Who's going to live forever?

Now I sense that a lot of Christians have a knee-jerk reaction about this kind of story and I want to question what it is about. If we could find ways to live longer with resonable qulity of life, what issues does that present for Christians? I suspect that a lot of us get suspicious because it seems to encroach on the territory of eternal life and the like, some might even see the 'three-score and ten' years as prescriptive rather than descriptive? Then there is the suspicion that to desire to live longer is rather an act of bad faith in the promise of heaven. But is this necessarily so? Is it not rather that in some way to seek an earlier than necessary end to life is more like, in such circumstances, the mentality of so-called suicide-bombers? By that I mean the idea that we devalue life in this world and what we could accomplish by seeking the afterlife. This is the kind of attitude that is parodied in the phrase 'pie in the sky when we die' whereby improving the earthly lot of people was not given priority because of the thought that they'd be better off in heaven.

On the other hand there is a real theological issue in the idea in Genesis that shorter life spans made sure that human evil is not multiplied ... Would longer lives [especially by rich and powerful people] make it more likely that "the evil that men do" lives on with them and grows? How would this work? Note that fingers in the dyke is not an option: the flood, if it's coming, will come.

I do suspect that there would be real issues in this about cost and distribution of life chances [guess who get the chances and guess who don't], and issues about population and children [as the article suggests]. There are some hints of social consequences in the SF books by Julian May in the Galactic Milieu trilogy. We should give this some thought now.

I'm going to live forever - Review - Times Online