X-Message-Number: 18366 From: "Mark Plus" <> Subject: A humanist's flirtation with Immortalism Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 16:34:19 -0800 From "A Challenge for Naturalism," by S. Matthew D'Agostino: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dagostino_22_1.htm Is Even Death Solvable? Sadly, death will come to us all. Nature appears to have been unable to arrange for the individual to survive indefinitely. Rather, the path evolution followed equips us with tendencies toward sexual profligacy such that the species will survive. Under evolution's logic so far the individual is expendable but other logics are possible. I believe that death is neither necessary nor "sacred." It's only the path that evolution appears to have taken to date. Human intelligence may be able to force evolution into a different direction. Eventually, I am convinced, science will overcome death. What's perhaps a more annoying possibility these remarks may surprise you is that death would probably already have been overcome, long ago, had we not endured two thousand years of myths and mumbling priests. Christianity turned its back on "the glory that was Greece." The early church father Tertullian (c. 155-220) explained that turn succinctly: "If you have Jerusalem, you don't need Athens." Having turned its back on rationality and loosed twenty centuries of anti-science hysteria and persecutions, which continue even today, Christianity will deserve the "credit" for putting at least our grandparents' generation, and our parents' and our own in their graves. How many more will be lost before the conquest of death? _________________________________________________________________ Join the world s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18366