Opposition to Radical Life-Extension

You might think that the goal of extending our lifespans is a noble one. Not everyone agrees. BetterHumans points to a fascinating article on the Crisis web site called Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism. Here's a sample:

The search for eternal youth is an ancient human impulse, going back to the world’s earliest recorded epic, Gilgamesh. But with modern medical technology, we now seem closer to achieving that end than ever before.

But does this go too far? Theological critics of anti-aging technology have pointed out that aging has long been considered a consequence of the Fall, and that we are undoing God’s command when we radically extend life through medical means. Leon Kass, former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, sees other, more philosophical problems with anti-aging research: “The desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one’s life and keep it. . . . It seeks an endless present, isolated from anything truly eternal, and severed from any true continuity with past and future. It is in principle hostile to children, because children, those who come after, are those who will take one’s place; they are life’s answer to mortality” (First Things, May 2001). Meanwhile, in apparent agreement with Kass, a 2002 document edited by then–Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, states, “Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life.”

Now, why would these theologians find fault with the idea of extending human life? The message we're used to hearing from them is that life is sacred. I guess it is sacred only so long as you don't have too much of it.

Here's my take on it. And I know some of you will vehemently disagree, but I'll go ahead anyway. It's about control. People are controllable by religious leaders essentially due to their instinctive fear of death. Take death away and the religious leaders lose their grip on their followers. Worrying about one's eternal destination, be it heaven or hell, will be cast aside, or so these theologians fear.

Of course many believers are religious for other reasons. They find comfort, solace and even transcendence in their beliefs. That motivation won't vanish if we can live longer, will it? I think not.

It's not hard to see, with only a cursory glance at history, a trend away from human religious authority. Not religious feeling or observance, mind you, but the slavish obeisance paid to religious leaders and institutions. There was a time when the Roman Catholic church was the only game in town. The regular Joe couldn't read, couldn't read Latin, and had no access to a Bible anyway. Knowing the will of God was the exclusive province of the Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests.

If anyone tried to guide people to a different path, they were aggressively hunted, tortured and burned at the stake through an institution called the Inquisition. But then came Martin Luther. The Roman Catholic church now had Protestant competition for the fealty of the common man.

You see, the religious leaders of old wanted to maintain control. Perhaps some of them truly believed that maintaining control over people's beliefs and lives was the only way to save their souls. But control they did desire. The same is true in our day, I fear, leading some religious potentates to decry the possibility of radical life-extension. Perhaps what then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, should have said is that "Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of our control of the church."

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