I’ve long felt that the single biggest reason that religion endures is because man is mortal. If science could ever unravel the mysteries aging and finally find a cure for death, would religion survive it? Are there enough other reasons for religion to keep it going?
I don’t think it would change anything except practices. A cure for aging doesn’t prevent accidental death, so heaven and hell are still there for the believer. It would probably put a dent in reincarnation religions.
The only thing that could make religion go away would be immortality. The inability to die or be killed. Of course, at that point we are god.
JT
no the thing that would make it go away is if we figure out a completely valid explanation for the creation of the universe. there are two things that are unexplained- what happens when this ends, and what happened before it started.
unless we can figure out an explanation for what created the concept of time, we cannot possibly ever conceive an explanation for the creation of the universe. i choose god, because anything else doesnt make sense. simply because things that exist external to time have never made sense. including god, but i dont claim to understand what he looks like, only that he ‘decided’ to put this here, and also decided to put humans here for some reason.
Evangelism would no doubt be harder- there are a lot of ‘entry-level’ Christians and even mature believers who’s religious life centers around hope for heaven or fear of hell. Other reasons for religion? Well, you always have the philosophers and others who believe that theism is true, and that’s enough reason for them. For recruiting type reasons though, you still have the perception of moral decay, and the notion of an impending apocalypse, which could actually be intensified if people no longer aged. There’s also the whole moral conviction/self-worth angle: People coming to the faith because they have led wicked lives and seek atonement.
I suspect people pay a lot of lip service to the afterlife issue even if it has very little impact on their day to day lives.
Incidentally, when I first saw the title of this thread, I thought it said “Would a cure for morality…” 
I think that would have a bigger impact on religion.
The heaven as a reward for a virtuous life and hell for a sinful life wouldn’t be a very effective ‘carrot and stick’ if no one died- afterlife would be irrelevant, then. 
Maybe eventually immortality would become bitter and empty. With no ultimate penalty for failure/foolishness, perhaps there’d be no challenges. Skydivers get a rush from the dangerousness of that activity, but there’d be no danger if you couldn’t possibly die. Likewise, eventually you’d manage to do everything, see everything and know everything. Then all you could do is do it all again. Would that be enough?
Certainly you make a point, Future Man- a cogent & consistent explaination for the existance of the universe would be necessary to erase all need for faith. Personally, I find an infinite series of “Big Bangs” followed by “Big Crunches” with no discernable cause or beginning to be at least as plausible as creation by a God that has no discernable cause or beginning. 
YMMV, of course.
Hi Phaedrus,
I think it would probably make churches fuller - for that matter, everywhere would become crowded - because a cure for death would mean a lot of people would ask what the purpose of such a long life could be. It would also mean a rise in suicide amongst those who didn’t find an answer to that question too I think.
Shalom
Bob
I see this is diverging along two possible lines. 1) Man is immortal in the sense that he doesn’t age. Death by injury or illness is still possible. 2) Man has somehow become immortal and invulnerable. Nothing can cause his death. A bit of a stretch, I’ll grant you. Naturally, suicide isn’t an option for Immortal #2.
Ultimately, why would a life long or short need to have some externally assigned purpose to be meaningful? If we assign our own meaning to it, is that meaning any less valid than one dictated to us by some outside force? (Okay, I mean that rhetorically, but you can answer if you like… ).
Hi Phaedrus,
The longer a life gets, the more you ask what purpose it serves. Especially a life that doesn’t have the same quality as at the beginning starts people asking what it is good for. If life is painful, all the more we start asking why we have to endure that pain. If life has no perspectives for us, we ask what it is good for.
Shalom
Bob
What I’m asking is whether choosing a purpose for yourself means the purpose is less valid than having it chosen for you.
You make very good points, Bob. I certainly don’t know what the psychological effects of immortality might be. Authors of scifi & horror frequently speculate on that topic in the form vampire stories. Vampires, particulary in the Anne Rice books, often are portrayed as growing incredibly decadent as a result of their eternal existance.
I for one suspect that being immortal would eventually create an overwhelming sense of mundaness. Once everything became “old hat,” all the wonder would go out of the universe. It may appear so dreary and commonplace that any thoughts that it was divinely created would appear absurd. It’s one thing to believe in God despite his deafening silence for a human lifetime- how many countless millenia and eons would have to pass without a peep from God before you’d finally have to admit he’s not talking because he’s just not there?
how long before i doubt god exists simply because he doesnt talk to me?
forever, hes not talking because if he specifically told you that the mission in life is to do selfless actions, those actions would cease to be selfless, and the mission would be impossible. my theory on the matter is pretty much invincible until it makes sense that the universe created itself, which it wont.
hopefully by the time we get immortality technology we also get memory erasing technology. id never stop playing video games, ever
I think immortality would change religious dogma by emphasising different parts of it, but it would not destroy religion.
There’s more to religion than going to heaven when one dies.
Religion enables people to make sense of the world – right here, right now. Religion enables people to answer questions about where they come from and it provides comfort in a world of suffering, pain and injustice. These are needs that require addressing in THIS life and these needs would guarantee the survival of religion.
Ironically, religious belief systems operate on a Darwinian evolutionary model: interpretations mutate, ideas evolve and the parts that best fit the current environment, prevail to become the predominant dogma.
For instance, there could be a shift from going to heaven to preparing the way for the kingdom of heaven on earth. The “death†in the bible could be reinterpreted to emphasis the death of the “old man†and the rebirth of the new – born again – man.
So with the advent of immortality, I would expect religion to continue to flourish, albeit for different reasons.
The only religion i truelly can say that i know is christianity
This would crush it.
The bible says after the flood of noah, that god said, in no uncertain terms will any one man ever live past the age of 120. If we found immortality, many men would reach 120 and surpass it, this would show god didnt know what he was talking about, or more likly that he doesnt exsist, since in order for god to be the god he says he is, he must be onipotent, if he’s not onipotent, hes not god, no god no christianity.
There’ve been several men that have lived longer than that in the last century…
Why do you think Xtians demonize vampires? Eternal corporeal life, they say, must be the work of the Devil. Thus demonizing eternal life in the physical realm forces people to focus more on how to achieve eternal life in the spiritual realm…Xtianity of course.
I suppose that’s true, Sage. I still think mortality is the main reason we keep carrying religion on our backs, but my fellow ILP’ers have pointed out some other reasons, too.
My first guess would be because vampires are mythical creatures with ‘demonic antagonist’ as part of their definition. You may as well ask why people demonize Darth Vader.
Sucking blood, sleeping in graves, and bursting into flames when touched by anything holy is probably the work of the Devil, too.
Hate to tell you, but eternal corporeal life is one of those not-so-often- publicized-for-fear-of-being-called-whacky Catholic dogmas:
In fact, the commonly held belief by most Christians that the resurrection is just for souls is considered heresy (due to the “heretical contention of Hymeneus and Philitus that the Scriptures denote by resurrection not the return to life of the body, but the rising of the soul from the death of sin to the life of grace”).
Sure sure, its a bit different, as Catholicism holds you don’t reach this eternal corporeal life until after dying first, but the concept is still Catholic dogma. I don’t know where exactly other Christian faiths stand on this, so I will not comment on them.
Vampires…psh…
Who did?
names>
Genesis 6:3
I don’t see how the fact that a couple of people have lived over 120 years is a Bible-defeating contradiction any more than the billions of people who haven’t lived anywhere near 120 years.