X-Message-Number: 26426 Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:08:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Can't We Just Get Along? From: "Joe Waynick" <> My friend Dave seems stuck in the quagmire of his own faulty logic. Dave, you can claim you are not attacking religion as much as you want. But as long as you advocate filing lawsuits against the church, then you are attacking religion. Lawsuits are adversarial in nature. One side attacks by prosecuting an objective and the other side defends until a judge declares a winner. The very least you can do is be intellectually honest and admit what you are proposing is to attack religion by filing your lawsuits. If you do not believe this to be true, just wait for the defensive response of the religious right after you mount your non-attack attack. Your assumption is that because your views are different from people of faith it makes them liars and you honest. I find it disturbing that you think it is okay to call millions of people liars simply because you disagree with their beliefs and what they teach. I find it disturbing that you are prepared to ignite a very serious confrontation between cryonicists and people of faith simply because you disagree with their teachings. I cannot think of very many things more dangerous than fool hardy ideas such as that. Your repeated assertion that religion guarantees eternal life only demonstrates your own lack of understanding of faith based beliefs. Somehow, you have twisted religion into something you fear and loathe. So you want to attack it. Somehow, you see religion as some great obstacle to greater acceptance of cryonics. Somehow, you think that by attacking religion you will prove something to the world and open the floodgates to greater numbers of cryonicists because, due to your efforts, the religions of the world will no longer lie about eternal life, and a grateful population will make more informed choices and (hopefully) more of them will choose cryonics, the RIGHT choice, right? If your goal is not to increase the number of cryonicists because they will be able to make more informed choices, then this endeavor is even more foolish than I thought because you do not even have an objective. The problem with your proposal is that it is predestined to fail, as it should. It should fail because everyone has the right to believe what he or she chooses. I fought a very tough battle last year making that very argument in the Arizona state legislature. Alcor prevailed because we have a RIGHT to make our own end of (first life cycle) choice to choose cryonics. Many of the legislators who voted in our favor told me point blank that they thought we were putting our faith in JUNK SCIENCE. They said they thought the entire concept of cryonics was FOOLISH. Yet they voted to defend us, and ultimately, defeated HB2637 because those same legislators believed even more strongly in our freedom of choice. The same freedom of choice you would like to restrict under the force of law for people of faith. Your fixation on religion is scary and dangerous for cryonics. I have yet to debate a person of faith on the issue of Christianity and cryonics and not have them acknowledge the lack of biblical foundation for objecting to cryonics. At that point their objections fail and their opposition ends. Typically, the person will back away by acknowledging our right to our choice, while saying it was not for him or her. That is not exactly a conversion, but at least they do not oppose the concept anymore. You see Dave, we do not need lawsuits. We need persuasion. We need facts. We need scientific evidence. Take the money you are so willing to commit to a massive lawsuit and commit it to our research program and do some real good. People of faith are not our enemies simply because they choose to teach something you do not believe. And the fact that you do not believe does not make people of faith liars. Making such statements only demonstrates your intolerance. Dave, I have always considered you a friend. But I am just not with you on this one. Sorry. I will come up to Creekside soon and perhaps we can continue this discussion in person. ;-) Joe Waynick, CEO/President, Alcor Life Extension Foundation Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26426