To Outlive Death

The laws of physics changing from their current patterns is not logically impossible.  Logical axioms are not contradicted by this, and thus it could happen.  Unless this was to occur, as unlikely as it still appears in light of memories and sensory evidences of consistent natural phenomena, every individual person seems fated to eventually die as their body's vital functions cease their activity.  The epistemology of death is of course vastly different from what many people would expect: I cannot know that I will die because there is no absolutely certain truth I can know from which it follows by logical necessity that I will die.  Even so, there is a great deal of sensory evidence that my body, like other human and animal bodies, is succumbing to gradual decay and will eventually perish.

In fear or awe, some pursue life extension methods like cryogenic freezing, where people are put into a low temperature state that preserves enough neurological functions to correlate to sustained consciousness, though that consciousness might be inactive or at most only dreaming.  Those in cryogenic stasis could supposedly be revived in the future, but even then, unless the laws of physics change, their bodies would still deteriorate at the usual rate once again, and if they were simply left in cryogenic stasis, what if the universe around them comes to an end?  Would they be guaranteed eternal life in that case, as bland as the life in cryo-sleep might be?  There is also exercise and the consumption of healthy foods and liquids, but this leads to an expanded lifetime with hopefully fewer discomforts and ailments that does not even last as long as cryogenic sleep.

To outlive death by scientific means is extremely improbable at best, no matter the advances of medicine and general technology in the present era.  Short of an afterlife of some kind where consciousness is free of the body, there would only be death of the mind and the body that awaits a person, though the exact timing could be postponed intentionally or unintentionally.  In contrast with all of the particular actions that a person can take to promote the health of their body or to otherwise prolong its biological life, there are also many factors that are completely beyond a person's control, including meteorological events that are not stopped by willing them away, the recklessness or malice of other people, and the happenstance shutdown of one's body.

The, in one sense, persistent imminence of death--that at any moment, there are many logically possible ways that we could die which we could do nothing about--is something taken for granted by some people as others might desperately try not to dwell on their mortality.  All at once, there are widespread cultural trends meant to push death further away and behaviors meant to distract people from how death hangs over us from our very births.  As one person obsesses over their health and safety, someone else might drown themselves in hedonism to focus on something other than serious philosophical matters.  Regardless of how much specific people think about the subject, people die young, and people die old, and the technological revolution that has made life extension more attainable has also provided a way to broadcast death on a greater scale.

If death is inevitable despite the progress made in delaying it, then, other than various logically possible kinds of soul-only afterlives for which there is no evidence, the only pathway left to the eternal life as a mind-body unity that so many people seem to crave is not life extension, but resurrection.  The hope of living forever would lie in being restored to life after death instead of in trying to stave off an ever-nearing, constant specter of bodily failure.  Although I cannot logically prove what will happen to my consciousness when I will die or even if I will ever die, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ points to an event that Paul calls a foreshadowing of a broader resurrection that will, at last, grant the righteous and redeemed eternal life (1 Corinthians 15:20-26).  The true gospel is this, as put forth in John 3:16: without salvation, the consciousnesses of fallen humans will one day cease to exist, but for those who repent and commit to Yahweh and Christ, there will be eternal bliss.