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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 8:15 am
Irascato, I liked your story. Maybe it could be a revenge story. Imagine one of the scientists who approved you for the experiment had a grudge against you and guessed that never ending life would be torture. In the end, you would know that they got their revenge.
Eternal life sounds horrible.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 9:34 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2015 at 9:41 am by paulpablo.)
(June 20, 2015 at 12:01 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: If you could take a pill that would cause you to stop aging and render you immortal until the end of the world (whatever this means to you), would you take it?
Please explain your answer.
Yes I'd definitely take it. I don't like the thought of aging, mental and physical deterioration. I enjoy living. And this is only until the end of the world, which to me means the point when the earth stops supporting life I'm guessing. I wouldn't want to live on a molten ball of rock with no one else around waiting for it to explode for a few millennia.
I could learn new languages and new skills beyond normal human comprehension, I can't see a downside to it. This is as long as I can definitely die when everyone else dies around me and it's the end of the world in that sense.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 12:04 pm
Definitely. I don't want to die unless it's my own choice.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 12:30 pm
(June 20, 2015 at 12:01 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: If you could take a pill that would cause you to stop aging and render you immortal until the end of the world (whatever this means to you), would you take it?
Please explain your answer.
Your question is contradictory. "Immortal" means living forever. Not just living until the end of the world.
Assuming that the earth is not destroyed by a meteor or some other such thing, all life on earth will end within about 2.8 billion years, due to the sun:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...e-science/
See also:
http://www.universetoday.com/18847/life-of-the-sun/
So someone who does not want to be actually immortal might take you up on the offer, depending on more details that you have not specified (not aging does not mean that one cannot lose a limb, for example, nor does it mean that one cannot be captured, anesthetized long enough for the concrete to dry and be put into wet concrete and stuck that way for the duration).
However, from looking at the above articles and thinking about the gradual heating of the earth, it would not be a fun thing to experience, so one may still decide to reject the offer, even if otherwise it were acceptable.
Also, the immediate thought from the title was that this seems a ploy to pretend that atheists are just people who do not want the reward of heaven, and so they reject Christianity. The thing is, when I was a Christian as a child, I did not want to die (or, at least, I did not think about it deeply enough to want to die). It was only after becoming an atheist that I thought much about what it means to not have an afterlife, and how that really compares with the idea of living forever. As things are, I very much agree with Epicurus on death:
Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.
http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html
Was the year 1800 bad for you? That is what the year 2200 will be like for you. Death is not a bad thing at all. Bad things only happen to the living.
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— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 12:34 pm
No. One can only jerk off and watch re-runs for so long.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 12:52 pm
(June 20, 2015 at 12:17 am)Jenny A Wrote: It would depend on what immortality really meant. That is to say I'm aging and slowing down both mentally and physically. If this went on indefinitely, an eternity of it would be hell. Wait, take that back, an eternity of just about anything might be really, really bad. Can I live eternally until I don't want to anymore? That would be perfect.
But if I must choose a natural death or an uncertain but unendable eternity, I'd choose a natural death.
That ^
“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.” - George Carlin
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 4:03 pm
(June 20, 2015 at 12:01 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: If you could take a pill that would cause you to stop aging and render you immortal until the end of the world (whatever this means to you), would you take it?
Please explain your answer.
Sure as heck i don't want to die.. but given the choice i would given that people i love would die around me i would want to hang around and just see what
we can achieve in the end before its too late. Just observing and stuff in general.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 4:25 pm
(June 20, 2015 at 8:15 am)Nope Wrote: Eternal life sounds horrible.
Every time I seriously think about the idea of eternal life, the character Paul Edgecomb from "The Green Mile" (played by Tom Hanks) comes to mind. The look of utter desperation on his face as he's leaving (what is implied to be) the funeral for yet another dear friend gives me the willies every time I watch that movie.
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 4:53 pm
(June 20, 2015 at 4:25 pm)SnakeOilWarrior Wrote: (June 20, 2015 at 8:15 am)Nope Wrote: Eternal life sounds horrible.
Every time I seriously think about the idea of eternal life, the character Paul Edgecomb from "The Green Mile" (played by Tom Hanks) comes to mind. The look of utter desperation on his face as he's leaving (what is implied to be) the funeral for yet another dear friend gives me the willies every time I watch that movie.
FANTASTIC movie, btw.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
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RE: If you could be immortal... (poll)
June 20, 2015 at 7:06 pm
Quote:Death is not a bad thing at all. Bad things only happen to the living.
Then death, by definition, is a bad thing, since death is something that only happens to the living.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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