Some Objectivists oppose or are at least skeptical of indefinite human life extension on the grounds that immortal human beings would be akin to the “immortal, indestructible robot” Ayn Rand described and alleged cannot have any values. Mr. Stolyarov argues that it will never be possible for human beings to be completely indestructible, even if they progressively eliminate various causes of death. The absence of death does not imply the absence of the possibility of death, even for so simple a reason as that human beings can always choose (however foolishly and irrationally) to commit suicide. Moreover, even if there existed an immortal, indestructible robot with otherwise human properties, Mr. Stolyarov argues that such a being can have values, because the threat of being destroyed is not a conscious entity’s sole motive for acting.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
In this video, Mr. Stolyarov deals a double blow to opponents of indefinite human longevity by refuting two commonly made arguments. First, Mr. Stolyarov challenges the claim that the biological senescence process is inherently noble and dignified. Mr. Stolyarov’s response is that we do not value older people for their grey hair, withering skin, or decaying bodily functions – but rather for their knowledge and experience, which will not go away when indefinite life becomes possible. The second argument Mr. Stolyarov refutes is Steve Jobs’s claim that death is necessary for innovation, new ideas, and a diversity of people to come about and assume leadership roles. If more diversity is better, argues Mr. Stolyarov, then longer lifespans will enable more generations to coexist simultaneously and thus will create more intellectual diversity and competition, permitting the best ideas from every generation to prevail.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
In this video, Mr. Stolyarov addresses the objection leveled by some monotheists of the three Abrahamic faiths at the prospect of indefinite life extension – namely, the argument that those who pursue indefinite longevity are “playing God.” Mr. Stolyarov notes that the definition of the Abrahamic God as simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent renders “playing God” impossible for human beings, since humans – no matter how technologically advanced – will never have the attributes that believers consider the Abrahamic God to possess. Moreover, the “playing God” argument can be and has been used against technologies that have been developed throughout human history and which are used by many religious people today. There is no difference in kind between using this argument against existing technologies and using it against forthcoming ones; therefore, the “playing God” argument fails even from the perspective of thinking believers in God.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
Mr. Stolyarov refutes yet another argument commonly leveled at proponents of indefinite life – namely, the claim that if human lifespans are greatly extended, the Earth will become overpopulated and will run out of resources. Mr. Stolyarov counters by pointing out that birth rates in industrialized and industrializing countries have been on a consistent decline and that there is no reason why this should not continue when humans live indefinitely. Indefinite life will, however, be able to prevent any kinds of economically harmful population declines as might occur if the birth rate is consistently below the replacement rate. Moreover, the idea that humans can ever “run out” of resources presupposed a false equation of resources with material stuff. Resources, however, require the ability of the human mind to put them to use; what is a pollutant or nuisance in one era may become a resource in the next. Therefore, our resource base is actually likely to expand as our technology progresses and people live longer.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
Mr. Stolyarov refutes the claim that living forever will lead people to become bored with their own existences. Consider that in the course of our current miserably short lifespans, it would be impossible for even the most avid and consistent readers among us to read the entirety of books present in one local library. Mr. Stolyarov also shows that it is impossible to ever run out of things to do or opportunities to experience, since the number of available opportunities increases faster than we can complete tasks. Thus, living longer should lead people to experience increasingly less boredom, rather than more. Only boring people can ever be truly bored!
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
In the second part of his challenge to the conventional view that human death is inevitable and even desirable, Mr. Stolyarov argues that death is the greatest harm that can ever befall you, because death implies the disintegration of your individuality, the cessation of your very being. Death is so inconceivably frightening that no good ways exist in any language to describe the state of “being” dead. Nothing – not extreme pain, torture, or grief over the loss of others – can compare to “being” dead oneself. (“Being” is written in quotation marks, since a dead person cannot be anything; the personhood and individuality cease upon death.) The promise of eternal life offered by many religions is a tempting but poor substitute for living indefinitely in this world.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
Mr. Stolyarov initiates his own concerted attack on human mortality by attempting to convince you that human death is the greatest of all evils and that eliminating the death sentence that hangs over all of us is both possible and desirable. In the first part of this presentation of indefinite length, Mr. Stolyarov shows how utterly wasteful death is and how death forever deprives us of the experiences, thoughts, and contributions of billions of individuals – many of whom have left no trace after they died. This astonishing waste of human potential is intolerable and should not be allowed to continue. While we are still able to resist it, we should find every possible way to expand human lifespans and combat such causes of death in “old age” as heart failure, brain failure, and cancer.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
I do not believe in any god or gods, and, moreover, although I do believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure, I do not believe that it can be ascertained exactly when he was born. Nonetheless, I do not have any problem with the holiday of Christmas, its date, or even celebrating it myself. If you wish me a merry Christmas, I will wish you one right back. Yes, I know that my behavior is exactly contrary to what many Christian fundamentalists have tried to convince you about us atheists. But my approach to Christmas is, in my experience, the most common among atheists.
First, there is no problem with arranging a celebration on any occasion – with gathering with friends and families, experiencing good food, and sharing presents. Second, Christmas has already become so extensively secularized and commercialized that even many Christians celebrate it without engaging in religious ceremony. It seems that Santa Claus, rather than Jesus Christ, is the mythical figure around which Christmas is centered in English-speaking countries today.
Third, numerous pre-Christian cultures had celebrations on or near the beginning of winter. Celebrations of the winter solstice emerged naturally in numerous cultures because, if people had enough food with which to celebrate, this meant that they also had enough to last the winter – when gathering new food was problematic for pre-Industrial peoples. The early Christian church understood the significance of Winter solstice celebrations to those whom it converted. Instead of trying to root out the celebrations – an impossible task that would arouse considerable hostility – the early church officials simply co-opted them by convincing people that the birth of Jesus occurred around the time of the winter solstice. But the solstice celebrations came first.
Contemporary Christmas needs not have a religious component at all, and for many people it does not. And for those who wish to celebrate it with a religious component, this is their free choice. So long as no coercion is involved on the religious front, I have no objection to people, including myself, celebrating Christmas in public.
Mr. Stolyarov lays out six points on which all reasonable religious people should be expected to agree with atheists, agnostics, and other secularists for the purposes of preserving a civilized, humane, tolerant society. The purpose of the Minimal Secular Agenda Regarding Religious Belief (MSARRB) is to de-escalate many of the tensions that currently exist between believers and non-believers in the United States and to greatly reduce the scope of the present “culture wars.” Mr. Stolyarov’s agenda does not require the religious to abandon their religious beliefs, but merely asks many of them to change their views about non-religious persons, to restrict the scope of religion-based decision-making to the non-coercive private sphere, and to refrain from inserting religion into private non-ideological business endeavors – where it does not belong.
Please help promote this video by going to this page and giving it a rating of five stars, as well as embedding it on your websites and sharing it with others.
In the second part of this two-part video presentation, Mr. Stolyarov discusses how private action can effectively overcome government attempts at redistribution of income. An individual should never deliberately place himself in the position of being a net winner from a government redistributive scheme. If he does find himself in such a position by chance, he should attempt to identify the losers from the government scheme and to offer them compensation so as to at least mitigate the effects of the redistribution. In this way, one can legally, safely, and honestly counter the redistributive efforts of the contemporary welfare state. The last word of the video is “redistribution.”
