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April 5, 2015

For What Shall It Profit A Man....

DNA - Double Helix Contains The Death Code

In the beginning Man was not meant to die. But his eternal life was predicated on the condition that he would live in a perfect, sinless world in harmony with his Creator. That has not been the case for eons.

Most men fear death because, no  matter what they profess, they fear the unknown or subconsciously fear Judgement. People of means have long sought to defeat death, whether through the vaunted Fountain of Youth, emulsions, ointments, spells or vitamins.

But now as the secrets of DNA are unraveled, it becomes possible that someday people will live long past the three score and ten average life span of today.

But is it a good idea?

Some obviously think so...
Seated at the head of a table for 12 with a view of the city’s soaring skyline, Peter Thiel was deep in conversation with his guests, eclectic scientists whose research was considered radical, even heretical.

It was 2004 and Thiel had recently made a tidy fortune selling PayPal, which he co-founded, to eBay. He had spent what he wanted on himself — a posh penthouse suite at the Four Seasons Hotel and a silver Ferrari — and was now soliciting ideas to do good with his money.


The Human Upgrade:
Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.

[...]The entrepreneurs are driven by a certitude that rebuilding, regenerating and reprogramming patients’ organs, limbs, cells and DNA will enable people to live longer and better. The work they are funding includes hunting for the secrets of living organisms with insanely long lives, engineering microscopic nanobots that can fix your body from the inside out, figuring out how to reprogram the DNA you were born with, and exploring ways to digitize your brain based on the theory that your mind could live long after your body expires.

“I believe that evolution is a true account of nature,” as Thiel put it. “But I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society.”
But ours is not a sinless world. What happens to the value of human life? Just because people may live longer does not mean that people will live better. I shudder to think of some people I know extending their foolishness for twenty, thirty, forty generations. Especially when a 60 year prison sentence for murder is less than a tenth of your anticipated life time?

A life sentence today may last for sixty, seventy years at most. But what happens when a life sentence means a span of 600 or 700 years. What is the cost and who bears it?  We already have welfare families that have not worked in generations, what kind of world would we invite upon ourselves to support such unnecessary largesse?

No society can afford such a radically prolonged life span for so many. But for a privileged few ... there's a possibility. There is but one answer, an elitist dictatorship - which is probably the direction we are headed in regardless of longevity. And they will control the government agencies that decide who receives this blessing of long life. Perhaps they'll call it ObamaLongTermCare and there will most certainly be death panels.

There is a condition to this. As long as your quality of life is good, your health is acceptable, yes, drink to long life. Even if life isn't so good, a so-so life is still better than no life. But when life is an awful, wretched, painful, sorrow-filled experience; when life itself becomes a hateful condition and death is your only release, what if you can't die?

Revelations 9:6 declares that "In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them." This is the Tribulation, when men will long to die but cannot. I cannot imagine a more ironic fate from the hands of a Holy God than to deny death to those who would give anything to live. As stated in Mark 8:36, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

H/T Drudge Report

7 comments:

Kid said...

Earthly pleasures are the tip of the iceberg. I want to see the rest of the iceberg someday.

sig94 said...

Kid - Paul saw a little, tiny piece of it. It is far beyond our imaginings, no?

LL said...

A well-lived life brings a satisfaction that can only be appreciated later. As a lion in winter, myself, I can see that. The less sand that is in the hourglass, the more clearly you see though it. Therefore, it is not the length that matters, but how you live it and the kindness you can do to others that really has value.

Doom said...

Oh, it would not surprise me if such mechanism, of one sort or another or several, already exists. Even if such a tech were to be fully developed, along these lines, it would become a thing only for the ultra wealthy and powerful. Or the world's population would eat itself... by living beyond childbearing years, while eating the world from under the young. Or even forgetting about children, or as is already often the case in "singles" areas, persecuting families.

Been dead, believe I saw the gates... from the wrong side but with hope even there. Yeah, I want back in that game, according to God's will this time though. I cried for days after they resuscitated me. Didn't like the doctors all that much, either. Still, it is what it is, but I won't do a 600 year, or thousand, or more, year stint on this rock. I won't let them bust up my all day and night gig. I've got a back-door parole from this joint.

Kid said...

Sig, that's what I believe - No conception. Earthly delights will be like the fascinations of an ant looking at tree bark, If that.

Fredd said...

Mortality is God's will, and nothing to be trifled with by zillionaires with nothing better to do with their fortunes.

I can't imagine living to be 500 years old, and doing so as a brain soaking in a pickle jar filled with never-die juice.

Doom said...

Oh, but on the good side? If I wish you an immortal, or exceedingly long life? I am wishing you grave harm. It is the worst thing I know to wish at a man. If they get their wish, especially if there is no way to change it? They will wish, and pray to God, that they hadn't. Oh... they will find God. Though, too, they will find that while they know Christ, Christ will not know them.

A deal with the devil is not a good deal, especially if you get exactly what you wish.