Gamma Pi <gammapi@newsguy.com> writes:
> Why not considering afterlife as a goal? Imagine a future thanshuman
> civilisation, spread over the galaxy, with a mastery of space-time
> sufficient to reach "somehow" into the past and record "somehow"
> selves and memories of human beings. Back to the future, these could
> be uploaded to whatever physical structure is used those days as a
> vehicle for human consciousness.
> So the basic concepts of religion would become: God exists, we will
> evolve into it; Heaven exists, it is where God lives, A concept of
> "Purgatorium" could also be formulated in this framework as some
> personalities might need re-engineering before "Heaven". Even more
> interesting, the ethical/moral values of "God" are exactly the same
> that our own civilisation will develop.
> I am sure these ideas have been explored by thinkers (Theilard?) and
> discussed on the Extropian list. Any good references? By the way this
> is my first posting to the list, I look forward to discussing
> interesting things.
Welcome! What you are thinking of is sometimes called "universal immortalism", the idea that it would be possible to achieve immortality not just for some individuals at some point in time, but everybody. Perhaps the best example of the view (and most well thought out, even if it has some significant problems) is Frank J. Tipler's ideas about the Omega Point, described in his _The Physics of Immortality_ (I have some links att www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega).
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