6 replies to this topic

[Clifford Greenblatt]

In another thread, in which I demonstrated the value of the embryo, cryonics seemed to get the short end of the deal. I had no intention of belittling the value of the cryonically preserved body but was simply demonstrating the great value of the embryo. I have started this thread to demonstrate that the idea of cryonics, much unlike the idea of reincarnation, is actually a definite affirmation of fundamental Biblical principles.

According to the Bible, it is appointed for men to die once and then comes the judgement. However, the Bible is filled with examples of physical resurrection on the Earth. For example, in Matthew 27:52, there is a report of the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep rising from their tombs In every case, the spirit of the person returns to its original physical body. This was certainly the case in the resurrection of Lazarus who was dead for four days when his spirit returned to his physical body, its exclusive legitimate residence within nature. The only Biblical example I know of spirits going from one body to another is in the case of daemons being evicted from their residence in a man and taking up a very short lived residence in pigs.

The resurrection of Lazarus may seem to contradict the Biblical principle that men die once before the judgement. However, when he resurrected a girl, Jesus was careful to point out that she was not really dead but was sleeping. He also referred to Lazarus as sleeping. So, as long as the physical body remains, the Biblical principle regards it as the proper residence for the person’s spirit.

We need to consider the case of some martyrs who may have been so badly burned that there may not have remained any reasonable trace of a physical body. In this case, I think that there would be no future possibility of a physical resurrection on the Earth, because there would be no proper physical residence for the spirit, but there would certainly be a resurrection to a transcendent body in Heaven.

A cryonically preserved body is awaiting the return of the person’s spirit to its exclusive earthly residence. In this regard, cryonics affirms a fundamental Biblical principle. This is why I said that the cryonically preserved body deserves deep respect. However, I would apply this principle also to a body that is not so preserved.

[psudoname]

Why belive in god?

[bgwowk]

No! No! Noooo!!!!!! The idea of cryonics is being completely missed here. Cryonics is not a belief that technology can create a surrogate resurrection. Cryonics is a belief that medicine today is WRONG to call cryonics patients dead. There is no resurrection involved. Dead people are resurrected. Sick people get better.

Here's a good biblical defense of cryonics

http://www.alcor.org...ndcryonics.html

Resurrection has nothing to do with it.

Clifford, may I ask where you got the idea that cryonics patients are dead? Maybe that's a dumb question because 99.9999% of the world believes cryonics patients are dead. But I'm just curious whether you got that from popular media, book, or a particular website that needs to be scuttled.

---BrianW

[mattmc]

No! No!  Noooo!!!!!!  The idea of cryonics is being completely missed here.  Cryonics is not a belief that technology can create a surrogate resurrection.  Cryonics is a belief that medicine today is WRONG to call cryonics patients dead.  There is no resurrection involved.  Dead people are resurrected.  Sick people get better.

Here's a good biblical defense of cryonics

http://www.alcor.org...ndcryonics.html

Resurrection has nothing to do with it.

Clifford, may I ask where you got the idea that cryonics patients are dead?  Maybe that's a dumb question because 99.9999% of the world believes cryonics patients are dead.  But I'm just curious whether you got that from popular media, book, or a particular website that needs to be scuttled.

---BrianW

Clinically dead, right? No heart-beat or brain activity?............

[Clifford Greenblatt]

No! No!  Noooo!!!!!!  The idea of cryonics is being completely missed here.  Cryonics is not a belief that technology can create a surrogate resurrection.   Cryonics is a belief that medicine today is WRONG to call cryonics patients dead.  There is no resurrection involved.  Dead people are resurrected.  Sick people get better.

Here's a good biblical defense of cryonics

http://www.alcor.org...ndcryonics.html

Resurrection has nothing to do with it.

Clifford, may I ask where you got the idea that cryonics patients are dead?  Maybe that's a dumb question because 99.9999% of the world believes cryonics patients are dead.  But I'm just curious whether you got that from popular media, book, or a particular website that needs to be scuttled.

---BrianW

It is crucial to understand the difference between mortal resurrection and immortal resurrection. The raising of Lazarus was a mortal resurrection because Lasarus presumably died some years after that resurrection. An immortal resurrection is not possible with a mortal body but only with a transcendent body.

In the Biblical view, it could be said that a skeleton is not dead but is sleeping. Even the most advanced of technology could not resurrect a skeleton for which data has not been preserved so a miraculous resurrection would be required as a medical reanimation would not be possible.

I would not consider a medical reanimation of a cryonic patient to be a resurrection because a Biblical resurrection must involve reversal of naturally irreversible processes. In this sense, you would be correct in distinguishing a cryonic patient from the conventional dead. However, how do you know when a person's death becomes naturally irreversible? Apparently, the laws of the land do not regard a cryonic patient as being alive because no one could be charge with murder for destroying a cryonic patient. Someone could be charged with destruction of property in this case but not with murder.

[bgwowk]

mattmc wrote:

Clinically dead, right? No heart-beat or brain activity?

Cryopreserved humans are clinically dead and legally dead. Clinically dead means no heatbeat or breathing. Legally dead means a legal authority has declared that resuscitation is either impossible or inappropriate (it's very common to declare people dead who could actually be resuscitated). Being pronouced legally dead is a bit like being pronounced married. It's a legal status that in general is not related to a particular biological state.

By the way, brain activity is not part of the definition of clinical death. You can be clinically alive with no brain activity (e.g. barbiturate coma).

The point is that cryonics patients, under good conditions, are probably not *biologically dead* in the sense of being unrecoverable by any physical means.

Clifford wrote:

I would not consider a medical reanimation of a cryonic patient to be a resurrection because a Biblical resurrection must involve reversal of naturally irreversible processes.

Agreed. The problem with your original post was that it discussed biblical exceptions to this:

According to the Bible, it is appointed for men to die once and then comes the judgement.

Such exceptions are irrelevant to cryonics because the thesis of cryonics is that biological death is being prevented, not overcome. So there is no first death. In my experience, this is crucial to theological understanding of cryonics. Otherwise people get really bogged down in that sentence above, biblical exceptions notwithstanding. Cryonics is best understood as a type of medicine, not recovery from death.

However, how do you know when a person's death becomes naturally irreversible?

Short of complete destruction, it can be really hard. It's especially hard because with really advanced medicine you can physically revive almost anybody, with just different degrees of amnesia depending on the degree of brain injury. Where is the dividing line between personal survival and replacement by an amnesiac clone? Returning to the original theme of your posts, the question of when life ends is ultimately as difficult to answer as the question of when it begins.

http://www.alcor.org...nalogWorld.html

Cryonics is often explained as a belief that future resuscitation technologies will be more advanced than today's. But there is a very deep corollary of that. It is that in general it is almost impossible to know whether someone is beyond recovery by technologies that still have to be invented. Therefore we should always make the conservative presumption that the patient is still viable, even though in many (most?) cases it will be unknown. This view has been championed by Thomas Donaldson

http://www.alcor.org...Archeology.html

I call that the moral argument for cryonics. It is dinstinctly different in character from the technological argument for cryonics, which is the argument that cryonics is likely to work for someone cryopreserved under good conditions with access to foreseeable technology.

Of course you are right that cryonics patients currently have no legal status as people. Hopefully that will change someday.

---BrianW