X-Message-Number: 4016
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Church of Cryonics
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 10:29:45 GMT
Message-ID: <>

Imagine a group of people with the following attributes:

a) They believe strongly in the possibility of life after death,
   indeed this belief is the central reason for the group's existence.

b) They believe that what you do in this life (this animation) can
   strongly affect your chances of literal resurrection into a second life.

c) After they die, a procedure far stranger than any burial ritual of any
   known religion is performed by trained and certified upper level
   members of the group.  The procedure is exacting, gruesome and usually
   involves decapitation.

d) All members of the group make regular payments to those in charge, in
   order to improve their chances of life after death.  Many believe that
   the more they contribute, the better their chances.

e) Members believe their resurrection will be acomplished by a future
   technology so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic.

f) While most members feel their beliefs in this life after death are based
   on rational principles and arguments, they will also generally admit
   that many of the most important principles are far from certain and
   that their probability and even possibility must be taken on faith.

g) In spite of the claim of rationality, members are few in number, and
   thought to be odd or fringe people by those in the mainstream.  In
   many cases the families of members object to their membership, and
   the burial procedure in particular.

h) The group wishes to evangelize its believes to those in the mainstream,
   and convert them to members of the group.

i) The group has a "burial ground" with tanks with they believe literally
   contain the stored consciousnesses of the dead.  They treat these dead
   as actually still alive, and hold them as sacred as they do the living.
   The burial ground is protected, and desecration of it would greatly
   offend members of the group.  They will go to great lengths to protect
   it, and the dead within it.  They will resist the efforts of the
   justice system to gain access to or custody of the dead members remains.

j) The group is highly interested in the question of the nature of life,
   being and consciousness, and whether or not the soul exists.  The
   presence or lack of a spiritual nature to humanity is of the keenest
   interest.


I could go on, but doesn't it strike you that such a group meets many
of the standards by which mainstream society might call it a religion?

In fact, if you take clause (f) in particular, even those here might
agree it is a religion.  There is a large element of faith involved
in cryonics.  Not faith in a god, but faith that certain things can and
will be done, that the universe will unfold as it should.

And why would it want to be a religion?

Well, if a group is a religion, contributions to it can be tax deductable.

That could make a big difference.

For example, if you are a person in good health in your 30s, you can get
a $50K life assurance policy for about $7,000 today one time cash payment.
In addition, you might have to pay a few hundred per year for an
emergency response fee.  What if these were tax deductable?  The life
assurance would not be, so it would have to be done self-insured, but this
could cut that one time cost down to about $4,000 after tax, which might
mean a lot more people would be able to pay it.

I can understand why Alcor doesn't want to be the insurer, some of those
reasons financial and some legal.  But with this benefit...

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