X-Message-Number: 11728
From: Daniel Ust <>
Subject: Reply to David Pascal on Atheism, Cryonics, and Marketing
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 09:45:14 -0400

On Monday, 10 May 1999 12:30:18 EDT David Pascal  
wrote:
>The fact is that (according to the World Almanac) there are roughly 
301,000,000 people
>in North America and Canada, and only slightly over 1,000,000 of them 
are atheists - ie
>about 0.3% of our potential membership.   Nonetheless we go out of 
our way to
>aggravate the 99.7% of our population  that belong, however 
tentatively or foolishly, to
>some form of organized  religion, usually Judeo-Christian.

While I have no desire to turn off religious people, I think that most 
people
in North America do not fall into the category of either atheist or 
member of
"some form of organized  religion, usually Judeo-Christian."  I've 
seen stats
for the US that state 5% are atheist which Christians usually tout as 
meaning
that the non-atheists are Christians.  I bet, what is more likely, the 
vast
majority have some religious beliefs, but are not members of any 
organized
religion and that if pressed most of them do not let religion affect 
most of
their daily lives.

In other words, they are not consulting the Bible when it comes time 
to buy
a house or make a career move.:-)

This is not to denigrate people who are religious and David (if I may) 
brings
up a good point about not discouraging people.  In Thomas Nord's 
defense,
however, Europe (Nord is in Sweden, if I'm correct) is not the same 
as
America.  People there, from my experience, are not as uptight here 
about
having fun poked at their views.  I assume most people who look at 
Nord's
sight will be Europeans.

Even so, David makes good points about the negativism and critical
attitude here.  That is to be expected, I believe, because we are 
dealing
with a lot of frustration and a lot of us are know-it-alls.  The 
former comes
from seeing points you think are obvious (e.g., cryonics is better 
than
death), yet not seeing everyone and his sister signing up.

Yet one approach we can use is target our audience.  Should we target
people who might be turned off by some witty slogans?  Should we
target the 99.7% (or whatever the actual figure is) who believe in a 
God
or gods?  I don't know the answer here.  I would hope someone is 
doing
some kind of a marketing study to see how various people respond to
different approaches.  Perhaps reconfiguring the marketing toward
religious types is worth the effort.  Perhaps not.

I hope Scott Badger's "An Exploratory Survey Examining the 
Familiarity
with and Attitudes Toward Cryonic Preservation" is not the only work
of its kind out there.*  If it is, I hope it is only the beginning of 
a more
serious study of how to market cryonics (and life extension).

(I freely confess to not reading every single post here or anywhere. 
 I
don't have the time to read everything on this or any list.  If 
someone
else has originated or beaten to death this idea, forgive me for not
having fresh ideas.)

Cheers!

Daniel Ust
* See http://www.transhumanist.com/volume3/badger.htm

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11728