Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: mmm@cup.portal.com Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Is Cryonics a Religion ??? Message-ID: Date: 5 Aug 89 03:26:50 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 41 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu When I first heard about cryonics, it seemed to me an innocuous new activity or school of thought. But as I've heard more from the cryonics people, it seems more and more like a religion -- a religion with potentially dangerous overtones. (For the benefit of critics, I'm numbering my points.) 1) Is it a religion? It certainly promises the great promise of any real religion -- an afterlife. When it comes time to die, you get frozen and begin that great trek into the glorious future. If you should be so foolish as to die without a cryonic insurance policy, you are doomed to the hellfire of non-existence. (Something like the "limbo" concept unofficially promoted by the Catholics.) 2) Is it dangerous? The orthodox atheist position is that ALL religions are dangerous. As a reform atheist, I feel that religions can be a healthful drug, taken in moderation. In this regard, cryonics may be dangerous because it can attract people away from the older religions developed through generations of natural selection. An appropriate analogy would be with laetrile: people who take laetrile often use it as a substitute for drugs which really work. 3) Is it dangerous (second part)? Some people seem to see cryonics and the nanotech future as the important bit; the present problems facing Earth are a short and relatively insignificant phase in the evolution of Man. As an example, I recall a recent comment by hkhenson that nanotech will invert the "greenhouse effect" problem. Rather than facing a crisis of too much CO2 in the atmosphere, nanotech will make carbon valuable. For example, nanotech will be able to make carbon into diamond, which will be the ideal structural material for many applications. If anything, this might lead to a shortage of CO2, as nanomachines withdraw it from the atmosphere. This is a dangerous belief because it anaesthetizes people to the very real threat of global warming. [Think again. The "very real threat" is probably Chicken Little foolishness. Even if the worst scenarios are realized, all that happens is that the comfortable/arable areas shift around geographically. So what? (Personally, I would welcome seeing Washington DC underwater...) I would be interested in hearing what "older religions" do that "really works"... --JoSH]