On Apr 12, 2004 (SageCrossroads), Dr. Leon Kass (Bush's Lead Bioethics Advisor) answered questions for about an hour. Kass used the term "blessed" or "blessing" six times and the term "immortals", "immortality" or "immortalists" five times.
bless·ed (blĕs'ĭd) adj.
1.
a. Worthy of worship; holy.
b. Held in veneration; revered.
2. Blessed Roman Catholic Church. Used as a title before the name of one who has been beatified.
3. Bringing happiness, pleasure, or contentment.
4. blessed Used as an intensive: I don't have a blessed dime
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Example (bless) - Quote Leon Kass
----The question—there is no question but that the gift(of more) time of the sort that you and I have been blessed with as a result of the changes of the 20 th Century, that that gift of extra time is a great blessing.
That to be able to imagine living out a full life span if one is lucky—and by the way, lots of people are not so lucky and we have a long way to go before the blessings of medical research and public health are extended to our fellow human beings, even in this country, not to speak of the rest of the world—but there is a real question as to whether the gift of time as indefinitely extended before us is, in all respects, a gift.
Time is a gift, but the perception of endless time or of time without bound in fact has the possibility of undermining the degree to which we take time seriously and make it count.----
Example (immortal) - Quote Leon Kass
----And the—the deep meditation to which that passage, I think, would invite us, would be something like this:
Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey presents human beings who he names as mortals. That is their definition in contrast to the immortals. And the immortals for their agelessness and their beauty live sort of shallow and frivolous lives. Indeed, they depend for their entertainment on watching the mortals who, precisely because they know that their time is limited, and that they go around only once, are inclined to make time matter and to aspire to something great for themselves.
And so the question would be, we are not really talking about immortality, but if it—is there some connection between the limits that we face and the desire for greatness that comes from recognition that we are only here for a short time.----
-----I would, I think, be inclined as we go forward over the next decades, to try to argue with the immortalists and the various other people who, it seems to me, have a very shallow view of this matter.----
Full Transcript:
http://www.sagecross...ts/13/index.cfm
Reason has an excellent rebuttal to Kass found at Fight Aging
http://www.fightagin...ives/000084.php
Robert Ettinger has a related Kass rebuttal:
http://www.youniverse.net/page6.html