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