X-Message-Number: 4098
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject: Re: Faith
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 95 22:43:37 +0200 (CET DST)

Ralph Merkle <> states:
> If there is any one thing that is critical, it is to persuade a broader
> community that cryonics is reasonable and should be supported. 

Last year there was a lecture at the University covering attitudes
toward death during the Victorian era in England. I spoke with the speaker 
afterward about the invention of heart-lung resuscitation technology
in the 1800's and its failure to become an institutionalized practice
in that period. His thought was that it was probably seen as sacrilegious, 
that is, it is against God's will to "raise the dead". 

This was not argued at the time, but the "loss" of this life saving
technology for almost a century demands some explanation. Similarly,
it is very likely that peoples' religious beliefs are the 
basis for their attitudes toward cryonics. 

On a slightly broader scale, the very idea of "progress" and the support
for research, which is crucial to the advancement of science,
is under attack these days. This poses as great a threat in the long
term as the specific attitudes discussed above.

The philosophical underpinnings of the cryonics movement are immature,
and many supporters appear to have beliefs counter productive to the
success of cryonics as a social movement. Failure to remedy this could 
have disastrous consequences.

dss

David S. Stodolsky, PhD,  Euromath Center,  University of Copenhagen
Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. 
 Tel.: +45 38 33 03 30. Fax: +45 38 33 88 80  (C)
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