Digitizing Life After Death

July 30, 2018 at 5:15 am Leave a comment

There seems to be something hardwired into humans that wants to cheat death. Writing for NBC News, Kevin Van Aelst, in his article “Disrupting death: Technologists explore ways to digitize life,” chronicles a new bevy of scientific experiments designed to con the grim reaper.

In one experiment, researchers work at mapping brain connections in an attempt to digitize the mind so that, even after a body dies, a “human being can live in on virtual form.” In another experiment:

Artificial intelligence specialists are developing digital avatars that replicate users’ personalities and can continue to communicate with loved ones after their owners have passed away … The program, Augmented Eternity, will then be able to communicate memories of your life and answer questions on certain topics, such as your political views, depending on what information is stored in your data.

Even before these technologies have been thoroughly tested and refined, their limits are glaring. Having someone live on as a digitized mind makes bioethicist John Harris wonder, because “we are so much flesh and blood creatures,” what it would be like to “continue to exist in a disembodied state.” Another woman, who created an avatar of a friend she lost, describes the avatar as a “sort of digital tomb to come to and mourn” and freely admits that her friend is no longer alive – at least in any sort of meaningful way. In other words, for all of science and technology’s attempts to cheat death, its reality and finality still loom large.

Christ does what science and technology cannot. All of our experiments, from digitizing minds to fashioning avatars, only succeed in mimicking life after death. Christ actually gives life after death. As He says to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even though they die” (John 11:25). The Christian hope is much more than a digital grave that a person can pay a visit to in order to hear a phantom voice. It is a real life that we are promised.

The scientific and technological advances that address life and death are both problematic in that they blur distinctions between the two and promising in that they give us insight into the two. But whatever their problems and promises may be, this much is clear: they will always only be partial. Only Christ can give real life – a life that is “to the full” (John 10:10).