Here are some changes that progress is bringing to our lives you can believe in!
As sure as Apple et al are changing the way we live our lives, technologically speaking, genetic engineering will be changing the way our religious beliefs fit into our lives. Although Western-style religions have been able to successfully resist changing their basic premise over the millennia, church elders have been forced to make concessions to accommodate scientific advances since the days of Copernicus and Galileo.
Taken together recent advances in physics, biology, chemistry, nanotechnology, and medicine all have made the possibility of creating life a reality. Does that fact, in and of itself, mean we have reached the final stage of our evolution?
When we begin to clone ourselves, or at least to clone replacement parts, a procedure which will become a reality in the next 20 years or less, we can all stay at the peak of health indefinitely, at least theoretically. (Subject to cash on hand, of course.)
So where does this leave our religion? Religion has always served the purpose of answering the question; what happens to sentient beings after the body dies? My question is, "what happens to religion if the body never dies".
What if, as proposed 10 years ago, a lifespan is just a plumbing problem on a nano sized scale? If we solve the problem of the ever shrinking telomeres at the end of our genes, insuring cell reproduction can continue without degradation, can't we live forever? If we eventually correct that one minor flaw in our genetic make-up, and we can extend our lifespan to at least biblical proportions if not galactic spanning lifetimes, are we gods?
The advance of science will not be stopped so the probability of man's living a lifespan of hundreds of years, dying only when tired of living, will become a reality eventually. Are our Western religions like Christianity and Islam prepared to deal with that eventuality? Seems those religions are based more on dying than on living.
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