Immortality

by Stephen Cave

  But the ultimate risk is what the transhumanists see as their ultimate salvation: the godlike “superintelligence,” an enhanced person or computer that is so clever it can solve all our problems, including how to live forever. It does not take the most vivid imagination to see how the creation of an all-powerful being could go badly wrong. The potential hazards are the stuff of all our favorite sci-fi films, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Terminator. Whether due to a programming glitch or because he/she/it develops mysterious intentions of its own, it seems entirely possible that the superintelligence might decide to do away with us. If Linus Pauling were alive today, it is likely that he would be very worried indeed.

  THEIR EXITS AND THEIR ENTRANCES

  ALTHOUGH Pauling dedicated himself entirely to applying his new theories to cure his ailing wife, Ava Helen’s condition worsened. The hemorrhages grew more painful and debilitating, until finally she could take no more. She ordered the transfusions to stop. Pauling had failed; all he could do was hold her hand as she slipped away. On December 7, 1981, she died, and one of the greatest scientific minds of the twentieth century found himself alone and in disgrace.

  Linus Pauling was a titan of twentieth-century science—a hugely productive innovator, a scientific Midas who could bring new insights to any field he touched. But he had dedicated the last quarter of a century of his long life to promoting his panacea—vitamins. He ran up against the views of the medical establishment and, say many, against the facts. After a career at the forefront of science, he increasingly indulged in savage attacks on the studies that proved him wrong—and on the scientists behind them. In 1990, when he was eighty-nine years old, the leading scientific journal Nature described him as “viewed as a lonely crank” whose fall from grace was “as great as any in classical tragedy.”

  Linus Pauling contributed more than anyone else to the science behind anti-aging and to the belief that science, diet and lifestyle can together deliver extreme longevity, but he also stands as a warning to would-be immortals, a foretoken of a society dominated by ancient yet ageless grandees whose ideas long ago became fixed. His career shows that there is a time to stand in the limelight but also a time to leave the stage.

  Of course, it was not simply any idea that preoccupied Pauling’s final years; it was the belief in something close to an elixir of life. He thought he had found the solution to all mankind’s ailments and that science would soon bear him out. But history is full of people who have believed just that, and the one thing they have in common is that they all died sooner or later—and usually their theories with them. Pauling had an immense depth of scientific knowledge, yet as he began to feel the effects of his own mortality, he allowed himself to believe in the impossible: a universal cure for humanity’s many flaws. This should make us skeptical of those today who claim that antioxidants, green tea or growth hormones will deliver eternal youth.

  THE first of our four fundamental forms of immortality narrative—Staying Alive—looks like it is here to stay. It is part of the promise on which civilization is founded, and it is integral to the idea of progress that is at the heart of the modern Western worldview. The hope of staying alive that little bit longer—and longer, and longer—is what has driven the development of almost all the material aspects of human society, and today it motivates the massive industries of science and medicine. These fields are delivering advances that really do make our lives longer and better.

  But the science that promises to take us still farther also has other lessons: that the processes of aging and decay are deeply embedded in our bodies, that the very technologies that could help us could also prove our destruction and that the world we live in will not tolerate human life forever. We might stay alive a little longer than our parents or grandparents; we might one day defeat cancer or grow replacement organs. But none of us will succeed in staying alive forever—neither our fleshy frames nor the planet on which we live will allow it. This narrative is both seductive and productive, but it will not deliver on its promise.

  When we started on this path, we said that staying alive in these bodies on this earth would be the most straightforward route to immortality. But we have now seen that the Reaper will catch us, no matter how much we try to jog away. We are, of course, not the first people in history to realize this—though we might be the first to really understand why it is so. Like the First Emperor, the wise or the pessimistic have therefore always sought a backup plan. Okay, we must die, they reasoned, but surely we can rise again. First time around this flesh and blood might fail, but there could be a second run—and perhaps then we will be transformed into something eternal. For thousands of years, this view has given hope to countless people. And now it is inspiring a new generation of scientists who refuse to accept that death itself or even the end of the universe is an obstacle on the road to immortality.

  This is our second strategy—Resurrection—and its popularity is owed largely to a man who almost single-handedly transformed this belief from that of a small Jewish sect into orthodoxy for the mightiest religion the world had ever seen.

  4

  ST. PAUL AND THE CANNIBALS

  THE RISE OF RESURRECTION

  SAUL watched with satisfaction as the heretic was dragged from the courthouse and took his place in the small procession that led the condemned out of Jerusalem’s gates. Once beyond the city walls, he took the robes of the executioners as they stripped for the hard, hot work of stoning the blasphemer to death. All was going according to his plan. It was a year since the crucifixion of the rebellious Nazarene, but his followers continued to cause trouble; soon there would be one less.

  Saul was a passionate believer in the one God and the law that he had given to Moses. “I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors,” he later boasted (Galatians 1:14). The execution he oversaw—of Stephen, the first recorded Christian martyr—was the signal for the cleansing of the holy city to begin. “That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem,” the Bible tells us. “… Saul ravaged the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison” (Acts 8:1–3).

  Saul was a Pharisee, meaning he belonged to a particular brand of Judaism that was devout but populist, in contrast to the austere religion of the Jewish aristocracy. Although he was born in Tarsus, a cosmopolitan coastal city on the southern edge of what is now Turkey, he was educated in Jerusalem by the best teachers of his time and was a citizen of the Roman Empire. This vigorous, clever and committed young man was destined for the highest ranks of the Jewish Temple hierarchy.

  Such was his success in persecuting the latest charismatic cult to threaten Judaism that its few remaining adherents scattered throughout the surrounding lands. Determined to prove his devotion to the faith, Saul went to the high priest, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1), and asked permission to hunt down those blasphemers who had escaped to Damascus. Permission was granted, but famously, Saul was to arrive in Damascus quite a different man.

  SAUL’S victims were the followers of Jesus, who had attracted an apocalyptic personality cult of a kind that was common among the Jewish subjects of the mighty Roman Empire. The Bible describes a few of these would-be saviors—such as Theudas, who “claimed to be somebody” and gathered some four hundred followers before he was slain, and Judas of Galilee, who “drew away many people after him” before he too perished (Acts 5:36–37). Evidently many Jews fervently hoped for the coming of the Messiah—the “anointed one” who would restore the line of King David to the throne and bring peace and justice to the land in accordance with the prophecies. And this is exactly how Jesus’s followers regarded him: as a Jewish Messiah come to save the Jewish people in fulfillment of a Jewish prophecy. But many fellow Jews saw the Christians only as schismatics, dividing Judaism at a time when its very existence was already threatened.

  On
his way to Damascus to persecute these heretics, Saul was struck to the ground by a heavenly light. According to the book of Acts (chapter 9), a voice boomed: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you?” Saul asked, to which came the reply, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” Saul rose but found himself blinded and had to be led by the hand into Damascus. There he waited without eating or drinking until, after three days, he was visited by one of Jesus’s followers. As soon as the disciple laid his hands on Saul, “the scales fell from his eyes,” his sight was restored, he was filled with the Holy Spirit and was baptized.

  Saul was certain he knew what this meant: he had become a witness to the first resurrection. Just as his disciples claimed, Jesus had truly risen from the grave and had now spoken to Saul directly. The significance of this was immense; the act of resurrection was the most awe-inspiring miracle of them all—the conquest of death itself. Saul was convinced that through this single act God had revealed his plan for all mankind: to grant them immortality. And now by appearing to Saul, Jesus had also chosen the medium by which this good news was to be spread.

  Saul wasted no time before dedicating the same enormous energy and zeal with which he had once persecuted the new faith to furthering it: he went straight to the synagogues to proclaim that Jesus was risen from the grave. Those who heard him were amazed—“Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name?” they asked. “And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?” (Acts 9:21).

  As he continued in his new mission, Saul began using the Greco-Roman version of his name: Paul. Before long, his previous comrades, those pious Jews who remained skeptical of this latest Messiah, realized he had indeed abandoned them for the other side. They conspired to kill him, as Paul had once conspired in the killing of Stephen. Believing he was planning to flee Damascus, his enemies lay in wait at the city’s gates. But Paul had gotten wind of the ambush, and his disciples “took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket” (Acts 9:25). It was only the first of many times that an angry mob—whether of kinsmen or strangers, Jews or pagans—would attempt to stop Paul from spreading his newfound belief in the resurrection—and launching one of the world’s great religions in the process.

  DYING TO RISE AGAIN

  IN the previous two chapters, we looked at the first fundamental form of immortality narrative—the promise that we can stay alive on this planet forever. And we saw that, even with the longer lives promised us by the scientific revolution, eternity on earth remains an unlikely prospect. Death is meticulous in collecting every living thing sooner or later.

  But the earth is not a barren wasteland: all things die, yet the world is virile, green and blooming. Spring’s bluebells wither all too soon, but the next year they rise from the ground again. In nature, dying is not the end but only part of a greater cycle—a cycle of life, death and rebirth. This observation has given hope to many who are otherwise resigned to the infirmities of the flesh. They recognize that we, like other living things, flourish only briefly before fading away. But they hope that, as with the bluebells, this fading is merely a prelude to our rising again. This is the hope of resurrection—the second basic form of immortality narrative.

  We saw in chapter 1 that our culture and beliefs are attempts to satisfy the will to immortality and reconcile the tension created by the Mortality Paradox—that on the one hand it seems clear we are perishable and will die like all creatures, yet on the other hand this prospect seems unimaginable or even impossible. The Staying Alive Narrative simply denied the necessity of the first part of the paradox, promising that we can avoid physical death. But clearly there are many who find this claim implausible—it is, after all, contrary to the evidence we see around us. The Resurrection Narrative, in contrast, takes death on the chin and admits that we will go the way of all things; it accepts the truth of the objective view that we flawed, fleshy beings must die. But, say the resurrectionists, that is just the beginning, and one day, with the selfsame bodies, we can rise to live again.

  Until now, we have focused on how the will to immortality has driven progress in the material aspects of civilization, as it is this that enhances our prospects of Staying Alive. The idea of resurrection, however, straddles both the material and the symbolic aspects of human culture: it is deeply embedded in many ancient religious traditions, but it is also a motivating force in a hugely influential narrative about the power of science and material progress. In this chapter we will begin at the beginning: with resurrection’s symbolic importance—including how it has inspired the most powerful religious tradition in history—before going on to look at whether the resurrection story is a plausible one.

  It might seem obvious that religion has, at least in part, arisen to satisfy our will to immortality. Certainly, almost all religions have a clear account of how it is that we in fact survive bodily death (“If you believe in no future life, I would not give a mushroom for your God!” as Martin Luther said). And equally, it might seem obvious that religion and its siblings, ritual and myth, have contributed hugely to the development of civilization. But the story of just how religions function as immortality narratives—and in particular as Resurrection Narratives—is much subtler and more interesting than these first appearances suggest.

  The practice of ritual and religion in the broadest sense is as old as our species—which is to say, at least 150,000 years old. Evidence for this is centerd, unsurprisingly, on what people did with their dead—burying them in particular ways with particular tools or weapons as if they might have a life beyond the grave. Burial sites in Qafzeh, Israel, for example, that are at least 100,000 years old have been found containing shells and deer antlers, and burials from between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago involving the use of the pigment red ocher are widespread in Africa. These finds led the historian of religion Karen Armstrong to conclude that belief systems are “nearly always rooted in the experience of death and the fear of extinction.” By the time recognizable civilizations emerged, with writing, agriculture and so on, the afterlife had already long been a fundamental part of the human experience.

  Rituals are found in all cultures. What makes them distinct from other activities is both that they are highly rule-bound—they must be performed by certain people, at certain times, in certain places, in certain ways—and that their effects are indirect, unseen or symbolic. A man slaughtering and roasting a goat is not performing a ritual; he is just preparing dinner. But if that man first takes that goat to a temple, sings incantations to the animal’s spirit, cuts off the goat’s head in a single blow, then leaves certain choice cuts of meat for “the gods,” he is doing far more than what is required just to fill his belly. This “more” is ritual.

  Rituals are the physical manifestation of a particular religion or mythology; they are what make a set of beliefs practical and real. In a worldview in which spirits or gods influence every aspect of daily life, rituals to appease, befriend, charm or fool them are common. Not all rituals are in themselves an expression of a yearning for eternity—some are simply about getting on with the business of life, such as eating a goat without incurring the wrath of the goat god. But there are deeplying aspects of many rituals and religions that should lead us to think that they are very much driven by the will to immortality.

  There are many different approaches to understanding ritualistic behavior, but there are two important themes that stand out. The first is that ritual is very often about control. Sigmund Freud first pointed out the similarities between the obsessive behaviors involved in religious ceremonies and the behavior of neurotic obsessives. In both cases, actions are performed that make little practical sense but that bolster a belief that everything will be all right—that some danger or bad luck will be avoided and purity or peace achieved. Subsequent research has borne out this link, suggesting that ritua
l behavior, like that of obsessive-compulsives, is often a response to the same overactive scenario-generating systems in our brains that cause us to imagine danger—and death—around every corner.

  Which links into the second important aspect of ritual and religion. Freud wrote that “the gods … must exorcise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of Fate, particularly as it is shown in death.” In part, this is achieved by ritual’s generation of the sense of control. But fully reconciling us to death requires more than this; it requires the possibility of transcending the smallness and frailty of our lives. This is the function of religion at its grandest: enabling mere mortals to attain cosmic significance, to become one with their gods and so to attain immortality.

  In early religions, the line between this world and that of gods and spirits was a fine one, and much of their ritual was about intentionally crossing it. Shamans, for example, would seek union with the spirits of animals in order to benefit from their powers. In the mystery cults of ancient Greece and Rome that persisted unchanged for many centuries before being pushed aside by Christianity, participants engaged in complex rites often lasting for days and including all-night feasts, processions, drunkenness, sex, music and dancing, role-plays and secret props all designed to unite the worshipper with the god or gods, affording a transcendent experience that promised wisdom, strength and the key to immortality.

  Such rituals offered the humble mortal a chance to partake in the power of their deities and to imbue their actions with the magic of a cosmic drama. Still today, every Sunday, just such an immortality rite is repeated around the world, when Christians take Holy Communion: many of them believe that they are literally consuming the blood and body of their god, and all consider themselves to be reliving a crucial moment in his story. And the result? The Gospel of John explains: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever” (6:51).