Prove how the Universe was created as your next step. Should take you many of your extended lifetimes.

What would be more helpful would be a scientific breakthrough to be able to resurrect the dead since, at this rate, we'll all be long dead.

Science might be able to help with health and youth, but it's not gonna even take a swing at happiness. That's not its job. So you'd still need something else for the happiness. Some people figure that out for themselves. Others turn to religion for answers. Religion also provides moral guidelines and rules to live by. It also provides a sense of community and a common cause. It gives people a sense of their place in the universe and, like science, it gives them an idea of what will happen in the future. You can get all those things in other ways, but that hasn't stopped people from pursuing religion thus far. And even if Science could prevent death from natural causes, there are still accidents (e.g. getting hit by a bus or being thrown into a wood chipper. Also, religion promises eternal life in paradise, not hum-drum old Earth. I think religion would be safe.

That is an if that will never happen.

I suggest that all persons experience an "After-life", "Code-Blue" ....I did. The answers are All in the content of the participation. Unfortunately there is not a language on the planet to translate the verbage used in the mental intercourse during the event as aprehended. We are meant to live, learn to love, die and return again to gain a deeper grasp upon the truth that escapes the original question posed. That "All" that matters is Love.

Dr. Perricone is trying!

I think you lost some people at "science."

May I rephrase this just a little bit because there are a few assumptions I find troublesome? I would try to keep the essence of the q. as I find it. Q.: If science finds observable evidence of what it is that is alive in some final sense of the word, then will it be possible or necessary to identify this with the body/mind complex? If so, is religion useless for its present purposes? This has already been done centuries ago, however it is was not 'scientifically' observable until the more recent work in quantum physics. It is "awareness" that determines the outcome of these experiments. This points away from the body and the mind as the thing that is alive because it is not a "local awareness", meaning that its effects are not confined to the body/mind as previously thought. These recent experiments suggest undeniably that the world and its science is in consciousness and not the other way around. Ages ago, Jesus and many other sages said the same thing, but most (not quite all) current religions are based on a fundamentalist and literal kind of thinking. There are more questions than answers here, but the religious paradigm is truly upside down now. It makes perfect sense, in a larger way of understanding, which it seems is what your question asks for - a larger way of understanding. This awareness does not die nor has it been born although it is threaded through an individual's consciousness, which depends on the body. So then, isn't the body only just a re-arrangement of impersonal elements and chemicals that have always been here yet in a different form? Is there really any mystery about that? I don' think so and this is the main difficulty religion cannot abide. If a person is not finally the body and not the mind and not the do-er of the things done, then there isn't much to lose in a traditional sense of it. A controlling and punitive church has everything to lose. Thanks!

Science has yet to attract a bus full of virgins.