X-Message-Number: 26510 From: "David Pizer" <> Subject: Fw: replies to various messages 1 Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 12:50:49 -0700 ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Pizer" <> To: <> Sent: Monday, July 04, 2005 12:30 PM Subject: replies to various messages REPLY TO SCOTT SCOTT > David, > Your argument seems invalid to me because your premise is far too weak. Where's the evidence that religions explicitly provide guarantees? DAVID: Go to most Christian church services and listen to the preacher. Turn on your TV. Go to their websites. They are saying something to the effect that if you accept Jesus Christ as your savior you will have eternal life in Heaven. They have been saying that from the very beginning. They don't use the word "guarantee" perhaps but they do guarantee it. That is the underpinning of the Christian Religion - Accept Jesus = live forever. No buts about it. Further, I don't see how anyone could have missed this? Are you saying that they don't say what I think they say. If I am wrong on this than you are right that I am wrong on the whole first part of my argument and we are done. My argument rest on this premise being true - they guarantee eternal life. I actually have two arguments. The first one is that there is a wrong being done. That is the one I think is valid and sound in the philosophical sense of these words. The second argument I do not claim a deductive conclusion. The second argument is what most of us are debating and that is that the best way to fix the problem that the first argument exposes is to sue them. I am not convinced my self that this is the best way. 1) it might not convince them, 2) it might bring more harm than good, 3) They might not be convincible by any method, 4) There might be a better way that would convince them. 5) are the possible benefits of doing this way more then the possible risks? My first arguement is one where I think this argument is true, valid, sound and leads to a great harm beind done, the harm of accidental misrepresentation, and I want to argue in this one that I am right. I believe it hold by deduction, the stongers possible proof of an argument. The second argument (what should we do now) is one where I don't know if the conclusion is valid, let alone sound. I am throwing out premises that may be true. I believe them to be true on inductive logic alone. The conclusion (sue them) is arrived at by induction. Let's beat it around and see if we can destroy it or maybe make it stonger. Let the truth prevail! (I "pray" we can find that truth before too many more people die without getting frozen). SCOTT: >I've never heard a religious leader use that term. They make claims and offer promises based on beliefs which are in turn based on faith since they have no hard evidence to support their claims. DAVID: I don't know if they use the word"guarantee" but you can see that right now if you go to the website of most religions. Here is just one promise. You can find hundreds like this. www.mormon.org/learn below is the first part of what they say. They are all saying something very similar. WHAT THE MORMON RELIGION SAYS ON THEIR WEBSITE: "Where do we go after we die? Death is not the end. Death is really a beginning - another step forward in Heavenly Father's plan for His children. Someday, like everyone else, your life on Earth will end and our physical body will die. But your spirit will not die. At the time of physical death, your spirit will go to the spirit world, where you will continue to learn and progress. Death is a nexessary step in your progression, just as your birth was. Sometime after your death, yuor spirit and body will be reunited -- never to be seperated again. This is called resurrection, and it was made possible by the death and Ressurection of Jesus Christ." The above is the promise (guarantee), is some form or other, that is what all the Christian religions all over the world are guaranteeing. SCOTT: >Ask religious leaders if they provide guarantees to the members of their church, and I'll bet practically all of them will back away from that term. If they really did offer guarantees, they wouldn't deny it. DAVID: I have asked them that, on more than one occassion. And they do NOT back away. They do guarantee that accepting Jesus as your savior WILL get you life after death in Heaven. Further, Christians guarantee you won't get it any other way. I once asked a preacher what about the innocent people, say, in South America 700 years ago who did not accept Jesus as their savior because they had never heard of him. He said his church teaches that those people had a "desire" to try to find the truth and they should have built boats and crossed the ocean to find people who could have explained it to them. But because they were evil, they resisted doing this. And so even though they lived in South America in the year 1300, they were going to burn in Hell forever for not accepting Jesus as their saviour. The church guarantees this is the absolute truth and many people believe their guarantee because they believe that church or religion is speaking for God as they claim to do. So they then conclude that they don't need cryonics. SCOTT: > Another big problem with your argument is that you assume that this alleged guarantee is THE reason people choose to be religious, but that's a fallacy. There are many other factors that contribute to religiosity which you are not taking into consideration. DAVID: Example: If you already have a guarantee that your mother will have dinner on the table when you get home tonight for you and all your family, then it is logical that you will not stop at Jack-in-the-Box on the way home and buy dinner for you and all your family. The same logic must be true for extended life. If you thought you knew that you were going to live on forever in Heaven after legal death on Earth, it is only logical that you would also think you do not need extended life through cryonics. In fact, it might be the case that at first so many people felt this way, that the religions had to make it a sin if one comits suicide because people were killing themselves to get to Heaven faster. If you think you already have something, (like eternal life because you have a guarantee from the highest source in the universe) why would you try to obtain it from some other vender. You have a good car to get to work in, why buy another car to get to work. SCOTT:: > I'm also curious about why it is that the people who have offered support for your idea have only sent private messages to you rather than present them openly on cryonet. Did any of them give permission to have their messages posted anonymously? DAVID: I can only guess that my position, right now, is very unpopular. Most people in the cryonics movement are concerned about the political consequences of going against the majority. Further, many of the leaders of cryonics organizations who will eventually be the ones to suspend you are against my position. I guess that the people that support my position might think that if they piss off the leaders, they might not get a good suspension. I don't think that would happen. There is case history on this type of fear (not on that it did happen). When Jerry Leaf died, Mike Darwin was involved in his suspension. Jerry (Alcor VP) had opposed Mike (Alcor Pres) lots of times in the past. Right after the suspension, some people accused Mike of doing something to not help Jerry get as good a suspension as possible. I was outraged when I heard those accusations against Mike. I felt they were only based on the beliefs of the accusers that: 1. Mike felt that Jerry had treated him bad. 2. A person who thinks they have been treated bad will retaliate. 3. Therefore when Mike had the chance he got even with Jerry. But this argument doesn't take into consideration that Mike would never do anything like that. Meanwhile the accuser ordered some investigations and other things. I am trying to show that people do think (at least in this case) that the leaders of cryonics might take it out on you when you die, if you oppose them. I don't believe this but this might be an answer to your question as to why people who support my position only reply directly to me. Still, if you are just counting numbers, counting the public and private responses, not giving any credit for the quality of the arguments or the possible truth of the premisis, of the lack of argument in the pure rants, I can tell you that it is about 20% pro, 70% against, and 10 undecided or at least I can't tell as there were mostly questions and not opinions in those. BUT NUMBERS ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT TO ME AS JUSTIFIABLE REASON AND LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS,. WHICH AS ETTINGER LATER SEEMS TO ME TO POINT OUT ARE HARD TO COME BY IN SOMETHING AS NEW AND DIFFERENT AS THIS, AND SOMEONE (I hope he will) NEEDS TO DO SOME PROBABILITY CALCULATIONS. Further, I am NOT afraid to be the only person on a side in a debate with the leaders of the cryonics community if the facts and logic seem to support my position and the discredits the opposite position. I am not running for any cryonics political position. Further, I have been in this same position several times in the past. (I hesitate to continue on this vein further because it sounds so self-surving, but it is the only way I can make my point on why the numbers don't count as much as the facts and logic., so here goes:) In every case where there was a major difference with the leaders of the cryonics community and David Pizer, in the end it turned out that I was right and they were wrong. So, if anything, that track record would tend to be evidence in my favor. If we look in the past and see Pizer was right 10 times and cryonics leaders were wrong 10 times in their last major debates, then that is some type of evidence (maybe weak) that in debate #11 the same results will occur. Example: If Ali beat up Smith in 10 fights in a row, and if he had knocked Smith out in the first round each time, and if he is fighting Smith again (as soon as Smith gets out of the hospital) and you did not have any info other that this, who would you bet on? DAVID: this is one of the best stated challanges/inquires to my positon I have received on Cryonet so far. Thank you. REPLY TO KEITH. KEITH SAID: Before people get too deep in these arguments, I think it would be worthwhile to understand why people have religions at all, and why those in state societies are different from those of more primitive peoples? I won't say the question has been entirely answered, but reading Pascal Boyer's book _Religion Explained_ is a step in the right direction. Cognitive science and evolutionary psychology are where answers to such Qestions are going to come. DAVID: I havn't gone to the website yet, but I once wrote a reply to Pascal's Wager. Here it is again, from memory and not guaranteed to be exact: Pascal wagers something to the effect that since you are going to live a moral life anyhow (one of the conditions to get to Heaven) and religions guarantee (he doens't use this word) that if you do certain things you will get to Heaven. (I think one of those things is believing in God and Heaven). He says you have nothing to lose if relgions are wrong, so there is no penalty in doing this, AND you have everything to gain if doing what he advocated (believing in God by faith alone?) does lead to Heaven. So you might as well believe in God. And he says, (maybe somewhere else), that believing in Heaven, even if it is wrong, would ease the pain of knowing that you are going to be dead (if it turns out there is no Heaven). So believing in God and Heaven is a rational gamble or wager and it is Pascal's Wager. When I first heard about this years ago, I wrote something to the effect called "Pizer Calls and Raises Pascall" where I said that before cryonics Pascal's Wager was a good one. But now that we have the technolgy of cryonics things may be different. I gave what was a precursor to my current argument (that if one believes in Heaven, AND if one then concludes that one does not need cryonics, and if it turns out that there is no Heaven and cryonics works), then Pacsall's Wager might be a loser. PIZER' WAGER, is to try for both: to be open minded about Heavnen, live a live or morality that would get you there, and sign up for cryonics, also. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RESPONDS TO ETTINGER ROBERT: Dave Pizer's error, I think, is one often made by litigants--assuming that the judge and jury will listen to you and that logic will prevail. The U.S. Supreme Court is a farce, with 5 to 4 decisions on the wrong side of what should have been open and shut cases. If the nation's top jurists disregard the law and vote their prejudices, you can imagine the chance of logic prevailing at lower levels. DAVID: Robert, I agree with you that I will most likely lose the court battle. But I would love to be in the world-wide arena that this suit might put me in. I just want the attention of the whole world for a couple of years to carry out this debate and try to RESPECTFULLY persuade them of what I think is their mistake, what is a better way to proceed, the moral ramifications of what they are doing if they are wrong, that we both (cryonics and religion) have the same goals - extended life. ROBERT: Dave, I suggest you ask a few lawyers about your idea. DAVID: I agree. My plan was: 1. dicusss this with my fellow cryonicists for a year or so. 2. discuss this with those reasonable religions leaders who would agree to discuss it. 3. then talk to attorneys. 4. Then go back to the cryonics community with a plan for them to investigate. 5. All along the way, I would be trying to find ways to insulate the cryonics community from any possible backlash. Even in the short time we have been discussing this I have come up with what I think is a VERY GOOD IDEA. I would let the cryonics community know before the suit was filed and if they wanted to they could enter the suit against me for whatever reasons they have stated so far. Right off the get-go they could offer to join the religions community against me. It's just a thought for now that needs more exploring. ROBERT As for the notion that we should risk ourselves because we might save a lot of strangers--well, at the moment I'll just turn around your request for objective data and calculations of probability. Can you display any calculations supporting your project? DAVID: No. I don't know how to start. And further, I think you are one of the few people in the world who really undertands probablity calculations (which I do not). I was really hoping that you would do some calculations in this area so that I could see if the risks really are too great. I was hoping you could do this in the writing style of 'PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY" where a very complicated idea was explored with clarity a novice could understand. And, if it comes out bad for my position I want to know that. REPLY TO TIM David had said> >There is no more important battle for mankind. Tim Replied > I don't make decisions for mankind; the relevant question is whether there's a more important battle for me, right now. Doing what I can to try to keep myself alive is (in my opinion) more important than trying to change the outcome for the crowd, mostly because I'm much more likely to control my own actions than I am to successfully influence a crowd. (I might feel different if I've maxed-out my contributions to my own longevity, but I'm quite far from that.) DAVID: Very good point. I can't help it if I have this "problem: where I feel sad and uncomfortable when I see someone else die and not get frozen. I feel sad even if they do get frozen because we can't know if it will work. I realize that a lot of people on Cryonet don't feel as strongly as I do, but some others do. And in the end most cryoncists DO agree with my goals of wanting to help get more people signed up the dispute is in ***How*** to proceed. The other day I came home and there was a dead rabbit in my driveway and some birds were picking at it. Things like this make me sad. When other people die it really makes me sad. I donated 11 years of my life to working at Alcor for no pay only because I thought it would help save more lives. I also donated money. Perhaps this over-emphisizing of other living creatures is because I was around so much death in my early years. Perhaps that is the way I was raised. I can't explain it, but I do feel very bad when people die, and I have this desire to make some kind of difference before I go into the tank. I think a lot of other cryoncists do too. I think we all want the same goals. I don't think even one cryoncist wants to shut the doors and tell eveyone else there is no room in the tank. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26510