Sheldon,
I should add no species of living thing acts consciously and purposefully toward self-destruction except ours.
-and you know that to be fact exactly how?
As far as I’m aware, humans are the only species aware of its own mortality. We don’t like that notion at all, so we have invented thousands of religions to help us cope with the terror of oblivion.
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Boomer47,
You wrote
However, I see the Amish lifestyle as an affectation. As far as I can tell it can only occur in a liberal democracy. I’m not even convinced the Amish could have their life style in any democracy.
It is the Republican structure of the U.S. Constitution that assures the Amish can live as they do. If the U.S. were an unlimited democracy, the Amish could have been subjected to pogroms and ethnic cleansing by a hostile rabble.
The Amish have been somewhat affected by the outside world of the “English” as they call non-Amish. Some Amish now use cellular phones, presumably charged by foot-powered or windmill-powered dynamos. But they are still pedestrians and horse-drawn on transportation. (Don’t ask me how they find cellular phones or dynamos in their literalist reading of The Holy Bible.)
In terms social, economic and ecological changes needs in an immortal society. Our resources are finite. There seem to be a polite fiction that improvements needed to feed and house everyone can be made indefinitely. Even as we are now, we are already running out of fossil fuels*** and heading towards over population.
I’m not convinced human immortality is sustainable except to a strictly limited degree.
***It’s no secret that we’re running out of oil. Yet people seem oblivious to what that entails long term. I’m referring to the many other uses we have for oil, ranging from fertiliser to plastics.
“Finite” resources does not necessarily mean that the end is at hand. As long as there are living things dying, decomposing, sinking into the Earth, and subject to heat and pressure, there will be petroleum to be refined into fuel and all of its derivatives.
If living things stop dying, then we’ll need a new fuel. (As Robin always told Batman: “Atomic batteries to power!..Turbines to speed!..”)
If we’re running out of petroleum, it’s obviously a “secret” to all the people who keep finding it, such as Europeans in the North Sea and the U.S. finding masses of petroleum in the ANWR region of Alaska and in the Dakotas. The U.S. Geological Survey in the early Eighties knew that the North American Continental Shelf had enough petroleum for at least 1,000 years at current usage, enough shale oil for hundreds of years more, and enough Uranium for indefinite periods of time.
Even little israel has found it is sitting on a supply of petroleum bigger than Saudi Arabia. In turn, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela are finding out the hard way that they can’t stake all of their economies on petroleum because they no longer have the lock on petroleum.
Saudi Arabia’s financial straits may be what diversifies their economy, opens up their repressed society, and dries up their bankrolling of Islamic terrorism. Before it’s all over, Saudi Arabia’s crisis could even alter or abolish Islam itself. Must wait and see…
And finite resourses does not preclude substitution of resources. The use of petroleum itself was a substitution for use of whale oil as fuel. The discovery of petroleum and invention of refinery are what ultimately saved the 19th Century whale from extinction. Today, only Inuit tribesmen and renegades from Japan and Norway hunt whales.
As for overpopulation, that is becoming much less of a problem. Not only is birth control ubiquitous in developed societies, but it is becoming more available for the developing world. Also, women aquiring education and careers worldwide are either delaying or shelving childbirth and having fewer children when they do give birth. As developing nations industrialize, they need fewer hands for survival than agrarian societies and mechanized agriculture also requires much fewer hands.
Even high-population nations like China and Iran are experiencing slowdowns of population growth. Iran’s attempts to encourage natality are failing as are other nation’s pro-birth policies.
Demographers are now seeing the world’s population starting to slow and think it may stabilize at anywhere from 2050 to 2100 C.E.
We’re not without problems by any means, but we’re closer to Steely Dan’s “I.G.Y.” than to Zager and Evans “In The Year 2525.” It would be the worst folly for both us and future generations to stop that momentum.
Agreed, but that doesn’t change the fact our environment is finite, which was the context of your original question I had answered.
Well that sounds like a evolved instinct to me, not a purpose, which would require intent. You also appear to have moved the goal posts here, as you asked…
What is the point of life if the end result is death?”
As I said I have always found the question presumptive, since there is no objective evidence that life has an over arching purpose or point.
The fact we find value and meaning in it, doesn’t change this. Nor do evolved instincts.
Well I think purpose is subjective, not necessarily arbitrary, and now your question has moved from an existential philosophical one, into a moral one. Though again the answer IMHO would necessarily be subjective.
Boomer47,
To answer you question earler about self-destructive species, while I am open to evidence, the closest thing I’ve ever heard of self-destruction in other species is the lemming. It turns out that they aren’t suicidal at all, just desperate and limited in perception:
Do Lemmings Really Commit Mass Suicide?
Myself, I take the perspective of resource/survival. Or imbalance in predictor/prey - etc.
Our species is not much different. We do have a higher intelligence for concepts and invention: for cause and effect: etc. AND this has held us to a higher standard of resource management and accountability to the planet (IMO).
While it can be rightfully stated that we have cause extinctions of species, we have also worked to preserve endangered species. While we have caused pollution and environmental damage, we have also “cleaned up our act (to a large degree)” and are still pursuing this (clean energy) as well as repaired, protected and restored areas of earth.
There is still much to do - our oceans 
- space … however I do not just write us off as “self-destructive”. As a community we recognize those within our midst that we would classify as “destructive or negative” and work towards countering these within our species.
Evolution brought mankind to the top of the food chain. But those same evolutionary processes did not ensure mankind would become a good warden of this planet and it’s resources.
IMO we are like locusts, we arrive and destroy.
Lol 
see we aren’t the only destructive species!
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Indeed.
It’s my understanding that mammals and other animals generally will breed to meet available resources and the relative population of predators. When there is plenty of food and few predators, the population of some species will explode EG: mice, rabbits, grasshoppers ,(as locusts) and of course human beings. We simply behave as the animals we are.
We will probably continue to hold the fatuous belief that we are a special species as long as we are at the top of the food chain. We are not only not special, but have not been around long enough to claim we are a truly successful species [relatively speaking]
The way we’re going ,we may cause ourselves to go extinct within a fairly short time, certainly far less than a million years
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Sheldon,
No goal post moving was intended, though I should have clarified myself better. By “purpose,” I mean an end towards which a being acts, whether by hard-wiring or by conscious intent. In that sense, all living things have a purpose.
Perhaps “magical thinking religions” have inadvertently acted as a stop-gap for our light-speed advancement.
It has offered humanity a diversion and helped refine our thinking processes, to counter our specie’s imagination (which is also beneficial).
Who knows, we may have just as likely “nuked” ourselves out of existence a thousand years ago. 
Just so.
However, there is at least one respected writer who blames christianity for the nature and rise of capitalism.
“The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit Of Capitalism” Max Weber. A seminal sociological work, well worth reading for its own sake. I think it may be in the public domain and available free,
Well if it’s a hard wired instinct I’d not assign a purpose to it, in the sense the question is usually asked, as in does life have a purpose.
As for intent humans can and do deny their survival instinct, for subjective reasons, as well as in favour of other hard wired instincts, like defending offspring for example. So I think claiming survival is the purpose of life, or even a purpose is a little disingenuous.
I certainly don’t believe life has any overarching purpose, in the sense religions claim.
It could be argued this isn’t only reserved to humans, the fight or flight response can be observed in most life forms.
Even trees evade harmful entities to the best of their ability.
But I am inclined to agree to a point, life doesn’t need to have a purpose, it just is and reacts to its environment.
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It is undeniable that when the church held real power in Europe, scientific progress was held back. The view that everything mankind needs could be found in the Bible, coupled with a millenarian philosophy was precisely what caused Galileo to be arrested and that incident was indicative of the widespread mindset.
However, I would not agree that such a problem still exists, except possibly in some Muslim countries. The Enlightenment introduced mankind to a new way of seeing the world, a fresh way to seek answers and explain mysteries and that change led to a blossoming of interest in science and the removal of the shackles of religion.
Religion can still hamstring scientific endeavour of course, through legislation, and of course by disseminating false information to the sheeple.
Think stem cell research, and anti maskers and anti vaxers. Though it’s clearly not as bad as Galileo facing the Inquisition for publishing objective evidence the church disagree with.