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Bill Nye would choose to die.

A question similar to this was asked on one of Bill Nye's pod casts.

Which would you choose?

  1. Eternal life, starting now, with the caveat that no children can ever again be born.

  2. Life as it is: we are born, we live with the ability to procreate, and we die.

I, of course, choose life as it is. One of the least appealing things about the heaven I was taught to believe in was that no children would ever again be born.

Joanne 7 Nov 18
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34 comments (26 - 34)

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Choose number 1. Theres nearly 8 billion people on this planet now. Far too many. Thats more than enough if we all have eternal life.

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As is

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I did not know this and I was raised Catholic, maybe it is not a Catholic thing, or maybe I missed that day.

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Well, I can't stand kids, so 1 sounds pretty appealing on that point alone. But, and bear with me here, I would want to take number 1 as long as I was able to walk around with a sword all the time. Hundreds of years from now, I would still probably tell people that there can be only one. The possibilities of one person to commit themselves to scientific discovery for eternity, what would they come up with and at what rate would it be, likely exponential. Granted, they may even be able to eventually watch every video on YouTube. I know, I'm taking the mick now.

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What? No children? Life would be deprived of silly nonsensical moments. Option 2 for me.

Mimee Level 6 Nov 21, 2019
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Having tasted of life, oblivion holds no interest for me.

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Just a couple thoughts about everlasting life on Earth.

In approximately 5 billion years, the sun will begin the helium-burning process, turning into a red giant star. When it expands, its outer layers will consume Mercury and Venus, and reach Earth. Scientists are still debating whether or not our planet will be engulfed, or whether it will orbit dangerously close to the dimmer star. Either way, life as we know it on Earth will cease to exist. [space.com]

2 Peter 3:10 ... The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

The first is science that sounds like everything would be eliminated by the Sun.

The biblical future sounds more like an asteroid wiping out life on Earth in a greater impact that what killed the dinosaurs off.

Either way a natural sort of life would not seem possible for ever on Earth. Hence the "spirit " afterlife ideology.

Spirit has connection to cognition and force. Like our thoughts are Predicated on the force of our brain waves and chemical reactions.

So, in the event that our "soul" (personality) were to some how not dissipate into nothingness at the death of our brain then this energy of our thought cognitive capabilities would be considered to some how still be carried on perhaps as a transfer of this cognitive capabilities from the housing of our brain into the environment at large.

So in a way to speculate a natural explanation for our cognitive capabilities to continue after death might be some how explained if by scientific explination that our cognition could ride on a light wave or other forms of kinetic energy or electromagnetic radiation in the environment.

Word Level 8 Nov 19, 2019

Stephen Hawking gives us even lesser time to live on earth. According to him humans will begin exploring and colonizing other planets within the next 1000 years or so. Global warming is killing it anyway and in future humans will probably look at a tree in a museum.
We'll probably use our cognitive abilities to transport our minds and bodies through different dimensions.

@Mimee if you understood biblical text, the old testiment "god" is like a bodiless mind. Then, if you understand biblical text, that bodiless mind becomes flesh. The way the bodiless mind becomes flesh is that it is spoken into existence by kinetic energy of the spoken words of people. Air molecules leaving the lungs with kinetic energy of an intellegentable pattern. Things are created by kinetic energy. "Bang" then there was light, hydrogen gets fused together to make helium by force of gravity. In the beginning the force of the almighty one was hovering over the waters. Then the almighty one said , let there be light.

There is more that could explain, analyze the analogy.

I always wondered about that. Hmmmmm...

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There is another option. If we survive climate change, we will move into space, and live in habitats called O'Neil Cylinders. It is possible to build enough of them to have our population be trillions of times larger. Moreover, if we develop fusion power plants, we can live further from the sun, and further increase the population. No need to stop having babies.

Question one on the podcast stated that no children ever again being born was the trade off being made for obtaining the ability to live forever. We would somehow be endowed with the ability to live forever, but a side effect would be eternal sterility.

@Joanne I do not believe in God because it is unrealistic and hypithetical, the same is true of the thesis live forever sterile. Why play that game as if it were an option? If science does cure death, sterility isn't likely.

@EdEarl : My take on the question was that it was a way to get people to think about their ideas of an afterlife--where they live forever; but, in this afterlife, no children will ever be born. If one would not choose to live forever on this earth if it meant no children will ever again be born, why would one want to have an eternal afterlife where no children will ever be born?

@Joanne Afterlife is another unrealistic hypothetical; not interesting to me.

My daughter and her husband live in Chateroy Oregon, but I've not been there.

@EdEarl: I guess it is of interest to me because I have so many religious family members and I look for ways to present questions to them that might make them think about what they actually believe.

@Joanne Makes sense.

@Joanne What's so great about children?!? To me childhood is mistakenly made a seemingly unending fantasy ride which abruptly ends when the little brats realize the true nature of the dog-eat-dog world into which they were born.
It's an unfortunately necessary phase one goes through guaranteed to make the rest of one's life seem like torture by comparison.

@Storm1752 The dog eat dog culture was once, when I was a young man, not as bad as it is now. Neoliberal politics has made it so.

That sounds shocking to me. I’ll just fade out with the dusk and take my silly ideas with me!

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