Do you want to live forever with a healthy mind and body? Most people would say that they would on the condition that their "quality of life" was OK. We almost universally want to live rather than die.
I went to hear a talk this week given by Ray Kurzweil. One of the topics he covered was Living Forever. His assertion is that withing a fairly short period of time (under 50 years) pervasive nanotechnology will enable us to completely eliminate disease and effectively live forever. Of course, eliminating disease doesn't really mean we'll live forever. Accidents and suicide are still threats. I did more investigating and spreadsheeting than I should have, and estimate that eliminating all disease would increase the expected lifespan for a someone living in the US from 78 years to about 1300 years (Based on data from NSC and NCHS).
The question is this, "Is it a sin to prolong our lives by artificial means?" Should we try to live here forever? When Christians say we're going to live forever we don't mean here on earth we mean in heaven after our resurrection. We agree intellectually with Paul in Philippians 1:23-24 when he says it's better to die and be with Christ, but we don't actually live that way! That would mean not going to the doctor when we got sick, not bothering to go to the hospital after an accident, etc. Nonsensical for most of us.
The resurrection means that we will live forever, but not here. Our desire to live forever is one of those "God fingerprint" things. God made us to live forever and so we desire to live forever. In that sense, prolonging life is in God's will. Whether we prolong our life here or not is mostly irrelevant, but life is clearly a "good thing."
2 comments:
It's cool that you went to hear Kurzweil! The problem with his predictions is that they don't just depend on technological advances. They depend on a theory of mind that is still speculative at best. If you can keep a brain alive indefinitely, is that the same thing as saying that a person's mind stays intact and functioning? What happens to memory and personality when the human lifespan has been far extended? His ultimate answer is to transfer your consciousness into a machine. Such a proposal presumes a lot. Materialism, for one thing, i.e., that the physical world is all that exists. Even if you grant him that, which of course no Christian would, we can hardly talk about "transferring consciousness" when we don't really understand what consciousness is yet. This is not science, it is Star Trek.
Well, enough about the geek stuff. Regarding Philippians 1:23-24, I think one aspect of stewardship is to guard our health so we can continue to serve God here on earth as long as he wants us to. Paul's point wasn't that he was tempted to walk in front of a bus so he could be with Jesus, but that his purpose for being here is to advance the Kingdom of God. Living according to Phil 1:23-24 doesn't mean not bothering to go to the hospital if you're sick, it means realizing that every moment God gives us in this life is a gift we should give back to him for his glory.
We know little about the mechanism of the soul. For example, how does God "attach" a soul to a physical body? And why? We are a bit more certain (some of us) on when the attachment occurs, but the rest is a mystery.
We can react to this mystery by assuming that because we don't know how God connects soul to mind, that it's not possible for us to manipulate the physical instantiation of a mind. We can also assume that God does this for his own reasons and using his own methods and is not concerned with the "form" of the mind.
For example, if we were able to clone a human being would God attach a soul to the clone? What about growing a baby from a fertilized egg outside the body, or using a surrogate mother, or in vitro fertilization? In all these cases I think yes. We have been making new human beings for a long time. These are simply differences in mechanics.
Conceptually, it's only a small step from "wetware" to silicon as the carrier of intelligence. I'm not arguing that we can create a soul. Perhaps intelligence is what being created in God's image means.
We exist only to serve God. Therefore, we are obliged to remain here to serve him in this place by what ever means we can manage. When God is finished with us, he will take us to heaven and there won't be any way for us to interfere. We are not free to choose how long we live and are obligated to use every method we know to preserve life. This creates difficult choices, but not many in the specific arena this post is addressing.
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