Curious Incidents of a Flailing Mermaid

Day twenty-three: the immortal blog

Prompt for day twenty-three: Do you believe immortality exists? What does it mean to be immortal? Does reincarnation exist?

Gosh, this is a little different to listing your top five websites! Madness: but very interesting. Now I just have to decide what to write!

You wont be able to tell but I got to there ^ about two hours ago.

I’m not religious. Maybe I should be. Maybe I want to. But do not claim to have specific beliefs surrounding these areas. Therefore, I’m just writing and don’t have a direction in mind… lets see where we get to.

The first thing that struck me about this blog prompt was that immortality and reincarnation are pretty different concepts. So I’m going to divide the blog into two.

Immortality:

Immortality is the ability to live forever, or eternal life. Biological forms have inherent limitations which medical interventions or engineering may or may not be able to overcome.¹
In religious contexts, immortality is often stated to be among the promises by God (or other deities) to human beings who show goodness or else follow divine law (resurrection).¹

Do I believe that immortality exists for humans? No, of course not. In the human world immortality relates to religion and the only immortal beings are Gods. However, I wouldn’t think of Gods as human. Whether or not Gods do exist as physical beings – they do exist for those who believe in them. As long as someone is around to believe, Gods will exist. Thus, they are ever immortal!

In the natural world, there is evidence of immortality, or suggested immortality. For example, the Turritopsis nutricula.² (Jellyfish) after becoming a sexually mature adult, can transform itself back into a polyp using the cell conversion process of transdifferentiation.³ They repeat this cycle, meaning that it may have an indefinite lifespan.

Another example is the Bristlecone Pine⁴ (a long-living species of tree found) which is thought to be "potentially" immortal with the oldest known living specimen is over 5,000 years old.

If 5000 years of living doesn't count as immortal, I don't know what does.

Reincarnation

Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions⁵.

I know even less about reincarnation than I do immortality. Occasionally, I find myself wanting to believe it exists. Sometimes, I come across babies and children who seem so wise and beyond their years that I think they've been here before. Other times, I think when you die, that is it! You're dead, either in the ground or as ashes blowing in the wind. We will never know until we get there. I like to spend as little time thinking about death as I can.

Food for thought: This interview was on day time TV in the UK last week. Jesus and Mary clearly truly believe they are who they say they are. How can they possibly prove it? How can we possibly prove other wise?



Footnotes:
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality#Biological_immortality
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-of-...
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdifferentiation
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristlecone_Pine
5.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation