The Guardian recently published the article: “Your animal life is over. Machine life has begun.” In summary, the article claims that in a few years we will have the technology to achieve immortality. This road to immortality is coming from Silicon Valley. The radical (and dare I add mad) side of computer science is being funded by a few billionaire tech giants. The plan is to fully develop the technology to upload the human mind and consciousness into a computer emulation of our brains. Thus achieving immortality through the shedding of the mortal body for an immortal computer. Of course, this does come with the side effect of destroying your natural brain during the uploading process. The quest for immortality goes back to ancient alchemists and may actually be reached by computer scientists. The only difference is that instead of the Elixir of Life we have computers as our savior from death. However, it does need to be noted that this makes a few assumptions that may turn out to be false. The first is the very naturalistic believe that the human life is only material in nature. If the human mind and consciousness is entire driven by a DNA-driven base 4 biochemical computer system, then this path to immortality makes sense. After all, if the whole of a person can be boiled down to a set of data, then uploading a person into a computer would be no different than ripping a music CD into mp3 files. At the same time this is a very big if, which assumes that the concept of souls is nothing more than an old superstitious delusion.
Personally, I question if this eternal life through computers can even be called life in the Biblical sense. This is because in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and God created humanity, both male and female in the image of God with both a body and a soul. In Hebrew, the same word nehfesh is used to mean both life and soul, which shows that the body is as essential to life as the soul. To claim that the body does not matter but only the soul (or even your mind) matters is equally wrong as somebody saying that only their computer data matters and not the computer itself. This is because, without the computer to be able to use and access their data, a hard drive is completely worthless with the possible exception of being a doorstop or paperweight. In Hebrew, the same word ruah is used to mean breath, wind, and spirit. God is the source of the life of humanity. Genesis describes the creation of humanity as God breathing His spirit into us in order to give us life. Thus we are alive as long as we continue to breathe and the source of our breath is the life animating spirit of God within us. This is why the promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ places such a high emphasis upon the resurrection of the body because without a body there can be no life.
This is why I titled this post the rise of the undead because this so called eternal life is not life at all. As destroying the body to live on as a ghost in a machine is, in my opinion, more accurately described as becoming an undead lich. As along this path the darker side of computer science is becoming the alternative to necromancy. The only difference is that instead of a sorcerer using dark magic to unnaturally extend their life, it is a billionaire paying for the ability to use computer technology to unnaturally extend their life. So it looks like the Preppers were actually on to something. Their only mistake was that they were preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse and not the rise of lich overlords as the new 1%. Instead of food and weapons to fend off zombies, they should have been stocking up NNEMP (Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse) units.
What do you think of this potential life extension technology? If money was not an issue would you consider making use of it on yourself?
Mercersburg Mystic 