goal. Our goal is to share Christ’s Resurrection. If a morally legitimate way were found to live for hundreds or thousands of years, I see no reason why one should turn this down, any more than one would turn down treatment to prolong one’s life to seventy or eighty or a hundred years. (For instance, I am on medication to prevent my blood from clotting–I have a biochemical deficiency which leads my blood to clot and would probably have killed me more than eight years ago if not for modern medicine. I’m very grateful for these past eight years of life and any further years that God may grant me using modern medicine and other created means. If God chose to give me a thousand years of life, that would be great–I’d get to read more books, for one thing!) But we would have to bear in mind that such an extended life span is not our right, is not a high priority, and is not in fact immortality. (We would still be subject to death, just not to an inevitable death at somewhere around 75-100, give or take a few years, as we are at present.)

Edwin

 

[po18guy]

If humanity were to actually achieve true immortality, through whatever kind of technological miracle, that is to stop our aging, would the Church consider it a sin, even if immortality restored health youth and vitality?

It would violate the first Commandment, in that it would deny the will of the Lord, Who alone is both the giver and taker of all life.

Christ’s peace.

 

[arvinsim]

I don’t know if it is a sin or not…but there are great implications of this.

for one thing, if immortality is achieved, sooner or later the planet would be crowded because of the imbalance immortality creates in the death-birth equation…

as a catholic though, I’ll just wait for the resurrection

 

[Reynardus]

I don’t think it’s a sin unless the means for immortality is gained by taking something from someone else.

Has anyone watched an old sci-fi movie called “Zardos” starring Sean Connery? In that movie, there were a group of people, the rulers who attained just that…immortality. However, after existing for hundreds of years, they found their life so empty and so unbearable, they were begging to die.

Immortality if it somehow happens, might actually bring people to Christ…with a little time.

 

[adstrinity]

If humanity were to actually achieve true immortality, through whatever kind of technological miracle, that is to stop our aging, would the Church consider it a sin, even if immortality restored health youth and vitality?

What is, “true immortality”?

 

[Contarini]

It would violate the first Commandment, in that it would deny the will of the Lord, Who alone is both the giver and taker of all life.

Christ’s peace.

I don’t see this. If God providentially allowed people to discover a means to prevent aging, then that might be a sign of His will. By your logic one could argue that any medical cure is a violation of the First Commandment.

All our efforts to preserve and extend life stand under divine Providence. They are all fallible and fragile, and that would not change even if a “cure for aging” were discovered. There would still be disasters and probably still diseases.

Edwin

 

[CentralFLJames]

If humanity were to actually achieve true immortality, through whatever kind of technological miracle, that is to stop our aging, would the Church consider it a sin, even if immortality restored health youth and vitality?

Yes it would be a sin - a grave sin. The body is simply not designed to support life for more than about 65-110 years. Death is natural and nature’s way of making room for the new and preventing Creation from getting stuck in the rut of status quo and never advancing to higher achievement. Attaining immortality would imply that man has interfered with the natural God given order and is again “seeking equality with God as something to be grasped at”. It would be like directly challenging God’s Plan again.

But we don’t have to worry about this hypothetical question anyway. If God would not permit the tower of babel to be built He certainly will not permit humanity to build on the foundation of his sinful and tilting self to reach to the heavens. It would all come crashing down by Nature if man tried. That is Nature itself would rebel and not be willing to to suffer an immortal and sinful humankind.

Another way of looking at this is we are already immortal. The only thing that changes is where we elect to spend the last phase of our development - heaven or hell.

James

 

[Starwynd]

What is, “true immortality”?

To stop physical aging of the body. People can die by any other means, but eseentially you can live forever. You just stop aging.

 

[JimG]

You can’t stop entropy.

 

[CentralFLJames]

You can’t stop entropy.

Another excellent point.

Not to mention that mass population growth and density would so screw up the natural order that life would become “cheap” as everyone competed with limited land mass, limited resources and likely be in perpetual warfare to re-balance the natural birth-death rates to achieve systemic equilibrium. I could imagine too a huge class dichotomy emerging where ancient age would confer status, privilege and rank and lead to all sorts of tiered class hierarchies. The relatively young would be relegated to the lowest tier of society and abortions would become a matter of law and patriotic duty for those exceeding their family quotas.

James

 

[DanteAlighieri]

I don’t know if it is a sin or not…but there are great implications of this.

for one thing, if immortality is achieved, **sooner or later the planet would be crowded **because of the imbalance immortality creates in the death-birth equation…

as a catholic though, I’ll just wait for the resurrection

Not if the pro-aborts get their way.

Anyhow, I don’t see how achieving immortality is inherently immoral. The means to do it could be, but the state itself isn’t.

That said, I can’t imagine it being possible without side effects.

Peace,
Dante

 

[colmywaykurtz]

In addition to all the questions you have posed, Contarini, there are some other questions that were raised by Frank Herbert in his novel The Eyes of Heisenberg. In addition to social divisions caused by who had the life-extending resource and who didn’t, what about the maintenance of such a condition? It most likely would require regular renewal, and the people who had control over that resource would have incredible power over others.

And if the whole world had been granted extended life, then the whole world would be in thrall to those who controlled the life-extension resource.

Either way, people would come to be unable to conceive of doing without it and living normal lifespans, and would do anything to keep getting the LER.

That could become a very bad situation. And if people lost it for some reason, there’d be chaos. Having it withdrawn might have severe physical and mental effects on a megascale.

I’m sure we’re better off without it. But one can be certain people will pursue this like conquistadors after El Dorado. Immortality has always bewitched the human imagination.

I’ve thought about this question from time to time. It seems to me that it would not be a sin to discover a way to stop aging. I am skeptical that this would happen, but if it did there would be nothing intrinsically wrong with taking advantage of it, in my opinion.

However, in the unlikely case that such a “cure” for aging was found, there would be a lot of hard questions. Would this treatment be available to everyone? If it was only available to some, should Christians try to be among the favored few? What about overpopulation? What would be the implications for questions of contraception and abortion?

Furthermore, one can legitimately question whether Christians ought to be part of the push to find such a cure. Should a Christian scientist work on such a cure? Should Christian politicians vote for funding for such research? What if finding a cure for aging involved using means that were morally questionable (the destruction of human embryos, for instance)?
What is clear is that for Christians immortality in this body and this present life is not the goal. Our goal is to share Christ’s Resurrection. If a morally legitimate way were found to live for hundreds or thousands of years, I see no reason why one should turn this down, any more than one would turn down treatment to prolong one’s life to seventy or eighty or a hundred years. (For instance, I am on medication to prevent my blood from clotting–I have a biochemical deficiency which leads my blood to clot and would probably have killed me more than eight years ago if not for modern medicine. I’m very grateful for these past eight years of life and any further years that God may grant me using modern medicine and other created means. If God chose to give me a thousand years of life, that would be great–I’d get to read more books, for one thing!) But we would have to bear in mind that such an extended life span is not our right, is not a high priority, and is not in fact immortality. (We would still be subject to death, just not to an inevitable death at somewhere around 75-100, give or take a few years, as we are at present.)

Edwin

 

[Ridgerunner]

I doubt we are in any great danger of seeing it happen.

But sometimes it’s interesting to think about. I, for one, think it would be intolerable.

Who was the most capable conqueror who ever lived? Alexander the Great, perhaps? Genghis Khan? Imagine living under the perpetual rule, for millions of years, of Genghis Khan. Or perhaps having to put up with eternal war between Alexander and Genghis Khan, if they were evenly matched.

The most capable oppressor? Stalin, maybe. Eternity in the Gulag.

The most capable capitalist? Perhaps J.D Rockefeller. I don’t know. Imagine a world in which the five most capable robber barons managed, over, say a thousand years or so, to own absolutely everything.

And, presumably, those people would get better and better and better at the behavior and talents that allowed them to dominate everything.

I don’t doubt those who say that humans are built, spiritually, to attain union with infinity. But we are thwarted in that on this earth, not only because of our mortality, but because of the very limitations imposed on us by being material creatures. If that is our natural (God-given) inclination and potential, perpetual terrestrial life would be a terrible curse. There have been Catholic thinkers who held that hell is precisely our choice of ourselves; to lock ourselves within ourselves forever. Possibly, if we somehow endowed ourselves with eternal life on earth, we would have achieved hell.

I think I’ll pass.

 

[JimG]

Even if the aging process could be stopped, it would not guarantee immortality. Eventually the Sun will expand into a Red Giant, exterminating all life on earth, no matter how good our anti-aging program might be.

Before that happens, we might try to colonize other planets or other galaxies. Anti-aging processes would be helpful in doing that. But if we could attain near light-speed travel, (and assuming relatively theory is correct about the consequences of that) we would have a built-in anti-aging mechanism. Interstellar travelers who traveled at say 99.9999% of light-speed, would age hardly at all, while planetary history continued at a normal pace. The disadvantage is that the travelers, having started out, could never hope to see their own relatives or even their own civilizations again: by the time they came back, millions of years would have passed.

Even then, entropy rules. Eventually the universe itself will wind down and die.

 

[Deacon_Ed_B]

If humanity were to actually achieve true immortality, through whatever kind of technological miracle, that is to stop our aging, would the Church consider it a sin, even if immortality restored health youth and vitality?

To hypothesize on the impossible is an exercise in futility
Prayers & blessings
Deacon Ed B.

 

[Starwynd]

Never say never.

Science dfoes have a way of doing the impossible. Things that are commonplace and taken for granted now were seen as impossible a hundred years ago.

And secondly, the phrophecy of Revelations does mention, I believe, thaqt many forms of technological mirtacles would be available, aqnd many of them created by the anti-Christ, at least as far as I know.

 

[Greg27]

I think it would be impossible to achieve ‘true’ immortality in the sense we could make ourselves (in our present form) able to exist for all eternity; the laws of physics and developments in the evolution of the universe (such as the death of the sun in 4.5 billion years) will eventually make life for us, in our present form, untenable. Some theologians might argue it is ‘against the will of God’ to use techniques which would stop ageing or get rid of age-related disease. Personally I think such a position is not tenable; who would deny someone suffering from chronic arthritis, osteoperosis, or Alzheirmer’s disease from getting effective treatment, if they were available? If religious leaders did agitate against these on dubious grounds, it would give secularists all the ammunition they needed to demonstrate religion is foolish.

Even so, I think a stronger moral objection can be made when resources and funds are poured into medical treatment to prolong the lives of the wealthy rich, while there are many young poor in the world who are suffering from diseases and conditions that can be remedied, if the resources were available. I don’t think vast sums should be spent researching anti-ageing drugs when the world desperately needs medicines to combat conditions like AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases which cause so much suffering in the developing world. Theologians, on social justice arguments, can make out very good grounds for not expending huge resources on anti-ageing treatments beyond the extent needed for good theraputic reasons.