Immortality
The terms "immortality" and "eternal youth" are often used as synonyms for "indefinite lifespan", but they carry connotations from their other contexts which science has deemed to be impossible. That is, immortal means "incapable of dying". Eternal implies guaranteed existence for eternity, and in this context is also implausible because of entropy. Even if cures were found for all the degenerative diseases, and effective treatments were developed for all the processes of aging, so that bodies could be maintained as easily as cars can be repaired, people would still be killed in accidents, slain in wars, choosing to die, etc. The term indefinite lifespan represents this more achievable state of affairs, because it merely implies freedom from death by age or infirmity. The use of the term is also sometimes favored for reasons of linguistic aesthetics, in the same way that the term birth control is preferred to "birth prevention" or "birth elimination" which both imply, as does 'immortality', that the choice is one-time only and has permanent consequences, whereas the point of 'indefinite lifespans', like the point of 'birth control', is to gain the opportunity to lead one's life in a more conscious and deliberate manner.
Read more about this topic: Indefinite Lifespan
Famous quotes containing the word immortality:
“But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.”
—Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
“If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)