Immortality

[5][6][7] What form an unending human life would take, or whether an immaterial soul exists and possesses immortality, has been a major point of focus of religion,[8] as well as the subject of speculation and debate.

Rather Medvedev thought that known features of the biochemistry and genetics of sexual reproduction indicate the presence of unique information maintenance and restoration processes at the different stages of gametogenesis.

scientists believe that boosting the amount or proportion of telomerase in the body, a naturally forming enzyme that helps maintain the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, could prevent cells from dying and so may ultimately lead to extended, healthier lifespans.

Technological immortality is the prospect for much longer life spans made possible by scientific advances in a variety of fields: nanotechnology, emergency room procedures, genetics, biological engineering, regenerative medicine, microbiology, and others.

An important aspect of current scientific thinking about immortality is that some combination of human cloning, cryonics or nanotechnology will play an essential role in extreme life extension.

[41] Freitas anticipates that gene-therapies and nanotechnology will eventually make the human body effectively self-sustainable and capable of living indefinitely in empty space, short of severe brain trauma.

Raymond Kurzweil, a futurist and transhumanist, stated in his book The Singularity Is Near that he believes that advanced medical nanorobotics could completely remedy the effects of aging by 2030.

[43] Cryonics, the practice of preserving organisms (either intact specimens or only their brains) for possible future revival by storing them at cryogenic temperatures where metabolism and decay are almost completely stopped, can be used to 'pause' for those who believe that life extension technologies will not develop sufficiently within their lifetime.

Ideally, cryonics would allow clinically dead people to be brought back in the future after cures to the patients' diseases have been discovered and aging is reversible.

This process reduces the risk of ice crystals damaging the cell-structure, which would be especially detrimental to cell structures in the brain, as their minute adjustment evokes the individual's mind.

Another possible mechanism for mind upload is to perform a detailed scan of an individual's original, organic brain and simulate the entire structure in a computer.

Whatever the route to mind upload, persons in this state could then be considered essentially immortal, short of loss or traumatic destruction of the machines that maintained them.

[46] Even replacing biological organs with robotic ones could increase life span (e.g. pace makers) and depending on the definition, many technological upgrades to the body, like genetic modifications or the addition of nanobots would qualify an individual as a cyborg.

The viewpoints of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism regarding the concept of immortality diverge as each faith system encapsulates unique theological interpretations and doctrines on the enduring human nature soul or spirit.

Christian theology holds that Adam and Eve lost physical immortality for themselves and all their descendants through the Fall, although this initial "imperishability of the bodily frame of man" was "a preternatural condition".

[citation needed] The perspectives on immortality within Hinduism and Buddhism exhibit nuanced differences, with each spiritual tradition offering distinctive theological interpretations and doctrines concerning the eternal essence of the human soul or consciousness.

[citation needed] There are explicit renderings in the Upanishads alluding to a physically immortal state brought about by purification, and sublimation of the 5 elements that make up the body.

[80]To Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the verse means, "Once a man has become established in the understanding of the permanent reality of life, his mind rises above the influence of pleasure and pain.

Although almost everybody had nothing to look forward to but an eternal existence as a disembodied dead soul, a number of men and women were considered to have gained physical immortality and been brought to live forever in either Elysium, the Islands of the Blessed, heaven, the ocean or literally right under the ground.

Among those humans made immortal were Amphiaraus, Ganymede, Ino, Iphigenia, Menelaus, Peleus, and a great number of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars.

Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, the Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed.

According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room.

[84][85][86] Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch in his chapter on Romulus gave an account of the king's mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification, comparing it to Greek tales such as the physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton".

Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal.

"[89] Likewise, he writes that while something within humans comes from the gods and returns to them after death, this happens "only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled.

[95] In the Tractate of Actions and their Retributions, a traditional teaching, spiritual immortality can be rewarded to people who do a certain amount of good deeds and live a simple, pure life.

[d] The full argument for the immortality of the soul and Thomas Aquinas' elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the First Part of the Summa Theologica.

These include persistent vegetative states, the nature of personality over time, technology to mimic or copy the mind or its processes, social and economic disparities created by longevity, and survival of the heat death of the universe.

The best outcome, Kagan argues, would be for humans to live as long as they desired and then to accept death gratefully as rescuing us from the unbearable tedium of immortality.

Panagiotis Pentaris speculates that defeating ageing as the cause of death comes with a cost: "heightened stratification of humans in society and a wider gap between social classes".