X-Message-Number: 16440
Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2001 22:09:17 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: Cryonets #16417, 16425, 16428

At 09:00 AM 6/5/2001 +0000, you wrote:
>Message #16423
>Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 16:12:51 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Eivind Berge <>
>Subject: Re: Cryonet #16417
>
>Mike Perry wrote:
>
> > Personally, I live a celibate lifestyle and sex is not so important.  But I
> > support the right to choose here as elsewhere.
>
>But if everybody chooses to transcend as you envision, my right to choose
>being a normal man with a normal sex life is meaningless.

Well, I suppose you could create a partner for yourself; that ought to be 
possible, though you might have to wait till space is available or move off 
planet...


>Message #16425
>Date: Sun, 03 Jun 2001 14:46:33 -0400
>From: James Swayze <>
>Subject: SEX and the Single Uploaded Entity--R-Rated
>
>St. Benedict, the guy that started the celibate monk thing and famous for
>good wine, died and went to heaven. St. Pete says, ...sternly, "I SAID 
>CELE-BRATE!!".

(Actually, ol' Benny didn't start the celibate monk thing, it goes back 
BCE, but I get your point. However, people like him and me *are* 
celebrating in our own way.)

>Poor St. Benny, look at all the fun he and his ilk missed out on. I am
>thoroughly opposed to celibate lifestyles. Mike, I love you buddy, but
>please, GET LAID! ;)

Well, James, I appreciate your sentiments, and also I do feel for you in 
your own immense frustration and general state of being different than 
you'd like to be, but you have to realize, I just don't see it the way you 
and most others do. Also, though it may be nit-picking, I think the orgasm 
is really felt in the brain, and the fact that you haven't been feeling it 
is due to lack of stimulation in the right areas rather than the nerve 
locus itself being somewhere else. (Somebody more knowledgeable about the 
brain may wish to comment.)

>Your neglecting that aspect of life may be wrongly
>tainting your views on uploading. I'll be the first to defend a persons
>right to chose such a lifestyle but it's far too cerebral for me.

It's important that a person have the right to choose.
...
[What follows is from Louis Epstein's posting, #16428, with me leading off:]
> > As one case in point, the clock started out as an imitation sundial and
> > was arguably inferior but now has far surpassed its "original." The
> > same could be said of many other inventions.
>
>Such as...?

Printing from movable type (imitation handwritten text), the horseless 
carriage, the electric light (imitation lamps and candles), photography 
(imitation of the painter's art, and not in color at first), movies 
(imitation of live performance), to take a few more cases. For some of 
these it's not true that the invention has totally overwhelmed its 
prototype; people still watch Shakespeare's plays, for instance, but you 
don't have the special effects on stage that you have in the movies either.

>...
> > The Society for Venturism, which endorses and promotes cryonics, is 
> legally
> > recognized as a religious organization in the U.S.
>
>I've heard of it,hence my statement that I wasn't
>a Venturist in my first Cryonet posting.
>
> > (see the website http://www.venturist.org, especially "About Us").
>
>Just looked...it used to be unreadable with my
>text-based browser,and still appears rather incomplete.

It is, and it was recently resurrected after some problems we had, and more 
work needs to be done--as time can be found.

>In any event,it seems to incline toward atheism,
>which I consider a ridiculous position.

You have the right to your opinions. The Venturist organization is not 
officially atheistic but its members generally are. In my book I develop my 
own views which amount to "atheism with a concept of divinity"--not the 
usual variety of atheism but not professing belief in a sentient God either 
(and not agnostic either).
...
>Venturism from my reading has appeared to be
>a sort of L-Ron-Hubbard-of-cryonics...seeking
>the guise of a religion for material advantage
>without a sincere belief in something beyond
>the believer's ability to shape.

It isn't exactly that, though in one respect we do seek a material 
advantage in providing support to cryonicists who want to avoid autopsy for 
religious reasons. Based on the Venturist perspective, however, there is 
certainly grounds for belief in something beyond the believer's ability to 
shape. If you want a happy immortality, you have to respect things like the 
laws of physics, as well as how people (including the advanced beings we'll 
hopefully become) interact and will continue to interact, which are not 
just arbitrary. The Venturist organization, on the other hand, is intended 
to be something of an umbrella for groups with more specific or specialized 
attitudes or beliefs, rather than a "mother church."

>(The things that really matter matter because
>they can never change.Ultimate truth exists
>completely independent of belief in it.I have
>no appreciation for subjectivism).

I am not a relativist either.

>In seeking to be a religion but not a religion,
>so that its believers can believe whatever else
>they like,it falls down and simply isn't one
>that I can see as such.

Adherents can't just believe whatever they like, though a rigid list of 
dogmas is not enforced.

>I'm secular in my outlook,
>but strongly theistic,and consider there to be
>rules all ought to follow.A religion should say
>the same.

Well, perhaps you'd like to read the essay under "about us" at the website. 
We say that moral principles should be tested and validated by their 
consequences. This is different from the position that one's principles 
derive from infallible scripture or revelation, but the principles 
nonetheless are there and far from "do-it-yourself" or "do what thou wilt 
shall be the whole of the law".

> > >A religiously based cryonics organization/cryonically-based religion
> > >would see suspension facilities as the proper alternative to cemeteries,
> > >much as Hindus use cremation pyres and Zoroastrians leave bodies to
> > >decay in the open.By belonging to a religion and being classed with
> > >cemeteries (even though the eternal hope of revival was part of the
> > >religion) they would presumably be tax-exempt.For appearance's sake
> > >the particular units might perhaps best be underground,which might make
> > >sense from an insulation standpoint.
> >
> > Generally the idea of associating cryonics with cemeteries has proved 
> to be
> > a "can of worms" (more literally and in more ways than I care to think) 
> and
> > has been avoided since the days of Chatsworth.
>
>What has seriously been done with it?
>I think the concept of faith-based obligation
>to keep bodies from decaying at all costs is
>something that could have its uses.
>Of course,it's the opposite of what some
>religions teach...but there's always the
>Egyptian precedent to improve upon.

Cryonic Interment, Inc. kept frozen bodies in a crypt in a cemetery for 
awhile. They were "out of sight, out of mind" and ultimately all were 
thawed and lost, with much legal recrimination. But associating ourselves 
with cemeteries would bring us under cemetery rules and regulations, which 
weren't intended to apply to bodies or parts stored in liquid nitrogen. I'm 
not opposed to having a faith-based obligation to keeping the frozen frozen 
*and* seeing that they are reanimated in due course, assuming this proves 
possible, and this indeed is part of the mission of Venturism. (One other 
way that Venturist attitudes/beliefs are not arbitrary. And by the way, I'm 
using "faith" here in the sense of "fundamental commitment" not "belief 
without reason.")

Mike Perry

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