Above, is my illustration featuring “Simulation ends; resurrection begins.” A man contemplating to remove the VR headset that he is wearing, when he removes, he will see Jesus Christ – who has conquered death, toward the bright horizon.
From the first genealogies of Genesis to Paul’s resurrection hymn, Scripture names death as humanity’s great enemy — and declares that Jesus Christ alone has broken its rule. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” Paul sings in a chapter that climaxes with the proclamation that the risen Christ will never die again: “death no longer has mastery over him.”
That claim stands in stark contrast to the brightest promises of contemporary transhumanism. Whether through radical life-extension or “mind uploading,” many hope technology will finally dethrone mortality.
The question is not whether science can do good — it already has, spectacularly — but whether any technological program can conquer death rather than merely postpone it.
The evidence from demography, aging biology, neuroscience, and philosophy is clear: transhumanism can extend life and relieve suffering, yet it cannot cancel the grave. Only Christ Conquers Death.
The biblical frame: death’s universality — and its one defeater
The Bible begins by confronting us with lives of startling length — “Adam lived 930 years… and he died”; “all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.” Even these towering spans end the same way: “and he died.”
Later, God signals a curb on lifespans — “his days shall be 120 years” — a line that anticipates (without fixing a precise biological ceiling) the rarity of ages beyond about 120 today.
In the New Testament, Christ is said to have “destroyed the one who has the power of death,” freeing people from lifelong bondage to the fear of it. He names himself “the resurrection and the life.” Death’s reign is real; Christ’s victory over it is unique.
What the numbers say: humans live longer — but not forever
Modern demography shows remarkable gains in average life expectancy over the past two centuries, driven by sanitation, antibiotics, and safer societies. What about maximum human lifespan?
In 2016, a Nature analysis argued that the age of the oldest humans appears to have plateaued since the 1990s, pointing to a practical limit near the upper 110s to around 120 years.
A complementary media synthesis in Time noted the fierce debate that followed but underscored the central observation: added decades are extraordinarily rare, and the record of 122 (Jeanne Calment) still stands. Science subsequently reported a mortality “plateau” beyond 105 in Italian data, suggesting hazard rates stop rising but do not vanish.
Later scrutinies — including a 2022 Demographic Research replication for France — questioned whether such plateaus generalize. Taken together, these studies show substantial mortality compression (more people reaching old age) without credible evidence that technology has lifted the human maximum far beyond the biblical intuition of “about 120 years.”
Media roundups have reflected the same tension. WIRED summarized the “may never age beyond 125” argument and, years later, highlighted researchers who suspect we’ve already brushed against biological limits — prompting a shift from chasing immortality toward improving healthspan (years lived in good health). Either way, death remains undefeated in the data.
What biogerontology says: we can slow aging’s damage — not abolish it
Aging science has chalked up thrilling wins. The “hallmarks of aging” framework in Cell (2013) maps the processes that erode cellular integrity; intervening in these pathways has extended median lifespan and vigor in animal models.
Senolytics — drugs that selectively clear “zombie” senescent cells — improve function and extend remaining life in mice, with early human pilots (e.g., idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) showing feasibility and symptom benefit.
Partial cellular “reprogramming” with Yamanaka factors in mice can reverse some age-associated hallmarks in tissues and prolong life in progeroid models. These breakthroughs are aimed (rightly) at suffering, frailty, and disease. But nothing in this literature amounts to erasing mortality. Even impressive mouse gains (often measured in healthspan or median survival) do not demonstrate open-ended longevity, let alone immortality.
Crucially, leading reviews stress clinical caution: translating senolytics and reprogramming to safe, long-term human use remains an open challenge, and most interventions target how well we age more than whether we die. That is a noble objective — but it is not victory over death.
What neuroscience says: “uploading” a brain isn’t uploading you
If biology can’t abolish death, what about digitizing consciousness — “mind uploading”? The idea presumes that if we could map every connection (the connectome) and state of your brain and simulate it, you would wake up in silicon.
But the science is nowhere near that capture. Consider the scale: even for mice, producing brain-wide, subcellular-resolution maps requires heroic protocols (e.g., CLARITY tissue-clearing; serial block-face EM; whole-brain fluorescence tomography), and we still struggle to integrate structure with the ever-changing electrochemical dynamics that actually constitute moment-to-moment conscious experience.
If we can’t yet comprehensively model a mouse brain’s living dynamics, we are galaxies away from emulating a person in a way that preserves identity.
More fundamentally, no consensus theory of consciousness tells us which physical variables are sufficient for your conscious point of view to persist. Competing accounts (Global Neuronal Workspace; Integrated Information Theory) still dispute where and how consciousness arises — posterior “hot zones,” distributed prefrontal–parietal broadcasting, or something else — precisely the uncertainty that makes “upload steps” scientifically underdetermined.
As Nature Reviews Neuroscience and Journal of Neuroscience debates show, even identifying the “neural correlates of consciousness” remains active and unresolved territory. Until we know what consciousness is in operational detail, we have no warrant to claim we can copy it — or that a copy would be you.
Philosophers add the identity problem: if a scanner destroys your brain while creating a perfect digital double, did you survive — or did a numerically distinct person begin?
Classic work in The Philosophical Review pressed this paradox decades ago; contemporary analyses keep landing on the same intuition: at best, uploading yields a copy with your memories. Copy ≠ continuity. Popular longform journalism has brought these puzzles to wider audiences, from The New Yorker’s profiles of brain-mapping pioneers to WIRED’s explorations of digital immortality — yet the metaphysical gap remains.
What the best reporting says: less “forever,” more “be healthier, longer”
The most responsible media on longevity now nudge expectations away from “forever” and toward healthspan and quality of life: relieving chronic disease burdens, delaying dementia, and compressing late-life frailty. Time’s overview of the lifespan-limit fight, WIRED’s coverage of centenarian data and putative ceilings, and Popular Science’s skepticism toward immortality hype triangulate a consensus: dazzling progress, yes; immortality, no.
Why the Christian claim is different
Christian hope is not a bet on incremental biological repair or on copying minds into machines; it is a proclamation about what happened to Jesus of Nazareth and what that means for all who belong to him. The New Testament stakes everything on a bodily resurrection: “Christ has been raised… the firstfruits,” and those united to him will share that resurrected life. Death is not “managed” or “minimized” but defeated from the inside by the One who passed through it and broke its hold. That is why Paul can taunt death in 1 Corinthians 15 and why Romans 6 can say “death no longer has mastery over him.” This is not metaphor; it is a claim about a new creation already begun in the risen Christ.
Even the long lives of Genesis point here. Adam’s 930 and Methuselah’s 969 end alike; the genealogical drumbeat — “and he died” — beats on until the story reaches a tomb outside Jerusalem where, Christians confess, it finally breaks rhythm. Genesis 6:3’s “120 years” sits oddly close to our modern outliers; but Scripture’s point is not a lab ceiling — it is to remind us that apart from God’s life, we are dust. The gospel’s point is that in Christ, dust rises.
A sober synthesis
- Demography: Lifespans lengthen on average; extreme ages cluster below ~120; debates persist over strict “hard limits,” but no evidence shows the end of mortality.
- Aging biology: Senolytics, reprogramming, and metabolic interventions can improve health and extend median lifespan in animals and show early human promise; none abolishes death.
- Neuroscience: We cannot yet capture the dynamic brain features plausibly necessary for consciousness; theories disagree on what those features even are. Uploading is science fiction, not self-preserving fact.
- Philosophy: Personal identity through destructive copying remains unresolved — and likely negative; a perfect replica is not numerically you.
On every front, transhumanism’s best-case scenarios amount to deferrals: more decades, fewer diseases, better endings. Christians should cheer much of that work as mercy. But when the question is conquest of death — the sting extracted, its dominion ended — only Jesus fits the description the New Testament provides. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he says; whoever trusts him “will live, even though they die.”
Final word
Transhumanism’s best tools are instruments of mercy: preventing disease, easing frailty, buying precious time. Christians should celebrate such goods. But “only Christ conquers death” is not a slogan against science; it is a statement about the kind of victory science cannot deliver.
In the lab, we may trim death’s thorns. In the gospel, the thorn bush is uprooted. “I am the resurrection and the life,” says Jesus. He alone speaks with the authority of one who has passed through death and come out the other side — not as a longer-lived patient or a clever copy, but as the firstborn of a new creation.
REFERENCES
Bible
Genesis 5; Genesis 6:3; John 11:25; Romans 6:9; Hebrews 2:14–15; 1 Corinthians 15.
Demography & longevity science
Dong, X., Milholland, B., & Vijg, J. “Evidence for a limit to human lifespan.” Nature (2016).
Barbi, E., et al. “The plateau of human mortality.” Science (2018).
Lenart, A., & Vaupel, J. (critiques summarized in media). See also replication: Hachon et al., Demographic Research (2022).
Aging biology & interventions
López-Otín, C., et al. “The Hallmarks of Aging.” Cell (2013).
Ocampo, A., et al. “In vivo amelioration of age-associated hallmarks by partial reprogramming.” Cell (2016).
Xu, M., et al. “Senolytics improve physical function and increase lifespan in old age.” Nature Medicine (2018).
Hickson, L., et al. “Senolytics… in IPF.” EBioMedicine (2019).
Kirkland, J. L., & Tchkonia, T. “The Clinical Potential of Senolytic Drugs.” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (2017).
Novais, E. J., et al. “Dasatinib+Quercetin prevents disc degeneration in mice.” Nature Communications (2021).
Neuroscience, consciousness & connectomics
Chung, K., et al. “CLARITY.” Nature (2013).
Chung & Deisseroth. “CLARITY for mapping the nervous system.” Nature Methods (2013).
Economo, M. N., et al. “Brain-wide imaging platform.” eLife (2016).
Van Essen, D., et al. “Human Connectome Project.” NeuroImage (2013).
Koch, C., et al. “Neural correlates & the posterior hot zone.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2016).
Boly, M., et al. “Are the NCCs in the front or back?” Journal of Neuroscience (2017).
Oizumi, M., Albantakis, L., & Tononi, G. “IIT 3.0.” PLOS Computational Biology (2014).
Dehaene, S., et al. “Global neuronal workspace (overview).” Current Opinion in Neurobiology (2014).
Tsuchiya, N., et al. “No-report paradigms.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2015).
Philosophy & identity
Williams, B. “The Self and the Future.” The Philosophical Review (1970).
Top media & longform (pre-4/17/2022)
Time: “There’s No Known Limit To How Long Humans Can Live, Scientists Say” (2017).
WIRED: “Humans may never age beyond 125” (2016); “The Quest for Longevity Is Already Over” (2023 summary of older debates—useful for background, but the core debate predates 2022).
The New Yorker: “Lighting the Brain” (2015)—on CLARITY and the staggering complexity of mapping minds.
Popular Science: “Can science make us immortal?” (2014). Universidad de La Rioja.
Quartz/MIT Tech Review features on the immortality quest (2019).