Today’s reading in my religion and science fiction class was the story “Mortal Gods” by Orson Scott Card. I’m including the story below, for those who may never have read it. It raises a question relevant to this particular season. Is immortality desirable? Many religious traditions in our contemporary world focus on offering the promise of an afterlife in return for faith or behavior in the present. But one way in which we can helpfully allow sci-fi and religion to dialogue is on this topic. The Q Continuum on Star Trek faces one of the perils of being essentially all-powerful and immortal: boredom. Card’s story, on the other hand, suggests that death can be viewed as a gift rather than a curse. To echo a scene from Blade Runner that a student showed in class last week, “The star that burns twice as bright burns half as long” (although as has been pointed out, a star that burns twice as brightly would live only one quarter as long, which may explain why replicants were so upset about their expiration dates).
Do you find the prospect of living forever desirable? Would you prefer to live forever, or just longer, and why?
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