X-Message-Number: 29155 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: Re: re: being too far out of the box Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:37:28 -0000 From: un person (on CryoNet) <> Subject: re: being too far out of the box > Believe it or not, parts of the jehovahs witnesses > dogma are somewhat akin to parts of what a > pro-cryonics gospel would entail. I speak as someone > who spent many hours selling Jehovahs Witness > magazines door to door in my childhood. The Jehovahs Witness web site mentions cryonics (the same article at different urls): http://www.watchtower.org/e/19991015/article_02.htm and http://www.watchtower.org/library/w/1999/10/15/article_02.htm The recent UK television programme featuring Dr Aubrey de Grey mentioned that one of his publicists is a Jehovah's Witness and that he sees no conflict between Dr de Grey's work and the JW religion. "The Bible" suggests that people have to do things for themselves and cannot expect God to do things for them. As far as I know, it does not say that life extension is the only activity where they have to trust God to do it for them. Nowhere does it say that there is a life limit beyond which it sinful to exceed. Indeed, it goes the other way to suggest that terminating your own life is one of the worst possible sins, even if you do it by wilful neglect (eg starvation) as opposed to, say, hanging yourself. This actually doesn't tie in well with the JW article mentioned above, but suggests that the article is flawed in logic. The section "Where should we put our hope" is correct inasmuch as it says that etnernal life is beyond science, but possibly for the wrong reason. I would put it more simply: You have to live forever to know that you are immortal. Forever never comes. The subsequent section then goes on to suggest ideas about sin being the case of death and all the faithful need to do is to be good and they will live indefinitely. The article is very positive about the idea of living indefinitley. There is none of this rubbish about people getting bored and wanting to die. Cut out the faith bits, and the rest could all go in a cryonics brochure. The aims are the same, the methods are different. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29155