X-Message-Number: 18382 From: "Mark Plus" <> Subject: Re: A humanist's flirtation with Immortalism Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 09:11:31 -0800 Keith Henson wrote, >Message #18376 Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 15:03:56 -0500 From: Keith Henson <> Subject: Re: A humanist's flirtation with Immortalism [snip] >>Why single out Christianity? Is not all religion similarly responsible - >diverting effort from what really may solve the problem of death into >pointless ceremony and ritual? >Memetic reasons. This is an article with the point of bringing Humanists around to our view of the world, call it progressive as opposed to the dominant view some years ago of "liberal guilt," that it was unfair for a few selfish people to live while all the poor died. Some of you may remember the very hostile reaction cryonics got (we were asked to leave) a Humanist meeting in San Jose ten or twelve years ago. Unitarians shared much of the same ideas, a Unitarian minister was defrocked for speaking out about cryonics about the same time. >Anyway, if you want to convince a Humanist readership that cryonics is a good idea, then blaming religions for it being delayed is a tactic. I would add that secular humanism has trouble getting much traction in the memetic world precisely because it lacks a compelling narrative for dealing with the death problem. Indeed, religionists who accuse plain-vanilla secular humanism of nihilism have a very strong point. Nihilism can quite easily be derived from secular humanist premises, if humans die the True Death in the short run, and the species' efforts are going to turn to ashes in the long run. Bertrand Russell was engaging in wishful thinking when he tried to paper over this problem in his famous humanist's credo, "A Free Man's Worship." Though in the context of his time, he couldn't have proposed anything better. Secular humanists in the 21st Century will perversely have to ignore the science news if they continue to maintain their deathist beliefs. It's going to get increasingly hard to pretend that we can't do anything about aging and death. S. Matthew D'Agostino is to be commended for trying to inject some technologically and morally progressive ideas into the moribund secular humanist worldview. Of course, religious answers to this problem suffer from their own absurdities, mainly because of infinite regression. If humans have to derive meaning and purpose from a relationship with a deity, does the said deity have to look up to a super-deity to find _its_ meaning and purpose? Otherwise, what's to keep the deity from succumbing to nihilism? (Perhaps it already has, and that explains the "problem of evil" in our universe.) Ironically, the Christian version of this theory suggests that a relationship with the deity may leave something to be desired. According to the Christian narrative, a significant portion of the deity's earliest creations -- Satan and the other rebellious "angels," whatever that means -- decided to reject such a relationship and strike out on their own. That's why Christians' obsession with the wonders of "heaven" puzzles me. Where do they think Satan came from? Mark Plus _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18382