X-Message-Number: 10551
Subject: Is religion the fundamental obstacle to cryonics?
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 16:41:38 -0500
From: Will Dye <>

In CryoNet message #10545,  writes:

> I begin to believe that religion is the fundamental obstacle to mass
> popularity of the cryonics movement. 

Suppose that early proponents of organ transplants had graphed out the 
objections raised to it, concluded that religion was the "fundamental 
obstacle to mass popularity of the" organ transplant movement, and 
started marketing organ transplants as an alternative religion for 
agnostics and atheists?  I suspect that in the long run, it would have 
done more harm than good for the organ transplant industry.  

I am what most people would call a "fundamentalist" Christian, and I also 
strongly support cryonics.  This has led me to bring up the issue of 
cryonics to several of my fellow evengelicals (including some that are 
even more conservative than I am), as well as several of my friends and 
acquaintences who are not evangelicals.

I have come to the conclusion that nearly all deeply religious folk will 
eventually accept and even promote cryonics, just as almost all of us 
have accepted heart transplants, blood transfusions, and other activities 
that initially raised some religious concerns.  We do tend to need more 
time to analyze and debate such matters; simply because for us, physical 
death has a larger number of parameters to consider.  

Returning to the heart transplant example, if you think that the heart 
has mental and spiritual signifigance, then you have a larger number of 
things to think about than the person who regards the heart as merely a 
simple pump.  This complicated and lengthened the debate about heart 
transplants, which in turn led to more opportunites for misconceptions 
and foolish mistakes, not to mention tangental insights and progress.  

But all this is the natural effect of having a larger number of things 
to consider.  It would have been a mistake to catalog the early 
objections, survey the tiny group of early promoters, and extrapolate 
out a strategy based on "us" and "them".  

> We are in direct conflict with the principle function of religion, 
> being the emotional comfort of providing purpose during life and 
> continuity of self after life. 

Are you saying that cryonics offers an alternate formulation of "purpose 
during life and continuity of self after life"?  I don't see how plain-
vanilla cryonics provides purpose in life.  Further, I tend to avoid 
describing cryonics as doing something "after life".  I think it's more 
accurate to say that we are trying to preserve the living, not raise 
the dead.  

I also believe that the principle purpose of religion is not what you 
discribed it to be, but that is another issue.  My main point is that 
I think that it's a mistake to promote cryonics as something which is 
in opposition to existing religions, even though we may hear a lot of 
talk along those lines in this still-early stage of the game.  

--Will

____________________________________________________________________________
William L. Dye      | Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the
Computer Programmer | sun.  But I have never been able to make out the
 | numbers.  -- A child answering a science test question

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