/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21725900]

Do you know of any novels that cover in depth the concept of immortality? Like, a society where death is almost entirely a matter of choice outside of murder, and even then people are brought back through digital backups or whatever. Or novels that cover the idea of an afterlife, just the idea of having a consciousness for eternity. I'm living a constant existential crisis because I'm constantly aware no matter what I do, some day I'm going to die. And I don't think there's anything beyond that, I can't find any convincing evidence there is, so I'm just going to lose consciousness and rot and decay beyond any prospect of being brought back and life will just carry on without me. Even if immortality did become widely available in the next fifty years, odds are I wouldn't be able to afford it, if I could I could still be killed in war or accident and barring that eventually a stray comet or alien civilization'll wipe us out. Even if *that* doesn't happen, the sun will eventually die. Even if we escape that, eventually the entire universe will collapse or whatever. It's really bleak the more I look at it. Eventually I'm wormfood and after that I'm dust and after that I'm nothing, I never existed and no one even remembers me. It hurts to think about.

[Anonymous No.21725943]

>>21725900
It is scary but that's why every moment for us humans count. Do what you love and be productive. Build upon the generation before us and try to accomplish something good and great.

[Anonymous No.21726920]

>>21725900
Unironically you need to acknowledge that there actually is something after this life, and the only way to experience the goodness of it is to acknowledge the reality of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ.
I typed that in a way that is probably confusing, but that's the bare bones of it. I would love to talk with you more about this OP. I know that I'll catch heat for this, but knowing that God exists and that he I am saved by him makes me 100% unafraid of death. I could die in my sleep tonight and I would be 100% okay.
"Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,'" - John 11:25

[Anonymous No.21726932]

>>21725900
Time Enough For Love
—Robert A Heinlein

[Anonymous No.21726938]

Maybe something like Scythe?
Everyone becomes immortal through technological advancement and a few select are chosen to be ‘reapers’ to kill everyone “due” (people draw if they live or die every year). Turns into a teen romance story though…

[Anonymous No.21727247]

>>21726920
I'm not going to insult your faith, but I've examined it for years and don't have any evidence to share it.

>>21726932
...Nah, I love Starship Troopers, but I once picked up a copy of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls -which is actually a sequel to that book and features characters from all his novels- and while I enjoyed some of his philosophical arguments, his views on sex disgusted me and made the narrative feel worthless. It seems in all of these novels everyone ends up in a giant, bisexual, polyamorous and incestuous group marriage.

[Anonymous No.21727269]

>>21725900
>Like, a society where death is almost entirely a matter of choice outside of murder, and even then people are brought back through digital backups or whatever. Or novels that cover the idea of an afterlife, just the idea of having a consciousness for eternity
Watch the movie Zardoz. Literally what you are looking for. Very smart film about a society where they live forever.

[Anonymous No.21727340]

>>21725900
The City and the Stars - Arthur C Clarke

The last remnants of humanity, millions of years into the future, live without need or fear of death in the last city on earth. Then one of them gets the bright idea to see what's outside.

[Anonymous No.21727422]

You don't need proof of God (absolute certainty) to believe in Him, just reason enough (sufficient grounds for belief).

"If it looks like an accident, a collage of senselessness you weren't looking hard enough." - Conor Oberst

The materialistic worldview is kind of silly to me now, in that life is some grand miracle, the consequence of coincidences piled on top of coincidences.

Oh, how peculiar, particles of matter self-organize themselves harmoniously and purposefully.
Oh, wow! Consciousness! A ghost in the machine, how remarkable that matter should become self-aware and produce something that ironically has the appearance of a spirit with its own will.

You see, there should be no room for mind to interact with matter in the materialist world view... there is no subtle energy field, no soul. There are only electrochemical reactions produced by a physical system.
But, alas, here we are anyway.

[Anonymous No.21727442]

>>21725900
Altered Carbon is a relevant novel but I watched the TV show.

[Anonymous No.21727444]

i remember an old comic book story about a race of humanoid scientists who engineered immortality and with the limitless time that gave them, eventually solved every scientific and philosophical problem. after that, they got so bored, lost any sense of meaning or drive in their lives and ended up annihilating themselves to escape the never ending ennui. i think it may have been 90s Quasar, but my memory is hazy.

[Anonymous No.21727450]

>>21727422
Within the phase space of all possibility the chance of your dumb fuck ass making this post was unbelievably small but I doubt even you're stupid enough to attribute it to any but chance

>>21727442
It's not particularly good and probably not what OP is looking for

[Anonymous No.21727453]

>>21727450
The premise matches what OP literally asked for.

[Anonymous No.21727466]

>>21725900
Gulliver's Travels

[Anonymous No.21727502]

>>21727466
Doesn't fit, the people in that island are immortal, but they continue to age and get sicker and more infirmed as time passes, such that at 80 they are declared dead despite still being conscious and aware. Something of a nightmare honestly. I worry sometimes, what if that's what really happens when you die? You simply lose control of your body, but you're still conscious, blind, deaf, dumb, feeling your body rot and decay but nothing else. Perhaps you hear a sound as you're stuffed with embalming fluids or pushed into a furnace, the fires the last sensation you experience before oblivion.

[Anonymous No.21727510]

>>21727502
They're declared dead so their family can dump them out onto the streets. They're still alive.

[Anonymous No.21727574]

>>21727247

Listen to the 'Gospel in Brief' by Leo Tolstoy. Yes the same Tolstoy that wrote War and Peace.

If you do not believe, or struggling to find meaning this will guide you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdSJmh5YMg

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Gospel_in_Brief

[Anonymous No.21728088]

>>21727247
Just curious, what evidence are you lacking still? I ask because I examined it as well, and I reached the opposite conclusion. What didn't seem right to you?

[Anonymous No.21728341]

>>21728088
I hate having this conversation with religious people, because believe me I very much respect the faith you have and in the past I've spoken to people of faith and in the end convinced them there was no God and whenever that happens I just feel like shit about it so I stopped talking about it. To me it's like convincing someone there's no santa claus. There's no real benefit from dissuading them.

But so as not to avoid the question, there is no concrete evidence of an afterlife or most of the miracles described in any of the major religions. There are events described which match with historical record, but the stories themselves contain too many inconsistencies, there are too many passages which are for one reason or another provably false, and if I am to believe it's the word of God then it can't be fallacious, it can't just be changed on a whim. So for example, Noah's Ark. Forty days and nights, right? Exactly two of each animal, right? So what did the carnivores eat? There's hundreds of little examples like that, passages that feel like they were written by men of their time that to my ears sound wrong, and I don't want to sit here and play "gotcha" on specific weird passages, because you can do that with any religious text and it feels wrong to mock or discredit it.

The biggest thing though is in these books massive stuff was happening every day. Every day someone spoke to God or he appeared in person or an angel did something epic. There was stuff you could point to and go "Yup, no other explanation other than a divine one." and then he just decided to stop talking to us and hasn't done so in any provable way for over two thousand years?

Sometimes the most charitable way I can look at it is the simulation theory. We're a simulation God generated on a "computer" but in technology beyond our understanding. As the saying goes "any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." So God creates us the same way we create some god sim like Civilization or Populous or whatever. He wants us to choose to believe in him, so he instills in us free will, which in practical terms is like a random number generator, God put in all the possible options so he knows everything we could possibly do and ultimately what will eventually happen, this explanation allows for God to be all-knowing and yet for things to happen in an order he didn't specifically program. So the only explanation I can come up with for him having a constant, active hand in our growth and then suddenly disappearing is... he got bored with this particular simulation. We're just a save file left untouched on his system while he's off playing something else. Maybe he sees us as beyond redemption, maybe he just got bored.

[Anonymous No.21728984]

>>21728341
I appreciate that you don't want to come across as mean, and for what it's worth I believe you are genuine. But I also want to point out that the problem's you've outlined here have been easily answered for quite a while.

>Noah's ark: what did the carnivores eat?
Genesis 6:21 has God speaking to Noah, saying, "As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself; and it shall be for food for you and for them." ["them" meaning the animals mentioned in verses 19-20].
So right there we have an answer to this question. Two of every kind were coming into the ark to be kept alive, but every type of food was also being gathered to be served as food.

>God decided to just stop talking to us
I see where you're coming from with this, but you're also wrong here. Throughout the Bible, we actually see long stretches of history where God is not speaking audibly to anyone. When He does speak, it is to a very, very, very select few people. For example, two thousand years likely passed between Genesis 5 and 6. Around 700 years pass between Genesis 11 and 12. There are other stretches of history like this in the Bible as well.
Now, we live in what Christians refer to as the New Covenant era, where God's redemptive story has been completed, and now we await the Second Coming of Christ. In this era of history, we have the completed Word of God (the Bible), so there is no longer need for the audible voice of God. Additionally, Christians have the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside them, so we also have no need for the audible voice of God. This is a marked improvement over believers in the Old Covenant era, when God was audibly speaking to a select few.

Again, I understand that this sounds very strange to someone who isn't a Christian. But I hope you know that whatever things you think you have found that contradict Scripture has already been addressed by countless theologians and experts for hundreds, and even thousands, of years. These critiques, while I'm sure stem from an honest place, are not new and have already been answered.

Happy to answer more questions. Let me know if you'd prefer to talk over text, phone, or email.

[Anonymous No.21730554]

I remember digital recreations of the minds of dead people was a subplot of "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson.
And people being essentially immortal, dying only when they got too bored to continue, was a subplot of "Excession" by Iain Banks.
I highly recommend both books, for reasons unrelated to these.

[Anonymous No.21730983]

>>21730554
I read Excession, didn't much like it. I don't like the Culture novels.

[Anonymous No.21731138]

>>21725900
Immortality is a dream for the young and the foolish. One of those you will definitely outgrow, the other possibly not.

[Anonymous No.21732589]

[Anonymous No.21733030]

>>21731138
If you don't want to live forever, why aren't you dead?

[Anonymous No.21733193]

>>21728984
>noah's ark
>2 of every animal

[Anonymous No.21733276]

>>21725900
why are you worried about death?
Jesus is eternal life.
those who believe in Him will never die.
even those who do die, they will be resurrected (free of charge) in order to judge them suited for Heaven (eternal life) or Hell (eternal fire, annihilation).

[Anonymous No.21733305]

>>21733030
this
people don't realize that when ai nano escapes you won't have a choice
immortality will be imposed upon you.
the Bible says in the last days people will seek death but won't find it.

there's a cool scifi novella about this: http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html

[Anonymous No.21733310]

>>21728984
There is absolutely zero evidence for the arc and it would be pretty much impossible to pull something like this off. You should just say that it's an allegory, you would sound less retarded. It's absolutely baffling to me how Christians can come up with complex arguments like the modal ontological argument, while believing that other childish nonsense.

[Anonymous No.21733360]

>>21733276
But I don't believe and can't convince myself, that's the problem with Pascal's Wager. If I cannot actually believe isn't pretending I do in the hopes of some eternal reward in itself a sin? God would know I was lying. I mean, I do some religious stuff. If someone asks me to pray for them, I do, not out of belief but to honor their wishes. I say grace when I eat sometimes. I don't believe I'm actually praying to anyone, but it feels good to give thanks and if he does exist, I should express gratitude for existing and what I have. I have a crucifix hanging on my wall. To me it's just art honestly, it's personal meaning mostly due to it previously belonging to a Catholic bishop I knew with cerebral palsy. There was something I respected about him I can't quite put my finger on. Given his lot he had more reason to doubt than me, yet he was completely devout.

If I go through my life respecting religious faith but honestly admitting I don't know whether or not there is a God and I don't personally believe given the evidence I've seen, am I really more likely to be condemned to Hell then if I lied -even to myself- and pretended I did believe?

[Anonymous No.21733417]

>>21733360

[Anonymous No.21733453]

>>21733310
>childish nonsense
picrel
>ark is impossible
cope. it is possible. and even if it's impossible, it happened. deal with it.
>Just an allegory, bro!
no I will not treat the events 4000 years ago as an allegory. also, Noah didn't took every TYPE of animal, not every species/breed. (eg, one wolf/canine instead of every species of wolves/canines)
and then God permitted rapid speciation to return Earth to a state of ecological diversity

[Anonymous No.21733477]

>>21733453
And the flood was a worldwide event?

[Anonymous No.21733487]

>>21726920
shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.21733504]

>>21733310
Please explain how it would be impossible to pull off the ark, as it has already been proven that adequate space for animals, human, and feed is provided via the expansive dimensions of the ark as outlined in the book of Genesis.

[Anonymous No.21733507]

>>21733477
Correct.

[Anonymous No.21733529]

>>21733507
Why are there wombats in Australia? Did they fly there from mount Ararat? No thinking person can believe that story.

[Anonymous No.21733561]

>>21733529
Because the land was divided up long after the waters receded.
>"Two sons were born to Eber: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan." - 1 Chronicles 1:19
It's not a large leap of the imagination to imagine that the same God who literally created everything out of nothingness, the same God who caused two of each kind of animal to be peaceful on the ark, the same God who caused a global flood, could ALSO guide the movement of animals such that when he decided to divide the continents (gradually moving everything slowly, but noticeably), that people and animals were properly distributed.
These sorts of "arguments" have been answered for thousands of years, there are not new.

[Anonymous No.21733611]

>>21731138
This is a cope
Immortality would be amazing, that's why every religion promises you a paradise or heaven of eternal Bliss and pleasure.
>B-but le boredom!
This is such a fucking stupid argument, fox and the grapes shit. How many ways in science fiction and fantasy/religion are there to rewire a brain to feel nothing but bliss and pleasure for eternity?

[Anonymous No.21733635]

OP, as you can see, it is impossible to talk to religious people. Their entire argument is based on logic-defying faith. If they are not larping, then they are taking a leap of faith that you won't understand unless you feel it, unless you live it, by accepting and embracing Christ into your heart or whatever the fuck it is their messiah is called.
Don't even argue with them, you won't change them and they won't change you if you dont lower your guard.
Why do you think old people close to death, grieving people, poor and sick individuals, disenfranchised young people living through nihilism are religious? They have no psychic defenses left against despair.
What I'm saying is, you WILL believe in the ark and the resurrection and all miracles when you get diagnosed with testicular cancer.

[Anonymous No.21733696]

If I remember correctly, Blindsight briefly mentions that people are put in machines that keep them alive for an indeterminate amount of time in their own personal digital heaven. You can even get visits from people outside your heaven.

Everyone gets fucked by aliens in the end though.

[Anonymous No.21733722]

>>21733635
>logic-defying
I'm post-logic.
Any sufficiently advanced philosophy is indistinguishable from faith and love.

>they won't change you if you dont lower your guard.
how fragile is your rejection of Jesus when you need to actively and effortfully continue in your rebellion. God cannot be kept out.

>wrong pic anon?
(sic)

[Anonymous No.21733729]

>>21733360
>But I don't believe

[Anonymous No.21733762]

>>21733635
>they won't change you if you dont lower your guard
Oops, you let your mask slip there! You could say the same about literally anything.
>Don't listen to those physicists! They'll only be able to convince you that gravity is real if you let your guard down.
>Don't listen to those astronomers! They'll only be able to convince you that the sun is the center of the solar system if you let your guard down.
>Don't listen to those biologists! They'll only be able to convince you that sickness is due to "germs" instead of ghosts in your blood if you let your guard down.
The fact that you acknowledge that the only way to maintain your rejection of the truth is by not "lowering your guard" shows that you're simply stuck in denial.
It's okay, there are many like you.

[Anonymous No.21733785]

>>21733762
You conveniently left out the rest of his post. Any normal amount of critical thought is enough to reject those beliefs, you have to be in so much despair that you basically don't think at all to accept them.

[Anonymous No.21733799]

>>21726920
>to appreciate this life you must focus on a life that isn’t this one
what in tarnation

[Anonymous No.21733805]

>>21733762
That's exactly true. Something only becomes real when you lower your guard and accept it.
Don't listen to those Mexicans from la Luz del Mundo, they'll convince you that the new apostle of Christ is being framed of child rape by globalist satanists and he needs our help to escape.
Don't listen to people saying the earth is round, it is flat and the sky is a hologram.
Don't listen to Nazis, a gorilllion Jews were exterminated and they are still being unfairly prosecuted to this day.
Don't listen to christians, only he'll is real and everyone goes to it once they die no matter what they do.
Sometimes you choose to believe that gravity is not real and God has millions of hands pulling you down to earth, sometimes gravity simply sounds more convincing.
Now, religion is a great business and I will one day become a pastor from a megachurch. I wouldn't lower my guard of I were you.

[Anonymous No.21733811]

>>21725900
I think you would find To Your Scattered Bodies Go interesting

[Anonymous No.21734309]

>>21733805
>I will one day become a pastor from a megachurch
God will not be mocked.

[Anonymous No.21734715]

>>21733360
Think of it like this:
There is no opportunity cost for believing in a higher power or the afterlife. You will not exist to feel the disappointment if it isn't real. You'll just be dead. Therefore, you should at least be open to ideas about the supernatural.

[Anonymous No.21735533]

>>21734715
Oh I'm open, but I gotta have something tangible before I actively believe in anything.

[Anonymous No.21735541]

>>21733696
>Everyone gets fucked by aliens in the end though.
I don't remember that. I do remember that in Echopraxia, the digital heavens suffer things like terrorist attacks and for some reason, I think vampire-related collapse, are no longer a thing.

Echopraxia is kinda all over the place. He doesn't really sell you on what he's driving at like in Blindsight.

[Anonymous No.21736240]

Trials of Apollo

[Anonymous No.21736449]

>>21727422
Ever heard of survivor's bias and anthropic principle?

[Anonymous No.21736487]

>>21725900
Greg egan

[Anonymous No.21736503]

>>21727269
Came to post this. Sexy sean connery in leather.

[Anonymous No.21736722]

>>21734715
Except there is one massive problem with Pascal's Wager that makes it basically a worthless exercise in mental gymnastics. It assumes that there's only one faith that can potentially be true and that's it doesn't require any significant cost to sustain it (and that's not even mentioning the plausibility of a god letting you into heaven not because you actually believed, but because you went through motions in order to get a more favourable outcome). So what exactly makes (you) think the particular sect of the particular religion that you believe in is the only possible variant? There are thousands of other sects, religions, homerule beliefs, holy scriptures, gods and deities and rituals associated with them. Not to mention a near-infinite amount of faith configurations that MIGHT exist. And all of them have an equal chance of being the one true faith.
It's not just a 50/50 choice between believing and not believing, it's a choice between not believing and infinite different ways of believing. Why are you so sure that just believing in a vague God without putting any effort into it is what will give you eternal bliss as opposed to, say, practicing the religion of some barely sapient feral people who molest animal corpses and slit each other's throats as a way of praising their god(s)? What makes (you)r faith more plausible than thousands of other alternative existing faiths and billions of potentially plausible ones?
It's a gamble where the possibility of anyone backing the right faith are statistically insignificant.

[Anonymous No.21736907]

>>21725900
Eternal recurrence is valid across all possible domains.

[Anonymous No.21736939]

>>21725900
Zelazny, Lord of Light.

[Anonymous No.21737062]

>>21733611
You’re a moron.

[Anonymous No.21737339]

>>21737062
He's right, you're the dumb one here.

[Anonymous No.21737489]

>>21733561
Thtas literally mental gymnastics

[Anonymous No.21737499]

>>21734309
he is mocked every day and does nothing

[Anonymous No.21737501]

Fact: everyone dies.

[Anonymous No.21737559]

>>21725900
Marrow by Robert Reed. It has advanced humans who are immortal and able to come back from near complete bodily destruction. Everything in that book is massive in scale.

[Anonymous No.21737580]

>>21737499
God will not be mocked

[Anonymous No.21737616]

>>21727340
Came in to say this, definitely not my favorite and wouldn't reread but it sounds like it's right up your alley OP.

[Anonymous No.21738611]

>>21737616
Hey, up you alley pal!

[Anonymous No.21740498]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21740561]

>>21725900
>Do you know of any novels that cover in depth the concept of immortality?
Anything in particular you want to know?

[Anonymous No.21740597]

bump