X-Message-Number: 17760 Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 08:50:31 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #17752 - #17759 Hi everyone! Unfortunately I totally fail to understand the relevance of religion to cryonics. Sure, people of various religions take up various positions about cryonics based on their quite false perception that religion and cryonics go together. They have this perception because they don't understand that our definition of "death" differs from the common one in ways which are very easy to explain. Put briefly, we don't think someone should be treated as "dead" so long as we cannot prove that he/she is so, not just for current technology but for the technology of the future. Most current doctors, when they think about the problem, simply decide a patient is "dead" when they don't know how to revive them ... a very poor test, as someone who has studied the work on reviving people even by those who are not cryonicists, such as P. Safar (MD). But the mere fact that people with one or another religion take up an attitude tells you nothing at all. They are no more dealing with "dead" patients when they deal with a cryonics patient than they are doing so when they discuss whether or not to have a haircut. And its importance for cryonics remains about the same. Best wishes and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17760