CryoNet #32224 - #32225

CryoNet - Thu 17 Dec 2009

    #32224: Re: Grim story on cryonics [John de Rivaz]
    #32225: Gregory S. Paul, was Re: Grim story on cryonics [Mark Plus]

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Message #32224
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Grim story on cryonics
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:43:10 -0000

With regards to

>>>
The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional  
Psychosociological Conditions


The nonuniversality of strong religious devotion, and the ease with  
which large populations abandon serious theism when conditions are  
sufficiently benign, refute hypotheses that religious belief and  
practice are the normal, deeply set human mental state, whether they  
are superficial or natural in nature. Instead popular religion is  
usually a superficial and flexible psychological mechanism for coping  
with the high levels of stress and anxiety produced by sufficiently  
dysfunctional social and especially economic environments. Popular  
nontheism is a similarly casual response to superior conditions.
<<<

I suspect it means this:

<begin>
Distressed people's dependence on religion

When good conditions prevail, a majority of people lose interest in going to religious ceremonies. This suggests that performing religious ceremonies are not normal deeply set behaviour. Instead, these ceremonies are a superficial and flexible psychological mechanism for dealing with threatening situations. In good times, atheism is more prevalent. 
<end>

It is a great shame that PhDs are awarded to people who can tie up a simple idea into confusing language that is only clear to other PhDs. Maybe this is why those with PhDs and other degrees now seem to hide their title except in a job application. I think this is a great shame considering all the effort that goes into getting these degrees. What is needed, of course, is for university authorities to reconsider what it is actually being taught. People with PhDs used to be called "Doctor" which actually means "teacher" not necessarily someone who lines people up in waiting rooms to receive permission to buy products from the pharmaceutical industry. Clear rendition of ideas ought to be the mainstay of whatever else these students are researching.

This phenomenon occurs elsewhere as well. In popular entertainment (TV films) simple plots are often made deliberately complicated on presentation so viewers think that they are seeing something deep and meaningful even if they are not.

It seems to me that if one starts discussing the real implications of religion, particularly with regards to the problem of death, people do get distressed and prefer unquestioning faith to actively thinking about these issues. Faith in the ideas of someone who lived centuries or even millennia ago is particularly appealing -- because that person can no longer discuss his ideas. It is possible to read "holy" books and gets lots of hypotheses about death. Few if any can be disproved, although they cannot be regarded as "evidence based" either.

For those who say cryonics cannot possibly work, for whatever reason, legal, social, environmental, or even physical, it is in the same category - there is no evidence that it can work. But there is some evidence that it "might" work, and this evidence is growing with technological advance. When cryonics was first suggested in the 1960s, there was little written about nanotechnology (then known as "molecular electronics" and therefore part of the study of electronics rather than medicine) and I don't think anyone made any serious connection between this idea and cryonics until the 1980s. 

There is no comparable evidence supporting religious hypotheses about death.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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Message #32225
From: Mark Plus <[email protected]>
Subject: Gregory S. Paul, was Re: Grim story on cryonics
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:21:51 -0800

In Cryonet #32223, David Stodolsky references Gregory S. Paul's paper, "The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions."

Paul also has a website:

The Science of Religion

http://gspaulscienceofreligion.com/

And you can listen to him on a couple of freethought-related talkshows where he discusses his research. Paul also advocates universal health coverage in the U.S. as the next step in the dereligionizing process:

http://www.equaltimeforfreethought.org/2009/01/18/show-291-the-big-religion-problemssolved/

and,

http://media.libsyn.com/media/ffrf/FTradio_178_091909.mp3

Paul's findings apparently support the Enlightenment era's conjectures about the causes of "bad religion," and how certain modernizing forces would tend to make it go away.

Mark Plus

 		 	   		  
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