span. When you consider what has been done in space, it would be very foolish to predict that you cannot do the same with life. Maybe, maybe not. Finally it should be noted that the Jehovah's Witnesses are convinced that you can. They have grasped that mankind must either be heading for immortality, or for catastrophe, in spite of their quaint biblical criticism and suspect geophysics. They are the only sect of the Church, that I know of, which does not in practice regard the promise of Christ's second coming as moonshine. They are actually getting ready for it.
I know it sounds absurd to most people to hear the suggestion that man might become immortal; but this is simply because from our births onwards, all day and every day, we think and act, walk and talk, go to bed and get up again, convinced in our heart of hearts that death is inevitable. If a man believes that he is going to die, my guess is that he does die. Whereas the only hope of being immortal lies in the casting out from the mind of all idea that death is inevitable. Death must be regarded (if this be the truth) as the reward for a certain type of conduct; which is most assuredly the view taken by classical Pauline theology. But my guess is that it is conduct which allows the thought to enter the mind, and stay there, that death is inevitable. Furthermore I am sure that it is no good hoping for immortality because one is afraid to die. Immortality must be desired for its own sake, and fear of death seen only as one's uncertain belief in one's own immortality. One must desire it for its own sake. It all sounds so absurd. But Lavoisier, the father of chemistry, would probably have thought the atomic bomb absurd; for had they not recently discovered in his day that atoms were indestructible. Immortality is after all only the psychological atomic bomb!
However, common sense dictates that only for a very few, or for none at all, will immortality mean endless days in this world; for most people it will…