If science someday brings Eternal Life/Resurrection, what about Christianity?
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  If science someday brings Eternal Life/Resurrection, what about Christianity?
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Author Topic: If science someday brings Eternal Life/Resurrection, what about Christianity?  (Read 958 times)
Blue3
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« on: September 08, 2017, 11:45:35 PM »
« edited: September 19, 2017, 10:21:01 PM by Blue3 »

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and many other religions are based around promising Eternal Life or deliverance from suffering.

What if science one day leads to Eternal Life? How does a religion (like Christianity) adapt to that change? I could see them then focus on the promised Resurrection... let's say science delivers that then too (perhaps all physical/personality information at the moment of death is stored at the quantum level in the very fabric of spacetime itself if you know where to look, or something).

Everyone is resurrected. Everyone has eternal life. We even find a way to not only prevent the death of the Sun, but even prevent the death of the universe. How does a religion like Christianity (or Islam, or Judaism, etc.) react and adapt to survive and thrive? Or would Christians just say "mission accomplished, looks like the Second Coming came in a way we didn't expect, let's go back and reinterpret those old prophecies to see how we got them wrong, focus on loving each other for its own sake, and call it a religion"?

Religions like Buddhism could have a similar problem. The Buddha founded his philosophy/religion after observing the inevitability of suffering... observing the poor, the sick, the dying, and the dead. What happens if science is able to eliminate most of the forms of suffering, and the only suffering that is left is minimal, such as being worried about making a new friend or feeling uncomfortable with public speaking? What happens when people are genuinely happy with their present life and don't want it to change or end? How does Buddhism react and adapt to those changes, to survive and thrive?




Also, which NEW religions/philosophies might arise or experience a rebirth? People often need some kind of Higher Purpose in life, and without one even a post-scarcity/mortality world would likely be dreary:

I can brainstorm the following:
1. a renaissance of Hedonism (chasing happiness and pleasure)
2. a renaissance of Stoicism (training yourself to be happy or at least at peace under every circumstance)
3. creating more of and improve the Arts being an essential purpose
4. Self-Sufficiency and Self-Knowledge (to be educated/skilled and investigate for yourself, and integrate your subconscious) being an essential purpose
5. Renunciation of possessions/property, sex, alcohol, clothes, etc. (Don’t do those things and do these things, for better life now or simply because it’s “proper”)
6. the practice of trying to constantly be "in the Flow," completely absorbed in your actions
7. Devotion to and reverence of the Universe/Nature, and our social relations
8. The old, well-known “the final judgment is still to come, fear hell, obey our code” (Don’t do those things and do these things, for new world to come)
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Blue3
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« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2017, 11:25:28 PM »

Thoughts on what the consequences of this would be?
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catographer
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« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2017, 06:53:10 PM »

This question is a specific way of asking "what happens when science explains everything religion claims to know?" Nobody knows the answer :/
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The Mikado
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« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2017, 08:25:39 PM »

Religions like Buddhism could have a similar problem. The Buddha founded his philosophy/religion after observing the inevitability of suffering... observing the poor, the sick, the dying, and the dead. What happens if science is able to eliminate most of the forms of suffering, and the only suffering that is left is minimal, such as being worried about making a new friend or feeling uncomfortable with public speaking? What happens when people are genuinely happy with their present life and don't want it to change or end? How does Buddhism react and adapt to those changes, to survive and thrive?






Buddha would find that observation laughable. Someone with material wealth, health, family, security,and happiness just has more anchors keeping him from Nirvana, to a Buddhist. Those things are the root of the suffering, not the alleviation of it.
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Blue3
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« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2017, 09:17:37 PM »

What if they aren't in suffering anymore?
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Small L
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« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2017, 09:45:57 PM »

I guess religion as we know it would be over. That said, we have a better chance of all converting to scientology.

I fail to see how this "Eternal Life" could ever be genuinely eternal if it doesn't involve some kind of transcendent state of being. It seems to me that the universe will either end at some point or go on forever. If the universe has no end (or we somehow prevent it, LOL), I don't think it's possible to guarantee that one's timey-wimey quantum space existence will be preserved for eternity.
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tmcusa2
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« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2017, 09:16:32 AM »

What if they aren't in suffering anymore?

This is an excellent topic, and I thank you for it, but there are at least two remaining problems:
those who have already died and would we ever know that science has brought about eternal life? You can't know that you will live forever until you have lived forever... a paradox perhaps.
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Blue3
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« Reply #7 on: December 28, 2017, 07:55:12 PM »
« Edited: December 28, 2017, 07:57:19 PM by Blue3 »

What if they aren't in suffering anymore?

This is an excellent topic, and I thank you for it, but there are at least two remaining problems:
those who have already died and would we ever know that science has brought about eternal life? You can't know that you will live forever until you have lived forever... a paradox perhaps.
For the first, it's why I included Resurrection. For the second, I guess you could never truly know, but if people are going on for trillions of years without dying or adverse effects that would be a pretty good indicator Tongue
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #8 on: December 29, 2017, 09:00:14 AM »

We can extend life indefinately and the survival instinct is in all of us, but is it really possible to live forever? Will the universe itself go on forever?
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Enduro
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« Reply #9 on: December 29, 2017, 09:11:30 PM »

Science may some day be able to get the body to run indefinitely, but that doesn't mean that system of cells has a soul, or even is human.
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TexArkana
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« Reply #10 on: December 29, 2017, 09:13:43 PM »

Science may some day be able to get the body to run indefinitely, but that doesn't mean that system of cells has a soul, or even is human.
Fair point, although I don't believe people have souls.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #11 on: December 31, 2017, 08:28:10 AM »

Eternal life in a corrupted world would produce more suffering, not less.
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