X-Message-Number: 26532 From: Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 10:46:54 EDT Subject: The alternative to suiing organized religion It is my opinion that Dave Pizer's target ( organized religion) is incorrectly chosen. The real problem is not what organized religion may say or promise, but the manner in which individual peoples think about what is said or promised. The great majority of people are concerned with and deal with the difficult idea of one's personal death by ( take your pick): preoccupation with other earthly matters that seem more understandable and controllable; genuine belief that they do not actually want more life here on earth than the approximately 80 years given to them ( it is the "human life is too much of a struggle and a losing proposition" concept; laziness; preference to have easy answers given them by others; have the wishing will make it so philosophy; preferring to leave such difficult concerns to the minds of ( perceived) superior thinking others; ( something that many cryonicists themselves are guilty of , believing that all they have to do is sign up and all will be ok) an inherited belief system they never challenged; lack the will or courage to fight the majority; lack the will or courage to be a minority; possibly an undiscovered biological death drive; or simply feel good believing in a promised afterlife (among other reasons I undoubtably am unaware of), and therefore, accept the tenets of organized religion, rather than apply their mind and effort to a scientifically based alternative or supplement. The answer is in education of our fellow humans in the value of alternative ideas, and encouraging more active personal thought. When you fight the beliefs of organized religion, you really fight the billions of peoples that support it, and they are one's to be convinced. Suing organized religion at worst will mobilize the faithful into retaliative law suits or simply convince them even further that they are right due to the reflex thinking of the human mind to reject processes that threaten them. Joe Waynick, Alcor's CEO, for example, is an educated but vigorously religious person who understands the value of having alternatives at his disposal. Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26532