Talk:Immortality/Archive 1

Layout cleanout/Merging of sections

I have somewhat cleaned up the layout of the beginning. However, there is some conceptual duplication between 'Definitions of immortality' and 'Types of immortality'. Those two parts should be merged, if someone has the time.

Examples of extremely long lifespan in nature

I have deleted this section because it contained pictures with possible copyright problems which I did not want that to stop this article from becoming a Feature Article. If anybody can find some pictures of organisms that live a very long time such as the bristlecone pine please do so and we can recreate this section.

• The HeLa cell is considered immortal, perhaps it is good for inclusion in this section? Someone else can make the judgement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa_cell

Wait, you deleted a complete section because it had copyrighted pictures in it? It didn't maybe occur to you to simply remove the pictures?

Feature Article

I just nominated this article as a feature article again. Please cast a vote in the featured article section. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates

Pictures

If anyone is good at resizing the pictures that would probably help. Right now some pictures are much bigger than others.

I agree that the pictures need to be resized and layed out better. But before that, I'm a bit concerned about their copyrights. None of their descriptions contain copyright info, and some of them are retrieved from message board posts, so it's difficult to determine who took them and whether they allow them to be used. For the bristlecone pine, it would be nice to find a photo by the Forest Service, because that would likely be public domain (a work of the federal government). For the symbols of immortality, old scetches would be certain to be public domain. Without valid copyright info the photos would likely have to be removed, although I don't think it would really hurt this page too much if they're missing. The ones that I think are the most relevant are those regarding the symbols of immortality. Eisnel 23:14, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I tracked down copyright information for four images. One is a definite copyvio and I have removed it. Two are probable copyvios, I will leave them a bit to see if someone wants to contact the owners for permission. The fourth is free for non-commercial use, which means it is not a copyvio but also that it is not suitable for WP, and a replacement should be sought. Securiger 14:33, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Should we include Ouroboros as a symbol of immortality? Paranoid 14:39, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Article

Wow, I wrote this article as a proto-effort at a conference paper I later gave. People have really taken it to town by evolving it into something really nice. -- Brinticus

I agree the article is getting much better. I will try to complete some of the stub paragraphs. My only concern before submitting for a feature article is the pictures. They are good but as the poster above mentioned there may be copyright problems. It would be a big help if someone who understands wikipedia's copyright rules could replace or fix the current ones. Chubtoad 10:30, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sufficient and necessary conditions

Right now there are two separate sections with overly long titles ("6 Unending existence is too simple a condition for immortality" and "7 The freedom from concerns of annihilation and death is insufficient for immortality"). I think we should instead create a section on what it means to be immortal and what conditions are necessary / sufficient. It should be more general than just giving these two particular concerns. Paranoid 11:02, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Removed from article

If this does not occur, then one unexpected side effect may be that humans become extremely risk averse. For example, being a soldier and risking one's life to defend something they believe in may seem reasonable if one only expects to live another few decades in their full capacity. However, if you expect to live 1000 years in prime health, unless you run into an unfortunate accident, then the desirability of even slightly risky activities will drop precipitously.

This makes a number of odd conclusions which are by no means NPOV or even likely to occur to all reasonable persons. Lets be very careful of POV in this article, it seems to have crept in. Sam [Spade] 22:24, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It is however a common speculation that arises in science fiction and futurologist discussions on the implications of immortality. I think it should be included, provided it's properly qualified as being a speculation and placed in the appropriate section of the article. Bryan 16:27, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Earlier

Before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the only seriously considered methods of achieving immortality involved a continued existence of a person in one form or another after physical death.

I may be not understanding but what about simply not dying? --Error 00:57, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And the Fountain of Youth and Elixir of Life? And Ambrosia of the gods? Or do those not count as serious? Securiger 01:10, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tao

I think that Taoism gave a lot of importance to the quest for immortality. --Error 00:57, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I wonder why the Eight Immortals aren't mentioned, even briefly, in the article?--T. Anthony 15:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

That's a verry good question.--Eternal Imortal 21:19, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Very good suggestion for inclusion. It's likely not here because the contributors to this article have thus far been focusing on Immortality in Western Culture, suggesting that to have other cultures included in this article, someone with more knowledge in that area would have to contribute... or someone can do research if they want to make this article really great. --Balrog30 08:11, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

On The Meaning of 'Meaning'.

Whenever we express ourselves, we create things. I press buttons on my keyboard to create letters. I create them in order to form words that convey what I mean (I hope). I can also express myself through art like music, painting or some kind of construction/destruction (no real difference). So, it's intuitive to expect that whatever I create has some meaning to it. To ask what the meaning is of any arbitrary thing implies that every thing has some intrinsic meaning; that every thing is an expression of some creator-of-every-thing.

Biologically derived consciousness is the only form of consciousness we know of. Should we ever manage to emulate biological consciousness with computers, such minds would be no different from our own. However, spiritual consciousness remains relegated to the paranormal which is equivalent to myth. The application of the term 'meaning' to concepts like consciousness is an exorsize in mysticism, not philosophy.

(This is an addition to this section dissenting with the comments here made.)

The ideas expressed in the above submission are not sound complaints given the topic at hand:

1. Stating that 'Biologically derived consciousness is the only form of consciousness we know of,' presupposes without support that 'consciousness' is biologically-based, when in fact, no such 'knowledge' can be proved.

2. Claiming 'spiritual' consciousness is an invalid perspective presupposes 'materialism.' As spiritualism, its opposite world-view, is an unfalsafiable concept (meaning that it cannot be tested such that results might prove, based on the substantiation or contradiction of a hypothesis, the existence or non-existence of 'spiritual' reality) its opposite, materialism (the thesis that material reality explains all existence, including conscious experience)likewise cannot be proved or disproved (as proof or disproof of one would be disproof or proof of its opposite, respectively). Consequently, ruling out a spiritual perspective simply because it is not empirical in nature is a demand based on fallacious reasoning, as it cannot be demonstrated the debate over consciousness is exclusively empirical in nature.

NPOV Dispute

Having come to this article by way of the VfD page on Physical Immortalism I was struck by the difference in tone between the two articles. Immortality is longer, has more info (and a section on Physical Immortality, but it had a subtle POV to it that bothered me. I recommended that the two articles be merged and Immortality be re-worked to make it NPOV. Now it is up to me to point out what I find objectionable POV about this article.

1. Christian Bias - Christianity is listed first, followed by Judaism, Islam, and then other, older world religions. This is neither alphabetic nor chronistic arragement: What is the principle at work here? Catagories at the bottom only list "Christian eschatology"... Do I need to do more to make my case? Christianity should not have this pride of place. That is a distortion of knowledge.

• I've taken the liberty of putting them in alphabetical order. Teflon Don 00:30, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

2. Glossing over "resurrection" as a Christian dogma and placing it under "spiritual immortality" is a complete misunderstanding of the tradition of "bodily resurrection". This mistake points to a particular Christian POV...

3. Absence of Taoist Alchemy as a World tradition focused on "physical immortality" needs to be remedied.

4. There's more, but I can't go on now...

That said, there is an awful lot of good work in the article, I just hope that it will be made better.

Emyth 23:25, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

The Immortality#Concepts_of_immortality section appears to have lots of POV. For example, the phrases "unending existence too simple..." and "...one desires that this existence be of a desirable quality..." are presumptive of the reader's attitude. Also, "According to most ethicists, the engineer has not done Jones a favor even if..." is also presumptive of a concept whereby exact duplication does not constitute resurrection, and presumptive of some majority of Ethicists. The series of subtopics in Concepts... appears to grade the quality or certainty of certain types of immortality, and steer the reader away from certain types, instead of using a more NPOV approach of describing these mechanisms and the related Philosophical/Theological arguments. HST, it would not take much changing to drop the POV and turn the section into something that captures man's desire to satisfy himself that the invented immortality was objectively truly immortal.

The thought experiments are interesting and do catalyze lots of good thought, but could be shortened. In fact, the simplest thought problem to consider is whether the consciousness that appears each morning upon awakening is instantiated right then, with access to all memories of the previous day, or did that consciousness instantiate earlire and persist overnight?

Since this section brings up the "philosophical issue of the meaning of consciousness", issues such as possibility of nontemporal and nonlocal qualities of consciousness (if consciousness exists outside of time, then only the ego cares if it was created this morning) can be incorporated.

As mentioned, lots of good work...I just do not know enough about the community of this page and volatility of the subject to make any changes to the page.

Poppafuze

I think Plato had several dialogs that involved immortality. The "Phaedo" (which concerns immortality of the soul) and the "Sympsomium" (which concerns physical immortality) come to mind. Since Plato is clear about the premesis that his dialogs operate on and uses logic to reach his conclusions I think they could add a lot to this article and do not contain any sort of theological bias. I found it very comforting not to have to take immortality on faith (since I'm not religious). I can break down the arguments and post them here but since I'm only a college student it might be more appropriate for someone else to do so.

Is a thought experiment like the one in Unending Existence(6.1) even encyclopedic. I would think as a quote from an expert on immortality, it would be excellent, but it doesn't seem to state any fact, which is the intent of an encyclopedic article, is it not? --Balrog30 03:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

"Immortals walk among us"

While i would dearly love to believe that there are indeed immortal humans, (im serrious, im not JUST leading into a point) i still must question the validity of your statement. If people are immortal, why are there no medical records of such immortals, and why they have not presented their amazing abilities in an open public forum. Im sure the community would love to ammend this article if you were to offer objective and scientific proof of these immortals.

Not that I am going to voice support of such (though I, too, would love to see immortals), but any smart immortal would do their best to hide the fact. I'm sure a number of people would be more than willing to kill you and take you apart or kidnap you and torture the information out of you. Of course, for this reason if someone did become immortal I doubt it would ever appear on Wikipedia because it would be very difficult to determine if they did a good job hiding it. Titanium Dragon 04:08, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to agree with this. Given that they might be truly immortal, there would be a lot of idiots trying to kill them, only to fail and keep coming until the immortal person kills them out of sheer annoyance (or the person dies by accident out of their own mistakes). This could get the immortal person into a lot of trouble - and sure, they're not worried for their life, but I'm sure most of them really don't want that kind of attention. And yeah... with the poking and prodding. Nobody wants to be a lab rat. - MasterXiam 18:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I have to erase one misconception you have about 'Infernals.' (Immortal Humans) Our immortality is not something we shy away from publicly. As when Infernals convene we are given no degree of serious, and no sense of credibility from the general public, and understandably so.

As an Infernal, I can conclusively state that after hundreds of years on earth, the eternal void that all humans fall into after death becomes a preferable fate to immortality. Despite the fact that Infernals are immune to the disease known as aging, destruction of an infernal is possible. However, I can never find the courage to grab that knife, I can never find the courage to end my existence.

68.115.93.19 06:28, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Weird... Turly-burly 13:22, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I find it difficult to beleive either contributor claiming to be immortal. There are numerous noble, life-threatening causes you could contribute yourselves towards if life is such a bore and suicide seems debasing and intimidating. If you are immortal, then you're just not trying hard enough.

Let me see if I understand this. User "68.115.93.19" is seriously claiming to be immortal? Am I the only one that find this hard to belive? I hate to sound like I am stifling debate but this seems quite impossible on many levels.

Ok. First of all, the idea of eternal void that immortal would fall in, seems true from our logic. But don't you think that an

immortal person should have some different logical system? You see the logics of 10-20, 20-30, 30-40,... age group for each person is different. Secondly, imagine yourself being immortal. What would you do now? Chase noble causes? Save humanity from itself? Comon, these are all related to mortal thinking. If a person is immortal, would'nt he be so powerfull to arrange sources for himself to protect him from all evils or blackmailers or attackers, etc.? Why shall not an immortal person give the secrets of his immortality to others? What shall he be afraid of? Is it something like that he will loose his batteries for giving away this kind of information?

I second that. This is wikipedia not a new-age bullshit forum. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.133.12.101 (talk) 17:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

Could we just archive or delete this section? It seems waste of space to even keep it around?Kairos 09:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Question from a non-spiritual POV

I'm delighted to find such an active forum to which to bring my question. My question is this: if the causes of aging mentioned in the article could be dealt with, and immortality achieved, how 'old' would the individual look for the rest of eternity? Could aging be arrested at any stage of an individual's development, such that she might forever appear as 'old' as she was when the treatment took place? Presumably the aging process could be arrested in infancy (an undesirable prospect). Adambisset 01:51, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It depends on the how physical immortality is achieve: let say nanorobots are used in this case constant rejuvenation of your body at the molecular and cellular level should leave you looking like you did in your prime if not better, you could order the little bots to change your appearance to what ever you want. Lets say organ replacement and stem cells are used, in this case your body's physical age would cycle from young to old to young again and repeat, you would look as old as how long its been since your replace your skin and skeletal muscle. Lets say Mind_transfer is used then you could download your self into any body you want, be it humanoid or not, cybernetic or completely robotic, when the warranty or lease goes out on your body just get a new one. --BerserkerBen 8 July 2005 00:30 (UTC)

Why can't the immortal or 'Infernal' contribute something to this article by describing how it's possible to be an immortal or what are the ways of becoming immortal?? -- A curious user

Non-mainstream immortality

Should this article maybe include a section on the various people out there who claim to be able to sell you immortality for a fee, such as Alex Chiu with his "immortality rings"? In terms of evidence and results, such devices are no less successful than the immortality promises of the various religions etc. already listed. --StoatBringer 00:02, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

boring immortality ?

"he did everything one can do in life, several times, becoming terribly bored". maybe one could erase parts of one's memory in order to live things again ? what's more i think there will always be something new to live (incrdedible games more complicated than lives, for example). should we add this idea somewhere in the page ?

That is a very interesting point. If the human mind is finite, then at some point it will have to forget some things if it wants to learn anything new. Over many aeons, the same knowledge could cycle through the human mind many times without the human becoming bored. Like the alleged "fish in the bowl," a human being could be, over the long term, to stupid to be bored.

I believe the advanced technology that would coincide with the development of physical immortality would open the universe to indefinitely long-lived (if in not actual fact fully, forever, immortal) interstellar explorers. Learning the secrets and wonders of the universe would vastly expand our own universe of possible experience, and I suggest following the future of our own universe, if that is the limit to the cosmos, might be enough to hold our attention to the end (if there is no end, it'll be a hundred billion years finding out, which is a long time even to an immortal). Another problem, though: Studies I've seen suggest our brains are only equipped to hold perhaps a thousand years of memory. Will we discover a biological or technical (or combination) method to allow our minds to expand indefinitely, perhaps combining with future starships? Will be still then be human? Is that a sort of death? If I sound like I'm describing science fiction, that's exactly my point. We must consider that a future where we can live for thousands or more years will be virtually inconceivable from our point of view, just as our lives today could not have been conceived even by Leonardo da Vinci in the seventeenth century. BTW, no real immortal would be stupid enough to leave behind an IP address on Wikipedia, the trail could be followed, and no immortal would have more computer experience than the rest of us - in fact, they would probably not be more than moderately proficient, given their longevity and the pace that entails. Thanks for the fun, though, it makes for good science fiction too. And science fiction sometimes becomes fact.

Comon people, how "boring" the idea seems that you would erase part of your memory to do things again and again so that you could find them attractive? Why would someone do something like that and still be intelligent? For example, I have played the game "Project IGI". I do play it again because I enjoy it. But there is a limit to it. Consider the process that I am, in hundreds of years, have played this game, thousands of time. Would you call me sensible? Yes we do not like to end our lives. But I think this is due to the fact that we know our lives to be mortal. Think of the opposite situation...

nanobots

I'm not completely sure but I have heard that the production of nanobots is impossible. Is anyone sure?

Why would it be impossible? From what I understand, people are already working on nanotechnology (especially for medical purposes). It's not impossible, it's only a matter of having instruments small or fine enough to assemble them. From what I understand, the smaller a microchip is, the better it works. I could be mistaken, though. MasterXiam 18:13, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right, smaller microchips work better, simply because there's less distance to travel and you can fit more stuff in the same area. (Er...maybe. That's just common sense talking, which has little say in the real world.) If nanobots were impossible, surely Star trek and suchlike would stop using them? since one of their secondary purposes is to convey a possible, if improbable future...(once again common sense, which doesn't apply in the Real world. I felt like replying.)Vimescarrot 23:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

There is a limit to how small a microchip can go though, which is when the tracks become thinner than an electron (because the electron is obviously too big to pass along the track). Because of this I believe that alternative forms of data transmission are being researched, such as using light. Hellfire83 13:46, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Skeptical POVs

I noticed that the page was underrepresenting the view that immortality is either impossible or unlikely, which is a majority point of view in the scientific community and the atheist or skeptical school of thought. This is something that editors should consider as well in making the article NPOV. Shawnc 21:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Is the possibilty of immortality really a minority opinion in the scientific community? I would think most scientists would be agnostic about it. KHM03 22:47, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is definitely a minority position. This is because immortality is theoretically impossible, as dictated by Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A more rational position than immortality would be indefinite lifespan, one in which we may have acquired some control over mortality, but with the admission that full control is impossible (again because of the Law of Entropy), and that life could be snatched away from us at any moment. Even if you can keep rejuvenating a person so that he could live on and on, it's not going to help him much when he gets smashed between a careening bus and a tree, or his airplane is highjacked by 19 suicidal terrorists who fly it into a skyscraper, or if he gets hit by lightning, or if his home is hit by an earthquake, avalanche, mudslide, wildfire, flash flood, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, volcanic erruption, meteor, comet, or nuclear bomb. On the other hand, if you manage to upload your consciousness into a computer and backup your mind onto 10,000 subsystems, it would take a doomsday device to kill you, unless you managed to get off this rock before it was launched by the Unholy Jihad. Actuarial analysis of death rates has determined that even if you remove all other causes of death, the average lifespan would level out at around 600 years (given our current level of safety) due to accidental death. You could of course improve your odds by always wearing a helmet. :o) Go for it! 16:16, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

OK. KHM03 16:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Er...well, you can survive being hit by lightning.Vimescarrot 23:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

This edit removed the reference to the belief of scientists regarding immortality, as shown by an actual poll. Supplementary notes to the poll is available here I do not think this improves the article's neutrality. Shawnc 01:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Addition of erotic stories from ASSTR

• Please see Talk:Succubus#Regarding_addition_of_erotic_stories. If it gets put to a debate, it should probably affect my edits to this article as well. Danny Lilithborne 21:42, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Fiction section

This article is awfully long, and the Fiction section seems to be the on which would be best spun-off into a sub-topic - just a thought. KillerChihuahua 16:50, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• Gotta say that I agree here, the fiction section makes this article, which is full of useful information, seem to ramble on. I suggest that a short summary of immortality in fiction be written, with proper links to well known specific cases (i.e. obi wan), or, at the very least, just a list of well known immortals from fiction. Keep it short! HammerHeadHuman 05:48, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Definitions of immortality

In the first section "Definitions of immortality", it seems to me that the sixth possibility mentioned, "brain-scan" is pretty much indistinguishable from the first, "spiritual immortality." Both require a dualist view that the mind/soul somehow exists independantly from the body and can be separated from it. In other words, you have to believe in some sort of "self" that is seperate from the physical body in order to consider this to be possible. The author (apparently unwittingly) makes this clear when he/she says:

"This, of course, raises the question of the soul... Once the scan is complete, wherein lies the soul? With the living organism, bound to die, or with the replicant at the time of the scan, which could live indenfinitely?"

The article seems to assume that there is some such soul or other body-independant self when this is certainly not self-evident. If such a body-independant self exists it is insignificant whether this self goes into a technological machine or some sort of spiritual perfect body once seperated from the physical form. Mind-downloading is simply a modern rephrasing of such spiritual positions as christian bodily resurrection.

I have taken the liberty of rephrasing the paragraph.

Jaspence 17th April 2006 12:28pm (EST)

Buddhism

I edited the Buddhist views on immortality a bit, mainly because it was somehow different than a buddhist's view. And for buddist rebirth being similar to hinduism and jainism, please check again, as it is different. Reincarnation, something that reincarnates (as in immortal soul), for hindusim and Rebirth, something that is (not immortal, but rather a rebirth... a bit more complicated), for Buddhism. Monkey Brain 02:50, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Audio file

I have placed an 8mb .ogg audio file under the Media portion of this article. It is a reading of the text for 24 July 2006. Brinticus 15:39, 24 July 2006 (EST)

The Borg

This article needs to be incorporate the idea of immortality as exhibited by the Borg. Specifically, the Borg is a superorganism, made by cybernetically linking multiple biological intelligences into a single mind. There are no "individuals" within the Borg; there is only the Borg. Parts of the Borg may die, but its consciousness and intelligence is eternal. --Amit 07:44, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Objection on the grounds that the Borg are entirely fictional.--Roswell Crash Survivor 20:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

irrelevant information

i think some of the "immortality in fiction" need to be deleted, or at least consolidated into a couple of paragraphs instead of taking up half the article. Because 1. Listing every reference in modern media to immortality will make a very boring article 2. its irrelevant? who is coming onto this page thinking "hmm, i wonder what popular tv shows or anime series have used the concept of immortality"82.21.150.24 01:55, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok I have removed some of the examples listed, based on the criteria: do they say anything about immortality, or are they just saying "In fiction X, the character is immortal". 82.21.150.24 02:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

The section "Wraith: The Oblivion" should be deleted. Wikipedia really needs a rule to delete any obscure references to role playing games. It might be better to create a seperate page for "immortality in fiction" because most of this info is totally useless trivia that bloats the article. Am I the only one who thinks it really hurts wikipedia's credibility if you're reading along seemingly factual information and then suddenly some paragraph like "and this is also true on Ogerslayer level 8 right after you get the magical sword" intrudes on so many articles? --Openman 23:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Douglas Adams Suggestion

Anyone thinking of adding Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged from chapter one of Adam's ||Life, the Universe and Everything|| (second sequel to ||Hitchhiker's Guide||) to the 'Immortality in Fiction' category? I think it'd add persepective.

I'd do it myself, but I'm not clear on all the legal issues involved and how best to go about navigating through them to successfully put it on here. I'll leave it up to whoever cares the most about this article.

On second thought, having just read the above entry, maybe if it's added that category should be made into it's own article, as it does seem interesting...or at least somewhat. I don't have a prayer of figuring out how to do that, so again it's up to whosoever gives a hoot.

History of immortality

Though "history of immortality" may create some tongue-in-cheek remarks, I was surprised to not find any historical references to ideas of a prolonged existence. In elementary school, I learned they buried people with weapons and food even in the stone age, so I was looking to update myself here.

Sources & Original Research

This article suffers from an extreme lack of sources and an abundance of Original Research. The whole 'quantum thought experiment' for instance. Wikipedia is not a place for editors musings on given topics. All opinions must be sourced to notable sources. Ashmoo 01:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the Quantum immortality section, it's looking pretty gross. An article should not blatantly contradict itself within the same section like that. Either correct the statement that is in error, or remove it altogether. That section just makes this article look really bad.--Balrog30 05:22, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Bad spelling and weak information

I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm Eternal Imortal ([sic] Immortal?), but your contribution is full spelling errors, unwikified references and material that adds very little to the preceeding or following paragraph. Life extension and rejuvenation are touched on in those paragraphs and following the wikilinks to the articles reveals much better and more accurate detail. This is not the place for such detail. For these reasons, I am reverting your entry. --GirlForLife 05:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Unhelpful deletion of an edit

This morning I corrected the introductory sentence that equalled "immortality" with "eternal life" to read as follows:

"Immortality (in this place I deleted "(or eternal life)") is the concept of living for a potentially infinite, or indeterminate, length of time. (The following sentence I added:) It is distinct from eternal life which is the concept of an exceedingly superior qualify of life than the present that is not governed by time."

I stumbled across the article on "immortality" when I tried to create a link to the article on "eternal life" and found myself re-directed to the article on "immortality". Though only an infrequent contributor to Wikipedia, I am nevertheless aware of the possibilility that a correct point can be deleted by a later editor simply because a particular article happens to be on a subject on which emotions run high so that it sadly turns out to be a matter of who perseveres the longest and not who states the facts or truth. Could this also be the case with this article on "immortality"?

Admittedly, there is much scope for improvement of the sentence that I added after the introductory sentence in order to ensure that other visitors to the site do not perhaps swallow the equation of "eternal life" with "immortality". And so I hope that someone with more time and greater competence than I will take this in hand, and also write a Wikipedia article on "eternal life".

What I object to, however, is that a subsequent editor simply deleted the distinction as regards "eternal life" that I had added, and that obviously unlearned subsequent editor, at least on this subject, said that the deletion had been made because what I had added "seemed arbitrary without sources". For all I remember, it is among the basics that students of philosophy of religion are being taught, though as I already admitted, the point can surely be stated more accurately and eloquently than I managed.

As for my part, and many share this hope, I am not looking forward to immortality, nor everlasting life, which can amount to no more than an infinite drawing out of this present misery, but only to Life Eternal, the quality of which I tried to hint at with the description "exceedingly superior", which is the only hope that keeps me going here in time, and many with the same theological outlook.

This distinction is not shared by everyone; but in the Wikipedia spirit of fairness it must not be suppressed.

86.136.188.189 22:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It was reverted to comply with WP:LEAD#Provide_an_accessible_overview - specifically the bits that refer to specialized uses and citing sources. The most basic definition of "immortality" is simply "not subject to death." Your personal views on the distinction are not really encyclopedia quality and certainly don't justify changing the basic definition presented in the lead section. CovenantD 19:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not just his personal view, it is a logical conclusion CovenantD. See the definition of eternity.--Eternal Imortal 20:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

What I see there is an article with no citations and only one philosophical and one biblical mention. Nothing indicates that it is a well-referenced entry that this one should depend on. Nor have you addressed the points I raised about the guidelines for the Lead section. Please read about Original Research on why this "conclusion" shouldn't be included in it's current form. CovenantD 21:15, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

This article was good 3 years ago; now it's great compost

...and apparently it can't be changed. Is there any way to just revert to something around 2004? If you'll look at the history of this page it's one of devolution. At this rate within a few years it will be an assemblage of wisdom from herb smoking fantasy gamers. I tried to start cleaning up the immortality in fiction trivia, but a bot wisely restored the content right after providing me with more motivation to leave such horribly ignorant trivia alone.--Openman 09:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree, but this isn't contained to just this article. This "in popular fiction crap" will be/is wikipedias downfall. I can't read an article about abraham lincoln anymore without knowing he was referenced on family guy. I felt physically ill when I glanced at the contents of this page and saw Naruto. I can't comprehend why any adult would find this tolerable. It should be deleted/moved from this page and every other wikipedia page of the same sort.

Why shouldn't Naruto be in this article? We are talking about a fictional concept; all examples of immortality are fictional and Naruto contains examples of immortality. If we remove all reference to popular culture from this article then we have nothing left but speculation on possible future technology. -- Lilwik 03:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Move the fiction section/delete it from this page

Can anyone come up with a good arguement to why any of these should stay? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.243.28.228 (talk) 22:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

You can tell gullible friends that it's all true and get a couple of hour fun watching them try some of them? -- DavetheAvatar 02:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

because immortality is a concept that exists and is explored heavily in fiction. whether it exists as non-fiction at all is certainly open to debate. There is no reason why fictional concepts shouldn't exist in an encyclopdia... there are even non-fiction books on fictional topics. The concept of immortality can not be completely defined nor properly explored w/out addressing immortality in fiction.

24.56.216.132 14:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)amyanda2000

yes, knowing that one of the characters on naruto can talk with his head cut off really helped me understand the concept of immortality better...

I really think the people who add these low culture references are some kind of meta-vandals

Atleast they know how to sign their posts(use four tildes"~").Kairos 09:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we definitely need references to immortality in fiction, because immortality is primarily a fictional concept. However I see why people are complaining about the fiction section. It is nothing but a huge list of works of fiction with very little organization or discrimination. I think we should include only the best example, or at least remove some of the poorest examples, and find a better way to organize it into sections. The current Physical and Spiritual subsections offer very little organization. I think I'll create an Undead section in which to put vampires and similar beings which are immortal because they have already died. -- Lilwik 21:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I have made the fiction section better. It now has meaningful subsections that each represent an aspect of immortality in fiction and a few examples to illustrate it. All of the examples that I couldn't categorize I have left in Other. It feels like the Highlander example really should be included because of extreme notability, but I'm not sure that it actually illustrates anything. Many of the 'Other' examples should probably be removed or else formed into a list.

The Mafistoplxeus example is especially awful. It doesn't seem to really be about immortality at all, just some game. I would have deleted it, but it seems to be the only information that Wikipedia has on this game and someone put some effort into it so it feels like it should be preserved, perhaps by creating an article for that game and moving this information there. -- Lilwik 00:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm unsure of what qualifies for a sub-page, but perhaps we can move all the references to works of fiction to a sub-page, and only leave the ones that serve to illustrate a point in the main article. It is true that Immortality is mostly a spiritual, and fictional concept, so perhaps we can include the most notable references into the article itself? I definitely agree that the fictional references clutter this page, and that they are still someone's work to add these references so they should be preserved if possible, but Immortality in Fiction sounds like a sub-page worthy topic to me.--Balrog30 03:18, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

More Organized

it loks much better this way!

Sorry!

it looks much better this way!Starovoytov 15:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)