Feb
25
Phist asked:
Firstly, A short explanation: The idea behind cryogenic freezing is that someone dies, their body is still in ALMOST working condition. Also, people can die temporarily, look at any hospital story where someone was dead for like a minute. So, the advocates of cryogenic freezing say if you could freeze people right after the die, before their bodies start to decay, then you could thaw them out and revive them in a century or so when medical technology is good enough to cure what killed them. There are already thousands of people in cryogenics facilities frozen.
Firstly, A short explanation: The idea behind cryogenic freezing is that someone dies, their body is still in ALMOST working condition. Also, people can die temporarily, look at any hospital story where someone was dead for like a minute. So, the advocates of cryogenic freezing say if you could freeze people right after the die, before their bodies start to decay, then you could thaw them out and revive them in a century or so when medical technology is good enough to cure what killed them. There are already thousands of people in cryogenics facilities frozen.
So, the question: From a religious standpoint, if someone’s been dead for 100 years their soul is now in heaven, hell, purgatory, their next life for those who believe in reincarnation, whatever. But then what would happen when people thaw them out and pump them full of enough of future’s cure-alls to bring them back to life?
Acai Berry
Comments
5 Responses to “To the Theists: What about Cryogenics?”
Leave a Reply
God has the answer, believe. Men will never be as powerful as God.
I dont know, but I havent seen it work yet
these people have died, no reason to think we can ever revive the dead years later
What if the whole world exploded into nothingness?
What if people kept misinterpreting science as an excuse to ask meaningless hypotheticals?
I believe they are dead permanently. They didn’t believe in God or they wouldn’t try to rely on man’s technology in the future to save them. They believed that man is superior. They made their choice.
I am almost certain that you do not MEAN **cryogenics**, which is low temperature physics: “The branches of physics and engineering that involve the study of very low temperatures, how to produce them, and how materials behave at those temperatures”. I expect that what you MEAN is “What about cryonics”.
Legal death or clinical death are dependent on definitions of technology. Before 1950 if a person’s heart stopped, they would be regarded as being permanently dead. Today, it routinely occurs that persons whose hearts have stopped (and are therefore “clinically dead”) are “restored to life” with a defibrillator or CPR. Does that mean that their soul was in heaven or hell for several minutes until it was brought back? Is that so different from a cryonics patient being “restored to life” after being cryopreserved for 100 years? What is the difference between 5 minutes and 100 years in the context of eternity or in the mind of God?
The Catholic Church is opposed to the destruction of cryopreserved embryos because they are believed to have been given souls at the moment of conception. This is not necessarily so different from cryopreserved adults who could be restored to life after 100 years.
Where in the Bible does it say that you go to heaven or hell immediately after the heart stops beating? There is talk of a “judgment day” so maybe no one is in heaven or hell until that day arrives — perhaps at the time of the Second Coming of Christ. That could be 100 years from now or it could be 100,000 years from now. There is no agreement about what happens to souls between the time of death and the time of Judgment Day. They could remain in a suspended state (like a frozen embryo) awaiting Judgment Day — unless they are revived with a defibrillator after several minutes or a post-cryonics treatment after several decades.
What happens to people who happen to be alive on Judgment Day? If they are killed or not killed, and whether or not they had spent 100 years being cryopreserved would make no difference.