_Death Is Not an Event in Life_ by James Still
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/still3.html
This essay nicely illustrates a common flaw in atheist
thinking, namely the almost dogmatic rejection of
immortality, (mainly) because of its traditional link
with religion. The author doesn't even *consider*
scientific methods to achieve physical "immortality".
Instead of actually trying to do something useful for
his dying father (i.e. try to get him frozen), he, in
his own words, "stood silently next to him, holding his
hand, and watched helplessly as he slowly, yet steadily,
slipped away from us forever(*)". He then tries to justify
his impotent defeatism with a lot of fluffy blah blah about
how one can "live forever" without actually being immortal,
that death gives meaning to life etc. The usual apologist
fallacies.
(*) ironic note: the author's father died in Phoenix,
Arizona.
Now, what makes this depressing piece of deathist
writing interesting is that there's an opportunity
to give feedback (see link at bottom of page), which,
assuming that it meets a very basic set of criteria,
will be published on the infidels.org website. Since
there's *very* little information regarding cryonics
and transhumanism to be found on this site (which is
a major atheist resource), this might be a good
opportunity to "put us on the map". The more people
react to this, the better. Atheists, of all people,
should be open to transhumanistic ideas, but these
irrational deathist memes are holding them back.
Perhaps repeated exposure to positive anti-memes can
get at least some of them on the right track.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:02:42 MDT