X-Message-Number: 26368 From: "David Pizer" <> Subject: Ethics of Immortality Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 18:58:24 -0700 Cryonet is an excellent place to have a brief discussion on ethics of life. Maybe, here, we can come up with some ideas that will help us to help many others? There is a major problem in the world at the present time, it has bothered me for over a decade and I have been thinking about what (if anything) a person, or group, might be able to do about it. So I will state it below and anyone who wishes to put in their two cents with ideas, or advice will be appreciated. David Pizer (Warning = no spell-checker) Here are some disjointed premises and my conclusion: GROUP ONE: There exists in our world today, a certain percent, (of the total amount of people on earth), who would like to live longer than the current normal life span (of say 60 to 90 years give or take). GROUP TWO: There are also some people who don't care to live beyond the normal life span. (I am not discussing them here) GROUP THREE: And, there is a 3rd group, those who don't even want to live to the normal limits and they are the ones who are suicidal. (I feel for them, but I am not discussing them at this time). Looking at GROUP ONE, the group of people who would like to live beyond the normal life span, I would guess that they love the thought of a very long, healthy and happy life, and further, I suspect that if that were possible, then most of them never want to be dead forever. We see that most of the people in GROUP ONE have joined some traditional religion which promises them eternal life. I would guess that about 50 to 70 % of the people living on earth today are in this group. (There may be more who don't want to die and they don't join an eternal-life-promising religion because they don't believe in it.) It the past, there probably was little or no harm for a religion to promise their members eternal life, (even if it was not true), because there was no other alternative available to try to obtain eternal or very long life. But today with the technology of cryonics, there is an alterntive option to try for vast extended life and maybe virtual eternal life. Another premise might be that there is little real evidence that religions can *gurantee* eternal life, even though they promise it. As a way of compensating for this they have introduced the concept of faith as a good thing. They compliment their members for holding their conclusions (through faith) even though there is no real evidence to reach those conslusions. I think this may be wrong. We don't compliment people for holding unsubstantiated conclusions in other fields. In fact we frown upon that in all other areas of human behavior. Further, religions have made the option of trying to obtain eternal life through religion easier to apply for than the option of trying for long life through cryonics. (Even if religions' options are not valid, they are still easier to apply for than cryonics). Therefore, for these reasons and other traditional reasons, at the present time most people have and will choose religion as their vehicle for attempting to obtain eternal life, rather than to choose cryonics. And, in fact that is just what is going on in the world right now. Here is the current score card: Religions: 3 to 4 billion. Cryonics: 1,000 give or take. There are some people running or helping to run religions who may honestly believe in their religion's ability to *guarantee* to deliever eternal life and no doubt there are some who know better. So if religions are making false promises some may be doing it on purpose and some may be making well-meaning mistakes. However, in this matter intentions don't matter - the results are the same. If religions' promises are not true, and you relied on them, you are just as dead forever if they fooled you by mistake or on purpose. So here is what is causing me to be uncomfortable: What if it turns out that there is no god nor heaven and cryonics works and cryonics leads to a virtual, physical immortality. That would mean that many good-intended preachers, ministers et al, (that really wanted to help other humans avoid being dead forever) had talked these followers into joining their religion, and thereby caused these followers to reject cryonics. (Because the religions' followers felt they already were avoiding being dead forever through their association with their religion). If this is the case, then, these well-meaning, (but wrong), religious leaders had actually caused these followers to miss out on what the followers really wanted --- immortality. Ouch! There can not be any greater mistake! If this is the case, and I believe there is evidence that it is, this is the absolutely worst thing one person can do to another; cause that second person to be dead forever when they might have had immortality instead. Whether they do this to the second person on purpose or by well-meaning accident, the result is the same, the second person is dead forever because of the first person. We can argue that the second person has a duty to be more careful in choosing or not choosing a religion, etc etc. But that is not my ultimate aim. Assigning blame is not my purpose. I want everyone making claims in this world to do so responsibly. The more important the claim, the greater the responsibility. What I would really like are ideas on how we (you and I) can do something to correct this situation as quickly as possible. I don't want to make the religions go out of business. I don't want to punish anyone. I want the religions to act more responsible and no longer *guarantee* followers eternal life. They need to have some disclaimers, just as cryonics does, when they talk about eternal life and their other *possible* benefits. I feel that we humans, if we want to rise to our best potential, have an obligation to help others - this includes help others find the truth. If we cryonicists are going to be in this world for a long, long time, we need to start making it better right now. We need to eliminate this most horible situation right now. I feel that after you have taken care of your own personal situation, the next more important thing one can do is to help others. Any ideas? David Pizer Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26368