X-Message-Number: 32299 From: Mathew Sullivan <> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 00:48:51 -0500 Subject: Re: Message #32284 --00504502ce4f30a6b2047ca0bf0e Thanks for the feedback Freeposity and sorry for the delayed response. Life is keeping me very busy these days. There is more to the definition of Agnosticism than you stated. I agree with you in that we are all judgmental, to a varying degree, but my position should be more obvious when taking a closer look. If a majority of cryonicists were Catholic and they were picking on Protestants, you can expect someone to chime in at some point and suggest that Protestants are just as welcome as Catholics. To the best of my knowledge, many cryonicists are Atheist, and I don't agree with those who bully others who have different beliefs than their own in such a degree to make them feel as though they are not welcome. I view cryonics as an experimental procedure that does not discriminate based on race, religion, sex, or even sexual preference. For example, if you were a transplant heart surgeon who realizes you are about to treat a five year old child, would you deny medical support because that child had parents with a different religion than your own? From my vantage point, cryonicists are welcome to share their religious views, but I don't think it is appropriate to force their views on others. If James Cameron has a religious belief in Gaia by chance, he is more than welcome to sign up for cryonics. This is also true of scientologists and those with other religious beliefs, despite anyone's opposing views on the subject within the cryonics community. Getting back to definitions, according to thefreedictionary.com: A theist has a "belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in a personal God as creator and ruler of the world.” An Atheist is "one who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.” On the other hand, an Agnostic is described as: "1. a) One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God. b) One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism. 2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.” I don't agree with "1. a)” at all. Those who use the word impossible are often proven wrong in my experience, so I'm not going to go there. I will say that I lean in favor of a healthy degree of skepticism and I am noncommittal, but I'm also open-minded to a multitude of possibilities. For example, God is defined as "the creator and ruler of the world”; well, our God could very well be a child who is simply following through his grade school requirement of creating a universe, where their society is much more advanced than ours. Every sentient life that has existed or will exist in this universe may not be anything more than a bowl of Sea Monkeys. So from our current perception, a grade school kid who is simply following their teacher's instructions could be our God. On the other hand, maybe we created the universe and our short lives are equivalent to purchasing a movie ticket. If you are a hundred million years old, what's another seventy years of life add up to? Some quick commercial that makes you laugh, cry, feel empathy? Maybe you spent time in this programmed life as a rock star and did all the other things many people dream of. Maybe that style of life got old after a while so you tried being a homeless person, and even a toad or bug for fun. Maybe you chose this life to experience some event in history that occurred over a five-minute period. So, in this circumstance, God is the programmer(s) who created this simulation. Maybe the universe as we perceive it is God's physical thought in formation, God's brain: <http://www.physorg.com/news181845616.html>. The image that forms looks a little like dendrites and synaptic connections if you ask me. Maybe we are the actualization of God's thoughts and imagination and apart of God physically. But then, maybe this is all just a random occurrence of events and we are fortunate to have this life as short as it is. Mathew Sullivan When you stand upon the truth, you can defend against many things that are false. http://www.mathewsullivan.com/ --00504502ce4f30a6b2047ca0bf0e Content-Type: text/html; charset=windows-1252 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32299