If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Mister Agenda]

No, if you could eliminate the solvable problem of old-age related breakdown, yes, people wouldn't "tire" of living. They might still want to end their lives, but it would be for other reasons than so-called "tiredness". Do you hear many young healthy folks saying they're done with life, they've lived enough and it's time for them to go now? Why is it that you don't, do you think? Take whatever reason you might come up with to explain that and ask yourself if you think it's unlikely or even impossible that we won't overcome it in the future.

You don't, but neither do you know that you will. If we are to allow for the simple fact that we just don't know what the future might bring or what that particular situation might look like, yet, then both positions expressed here so far are just as invalid. Namely, we don't know either way. We can make assumptions, though. That's what I've been doing, same as all the rest of you who disagree with me at the moment.

I'm not trying to argue with you, EP.  I am actually seriously considering your assumption.  Did I not make that obvious?  I think it's very likely that if we could "solve" the problem of old age and disease a great many more people would be happy to live on forever.  I would put myself in that category in fact.  The idea of ceasing to exist someday horrifies and terrorizes me on a regular basis.  But, I'm not operating on any assumptions, to be clear.  All I'm saying is that generalizations about feelings and motives like, 'no one ever feels' or 'no one ever wants', are meaningless unless you have some amazing ability to live the entire life of every human who has ever, or will ever be born.  

I admit that my feelings about 'being dead' have changed considerably since I was deeply sedated on an operating table for nine hours. It seemed like no time at all had passed, I closed my eyes and opened them somewhere else. There was nothing in between. I was truly unconscious. I knew in an intellectual way that death is nothingness, like a light going out; but 'experiencing' nothingness robbed me of all fear of it. I've got things I want to do first, and I wouldn't want to die painfully (or expensively), but my caring about anything stops the instant I do. The only thing I can leave behind are my footprints, and when the universe is an ever-expanding realm of photons flying ever farther apart, there won't be a detectable trace that I ever existed. But I did, and it meant something while it lasted.