V_V comments on Female Test Subject - Convince Me To Get Cryo - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (176)
Actually trying to live forever ("saving your soul") is the central stated point of religions such as Christianity and Islam.
Religious opposition to cryonics could stem from the fact that cryonics is preceived (correctly, IMHO) as a competing religion. Note that there is no strong religious opposition to most other procedures that promise a lifespan extension.
The difference between saving the soul and extending life is that saving the soul means preserving it to live in a particular way (i.e. the imago Dei). Extending life is neutral with regard to how you live it.
Huh. That is such a simplistic way of viewing religion. I think you're right in a sense - that it may very well threaten religions by providing an alternative for a key reason people become religious. However, I think most religious people I know (I'm not one so I am guessing at their reasoning) would object to this, saying that there is a lot more to religion than that, and that if the person is in it only to go to heaven, they're being superficial and not really "getting" it. For that reason, I think they'd say that they do not categorize their religion as a religion because it promises to save your soul, and they'd probably also not categorize cryonics that way either.
Indeed there is much more to religion than saving your soul, but that's a major point in Christian and Muslim preaching.