X-Message-Number: 4026 Newsgroups: sci.cryonics From: (Brad Templeton) Subject: Re: Church of Cryonics Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 01:31:34 GMT Message-ID: <> References: <> <3k58em$> In article <3k58em$>, Brian Wowk <> wrote: > The public relations wisdom of presenting cryonics as a "religion" >is questionable. Remember that most people (including cryonicists) Of course it's questionable. The question is, if you could cut the post-tax cost of Cryonics almost in half, is that worth the bad PR? Like it has a lot of good PR to begin with? A lot of people think cryonicists are nuts, or fallen for some sort of scam. There are only about 500 people in the world signed up for suspension, right? >already have their own religion, be it Christianity, Humanism, Extropianism, >Venturism, or whatever. As a purely speculative medical procedure, cryonics >is compatible with (not in competition with) any religion that values >individual human life. Well, of course we think so but I know those with mainstream religious beliefs who disagree. That is of course, their problem. > > Most cryonics organizations are already tax exempt (501(c)3) or >have tax exempt sister organizations through which tax-deductable >donations can be made. ERS dues cannot be made tax-deductable in >any scheme, religous or otherwise, because they are a fee-for-service >not a general donation. What about the suspension payment? Some of that is for suspension, the rest often goes into a general suspension fund, which would be deductable. However, life assurance for a deductable expense isn't deductable, is it? If folks divided the payment into "suspension fee, payable on death from life assurance, not deductable" and "general suspension contribution" payable either the same way, or in advance with the actuaral present value as calculated from the tables used for the life assurance policy bought for the first segment, I wonder if that would work. > > Thanks anyway for your interesting observations. I assure you >these religion analogies have not been lost on the cryonics community. >More than anything else, I find comparisons to religion a persistent >source of frustration. You surely must realize that there is a very >basic incompatibility between trying to present an idea as scientific >on the one hand, and yet religious on the other. You can't have it >both ways. I have chosen mine. Actually, while I am not religious, I don't see this dichotomy. That suspension will work and reanimation has a serious probability is something everybody is taking on faith. There is evidence that it is all possible, but it's far from conclusive. It's speculative at best. Of course, one may say one is not acting on faith, and that there is simply no other alternative (other than not doing it and saving your future value $50,000), but there is a credible case that faith is involved, which could qualify cryonics as a "real" religion, and not just a tax-evasion sham religion. The ordinary religions claim they have some evidence as to why their message of life after death is true. One popular one claims documentation of the ressurection of their founder, after all. Cryonics happens to have a better claim, but not a certain one. -- Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp. | www.clari.net The net's #1 Electronic newspaper (circulation 90,000) | Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4026