Tags
After-Life, Cryogenization, Hell, Immortality, Judgement Day, Overpopulation, Prolongation of Life
In Christian tradition and hagiography, the day a saint dies is considered his/her birthday. In this view, earthly life is, literally, no more than a trial-run before the Real Thing. God gave each of us an immortal soul at our first birth, and an appointed number of years to prove, before our death, that we are worthy of pie in the sky when we die. Whether we led a righteous life or not and ended up as sheep or goats, we will live forever. Up there in Heaven, or down there in Hell. In a world without end. Eternal reward or eternal punishment. Perpetual celestial feasting, including all-you-can-eat caviar (or prawns on the barbie for Australians) and T-bone steaks done the way we like them. Or we ourselves on the barbecue, well-done being the Devil’s preference.
As I celebrate this month my 77th birthday, I am conscious of the little time I have left before my supposed Real Birthday, the day I die. Give or take five, within fifteen years my earthly life will be all over. The prelude will have been played, the Overture will be over, and it’s “When the Saints Come Marching In” or “Dies Irae, dies illa”. Heaven or Hell. Jesus, by the way, was far more explicit about Hell than about Heaven. In Matthew’s Gospel (“GOOD News” ?), He warns us ominously : “The angels will hurl them (people like me) into the fiery furnace where they will wail and grind their teeth” (13:42), repeated word for word, in case you missed it, a few verses later (13:49-50). Scandalizing children (He could have added clerical pedophilia) will be punished by drowning à la Al Capone with a millstone around the neck, a variation on the Capo di Tutti Capi’s feet in concrete (18:6). To top it off, we have the prospect of an eternal home in “fiery Gehenna”, a putrid, flaming garbage dump outside Jerusalem (18:9) after the black-capped Judge’s sentence : “Out of my sight, you condemned, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (25:41). All in all, Jesus was a nasty, vindictive despot whom fans of the Beatitudes and of the Good Shepherd tend to turn into a softie (or the Sacred Heart with those gentle eyes and the nifty logo on His chest). Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ? Or Dr Jerry and Mr Love ?
Putting such nonsense aside, some people don’t specially want their earthly life to end. They would like not only to live a long time but, if they could, forever – here on earth. They would prefer to skip that “birthday” that is either the beginning of an after-life, for better or for worse, or the definitive end of existence. They would prefer not to die but they know they must. They are hoping – some are even confident and put their money where their fantasy is – that they can beat death by being resuscitated after being in the deep-freeze for as long as it takes, until science discovers a way to bring them back to life. They have purchased Prolonged Life Insurance from companies that offer either cryogenization, the conservation “sine die” of their corpse or at least their brain, or the conservation of skin-cells that could one day, before they die, be transformed into spare-parts to replace worn-out, defective organs, so that they can have, literally, a new lease on life (subject of a recent posting). Neither process is cheap : $200,000 for cryogenization of corpses performed by the Foundation Alcor, or $85,000 for the spare-parts solution offered by a biotechnology company called Cellectis.
Even if I could afford it, I wouldn’t bother trying to prolong my earthly existence. One of the spokemen for Cellectis has recently gone on record as saying : “I am certain that the first person to live 1000 years has already been born.” We’re talking tomorrow, folks ! Even if biotechnology succeeds in restoring or extending life, I will be quite happy to have had my four score and ten, give or take half a decade, and then pack it in. I find overpopulation is already a problem. It will soon be time for me to leave a little room for others and stop being a burden on Social Security. I leave to the wealthy self-centered eccentrics the pipe-dream of a longer life on earth, and to credulous non-atheists the illusion of an after-life. Meantime I’ll just continue to carpe the diem and enjoy life for as long as it lasts, or for as long as I decide to let it last … My good non-atheist friends, you can keep the faith, and immortality; I don’t need either.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
A Mencken quote that, for some reason, didn’t make it into Frank’s “Make Mine Mencken” blog of several weeks ago…
“In every unbeliever’s heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may
awake after death and find himself immortal.”
LikeLike
Ben trovato, Marty ! Wouldn’t it be great if atheists who accuse non-atheists of believing in pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die, ended up with eternal egg on their face ! It may sound pretentious, but I must be an exception : I feel no uneasiness whatever about finding myself immortal. Matter of fact, I don’t think H.L. did either. He was not expressing genuine doubt, but sending himself up with quasi-British self-derision. He was a master of tongue-in-cheek, or as we say in French, “getting pinched without laughing”, turning the other cheek, as it were.
It’s hard to take Master Mencken at fesse (look it up in your French dictionary) value, when you read another quotation I have been keeping up my sleeve for a second string of pearls :
“There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly. If you doubt it, then ask any pious fellow of your acquaintance to put what he believes into the form of an affidavit, and see how it reads … ‘I, John Doe, being duly sworn, do say that I believe that at death, I shall turn into a vertebrate without substance, having neither weight, extent nor mass, but with all the intellectual powers and bodily sensations of an ordinary mammal; …and that, for the high crime and misdemeanor of having kissed my sister-in-law behind the door, with evil intent, I shall be boiled in molten sulphur for one billion calendar years’.”
LikeLike
Frank,
The day will come when one of us will be surprised.
Marty
LikeLike
If you were dead, the biggest surprise would be to discover you had a brain capable of generating surprise.
LikeLike
Like Frank (or not as the case may be) I have no expectation of meeting him in some after-death life. I often say to friends, whose ideas of Heaven are very conventional, that if Heaven consists of fat-arsed cherubs sitting around on powder-pink clouds playing dirgy hymns on mother-of-pearl harps then i am very happy not to end up or down there.
One of the consolations claimed by believers for Heaven is that they will be reunited there with their loved ones including parents. Darwin should by now have convinced us that our ancestors all those millions of years ago were not quite sapiens homos uniquely infused with immortal souls unlike the other beasts not so endowed.
The logic of this truth is that somewhere along this route 666 some poor sod had a parent (or possibly but not necessarily two) who lacked the necessary qualification (a human soul) for ultimate entry into the Heavenly estate. Discrimination I say. Not cricket – or tennis for that matter.
But perhaps he/she may not wish to be reunited with this uncouth rellie anyway.
Time will tell.
LikeLike