X-Message-Number: 26448
From: "David Pizer" <>
Subject: Fw: Reply to Joe W.
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 08:24:51 -0700


JOE SAID:    My friend Dave seems stuck in the quagmire of his own faulty logic.




DAVID:  I have posted my argument again earlier today in a reply to Mike Riskin 
who also claimed it was "strained."  Logic is my favorite subject. I defy you to
reprint the exact argument (from my Riskin reply post)  and then point out 
where it is "faulty."


JOE SAID:  Dave, you can claim you are not attacking religion as much as you
want. But as long as you advocate filing lawsuits against the church,
then you are attacking religion. 





DAVID:  I do not see doing something that would make the religions better as 
attacking them.   Do you agree that religions should state their messages and 
beliefs  more as things they believe (and then only by faith and not hard 
evidence)  and what they hope for rather  than as things that are absolute.  For
instance which of the following statements would you like to see religions 
make.

A.  God does exist!
or
B.  We hope God exists.


A.  You can do certan things (we will tell you what they are)  and if you do you
will get to Heaven!
or
B.  We hope that the things we prescribe might get you to Heaven.






JOE SAID:  Lawsuits are adversarial in nature.


DAVID:  Most of them are, but all of them are not.  They don't have to be.  Some
lawsuits are filed just to try to make things better.  And in the alternative, 
even if a lawsuit (any lawsuit) was considered adversarial but it was doing what
is right, would being adversarial be a reason not to correct wrongful things..


For example:  Marines fighting the 911 terrorists, or others who attack the 
United States, is adversarial, so are you saying, Sargent Waynick, that is 
reason enough not to?


JOE SAID:  One side attacks by prosecuting an objective and the other side
defends until a judge declares a winner. The very least you can do is
be intellectually honest and admit what you are proposing is to attack
religion by filing your lawsuits. If you do not believe this to be
true, just wait for the defensive response of the religious right
after you mount your non-attack attack.


DAVID:  I would rather say one side tries to help make the other side do the 
right thing, and by doing this they are making the other side a better entity.


JOE SAID:    Your assumption is that because your views are different from 
people
of faith it makes them liars and you honest. I find it disturbing that
you think it is okay to call millions of people liars simply because
you disagree with their beliefs and what they teach. I find it
disturbing that you are prepared to ignite a very serious
confrontation between cryonicists and people of faith simply because
you disagree with their teachings. I cannot think of very many things
more dangerous than fool hardy ideas such as that.



DAVID:  I have granted from the get-go that the their are two reasons why 
religions may be doing things wrong.  There may be a few dishonest people in 
religions who do things they believe are not true, but I believe that if 
religions are wrong it is problable an honest mistake.  For example, religions 
used to burn people alive.  We all now know this was a wrongful thing to do.  
Did they do this wrongful thing knowing it was wrong or was it a mistake and 
they really thought they were helping the people they were buring alive?

JOE SAID:    Your repeated assertion that religion guarantees eternal life only
demonstrates your own lack of understanding of faith based beliefs.
Somehow, you have twisted religion into something you fear and loathe.
So you want to attack it. 



DAVID:  The Catholic Church says that if certain things they prescribe are done,
a person will then go to Heaven and live there forever.  Most Christian 
religions (in various ways) say the way to obtain eternal salvation is to accept
Jesus Christ as your savior.  That means if you do this, you will live on in 
Heaven forever after death. 

You made a giant leap of logic to believe that I loathe religions.


I want to make religions better.  I don't think we have the time to just 
persuade  them start saying they merely hope for the things to be true that they
now guarantee are true.  Although I do think that will happen in several 
hundred years or so.  But for now who is going to speak for the misguided 
followers who are rejecting cryonics because they believer for sure they are 
going to live forever in Heaven?


JOE SAID:  Somehow, you see religion as some great obstacle to greater 
acceptance of cryonics. 

DAVID:  I only believe that because it is true.

JOE SAID;  Somehow, you think that by
attacking religion you will prove something to the world and open the
floodgates to greater numbers of cryonicists because, due to your
efforts, the religions of the world will no longer lie about eternal
life, and a grateful population will make more informed choices and
(hopefully) more of them will choose cryonics, the RIGHT choice,
right?



DAVID:  If your had only said this a little more differently you would be right.
Here is how I would have said what you said.


Somehow you think that by trying to make religions more honest in their 
presentations, you will help make the world a better place and help greater 
numbers of people have more honest evidence with which to make choices which 
will lead to greater numbers of people opting for cryonics (while also keeping 
their religious options open) due to your efforts, the religions of the world 
will become better, and will no longer make the mistake of guaranteeing eternal 
life, and a grateful population will make better informed choices and 
(hopefully) more of them will choose cryonics, and keep their religions choices 
also, so that the RIGHT choice will be to have both a religious chance and a 
cryonics chance for extended life - the same choice of religions AND cryonics 
that Alcor's current president, Joe Waynick, has made. 



JOE SAID:     If your goal is not to increase the number of cryonicists because 
they
will be able to make more informed choices, then this endeavor is even
more foolish than I thought because you do not even have an objective.
    The problem with your proposal is that it is predestined to fail, as
it should. It should fail because everyone has the right to believe
what he or she chooses. 



DAVID;  I agree that everyone has the right to make their own informed choices.
The key word is informed.  They have to be "honestly" informed.  The 
information they use to make their choices has to be true.  The persons or 
organizations supplying that information has to NOT make guarantees they have no
right to make.


 JOE SAID:    Dave, I have always considered you a friend. But I am just not 
 with
you on this one. Sorry. I will come up to Creekside soon and perhaps
we can continue this discussion in person. ;-)




DAVID:  You are a friend, a very good one.  You are a person of good intentions.
Like the religions we are talking about, if you are making some errors in your
thinking I believe they are based on honest mistakes not bad intentions.  I 
will be glad to help you get your thinking on the right track.  I can hardly 
wait :=)



 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26448