CryoNet #32633 - #32634

CryoNet - Thu 17 Jun 2010

    #32633: Re: CryoNet #32629 [robomoon]
    #32634: the folly of cryonics sans religion [un person]

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Message #32633
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:51:41 +0200 (CEST)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32629
References: <[email protected]>

Drafted course of events in FIVE STEPS: (ONE) the foundation of a Research Center, named LRC (Life Research Center), for instance. (TWO) the LRC is looking for its potential members, espec. organizations who are key supporters to the common cause. (THREE) LRC succeeds to get CI, Alcor, KrioRus, ACS, the Cryonics Society, as well as international organizations including the Cryonics Society of Canada, the Japan Cryonics Association, and other key supporters in various continents of the world, as members. (FOUR) members are free to pay membership fees matching their individual preferences. (FIVE) LRC is entitled to gain an income from doing paid research on methods of standardized accreditation for their members. 

A Research Center focuses on the accreditation of organizations who are specializing in marketing and PR for other members. It will not only keep the advancing technologies in digital word processing without further commitments. It also keeps an open eye on the development of a specific software, espc. digital text files where written information can be stored and submitted to anyone getting interested in some literature belonging specifically to life extensionism. What should be done to avoid an unfulfilled research?
> 
> The model I propose is cooperative, not competitive. A Research Center would
> help local groups establish their own service organizations. Once the level
> of development reached the point where there were multiple service
> organizations in a geographical area, there might be a type of competition -
> but cooperation between groups would always be maintained through the
> Research Center, at least.

///



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Message #32634
Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:37:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: un person <[email protected]>
Subject: the folly of cryonics sans religion

Pre-revival cryonics will probably only go mainstream when it becomes part of some religion. The following excerpts support my theories on this:

from:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/03/04/macleans-interview-lionel-tiger/


some excerpts:

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger on faith and sexual behaviour, why religion comforts us, and how churches act as "serotonin factories'

Montreal-born anthropologist Lionel Tiger, 72, best known for coining the phrase "male bonding," has long been interested in bridging the gap between the natural and social sciences. In his latest work, co-authored with psychiatrist Michael McGuire, Tiger enters into the new field known as the cognitive science of religion. In God's Brain, Tiger and McGuire argue that religious practice "brainsoothes""alleviates the sharp edges of the human experience"far more than any other human activity.

Q: The ubiquity of belief in all human societies, you argue, means religion is rooted in our brains. You see it originating about 150,000 years ago when we were coming out of Africa, and were smart enough to contemplate death?

A: Yes, we had developed enough cortical tissue to anticipate a whole series of things about the future. The utterly astonishing one, the defining feature of religions, is the notion of an afterlife. It's really hard to deny that this is an act of marketing genius, if you were to look at this in a cynical sense. 

Nobody likes to die. The idea of an afterlife, for you and for loved ones, is very attractive. It seems to me wholly improbable"what's the evidence?"and yet it works, it just works. 

If you've got a very bad idea in your head"death"which is causing stress, and you can put another idea which is a very good one in its place, then the level of serotonin"which fights depression and anxiety and makes people feel good about themselves and others"begins to build. 

And you begin an organization to sustain that. Since five billion humans seem to accept that there is a heaven or reincarnation or something after death, then I have to say this is something that comforts the species.


Q: From the outside, then, it's not religion's strangeness you see, but its naturalness?
A: I've been on panels a couple of times with Richard Dawkins and invariably we come to the point where Richard will go on about how terrible religion is, and I'll say, "Richard, are you a naturalist?" And he says, "Well, of course I am." 

And then I say, "Would you agree, as you've in fact argued in your books, that over 90 per cent of people have some religion?" and he finally says, "Yes." 

"How can you be a naturalist and assume that the great majority of the species is not natural? That doesn't make any sense." 



Q: Despite increasing secularization, especially in the West, most people have not become flat-out rationalists. Do you think that for many environmentalism is a religion?
A: That's absolutely right, and that's interesting because it is finally the fruit of pantheism, a very, very old religious idea. For many people, not using more than four sheets of toilet paper is an act of moral purification.


Q: It's clear how socialization works, and how ritual supports belief, but are you also saying that the nature of religious belief means it long outlasts secular imitations?
A: Yes, those fail"all of them so far. 

All of the great religions came into being during the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture and pastoralism"hence "the Lord is my shepherd." 

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