X-Message-Number: 17743 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: comparing religious and cryonics disputes Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 11:02:39 +0100 Whether secularism or religion produces the biggest bloodbaths, no one denies that a lot of people kill or main each other over religion. God=omnipotent being. "I know God, therefore others who know it differently must be wrong. " The difficulty here is that only a lunatic can claim honestly to know God. He is being honest with himself, but deluded, of course. Apart from that, sane people have theories about God, and they may chose to plan their lives around those theories. However to claim that those theories are absolute truth, as do all religions, is what causes the problems. The difficulty with that is that if you start to examine the concept of God scientifically, ie conjecture that the universe has a creator, observe the universe and try objectively to deduce what sort of a being that creator may be, one doesn't get a very appealing answer. The only way to get a "nice" god is by definition, and then impose that by clever reasoning, appeals to emotions or emotional blackmail or possibly physical force. As most people are incapable of clever reasoning, physical force seems to be the way most people try and do it. Hence the bloodbaths. Cryonics also relies on a conjecture - a conjecture as to the capabilities of future technology and the motivations of societies, legislature and so on in the future. [I know it is future members of cryonics organisations, not society as a whole, who will do reanimations of technically possible. But they still have to work under society and the legal system that prevails at the time. If it is illegal to revive people, or possibly just legally dangerous for some at present unfathomable reason, they may still find it very difficult or impossible.] It is when conjectures are different, for example whether the procedures of various competing cryonics organisations will result in revivals, the animosity of a similar level to religious disputes becomes apparent. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://www.deRivaz.com my homepage links to Longevity Report, Fractal Report, music, Inventors' report, an autobio and various other projects: http://www.geocities.com/longevityrpt http://www.autopsychoice.com - http://www.cryonics-europe.org - http://www.porthtowan.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17743