X-Message-Number: 29139 Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:25:16 -0800 (PST) From: un person <> Subject: rich, illogical churches vs. poor, logical cryonics orgs A pastor in Minneapolis is being ivestigated by the IRS his financial dealings. Apparently he misused some of the money that the congregation donated to the church. How much did the church take it last year? 34 million! In one year! See this article: A divine discipline Pastor Mac Hammond's congregation at Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park reacted strongly Sunday to his appearance in the wake of a watchdog's group complaint to the Internal Revenue Service that he violated federal tax law and a front-page Star Tribune article examining his financial dealings: The congregation was presented with the annual report, which said the church had $34 million in gross revenues last year and gave $3 million to charitable causes and evangelism. ///////// the rest of the story here: http://www.startribune.com/614/story/995886.html a video of the pastor here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as0K6_zRRgc So....he took in 34 million in one year....From one megachurch in minneapolis! And there are dozens and dozens of such churches in America. And thousands of smaller churches. And many tv preachers. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. The salvation industry. The eternal life industry. And, logically, what are the chances of it working? NONE! And what about cryonics? How does it stack up to religion as a product? Logically, we should the churches' ASSES! But instead we are hardly a pimple on the ass of any halfway decent suburban church went it comes to MONEY. 34 million in one year! What amount of revenue have ALL cryonics orgs taken in over the last 20 years? Maybe ten million total? And there are some tv preachers that take in 50 million or more in one year. And cryonics sells much the same product as these churches. But a BETTER product in many ways. Just not marketed right. Cryonics is really marketed towards high-IQ, internet-dwelling types. People who don't mind reading lots of complicated text. Guess what? THat is a tiny, TINY fraction of the populace in America. Very few people really like to read that much. And especially of the sort of text that they would need to read to understand cryonics. Gee, I wonder why we only have 1000 cryonicists after 30 years.... So what I want to know is why no one in cryonics ever talks about this. Where are the cryonicists who want to know why we are not pitching cryonics as a religion, or, more properly, as an aspect of one of the already established religions? Not as a cult like scientology, but simply as an outgrowth of the "word of faith," prosperity-gospel, i.e., as the same sort of religion practiced by that the embattled preacher mentioned above, as and as practiced by many many other preachers all over america. There IS support from the bible on this matter that indicates a possible path forward for cryonics with respect to its integration into modern, evangelistic, word-of-fath, prosperity gospel. See Thomas Donaldson's essay here: http://www.quantium.plus.com/lr/cryonics-europe/jesus.htm There is support for cryonics in the Bible! Why do we not start a CHURCH, oriented around the prosperity gospel of protestantism, but with an extension centered around the practice of cryonics? All that money could be used to cryopreserve and store patients and to do research. And I suggest this as someone who is an atheist. Or we can just have another round of discussion about consciousness and qualia..... -unperson ____________________________________________________________________________________ Finding fabulous fares is fun. Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains. http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29139