X-Message-Number: 26388 From: Tim Freeman <> Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 07:09:12 -0700 Subject: Re: [CN] Ethics of Immortality References: <> From: "John de Rivaz" <> >It would seem that seeking some form of immortality is a purpose of >religions, and irrational concepts such as unreasoning faith are merely >(highly successful) tools of survival of particular religions. Religions are successful memes. They don't really have a purpose any more than a bacterium does. In some sense their only purpose is self-perpetuation, but they aren't conscious so the use of "purpose" in this context is dubious. Their anatomical details include ideas about immortality and an afterlife, ideas about the merit of unreasoning faith, and the idea that you should go to church every week. Cryonics won't make peace with a religion unless cryonics happens to be consistent with the core tenets of the religion. If the religion says that getting to Heaven is good, and the only way there is through proper observance of the religion, then there's no room for compromise there. If the religion specifies burial practices that are incompatible with cryonics, there's no room for compromise there. The maxim "love the sinner but hate the sin" applies here. Some religions are an enemy, but individual religious people are just unfortunate people who have been diverted from their own purposes by their religious conversion. They aren't intrinsically any more evil than other people that have been distracted as a consequence of having some intrinsic flaw exploited. People often talk about how cryonics is compatible with various world religions by citing religious texts. Religious texts are only relevant if individual believers are empowered to read that doctrine and make their own decisions. For the most part they aren't, so in general what matters is the way the religion is actually practiced, not what their holy books say. The essential thing people need to understand is the historical context that gave rise to their religion, and how things are different now. In particular, fantasies about life-after-death and about immortality were harmless then because there was nothing constructive to do to try to live much longer. That's no longer the case. -- Tim Freeman http://www.fungible.com Programmer/consultant in the Sunnyvale, CA area. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26388