I am not a religious person. Being of a scientific mind, I cannot believe in an afterlife. There is no evidence for it. No evidence that the mind is seperate from the brain. There is plenty of evidence however, that when the brain is damaged or impaired, the mind follows suit.
What conclusions can we then draw when the brain is dead, and irrevocably destroyed in the grave or the crematorium? The mind itself must then be destroyed. Death is no doorway, it's obliteration! This is the
certain fate of all who choose not to invest in cryonics.
But cryonics is no
guarantee of survival, and the cryonics companies are the first to tell you this. They are not trying to con anyone. We who are members in these companies are all quite aware that this whole endeavour is purely speculative. But what alternatives do we have, the grave or the oven? No thank you. I'll take my chances with the freezer, bizarre as that may seem to some. I have to wonder though, is it really more bizarre than the practice of putting your dearly departed loved ones in the equivelant of an overly expensive wooden trash bag and dumping them in a funerary landfill? That's more respectful than giving them what may turn out to be a second chance?
I think Curly Howard said it best when he told Moe "I don't wanna die, there's no future in it!" Well he was right, and neither do I, and we're not alone. Ever since newly sentient apes first grasped the bleak spectre of their own mortality, all mankind has been searching for a way to avoid it. It is a natural outgrowth of our instinct for self preservation. The ultimate promise of all religions, is that death is not the end. What cryonicists do, and hope for, is not weird, unnatural, or even new. It is as old as man himself. It is deep within us. No one wants to die. Why
should we choose to, why should we merely resign ourselves to it, when there could now be another choice?
Please don't enact legislation that could endanger that "Other Choice."
Albert McCunePittsburgh, PA