X-Message-Number: 26501 Date: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 01:55:34 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Re: Lawsuit References: <> David Pizer wrote: >Can you suggest a better immediate (people are dying every day, time is >of the essence) way than a lawsuit to get something going that will cause >religions to rephrase their beliefs as just that -- beliefs, and not as >absolute >truth? Dave, you say you want evidence for any recommendations that are made (including not to proceed with the lawsuit--my recommendation and just about everybody else's). Maybe you should talk to some devout believers who are not cryonicists--I'm not sure where you'd find them but you have contacts. Off the top of my head, if I try to put myself in place of one of these, all I can imagine is that I would take offense at someone trying to infringe on my freedom to (for example) proclaim the Bible as the word of God. I might say "this is what I believe" but also "this is what I *know* to be true" as I think many religious people do. (And by the way, to feel that you know that something is true, especially when it concerns a matter such as eternal salvation, is very important to many people. Do you think you need "evidence" of this?) I would say that my right to proclaim my religious belief as *what I **know** to be true* and not as *just a possibility* is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech; or of the press ...") I think I would be on solid ground that my position would be most unlikely to be overturned in the courts--can *you* produce any evidence otherwise? I think the First Amendment grants the right of someone to assert that they "know" something even if they can't produce enough evidence to convince a court of law. Other considerations are that the courts themselves are composed of non-cryonicists, many of whom are religious themselves, and they do consider precedent in arriving at decisions. On a different but related matter: a true religious believer, a "person of faith," who also chooses cryonics, does *not* make this choice on grounds that it is possible that his faith is misplaced and may not lead to the salvation he hopes for. Instead I think it is more akin to why he would choose to have a life-saving operation rather than immediately leave this world--for example, because he thinks he can do some good in this world before taking his leave of it. His hopes for heaven remain strong and unaffected in either case. And he would be intolerant of any suggestion that he begin to have some doubt about these hopes, which evidently would be the intent of the proposed lawsuit. Getting people to consider cryonics could be, but is *not necessarily* a matter of instilling doubt about some other hopes they might have about extending their life. My gut feeling, though here I'll confess to a lack of hard evidence, but anyway here goes, is that you will accomplish more by not attacking someone's beliefs but working around that. If you try to get them to question the truth of their beliefs, to admit that they are just beliefs and not guaranteed truth, they *will* perceive this as an attack whether you do or not. You need to focus on reasons to choose cryonics *even if* one's eventual, eternal salvation is absolutely certain. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26501