First, even if we achieved means to extending our lives indefinitely, that is certainly not equivalent to immortality.

When immortality means undefined lifespan (which it does in this case) then it very well is equivalent.

Emrys:

I guess what would probably happen is that survival-of-the-fittest will become considerably more pronounced within the human species,

Aside from survival of the fittest not actually happening at the moment(reproduction of the survivors is what happens in evolution).

Emrys:

and there might be a divergence into 2 classes - those with access to life-extension and those without. Struggle would ensue, of course.

Life extension technology will probably be expensive at first but the cost will fall (and government subsidies could help reduce conflict as well by allowing everyone to "live forever").

God OTOH we have no evidence for the existence of and no reason to suspect that immortality will arrive by that route, with technology we might get it.

If we are to live forever it will be through science and technology, not your imaginary friend.

Of course there is the issue of who would need a god and an afterlife if everyone could live forever (or at least for thousands of years).

This is an amazingly powerful argument! Let's try applying it to some other areas.

While I would love to have more money, I would hate to have an infinite amount of money. If I did, the balance in my bank account would overflow, thus crashing the computer inside any ATM I inserted my card into. It would be impossible for me to ever withdraw a dime!

While I would find a man made of straw useful, perhaps for practicing my fencing skills or deterring birds from my crops, I would hate to have an infinitely large straw man. If I did, it would fill the entire universe, preventing any of us from even existing!

In the long run, everything is a question of probability. If you own a gun, in the long run you will accidentally shoot yourself. If you're a dictator, someone will eventually shoot you. And if nothing else gets you, a lightning bolt will. What this means is that neither money nor power are the determining factor to long term survival, but long term planning and risk assessment.

This means that the only feasible option for those who don't want a technology to exist is to legislate that it never be developed and when you go down that road you end up needing a totalitarian state to enforce it (otherwise a democracy will vote to overturn the research ban, just like bans on embryonic stem cell research have been overturned in democracies).

Really worrying is that a Luddite dictatorship could very well last forever. I ask again those who think we shouldn't have immortality now; is an eternal dictatorship a price worth paying for avoiding whatever problems you think immortality would bring? Because that's the price you'll probably have to pay if you want to avoid them.

One of the things deathists assume is that we will only get "life-extension." But the same technology will also be capable of providing "life-expansion." No one would want to live forever as a 90-year old.

It's also false to present this as some sort of thorny moral dilemma. Or to claim that having long or unlimited lives would prevent children from being born. We should wish to have such problems to solve.

We'll have to get past the idea that suicide is a problem, and accept that the best person to choose the moment of their death is the person dying. That solves your boredom problem right there. Sick of it all? Take a lethal dose of barbiturates and drift off to eternal sleep.

I find this whole business of opposing transhumanism to border on paranoia. We don't have the technology now, we will probably have it someday.

When that day comes, the people who extend and expand their lives will not be having this conversation. They will be undoubtedly grateful for the added years. That's pretty much all that needs to be said. Any society which would prevent life-extension or expansion would essentially be murdering people who desired to live, and would therefore not be a humanistic one.

Death is the ultimate tragedy.

The problem with your first point is that it assumes a generally progressive narrative of human society, a narrative which I believe to be unfounded. Things are not always progressing to something better, they are all changing but not always for the better. The history of human society is the interplay of different "truths" winning out over others, not a transcendent truth that we can eventually come close to. Sexuality for example has been seen in a progressive light, that there was a sexual liberation in the 60's and 70's and that we are now free. It does not take into account that that "liberation" was just another exercise of power. The knowledge of sexuality would appear to be repressed in the Victorian era but there was no silence on the subject, new knowledge-power relations were formed, and the same with the sexual "liberation." This may seem odd and it is a concept I cannot fully flesh out here. I would point you to Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality Volume 1 and other works of his such as Discipline and Punish for a more complete discussion of the workings of power. A short summation of my point on a progressive narrative is that your view of power is much like a view of weather that assumes rain is the only type of weather and that sunshine is the absence of weather, that the sun has been liberated. "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" is also a good short essay that deals with the idea of transcendent origins and truth and the idea of a progressive narrative.

You assume death is the only way way for ideas to change, which seems odd on a blog such as your filled with people who were raised and believed in God and then have changed.

To your second point, that about those who would achieve immortality first, I am much more sympathetic. However, this is rather a symptom of "free" market capitalism, resources are always un-evenly distributed. It is true that those most in favor of transhumanism come from the libertarian community, but there are some leftist anti-capitalist libertarians who do not see capitalism as a liberating force and that the distribution of the technology is a concern that should be taken up in the economic realm.

About settling other planets, this is not a question of if but of when. Also this notion that this will "never going to appeal to any more than a small fraction of the population." mention is laughable. It will at first be viewed in this way but then eventually be seen as no more strange then airplane travel. I realize overpopulation is a concern but it is not that we will just discover immortality and have not advanced in technology in other areas such as food production and space travel.
"the economics of space travel are likely to remain prohibitive." This is simply not true, and anyone involved in personal space flight will tell you so. Even long range spaceflight is being developed with creating wormholes or a "wrap drive." Science Fiction meet Science Fact... and have glowing babies. It will happen eventually and that is to say that major breakthroughs in transhumanism, that of complete immortality, will also be far off. Just think of the increased productivity of a scientist who can live twice as long, with minor bio enhancemnets!

To your last point, by far your most philosophical, I say that you sound religious. The point boils down to that you believe you cannot have a meaningful life without death. This argument is made by the very religious and "economist" Francis Fukuyama in "Our Post human Future" a common punching bag for us transhumanists. This is the man that also wrote "the end of history" and we see how that one turned out. for good rebuttals to this read Liberation Biology written by Ronald Bailey science editor at Reason Magazine. Also Simon Young wrote a more philosophical text Designer Evolution. Although I disagree with him on the idea of a transcendent morality that he seems to get to. For a much shorter argument read the Fall edition of H+ (http://www.hplusmagazine.com/) and look at the last article.

Sorry to have taken up so much space. Also this was written rather hastily so if I come off as trolling or being arrogant I do not intend so.

You're right, it is tempting. But I think prase points out the major problem with it:
prase:

First of all, people don't remember infinite number of things. We all forget our knowlegde, and we would remember almost nothing from few thousand years ago if it wasn't used in between.

With immortality technology we'll probably also end up getting the technology needed to increase the storage capacity of the brain (and for all we know it is capable of storing many centuries of data already with no augmentation).

Even if we can't increase the memory capacity of the human brain a few hundred extra years would still be worth it (and suicide would still be an option if you really do get bored).

Ebonmuse:

I find this remark to be naive in the extreme.

It's your remarks on topics to do with technological advancement that are naive in extreme.

Ebonmuse:

This is not a problem that technology can solve: even if there was a pill that made you more receptive to reason, people would still have to want to take it.

A pill that makes you more intelligent without any side-effects would be flying off the selves at the local pharmacy, I doubt there would be much trouble finding people who want to be just a little bit smarter, just a little bit stronger, just a little bit more attractive, just a little bit longer lived.

Ebonmuse:

Moral progress can't be imposed on society, no matter how magically powerful we assume future technology will be.

But you won't get moral progress without more powerful technology.

Ebonmuse:

Human beings have to desire change before change is possible.

We have to know that change is possible before we can even desire it.

Ebonmuse:

And right now, we're nowhere near the point where I would feel comfortable seeing the majority of humanity become immortal. The poisons of bigotry and superstition are far too common in our society for us to risk making them irrevocably fixed.

I don't think we ever will reach the point at which you would feel comfortable before we get immortality technology. It is likely that the development of immortality technology will be what causes our morality to advance (that's how it's worked for every other technology that had a moral implication).

Ebonmuse:

Eric:

Is it really true that humans could not improve to the point that they didn't need to die off to improve their average morality? You take it as a given.

I have no idea what in my post gave you that idea, Eric. Sure, we might advance to that point in the distant future. Is it the case now? Manifestly not.

Well you certainly gave me that impression as well.

But anyway, as I said before, I suspect that the point at which you think we are morally advanced enough will never arrive without us first getting immortality.