It is "bleeding obvious," [Aubrey de Grey] adds, "that it is possible to
extend the human life span indefinitely. "Most people take the view that aging
is this natural thing that is going on independently of disease. That's
nonsense. The fact is that age-related diseases are age-related diseases because
they're the later stages of aging."
This de Grey fellow cannot be serious. I would really like to challenge this guy to a bet. Last I checked, humans have a 100% mortality rate and billions of people to prove it. The odds are on my side, and Ben Franklin agrees (ie death and taxes are guarantees after all).
But de Grey (and others) wishlist is really a product of our image-obsessed culture. We want to be young forever. We want to wear hip clothes forever. We want to be vigorous forever. Some spend hundreds of dollars on gym memberships and use them while many spend hundreds of dollars and don't use them. We watch television, are obsessed with youtube, and cannot keep moving images away from our face. We only elect people that are good on tv. We are obsessed with image.
We aren't obsessed with old truths like these:
1) All humans were made by a Creator and weren't supposed to die.
2) But humans screwed up and so now everyone is subject to death.
3) But God entered into human existence to remedy this problem by dying in humanity's place.
4) And God came back to life, conquering death.
5) Now God extends that same possibility for all: resurrected life, both physical and spiritual.
We should be obsessed with that instead.
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3 comments:
"But de Grey (and others) wishlist is really a product of our image-obsessed culture."
Not at all. It's a simple response to the realization that disease is bad, suffering is bad, frailty and losing mental capacity is bad, so if we can cure that, we should.
If you don't want to live longer, you can always refuse anti-aging therapies, but I know that many others would like to have the choice, including me.
You must not have read the quote. de Grey suggests that ridding the world of disease would equate with the realistic possibilty of living indeterminately. That is ludicrous. Of course we should eradicate disease, and do so in a manner that preserves and respects all human life.
But surely you're not under the utopian dilusion that humanity will ever eradicate all disease? New diseases are always popping up even after we eliminate the world of small pox, for example. I'm not a fatalist, but I do think it's important not to give a false hope. Modernism is that false hope.
I allow anonymous comments so that anyone can post who wants to, but anonymous comments also lack a courageous character. So who are you?
We were made in the image of God - any other image we consume our time with becomes a distraction form caring about the only thing created in the image of God...humanity. In our image driven society we have lost the heart of the first two commands of the Decalogue (no other gods before YHWH and making no graven images which cause us to worship the work of our hands). We are distracted from caring for our neighbor; every neighbor - both down the street and around the world. While we admire the work of our own hands, people suffer; those left behind by our distracted image driven culture.
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