102 replies to this topic

[CryoBurger]

There's a really large assumption in Cryonics that seems to be overlooked.

Its the assumption that something which has died for an extended period of time, can be brought back to life.

While this may sound obvious and fundamental, I dont see it actually being researched.

We have yet to establish that living organisms are just machines. There is an assumption in Cryonics that we are nothing more than machines. And with the proper knowledge, any machine can be brought back into operation.

Even as I type this Im not 100% clear what my point is. However I keep thinking about Sea Monkeys. There we have an example of a little round "seed" that can sit in a drawer for over 100 years and the minute you add water, it becomes a multicelled living organism. One that is more like us than any plant that would come from a seed, is. This lends credibility to the claim that life is nothing more than an operating machine.

There is always the option of suspension while still alive, albeit illegal.

But why arent we looking into the premise of this technology. The very fundamental assumption. It seems there could be some sort of research or testing that could be done to confirm or deny this, but maybe I am out of my mind.

After all, if we find that something which has died can't be brought back to life, then it doesnt matter how good technology gets in the future. Shouldn't we be nailing down this question first?

Reminds me of the movie "AI" - where they "discovered" that a human life can truly only exist at one point in the universe, and can't just be reanimated at a later time. Clearly they were catering to the publics need to believe that we have spirits and souls ... but it was an interesting aspect of the movie.

Just opening up the discussion.

Edited by CryoBurger, 21 September 2010 - 09:48 PM.

[JJN]

I have been thinking a little along these lines. Science is still pretty far off from being able to test the full reanimation of a complex organism.

My understanding of the scientific method is that you start with a thesis, or conjecture, make hypotheses that can be tested, then develop theories that are based on repeatable verification of the hypotheses.

It really depends on what aspect of cryonics we are talking about. As far as the Big Picture, I consider it still to be conjecture scientifically.

But cryonics is made up of many small parts. I think they are slowly making progress on some parts of it. As far as what parts are still conjecture, which are testable hypotheses, and which are theories, someone more knowledgable will have to answer.

Jeff

[e Volution]

I think your making an unnecessary distinction between alive and dead... People drown all the time and are "dead", only to be revived later, also hasn't someone being "technically" dead for hours when they fell into ice water before being found? There is no difference between being dead for one minute and being dead for one year as long as there is no change to any of your tissues, body, etc.

Also these more metaphysical questions seem to be some way off being answered, so you are right Cryonics is sticking with the obvious and most likely to be right assumption that we are just machines, atoms fixed together like any other living creature on this planet. Even if we are not and have some kind of "soul" (highly doubtful) then there seems no reason why this soul can't be suspended or revived, as per the drowning example above.

I think your ideas are valid, and SHOULD be considered. And I am confident they are in the community! But they should have absolutely no bearing on the day to day advancing of Cryonics, just as they should have no bearing on the advancing fields of neuroscience, or consciousness, etc.

Edited by e Volution, 22 September 2010 - 12:05 AM.

[bgwowk]

That life can be stopped and then restarted is a settled question in medicine and biology

http://www.alcor.org...ltimetravel.htm

Vitalism (to be distinguished from emergentism) has been dead in biology for 100 years. Beliefs in a soul are not. This is because the question of whether life is composed of molecular machinery that can be stopped and restarted, and whether a soul exists, are not the same question. One need not posit that there be no soul for biostasis to work.

[CryoBurger]

That life can be stopped and then restarted is a settled question in medicine and biology

http://www.alcor.org...ltimetravel.htm

Vitalism (to be distinguished from emergentism) has been dead in biology for 100 years. Beliefs in a soul are not. This is because the question of whether life is composed of molecular machinery that can be stopped and restarted, and whether a soul exists, are not the same question. One need not posit that there be no soul for biostasis to work.

So the assumption would be that if both exist, the soul goes off on some adventures for 600 years and gets forceably sucked back into the body when reanimated?

[bgwowk]

If a soul is a person, and a person in biostasis is a person as proved by later revival as a person, then the soul of a person in biostasis is still right there with the person. This is no different than sleep, anesthesia, ischemia, hypothermia, or any other state of unconsciousness or brain inactivation from which people later recover. Revival from biostasis is recovery from a deep coma.

No one worries whether souls of embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen for years wander away. I am not aware of any scaling laws for souls that would create problems for adults.

[chrwe]

Let us assume there is no soul except the one that resides in our brain. Then there is no issue. This seems the more likely option given the current data (although it is not 100% sure because we do not yet have all relevant data about the Universe).

Let us assume there is something like an extra soul outside of our brain (the definition of which seems to be highly variable, ranging from our normal "living" consciousness continued - by the way, just truly imagine that for n-thousand years.... - to some sort of spiritual existence which essentially has nothing to do with what we consider to be "us"). If such a thing exists, then there is also no issue because you can assume that whatever "higher plan" exists already includes the return after a successful cryonics experiment . If you are a believer of the "spiritual" definition of the soul, it is even less of a problem because the "normal ego" returns while the etheral soul is still doing whatever it does when "I" am no longer there .

[Trent]

I'm a little bit puzzled how this conversation is occurring. This is the commonest question people have/criticism they make about cryonics. They say: "Sure you can be frozen, but can you come back to life?" The answer from cryonicists: "Well, we certainly hope so! We can't do it now, but with the wonders of technology in 100-200 years, maybe it will be doable!" If you're wondering in principle if it's possible to bring a frozen human being (including, crucially, their nervous system) back to life, I'd tentatively say yes. I think it's clear that it's possible in principle to make biological machines (step 1 happened this year), to make nanotechnology that can manipulate matter down to the individual atom, to become a Type III civilization, to use mind uploading, and even to become superintelligent. Furthermore, I think it's quite plausible that biological machines, advanced nanotech, Type III energy supplies, mind uploading, and superintelligence will become realities eventually -- whether it takes 200 or 10,000 or 3,000,000 years -- as long as civilization keeps progressing smoothly like (more or less) it has been since the Scientific Revolution.

Let's try a fanciful thought experiment: the second after a person's heart stops (legal death), their body is instantly preserved down to the atom (I said it was fanciful). Long later, with the 5 technologies I listed in the last paragraph in full swing, can we revive the patient? I don't know how you could doubt that we can, with the ability to use bio/nano machines manipulate the patient's body down to every atom.

So the real 3 worrying questions about cryonics are:

1) Is the vitrification process good enough to preserve a person's mind just as it was before they were legally declared dead? The legal declaration is only based on the fact that our medical technology isn't good enough yet to revive someone if we can't get their heart beating again right away. "Flatlining", the first second of the heart beat falters completely, would be our legal death if we didn't have defibrillators. A positive sign is that people have, on rare occasions, been revived minutes after they were declared legally dead (after the defibrillators failed). Their minds were in the same state they were beforehand. So if we can vitrify brains to preserve minds to the level of two-minutes-after-declaration-of-legal-death, worry (1) is a worry no more! But that remains to be seen. We will only really know once we bust out our nanobots.

2) How fast will a vitrified brain deteriorate in preservation quality over time? This, I think, is a small worry compared to (1), although still a worry. Estimates I've heard say there is virtually no change until sometime between a few hundred years and 40,000 years [citation needed :p]. Worry (2) is inextricable from worry (3):

3) Will the 5 technologies (or just as many as are necessarily -- e.g. just biotech and nanotech) arrive on time to save the frozen patients? Or will the deterioration just discussed in (2) outpace the growth of technology?

In other words, for anyone interested in cryonics, the two main uncertainties are: how good is the vitrification we do now? and how fast will advanced nanotech arrive on the scene? Whether it is in principle possible to revive a human being is not a main worry, because the answer is yes, so long as the vitrification we do now is good enough. How good is good enough? We don't know yet, and probably won't know until we get advanced nanotech and try to revive cryonics patients. That is the whole idea of cryonics. It is an informed gamble: a cost-benefit analysis everyone must make for themself.


P.S. The second most common objection to cryonics is that cryonics is unfordable to the average person. This is almost universally believed, but not true: cryonics ranges from a total lifetime cost ranging from $29,250 to a maximum of $200,000. These may seem like a lot, but if you purchase a good life insurance plan when you are relatively young and healthy, the actual total lifetime cost to you is much lower. Also, in the latter example I linked to, you can pay significantly less than $200,000 if you plan ahead and pay membership dues.

Edited by Trent, 24 September 2010 - 04:00 AM.

[bgwowk]

If such a thing (soul) exists, then there is also no issue because you can assume that whatever "higher plan" exists already includes the return after a successful cryonics experiment

The assumption that if a soul exists it necessarily departs and must be returned upon awakening from cryopreservation is bizarre. This is not believed to happen during sleep. Nor is there a presumption that the soul departs during anesthesia, deep hypothermia, or from frozen human embryos to return when they are thawed. Nobody discusses the departure and return of souls of comatose patients who later recover. This is because it is understood that someone who recovers was never really dead, just unconscious.

If souls depart at death, and the purpose of cryopreservation is to stop the dying process to allow later recovery, then retention of the soul is the very objective of cryopreservation. If the person dies (becomes physically unrecoverable by any technology), then the soul departs, and the whole process fails.

[chrwe]

Or that. Mind you, bgwowk, I am not arguing the other side.

Strangely, since I have signed up for cryonics, I have met the argument "but wont you risk your soul" several times and I have found a number of answers to the issue (which, to me, does not make much sense in the first place, as you argue very correctly with sleep, anaesthaesia).

Good argument btw, I`ll use it in the future.

The issue which worries ME most is if my brain will be preserved well enough that I will recognize "myself" after revival - this depends on such a lot of unknowns (manner of death, time to be found, time to be preserved, quality of preservation etc.). Even worse because I dont live in the USA.

Edited by chrwe, 25 September 2010 - 11:33 AM.

[Kolos]

So the assumption would be that if both exist, the soul goes off on some adventures for 600 years and gets forceably sucked back into the body when reanimated?

Well there is no clear definition of what a "soul" is. Different religions see it differently and we don't really know what's it's purpose, how is it related to human body and consciousness etc. We have only some different and often contradicting hypothesis based on faith. We don't even know if it exists so for all we know this reconstructed person might have his old soul back, no soul at all, completely new soul or perhaps somebody else's soul there are no tools to check it.

[Kolos]

Can't edit so I reply to this in another post

After all, if we find that something which has died can't be brought back to life, then it doesnt matter how good technology gets in the future. Shouldn't we be nailing down this question first?

How do you imagine we can test something like that? Right now it's impossible but I never heard about any "law of the universe" that would prevent bringing dead bodies back to life.AI was a nice movie but more like a modern version of pinoccio than hard-sf so I wouldn't take this ideas too serious, they're part of this fairy tale-like convention. Even if there were theories like that (perhaps there are) we don't know a way to check them but even if we somehow did it we still can't be sure it will be forever impossible to find a way around it, only religion can give you certainty like that.

The issue which worries ME most is if my brain will be preserved well enough that I will recognize "myself" after revival - this depends on such a lot of unknowns (manner of death, time to be found, time to be preserved, quality of preservation etc.). Even worse because I dont live in the USA.

Yes, thats a serious issue. Even in million years it should be impossible to fix something that isn't there anymore. You can make brain healthy again but I would expect some problems with memories, I would expect some memory loss for all cryonic patients.

[bgwowk]

Well there is no clear definition of what a "soul" is. Different religions see it differently and we don't really know what's it's purpose, how is it related to human body and consciousness etc. We have only some different and often contradicting hypothesis based on faith. We don't even know if it exists so for all we know this reconstructed person might have his old soul back, no soul at all, completely new soul or perhaps somebody else's soul there are no tools to check it.

These are not even legitimate questions. The reason is that a double standard is being applied in asking them. When medicine achieves an advance in resuscitation, it is recognized as an advance in resuscitation, not theology. When it was discovered that with post-resuscitation hypothermia people could be recovered after 10 minutes of clinical death (instead of the previous 4 to 6 minutes), nobody started asking whether they got their old soul back, no soul at all, completely new soul or somebody else's soul. There were just revived. Period.

If someone is ever revived, from say a skeleton, with their old brain information reappearing out of nowhere with no physical explanation, THAT would be a theological event raising questions about the soul. Anything else is resuscitation, differing only in technology level, not concept, from what medicine does today.

[enoonsti]

I used to engage in long debates on why the word "soul" should be removed from all languages, but I very rarely convinced those who were privy to the soul. Now, I just show them this picture, and I seem to have more success:

[bgwowk]

Can't edit so I reply to this in another post

After all, if we find that something which has died can't be brought back to life, then it doesn't matter how good technology gets in the future. Shouldn't we be nailing down this question first?

How do you imagine we can test something like that? Right now it's impossible but I never heard about any "law of the universe" that would prevent bringing dead bodies back to life.

Actually there is such a law. It's semantic. Bringing back the dead is impossible by definition (death = irreversible loss of life). If someone can be revived, they were never really dead.

Perhaps you mean that there is no physical law that would prevent recovering *clinically* dead people. That is certainly true. Medicine does that already.

People are inculcated with the view that death is a biological event that happens soon after the heart stops because that is when medical professionals typically decide, as as matter of law, that further care is not appropriate. However pronouncing someone dead, like pronouncing someone married, is fundamentally a legal event. By not performing care to stop further biological damage (such as cryopreservation) after this legal event, the legal assertion that the patient has died inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling biological reality. It just happens more slowly, and with more subtly than everyone thinks.

[CryoBurger]

I'm a little bit puzzled how this conversation is occurring. Whether it is possible to revive a human being is not a main worry, because the answer is yes

The conversation occurs because assumptions are being made. You have just made an assumption. We have yet to establish that a human being, from start to finish is nothing but a physical entity. That is why I made this thread. People just "assume" that this is a given, when it is not. While I agree with you that "all signs point to yes", it still qualifies as a *huge* assumption.

It just struck me one day that I had been thinking like you. Focusing on vitrification. Focusing on nanotechnology. I know a lot of people in these circles roll their eyes at this question, but this is because they reject religion, or God, or spirituality. Those are fairly monstrous things to just reject. If anyone in the history of the human race was correct about God and the "human spirit", on any level, then Cryonics may run into some problems.

If Cryonics works, as far as I'm concerned, every world religion goes right out the fricken door and into the trash heap. There are a lot of huge implications on the table if someone is brought back to consciousness after being dead for 600 years. Especially if they look someone in the eye and say "Nope. Nothing. No Heaven. No God. No Hell. Just ... nothing. In fact, as far as I can tell, I just died 5 minutes ago and now here I am."

Your conclusion is one you came to based on your personal world view. But it is only one world view, and conflicts with the world view of literally tens of billions of humans who have lived on this planet so far. Tens of billions of people disagree with you, based on personal experiences. To just blow that off and pretend its a non issue is premature.

-CB-

Edited by CryoBurger, 28 September 2010 - 08:04 AM.

[CryoBurger]

When it was discovered that with post-resuscitation hypothermia people could be recovered after 10 minutes of clinical death (instead of the previous 4 to 6 minutes), nobody started asking whether they got their old soul back.

Well they wouldn't ask that question. You know what the response to that is. Great, you went from a whopping 6 minutes to a whopping 10 minutes. People who believe in a spirit / soul would say "So what?" Even with today's technology you have no idea if they're really "dead" yet. Im sure there are shades of gray in the process of dying. Proof of that even in an athiests belief system is the whole near death experience process. Athiests believe near death experiences can be vast, elaborate hallucinations that go on Long long long after a person is declared dead. So a whopping 10 minutes means absolutely nothing. People would state that they hadn't fully died yet and the theological spirit hadn't left yet. Thats why I made this thread. Show me something where the person was clinically dead for 2 days and then we got them back. Of course we can't do that because of the technology. But it is a valid discussion to wonder if its even possible. Likewise I dont see how the anesthesia, or "being asleep" or "coma" argument mentioned above is even valid to this thread. In none of those cases is the person recognized as dead so obviously - on a theological level - their spirit / soul wouldn't be expected to depart from their body. Im just looking at this how those with faith would look at it. The argument is still way too weak to be convincing to such individuals. I think the strongest argument anyone could ever have at this point is the issue of the frozen embryo. There's a girl who was frozen for 13 years and born a fully healthy baby. I've already posed the question to my friends in the Christian faith - exactly what was her spirit / soul doing for 13 years? Just hangin out? That question NEEDS to be answered by those of faith and they ignore it just like those without faith tend to ignore this particular topic.

Edited by CryoBurger, 28 September 2010 - 08:44 AM.

[mikeinnaples]

I think the strongest argument anyone could ever have at this point is the issue of the frozen embryo. There's a girl who was frozen for 13 years and born a fully healthy baby. I've already posed the question to my friends in the Christian faith - exactly what was her spirit / soul doing for 13 years? Just hangin out? That question NEEDS to be answered by those of faith and they ignore it just like those without faith tend to ignore this particular topic.

Even if you are one of faith, the answer to that question depends on when you believe body is inhabited by a soul. The same exact argument can be made in reverse for death. Perhaps the act of birth ...taking that first breath also 'breathes' in a soul ....perhaps that soul can only be freed by decay of the body. Of course the former would have religious impact on abortion, yet the latter would free up some religious qualms over cryonics. Even if you do believe in religion, I find it awfully arrogant to assume to know the beginning of the spark of life and the design of whatever deity you worship with out explicitly being told so.... since I don't want to tread any further down the abortion argument, I will leave it at that.

[enoonsti]

If Cryonics works, as far as I'm concerned, every world religion goes right out the fricken door and into the trash heap.

Charles Darwin: Finally, I will bring down religion!

Catholic Church: We accept an enhanced version of evolution!

Charles Darwin: God damn it!

Show me something where the person was clinically dead for 2 days and then we got them back.

What exactly do you mean by this? Did the person explode in an airplane crash two days ago? Or was he lying out in the woods for two days? Or submerged in an icy lake? Or did he experience just a tiny bit of warm ischemia before cryonics protocols began? Throwing around the word "dead" conveys absolutely nothing scientific whatsoever; it signals that the person really needs to start reading technical papers on biology/chemistry. Furthermore, he needs to take the time to understand that cryonics is a medical endeavor that will vary from individual to individual, and not something that will be "proved" after a perfectly healthy person pops in and out of Idealized Biostasis like a jack-in-the-box. Otherwise, the person will rely on abstract word games that waste everyone's time.

If someone is brought back to consciousness after 600 years, then it means the person was not dead. End of story. Whether you like the wording or not, it simply means the person was in LN2 coma. You're getting too wrapped up into the guy with the white coat who says, "Time of death 11:32" and then scribbles it on a piece of paper. Next time you go to sleep, I will stand over you with a white coat, scribble down "Time of death 11:32," and when you wake up I will proclaim: "Religion has gone out the door." But the truth is that evolution was much more of a religion-killer, and look how that turned out


EDIT: Let me add, though, that I think mass adoption of cryonics would affect religion in the same way Gregory Paul argues how universal health care affects religion.

Edited by enoonsti, 28 September 2010 - 10:14 PM.

[Trent]

I'm a little bit puzzled how this conversation is occurring. Whether it is possible to revive a human being is not a main worry, because the answer is yes

Ooh what a neat trick that is! You can make your point so much more crisply when you misquote me!

We have yet to establish that a human being, from start to finish is nothing but a physical entity. That is why I made this thread. People just "assume" that this is a given, when it is not. While I agree with you that "all signs point to yes", it still qualifies as a *huge* assumption.

It just struck me one day that I had been thinking like you. Focusing on vitrification. Focusing on nanotechnology. I know a lot of people in these circles roll their eyes at this question, but this is because they reject religion, or God, or spirituality. Those are fairly monstrous things to just reject. If anyone in the history of the human race was correct about God and the "human spirit", on any level, then Cryonics may run into some problems.

So your beef is with materialism? I've really had my fill with that debate. But plenty of people at RichardDawkins.net, SamHarris.org, and other forums will be happy to play post tennis with you all day long. Transhumanism is based on materialist thinking, so of course most of us transhumanists are materialists. I can't speak for everyone, but dualism isn't something I "just reject" half-consciously. Materialist thought is a very large corpus independent of transhumanism, which is a comparatively tiny growth on materialism. Like I said, most transhumanists are materialists, but predictably, most materials are not transhumanists.

When has the argument "a lot of people believe(d) it!!" ever convinced anyone of anything? Get real.

Especially if they look someone in the eye and say "Nope. Nothing. No Heaven. No God. No Hell. Just ... nothing. In fact, as far as I can tell, I just died 5 minutes ago and now here I am."

That wouldn't establish anything. If a soul leaves a body, presumably you can't just pull it back in from the afterlife by reanimating that body. This could simply that the soul of the person in question stayed in their body and never entered the afterlife.

Final note: I wholeheartedly agree with this statement from the article you posted:

I’m sorry to say this, but I now regard much of what passes for deep thought in transhumanist discourse as little more than poorly informed techno-utopian speculation.

[niner]

Let me add, though, that I think mass adoption of cryonics would affect religion in the same way Gregory Paul argues how universal health care affects religion.

Holy Smokes! Obama really IS the Anti-Christ!

[bgwowk]

It just struck me one day that I had been thinking like you. Focusing on vitrification. Focusing on nanotechnology. I know a lot of people in these circles roll their eyes at this question, but this is because they reject religion, or God, or spirituality. Those are fairly monstrous things to just reject. If anyone in the history of the human race was correct about God and the "human spirit", on any level, then Cryonics may run into some problems.

That is absolutely not true. Cryonics has no quarrel with religion over what happens to the dead. Cyonics is a disagreement about when and how people die, not what happens to people afterward. There are religious cryonicists. A recent Alcor CEO was even an elder at his church.

If Cryonics works, as far as I'm concerned, every world religion goes right out the fricken door and into the trash heap.

Nonsense. If cryonics works, people may look back disdainfully at medicine for misdiagnosing death. But they won't think less of theologians who took their cue from medicine about when death happens. Ancient clergy were only believing what doctors told them, the same as everybody else.

There are a lot of huge implications on the table if someone is brought back to consciousness after being dead for 600 years. Especially if they look someone in the eye and say "Nope. Nothing. No Heaven. No God. No Hell. Just ... nothing. In fact, as far as I can tell, I just died 5 minutes ago and now here I am."

The successful revival of any medical patient, unless by miraculous means, is IRREVELANT to what happens after death because THEY WERE NOT DEAD. That a person can be revived by purely physical, medical techniques means that they were not dead by definition.

In medicine, concepts of death adapt to available technology. If someone is ever revived after 600 years of biostasis, it will be by a society that has previously seen people revived after 6 hours, 6 years, and 60 years of clinical death. The idea that someone in an ametabolic coma is dead would be as quaint to clergy of that time as a geocentric universe is today.

Medicine must not be confused with theology. Theology describes what happens to people after they die. Physical reality determines when people die.

Your conclusion is one you came to based on your personal world view. But it is only one world view, and conflicts with the world view of literally tens of billions of humans who have lived on this planet so far.

You presume a particular world view on my part when people of many different spiritual world views have reached the same conclusion. Catholic priests have consecrated dewars. Protestant preachers and theologians have written favorably about cryonics. You are asserting a conflict where there is none.

Any perception of conflict between cryonics and the supernatural is a fundamental misunderstanding of the goals of cryonics and resuscitation medicine. Both seek to exploit natural (physical) processes to recover unconscious people from neurological illnesses and injuries, such as cerebral ischemia. They seek nothing more. Resuscitation medicine is an attempt to treat sick people who used to be given up for dead, not yank them back from the dead.

The perception that resuscitation medicine intrudes into the spiritual realm is solely the result of cultural programming that theological death happens whenever the last doctor to see a patient gives up. That is obviously arbitrary, and trivially false.

Edited by bgwowk, 29 September 2010 - 07:54 AM.

[enoonsti]

Ooh what a neat...point... so much more crisply when you...quote me!

Holy Smokes! Obama really IS the Anti-Christ!

"...then on that fateful day, niner won the thread. And they all lived happily ever after."

enoonsti softly closes book, pats random child on head, and stares wistfully out window.

Nonsense. If cryonics works, people may look back disdainfully at medicine for misdiagnosing death. But they won't think less of theologians who took their cue from medicine about when death happens. Ancient clergy were only believing what doctors told them, the same as everybody else.

To anybody with religious objections: please read all of what Dr. Wowk just wrote. He said it much better than I did.

There is no conflict, and - for whatever it's worth - I say this as a person with an extensive Catholic background.

[advancedatheist]

Let me add, though, that I think mass adoption of cryonics would affect religion in the same way Gregory Paul argues how universal health care affects religion.

Holy Smokes! Obama really IS the Anti-Christ!

Using the IRS to force everyone not already covered to buy health insurance from private companies doesn't sound like "universal health care" to me.

Glad to see that the implications of Gregory S. Paul's research have started to sink in, BTW. The firebrands on both sides of the god debate have framed it as an ideological struggle for the allegiance of the human mind, when the empirical evidence suggests something more banal: People have a weak attachment to religion, and they lose interest in it when they grow up in adequate socioeconomic conditions. This has happened organically in developed societies where people have religious freedom, without a Soviet-style effort to abolish religion against the population's wishes. For example, people in the New England states, like Bonnie Magee's Connecticut, show about half the level of religiosity as the people in the Southern states, despite a common political sovereignty which protects the free exercise of religion. Why the difference? New Englanders apparently live in a more advanced civilization than Southerners which makes them feel more secure.

Given that religion in the West has already declined substantially, why do cryonicists even bother with these "no conflict" arguments to appease an increasingly irrelevant social force?

[bacopa]

If Cryonics works, as far as I'm concerned, every world religion goes right out the fricken door and into the trash heap.

I don't see anything wrong with falsifying the fact that God doesn't exits, if Cryonics does work. God never existed, there is no afterlife, as I believe. What reason can you state that makes your belief in God, true? Isn't it just wishful thinking just like someone who wishes they could fly like superman?

If you base this on an antiquated book saying this is so, then I can't take you seriously.

Isn't the possibility of Cryonics working much more realistic then the possibility of an omniscient omnipotent, entity that we have never felt, talked to, heard from, and is so powerful that he/she/it was able to create the whole damn universe?

If we become smart enough, surely we'll be able to see, or understand this "God"?

Edited by dfowler, 01 October 2010 - 04:11 AM.

[bgwowk]

I don't see anything wrong with falsifying the fact that God doesn't exits, if Cryonics does work.

No such falsification is possible. The success or failure of any medical therapy does not prove or disprove the existence of God.

[Luna]

Oh, I'd LOVE if God and afterlife we proved to be TRUE, not falsified. Until then, I am not willing to gamble, I want to live forever, to never die and skip the chance to peek (mostly because I believe they are not real)

I am quite certain everyone would be more happy with proving God rather than disproving God. That is, if God was real.

If God isn't real, it is better to disprove the idea so people will act rationally.

Since we CAN'T prove either way, people should compromise instead of kill each other over the ideas, act rationally and be let to practice their belief without affecting other people. Yay for ideals which do not exist.

[Kolos]

Believers might always say that this person was in heaven but God erased this memories or that you can't access them in your mortal body or even that God knew that this would happen and stoped this soul in a frozen body etc. Thosethat don't buy one of this explanations might be more dangerous, for them this cryonics patients might not be humans anymore so they don'tdeserve any rights.

Edited by Kolos, 02 October 2010 - 10:43 PM.

[bgwowk]

Believers might always say that this person was in heaven but God erased this memories or that you can't access them in your mortal body or even that God knew that this would happen and stoped this soul in a frozen body etc. Those that don't buy one of this explanations might be more dangerous, for them this cryonics patients might not be humans anymore so they don'tdeserve any rights.

This would never happen except in fiction. No cryonics patient is going to be revived in 2010, so why predict the religious and social perceptions of such a revival as though a 2010 audience would be witnessing it?

Views of life and death adjust to what medicine is able to accomplish. Cryopreservation seems so much like death today because medicine is still so far from reversing it. Any future reversal of present-day cryopresrevation would necessarily be preceded by centuries of medical progress. Attitudes about what constitutes life and death, when souls leave, etc., would be changing incrementally the whole time. It makes no sense to project 2010 sensibilities on a society hundreds of years in the future.

Edited by bgwowk, 03 October 2010 - 06:13 AM.

[Kolos]

Yea it does sound a bit like s-f but I wasn't thinking about society as a whole but some religious groups that refuse to change their attitude (there are always some conservative people like that) think about Jehovah's witnesses and their attitude towards blood transfushions or radical pro-life groups that kill doctors because they believe that featus does have a soul.