The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Speaking of Life, Death and Rebirth, I have a question about the portrayal of immortality in religion and myth. Why is immortality and eternal life treated as both as potentially bad thing in some religions? I know this more of media thing but it is something that I am wondering about as I heard mentioned in another forum about how immortality tends to be treated in some belief systems.

"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."

Because if you become immortal only killable by other immortals (who are quite rare in the population, most of whom will eventually want to kill you because grudges and misunderstandings build up over time), everybody around you that you care about even slightly dies. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

While you're left having to worry about sleeping with your descendants every time you get hit on in every place you wind up in.

You just chug along. With a target on your back when it comes to the only others you could conceivably have an actual lasting attachment to.

That's why.

Edited by Euodiachloris on May 26th 2019 at 1:15:53 PM

The religious argument against immortality typically stems from the fact that if you’re immortal you’ll (probably) never make it to whatever is supposed to happen after death. In religions where you’re judged after death and then rewarded or punished, simply never dying is cheating the system.

Usually there’s some “traded your soul for eternal life” stuff going on too.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 26th 2019 at 5:16:10 AM

They should have sent a poet.

Eh. Africa has a tradition of people getting made into immortals against their wishes. No soul-pacts or whatever. Just good, old fashioned medicine, surgery and excersize (and universal law breaking on behalf of the maker).

It goes poorly for the victims.

Central and East Asia have something similar.

Edited by Euodiachloris on May 27th 2019 at 8:30:09 PM

There might also be another angle, where the immortal in question is only that in the sense that they cannot die, But they can still age. Which might lead into an advanced age where one's body and mind cannot function. Even with halted aging there would likely still be a psychological impact from living so long.

And then there's the case of not only outliving your immediate connections, but outliving the human race - whether that means living to see the heat death of the universe, living thousands of years until humanity is something unrecognizable, or until humanity kills itself and you're left alone on a poisoned Earth. Living for eternity, without the ability to choose when it ends, is just as effective an And I Must Scream as any other, I would say.

I guess some other religions might also see it as an affront to the natural or holy order, too. The 'Christian vampire laments their monster self' sort of thing.

Edited by RedSavant on May 26th 2019 at 9:22:58 AM

It's been fun.

Christianity does actually glorify immortality. But only the eternal life granted by God. God's gift to humanity is eternal life in Heaven.

What Christianity condemns is unnatural immortality that is gained via something other than God.

Disgusted, but not surprised

I'm not sure that Christianity has much of a condemnation against immortality since it's not really an issue for th real world.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Let's not forget that Antediluvian humans were apparently extremely Long-Lived and were outright immortal while in Eden. The loss of their immortality along with being cast out of Eden was their punishment for defying God.

Ultimately, immortality is seen as a good thing, but it's up to God to decide whether or not we deserve it.

So it's not so much that immortality is bad, it's the pursuit of immortality in defiance of God's will that is bad.

Edited by M84 on May 26th 2019 at 10:05:55 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Huh that makes sense from what I understand of Christianity

Didn’t Borges do a version of immortality where those inmortal eventually mentally shut down and become literally vegetative?

Speaking as a Christian transhumanist:

The Bible is mute on the topic. It's one of those things that everyone sort of assumes the Bible is against, but it actually isn't directly. Same goes for AI, genetic engineering, and a bajillion of supposed scientific sins.

It gets villainized for a few reasons:

1. 1: Immortality is "too good to be true". It's always assumed to have a catch, like being powered by a forsaken child.

2. 2: Immortality is something Christianity traditionally offers, so more conventional means of it can be come across as a competitor. This is somewhat valid, though I like to view it less as a competitor and more as a transition (Human body -> Transhuman body -> Glorified body)

3. 3: On a similar note, it can be seen as trying to escape "cosmic justice" (for what it's worth, immortality is a misnomer-you are guaranteed to die at some point, just later)

4. 4: There's what I call a "fear of hope" surrounding it, making us assume that immortal life would be undesirable. There's a similar train of thought with resurrecting the dead (that the person would always Come Back Wrong).

Essentially, we know that accepting our mortality is essential (which is true), and this is so deeply routed in our collective psyches that the idea of not embracing it is deeply disturbing to us. Ironically, our horror about resurrecting the dead is in part to reassure ourselves that our view on death is correct. If we could live forever, than that means the way humanity is practically wired to think about death is fundamentally wrong.

1. 5: It's something people would do evil things to obtain, especially vain people.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

It's telling that humanity at its most innocent and "pure" in The Bible lived idyllic immortal existences in Eden. Being cast out of paradise and being made mortal was our punishment.

Disgusted, but not surprised

It's also very telling how devout Catholic Tolkien had the opinion that being mortal is pretty much a Mercy Kill for us: we don't have to watch the whole world go to shit while being unable to stop it.

Considering humans were innocent, pure and immortal before eating the apple, it's pretty clear even the third had to go. Otherwise you'd have bunch of eternal monsters running around.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele

The general idea is that immortality is a good thing...but humans proved themselves to be unworthy of it. The idea is that devoting yourself to God or something is what grants people eternal life in Heaven.

Wikipedia has a page on this.

Eternal Life (Christianity)

The Gift of Men isn't just mortality though. It's essentially freedom from destiny itself as well. With the Gift, Men can find a song beyond the Music of the Ainur which dictates all creation.

Gift of Men

Also, Elven immortality is more like being trapped in the cycle of reincarnation. The Elves are bound to Arda forever.

Immortality

Edited by M84 on May 27th 2019 at 12:44:54 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Yeah true, which is where the "unable to stop it" comes into play - the Elves and Valar (prolly the dwarves too, lore is silent about them) are all bound by the song of the Ainur, so they can't really change the bad things.

Speaking of things the lore is silent on, I always wondered where that left the Hobbits. We at least get a myth about the dwarves and ents, but not them... (though Treebeard, who probably heard those same myths from the Elves who taught the Ents the Elven languages, does say the hobbits are unaccounted for in them and most humans or elves who don't pass through the region at least semi-regularly at the time of the Lord of the Rings know nothing of them)

Edited by akanesarumara on May 26th 2019 at 6:48:37 PM

Essentially, it's not so much the mortality itself that is great but rather the freedom that is part of the Gift of Men.

Hobbits are apparently a race of Men or at least related to them. So they presumably are also among those who received the Gift.

Edited by M84 on May 27th 2019 at 1:27:16 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

I think aging and decay is usually the worst part of immortality usually portrayed in legends. Apart from the psychological damage caused by losing everything. And that scale of time thing the brain has over time.

Secret Signature

That's one of the oldest tropes around. It goes all the way back to Tithonus who became a cricket.

Disgusted, but not surprised

The quest for immortality being self-defeating may BE the oldest trope around.

See the Epic of Gilgamesh's end.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

When religious myths and such do bring up immortality, it's usually fine if it's because it's a divine reward. Though in those cases it's not an eternal life on Earth but rather ascension to the heavens. Example: Heracles ascending to Olympus after his mortality is burned away by his funeral pyre.

So immortality isn't a bad thing. Quite the opposite. It's a divine blessing. And trying to pursue it without the blessing of the gods is profane.

Edited by M84 on May 28th 2019 at 3:04:51 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised

If you want to get wankery, you might argue that being turned into a divine being inherently modifies how your psychology works, therefore making the usual issues of immortality as a mortal meaningless.

@Protagonist: Perhaps it should be noted that the Bible is silent on those issues because those weren't issues back on when it was being written.

Granted that doesn't mean that what you can interpret based on what is in the Bible necessarily points towards a negative attitude towards these things, but Usonian pop-culture is both anti-intellectual and religious so that's what most people will get. (The fact the churches were centers of scientific advancement for a considerable chunk of European history is something that those consistently refuse to get)

It's interesting that apparently all it takes to be El's equal is to know good from evil and be inmortal.

Add Anti-Catholic to that mix, out of its historical roots as being formed by Protestant Englanders, the anti-authority fixation in Usonian culture and as an extension of the current racism against Latin people.

That said, while the Bible is silent on those matters, it must be noted that the Catholic Church consider that eventual additions on such matters can be held as complement on what is written on the Bible, hence the many Councils that came and went across the centuries.

Not at all.

Humans cannot hope to achieve the power or knowledge that God possesses by their very nature.

Trying to put ourselves as God’s equals, which is the Original Sin often alluded in Catholic teachings and the original form of the Cardinal Sin of Pride, is what got us exiled from Eden.

Edited by raziel365 on May 27th 2019 at 6:09:24 AM

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Cain's punishment basically include immortality?

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.