As a practical example, my parents are very religious. I’d like to convince them to sign up for cryonics. I haven’t (yet) come up with an approach that I expect to have a non-negligible chance of success.
If you don’t mind Dark Arts, I have a line of logic that has met with limited success with Christian family members in the past. I wouldn’t say it convinced them so much as it helped change their opinions and emotions about cryonics, which is the first step.
In the early 1st-5th century AD, one of the major rifts between Christians and Romans was how they treated the dead. Romans would burn the bodies for sanitary reasons and to prevent spread of disease; Christians would preserve the bodies and show them deference as the vessel of a departed soul. It was a Christians duty to keep the dead safe so that their bodies could be resurrected by Jesus when judgment day came; the word cemetery was invented by Christians and comes from “sleeping place,” the idea that the dead are just sleeping until God returns to this world.
Why were Christians so concerned about proper disposal of the body? Here are four reasons: (1) The body of every human was created by God, bore his image, and deserved to be treated with respect because of this. (2) The centrality of the Incarnation. When the Word became flesh, God uniquely hallowed human life and bodily existence forever. (3) The Holy Spirit indwelt the bodies of believers, making them vessels of honor. (4) As Jesus himself was buried and raised bodily from the dead, so Christians believed that their burial was a witness to the resurrection yet to come.
Cremation is bad because it instantly destroys the body. There are reasons early Christians would die to protect their interred loved ones from the pyre. Burial is better. Burial keeps the body more intact, but after a few decades there still isn’t much left. Cryonics is just a better form of burial, keeping your body, the vessel for your soul, intact for centuries instead of mere decades.
Cryonics isn’t trying to escape death or heaven. It’s just the best darn technological form of burial that exists. All that Alcor is doing is keeping your body safe for the day when Jesus comes. And hey, if they actually keep their promise and resurrect you into a post-singularity future, then you’ll get to see Jesus in person when the rapture happens.
Cryonics isn’t trying to escape death or heaven. It’s just the best darn technological form of burial that exists.
I’ve never been a Christian, so I could be wrong about this, but many Christians I’d met would disagree with you. They believe that if they die—permanently, without hope of revival—while being “right with God” (the precise meaning of which varies by sect), then they get to go to Heaven. Going to Heaven has infinite positive utility.
Desecration issues aside, if what the cryonics companies are selling is the real deal, then signing up for cryonics involves being bound to your physical body for a long time, potentially forever. Sure, you might be awakened at some distant point in the future, and there is some positive utility to living more days on this Earth, but this utility is finite.
Thus, the Christian has a choice between going to Heaven ASAP, and attaining an infinite positive utility; or signing up for cryonics and either attaining a finite positive utility (if it works), or keeping his utility unchanged for a long time (if it doesn’t). Therefore, it would be irrational for the Christian to sign up for cryonics.
They believe that if they die—permanently, without hope of revival—while being “right with God” (the precise meaning of which varies by sect), then they get to go to Heaven.
I don’t see where the “permanently” part comes from. It may be the layman’s interpretation, but I don’t think it’s Biblically motivated.
Unfortunately, christian theology has since advanced to the point where the physical body is not that important. I don’t think my parents feel enough connection to historical christianity for me to pull this one off (they expect new bodies after the resurrection, for example). However—is there a good popular-level source for this? I’d still be interested. Maybe I could use something along these lines.
It really depends on which sect of Christianity they are members of and their own personal views of the matter. Mormonism for example does not officially take a stance but strongly encourages burial vs cremation whenever possible. Catholicism “earnestly recommends” burial, and actively forbid cremation until the sixties; also, even though they tolerated it, they would not perform any ceremonies for cremated deceased until the eighties. According to my understanding, Eastern Orthodox still doesn’t allow cremation, but my knowledge of that branch is a bit more sketchy. As an aside, I believe cremation is banned by Judaism and Islam (though I assume this varies by branch, and my knowledge is even less comprehensive for these cases).
In my case I already knew they were against cremation, so this was just tailoring the message of cryonics to what they’d accept. It shifted them from thinking cryonics was ‘unnatural’ to thinking it was ‘nice but too expensive’. Hopefully one day they’ll shift even more to ‘hey I can afford that’.
If you don’t mind Dark Arts, I have a line of logic that has met with limited success with Christian family members in the past. I wouldn’t say it convinced them so much as it helped change their opinions and emotions about cryonics, which is the first step.
In the early 1st-5th century AD, one of the major rifts between Christians and Romans was how they treated the dead. Romans would burn the bodies for sanitary reasons and to prevent spread of disease; Christians would preserve the bodies and show them deference as the vessel of a departed soul. It was a Christians duty to keep the dead safe so that their bodies could be resurrected by Jesus when judgment day came; the word cemetery was invented by Christians and comes from “sleeping place,” the idea that the dead are just sleeping until God returns to this world.
Cremation is bad because it instantly destroys the body. There are reasons early Christians would die to protect their interred loved ones from the pyre. Burial is better. Burial keeps the body more intact, but after a few decades there still isn’t much left. Cryonics is just a better form of burial, keeping your body, the vessel for your soul, intact for centuries instead of mere decades.
Cryonics isn’t trying to escape death or heaven. It’s just the best darn technological form of burial that exists. All that Alcor is doing is keeping your body safe for the day when Jesus comes. And hey, if they actually keep their promise and resurrect you into a post-singularity future, then you’ll get to see Jesus in person when the rapture happens.
I’ve never been a Christian, so I could be wrong about this, but many Christians I’d met would disagree with you. They believe that if they die—permanently, without hope of revival—while being “right with God” (the precise meaning of which varies by sect), then they get to go to Heaven. Going to Heaven has infinite positive utility.
Desecration issues aside, if what the cryonics companies are selling is the real deal, then signing up for cryonics involves being bound to your physical body for a long time, potentially forever. Sure, you might be awakened at some distant point in the future, and there is some positive utility to living more days on this Earth, but this utility is finite.
Thus, the Christian has a choice between going to Heaven ASAP, and attaining an infinite positive utility; or signing up for cryonics and either attaining a finite positive utility (if it works), or keeping his utility unchanged for a long time (if it doesn’t). Therefore, it would be irrational for the Christian to sign up for cryonics.
I don’t see where the “permanently” part comes from. It may be the layman’s interpretation, but I don’t think it’s Biblically motivated.
Unfortunately, christian theology has since advanced to the point where the physical body is not that important. I don’t think my parents feel enough connection to historical christianity for me to pull this one off (they expect new bodies after the resurrection, for example). However—is there a good popular-level source for this? I’d still be interested. Maybe I could use something along these lines.
It really depends on which sect of Christianity they are members of and their own personal views of the matter. Mormonism for example does not officially take a stance but strongly encourages burial vs cremation whenever possible. Catholicism “earnestly recommends” burial, and actively forbid cremation until the sixties; also, even though they tolerated it, they would not perform any ceremonies for cremated deceased until the eighties. According to my understanding, Eastern Orthodox still doesn’t allow cremation, but my knowledge of that branch is a bit more sketchy. As an aside, I believe cremation is banned by Judaism and Islam (though I assume this varies by branch, and my knowledge is even less comprehensive for these cases).
In my case I already knew they were against cremation, so this was just tailoring the message of cryonics to what they’d accept. It shifted them from thinking cryonics was ‘unnatural’ to thinking it was ‘nice but too expensive’. Hopefully one day they’ll shift even more to ‘hey I can afford that’.