Conquering Death: Our Sisyphean Feat

First: read/skim through this article in the Washington Post about wealthy people funding research into, essentially, finding a technological solution to death.

Now, here's what I think about it: it's very sad.

A quote from that: "I believe that evolution is a true account of nature. But I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society." This is where the dominant secular mindset is: everything is material, yet the material is unsatisfactory in its transience. They, in a sense, want to reject nihilism. But they have so completely removed the spiritual from their worldview, it doesn't occur to them. Their only solution is to attempt, through material means, to transcend the limits of the material.

I would argue this is impossible, given what we know about the physical. Even if we could physically augment ourselves to stave off physical death, how do we maintain this state? What fuels this preservation, Eventually, I believe you hit a wall. What may last long will not last forever. And yet, the rich pursue this end because they cannot resolve this question, also a quote from the piece: "How can a person be there and then just vanish, not be there?"

Religions in general offer their solution: spiritual life or existence in some form. The concepts of afterlife and spiritual presence vary, but basically, they offer that the physical is not the hard limit to being. This, however, has been rejected by those that call themselves intellects. They have concluded that there is only the material and sensory...

@Thorrison Hence the unending quest to immanentize the eschaton.
— Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) April 6, 2015

As a Christian, I hope these people can be reached by the Gospel, because it offers the only true solution to mortality and the limits of the flesh. Christian faith is in not only spiritual life and regeneration, but in the fulfillment and restoration of the physical. We talk often of "saving souls," but God doesn't just do that. He remakes the body, reclaims the creation. Eternal life is not an ethereal, distant realm of vague ghostly existence. It is, after the Last Day, perfect physical life.

Humans fundamentally seek a life free of pain, free of decay, free of mistakes, and full of maximized happiness in mind and body. This is what God offers freely through Christ's sacrifice and resurrection. The only "catch," from our perspective, is that you don't get it all right now.

Well, that's not the only catch. The other catch is that you have to trust in someone bigger than you. Someone you can't fully understand. Those things are hard for us: patience and trust. So we say, "No, I/the smart people will figure it out." Because of this fallen state of mind, we choose the futile over the free.

This is what makes me sad to see these attempts at conquering the material through material means. There's an answer right there, waiting. Physical perfection is promised, right alongside spiritual perfection. They are, in essence, the same thing, and happen at the same time.

This promise gets discarded as a fairy tale for the small-minded. And yet, the top-ranked humans try to accomplish the very same thing. They throw money at the existential problem of human frailty. Money! Perhaps the only thing more fleeting than our own lives!

Thus, I offer that the human condition is not only the fact that we have to face an end, but also our futile efforts to stop that confrontation. We try to roll that boulder up to the top of the mountain, where release from our pain dangles before our eyes. In the end, we are crushed.

I wish I could show these people the better path and convince them to follow it. But I can't. Only God can.

He's the one offering, after all.