X-Message-Number: 32643
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Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:15:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: 2Arcturus <>
Subject: Religion & Cryonics

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I would disagree with an "expert" who was excerpted recently on this topic.
Belief in an afterlife antedates belief in a _happy_ afterlife.

Many of the most ancient religions saw the afterlife as a miserable existence - 
e.g., the Mesopotamian idea of the dead living underground, unhappy and thirsty 
for drink offerings, or the Greek idea of Hades, similar to the Christian idea 
of Hell, except that everyone, even heroes, went there. There is also the very 
ancient idea of ghosts as angry, resentful beings, which idea lives on in 
religions that would nominally deny such possibilities (such as Christianity) - 
witness the innumerable horror movies Hollywood puts out on the subject.

We also see distinctive beliefs about the afterlife such as reincarnation, which
in Hinduism and Buddhism is reason for despair not rejoicing (samsara is the 
cycle of endless suffering & repeated re-dying).

So based on the history of religions, we can't see belief in an afterlife as 
wishful thinking, since much of the most ancient beliefs about it were anything 
but wishable!

Rather, I agree with the old idea that belief in afterlife was "protoscience", 
an early theory of what happened after you died, based on deep intuitions about 
human persons having nonphysical, indestructible, and eternal aspects.

I think this intuition is still widely prevalent, and is just one more reason 
why so few people are interested in cryonics. According to this intuition, 
cryonics would be unnecessary, and possibly involve even a kind of quandary 
(would the "spirit" stay in the cryopreserved body, or break free? Would the 
resuscitated cryopatient still have his soul, or would he be a soulless 
zombie?).

Death as total extinction is dismissed, I think, not just because it is 
unpalatable, but also because it seems improbable.

So cryonicist philosophers need to understand this widespread intuition about 
"spirits" and the afterlife, and understand why it is intuitive, and what the 
alternatives would be, and how to explain them to the general public.



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