An Example of Science as Quasi-Religion
One of the attractions of religion for many people is that it offers the promise of immortality, if not of the body, at least of the soul. Today, many boosters of biotechnology and transhumanism are offering the same thing--but not tending to believe in the soul, they suggest that it can be attained in the body. Here is a story about one such scientist, who claims people alive today can, through the magic of biotech, live for thousands of years. Such assertions offer a corporeal "new Jerusalem," and induce in some a faith in science as the source of salvation--sometimes called scientism--that can be as intensely devout as religious belief.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:49 PM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
I suppose in ten or twenty years time if you were offered a cure for aging that was proved viable and tested to work, you would turn it down?
I'm betting you would refuse it preferring to die and see if heaven really exists. On that day I'll say good riddance to you and your ilk.
Heaven can wait. Choose life... outrun death until you can't anymore. Grim Reaper be gone! Aging sucks, get over it.
How can your ilk be so dumb?
Ah, you act as if I am a heretic. Yes, science, for some, is becoming a religion.
"distilled from the flesh of infants" another ignorant moron of the deathist cult speaks.
You need to see the following. http://realaudio.rice.edu/Scientia/2004/Silver/Silver.asx Then ask 'why are you and yours not wailing, gnashing teeth and renting cloth over the lost souls when someone shampoos their hair?'. You guys make me sick... literally.
I'm a quadriplegic and kept that way because idiots like you lot couldn't pass a Biology 101 course if your life depended on it. Stop legislating your values onto others. We don't all believe as you and that's a damn good thing.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html
For Wesley; a heretic is only someone that believes differently. By that token we both are. The problem is your way is the way of death. Of course I expect an ID man to hope there's a heaven. I have news for you, there's not. I died once, by clinical definition, found nothing to experience nothing to report. Saw the tunnel stuff though a different time, doing too many g's in an aircraft maneuver. The difference? Waning O2 levels in the latter absolute instant loss in the former. No slow O2 loss no NDE. Death is the end, period.
You both go ahead and die for heaven's sake! But do us all a favor don't be slow about it. That way your deathist memes will die with you.
FQ
I am not involved in the ID issues. Discovery supports a lot of different areas of research, and all of my work is strictly secular.
Regarding treatments for SCI. Korean researchers have used umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and some movement to a woman paralyzed for 20 years. It has been published in a peer reviewed journals. Other hopeful treatments include adult stem cells and tissues from the patient's own olfactory mucosa tissues. About two dozen quadriplegics have been materially helped. I know one paralplegic who erupts in fury at every dime diverted from these hopeful areas into cloning research or ESCR.
colin said...
FQ: Thanks for the link."
Did you watch it? Did you become informed by it? Do you now realize the difficulty and insanity in preferring pedantically, obtusely and stubbornly to consider certain tissues as "potential human beings"?
If placental cells themselves can be made to be a totally new embryo each and every one of them and yet they wind up in shampoo, how are they not just as much "exploited potentially human beings" as your ilk whine about?
"I am quite certain that I am not responsible for your continuing paraplegia, misfortune that it is."
I am quite certain you support Bush and his bans on the tech and potential of it and so I am quite certain you and Wesley are part of preventing my healing.
"You would exploit human life that you consider lower than yourself to improve your circumstances."
Incorrect. I would exploit tissue that IS MY OWN to do with as I see fit. If it is my DNA it belongs to me. If no natural conception is involved it is only an engineered cell making molecular machine and not a human being! I am merely a molecular machine myself. I have no pre existent "ensouled" infused at conception essence you lot call a soul. Therefore I and none of you have any specialness before developing a mind.
"I respectfully object. And I have no expectation that when this technology becomes available that it will be lavished upon people such as ourselves, who may be easily replaced more cheaply."
As long as you continue to support laissez faire assholes that leave it solely to the whims of market forces and the political corruption that that currently allows, you have every reason to expect not to see it. Well unless you have the dollars to travel to China. But there is another part. As long as you also dismiss the efforts of Aubrey de Grey and others, myself included, to eliminate aging you again help deny life to 100,000 people a day. And you also aid in perpetuating the "cult of death", that says "it can never be done", and "it's playing god" and so forth. Some better quotes would be. "It's a good thing to play god we expect good things from such mythical beings. If WE don't, who will?" To quote Dr. James Watson.
"I am not literally making you sick; your anger is doing that."
No, wrong again, my anger has allowed me survive the myriad insults to my health neo-cons and cons have caused as they have supported in the continuing removal of support for the disabled for over 26 years. I find it wholly ironic that Wesley whines about euthanasia while supporting the slow killing of me and my disabled brothers and sisters through support of right wing creeps. It would be more honest to actually force euthanasia than to slowly remove health benefits so we slowly die of illnesses that constantly need abatement. Talk about hypocritical.
"Extracted from your writing:
preferring to die...good riddance...outrun death...Grim Reaper...I died once...death is the end...You both go ahead and die!
Who's the deathist?"
I apologize for my earlier tone as I see you both are trying to remain civil but you have no idea what my life has been like and yet you both with all or at least more than me having your health presumably intact think you have the right to pontificate and legislate what my life should continue to be and be denied cures while preventing even basic care through support of those that seek to remove it. I hear your lot spout off and I think "Who the f*** do you people think you are?" As I said above you are the deathist by supporting the attitude we can do nothing about aging and by denying me and those like me cures made from our own tissues.
If you are religious more power to you but that gives you no right to force the precepts of your beliefs down my throat. You have no proof your beliefs are any better than mine. In fact as the second link I gave shows we actually have quite the proof positive that religious belief is detrimental to society.
Back to whether (I suppose you mean) common people will get these cures or not. My point about supporting longevity research is simply this. It entails ALL cures and as Aubrey says, "Governments won't be able to stay in power when most the people demand anti aging cures and those governments attempt to refuse to provide it egalitarianly...[sic]".
The best way to provide these is through democratic government social programs paid for by taxation and the tightening of belts in areas less useful for life, such as military. When the whole world of people gets the idea that life can be enjoyed for much longer wars will become rare. When we no longer justify sending our youth to war with the false solace that an after life awaits them in the misfortune of their untimely death, we will grow the hell up and do away with such primordial methods of conflict remediation.
FQ
Wesley J. Smith said...
"I am not involved in the ID issues. Discovery supports a lot of different areas of research, and all of my work is strictly secular."
Right, and you would have me believe you are an atheist now? You are attempting to slant. Like your man Bush says, "If you ain't with us..." In other words, you are with them so you support what they do, so you do support ID. Are you going to deny believing in it?
"Regarding treatments for SCI. Korean researchers have used umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and some movement to a woman paralyzed for 20 years. It has been published in a peer reviewed journals. Other hopeful treatments include adult stem cells and tissues from the patient's own olfactory mucosa tissues. About two dozen quadriplegics have been materially helped."
See this above is why I am compelled to question your intelligence or better yet your honesty. You SHOULD know very well that none of these has proven to be COMPLETE cures as none of them stems from PLURIPOTENT CELLS. You want me to believe you are unaware of this important fact and worse yet unaware of also tissue rejection by injecting into oneself the DNA of another?
Do you think I actually have cord blood of my very own birth hanging around? Since obviously it is more than likely that I DO NOT, it must mean that you expect me to inject into my delicate and as yet not well understood spine, no less, the tissue of a stranger?! And if I should do that you then further expect me to compromise my immune system for the rest of my life with immunosuppressive drugs?!! Anything to protect a "potential human" right? No regard for an actual living one right?
GET REAL!!
Being real is what this is all about. As I explained to Colin, an SCNT engineered embryo made of MY OWN DNA is NOT a "potential human being". SCNT does not involve "natural conception". You guys like to have your cake and eat it too. On the one hand you cry that "Clones won't be human because no "natural conception" is involved". But then you turn right around and cry about SCNT as if that were creating a "potential human being"; even though no conception is involved! Hypocrites!! I would even not mind if the shell came from a mouse or a cow providing some mtDNA was provided from my own cells making the shell less of a DNA factor. I'd risk that much to alleviate any hint of objection from you lot that it was "potential human tissue".
Like I said, a course of Bio 101 would go miles in your camp.
All the above said, though, I would wholly support any means of cures that circumvented these dicey issues such as the proposed methods of turning regular adult cells straight into stem cells without creating an embryo. But these will be slow in coming if we aren't allowed the funding to learn more about SCNT and ESCR with what we currently have the tools to do. And it wouldn't take long to go right on past needing embryos given the pace of development, if only you guys let loose your tight fists on the money. You lot are slowing the progress away from what you object to. How hypocritical is that?
"I know one paralplegic who erupts in fury at every dime diverted from these hopeful areas into cloning research or ESCR."
He or she is just as misinformed as yourself. Who's fault is that with all the misinformation going around at The President's Council on Bioethics and your own Discovery Institute and Center for Bioethics and Culture?
Like I advised. I hope none of you take part in any life extending technologies because the sooner we rid ourselves of your backward thinking the sooner we can make life truly better for ALL.
Oh and regarding your stance on euthanasia. I'm one disabled person that wishes you'd butt the hell out of my life and my rights. What gives you people the idea that you must be the keepers of everyone else? Watch your own p's and q's and leave it to others to watch their own. If you don't want to euthanize or abort and don't want your children to than YOU DON'T and YOU teach that value in YOUR household and leave others to teach their values in their own. It is none of your goddamn business what I do or some unfortunate woman that may have been raped or molested, probably by some bible thumping degenerate anyway as the statistics report, finds herself needing to do. Try preventing the circumstances that led to her awful choice rather than impugning her for what is usually a last resort. That is true compassion. What you people fob off as compassion is meddling and cruelty.
I have an argument here
http://www.infidelguy.com/article319.html for why your policies against legal euthanasia can and will in certain circumstances becoming available actually lead to the loss of the life you misguidedly think you are preserving.
FQ
If you want more information about the tremendous and ongoing research with non embryonic sources of cells, go to Do No Harm. My friend Jim steeps himself in these issues, and I warrant, knows far more than you. He reads the journals, talks with the researchers, and is one of the most knowledgeable persons on these issues I know. If you want to speak with him, I think I can arrange it. By the way, he once supported ESCR, changed his mind precisely because he came to understand that it is probably a dry well, or a well that will take way too many years to develop for him, a paraplegic, to benefit from. He believes strongly that money thrown into that well is money taken from the real chance for effective treatments.
As to not a cure: That is true. Not yet. But why do you dismiss tremeondous progress that was unthinkable a few years ago? My gosh, feeling restored! Some quadreplegics standing with braces and regaining bladder control! As to embryonic working, if it ever does, you are decades away.
Good luck. If you want to speak with Jim, e-mail me your e-mail.
Perhaps if I explain a little more what was going through my mind when I read your post and the circumstances surrounding it. With these you might better understand my initial anger and so accept this as a way of an apology of sorts. But I'm not yet letting you totally off the hook, not exactly.
I just last week the 20th had gall bladder removal surgery by means of laporoscopy. They inject CO2 gas into the abdominal cavity to do this and so despite having diminished feeling below my armpits I felt every bit of the referred pain that internal organs inflict upon us when they are messed with. It felt like a curved sword was thrust into my side and up through my shoulder! Worse yet, since I cannot walk off the gas, the means by which most normal people recover the same day from this same surgery, I had a nightmarish night and next day and am still one week from it far from 100%.
To say the least I was easily irritable and then I discover your comments likening my, as I view them, RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS for the future of technology, to that of religious belief! On the surface few would get too upset about that but they are not me and might not be as informed as I about certain things surrounding this issue. To wit, upon looking up your bio I see that you are associated with several organizations that are very well known to me, in the notorious sense, and involved in issues that are very dear and near to me, in the sensitive sense.
First and foremost your involvement with Kass and Fukuyama puts you in a certain category to me, luddites, in opposition to my Transhumanist ideals. Why shouldn't people have the right and ability to enhance themselves? Why shouldn't we empower the disabled rather than condemn them to death or a life marginalized? I've read Kass and he would even deny me a wheelchair!
We cannot fear change, change will roll over us if we don't embrace it and bend it to our will. Imagine Homo Erectus saying, 'let's not progress from here or we might disappear!' Oh but that's right, you might not believe that Homo erectus really existed, which brings me to my second issue. I am an atheist and you support the Discovery Institute, what an oxymoron that name is. There's no discovery in Intelligent Design. You know darn well in your heart that your fellows there start with Biblical claims and then try to fit their science, er ah, pseudo science into that expectation. It is bad science to presuppose an outcome and try to shoehorn the evidence to fit it. ID is not science and I oppose it being pushed as such.
This issue of disavowing evolution is part and parcel of denying that we can change our bodies away from the aging process and cure all disease. It supports the defeatist deathist viewpoint that we cannot do anything about this, it is either in some god or nature's hands and not at all in our own hands. If that were true we could not have already changed our longevity through engineering. We could not have saved lives through medicine especially things like heart transplants. Oh that's right, doesn't Kass oppose those too and other organ replacement tech?
I have survived so very very many insults to my health they are difficult to list. Many of them are a direct result of conservative policy wonk efforts to eliminate health care resources for me. One of them is the loss of a kidney to chronic infection partly brought on by inadequate medical supply provisions due to health care cuts. Related to that I also need a new bladder, not to mention the recent gall bladder. I have diabetes because of a viral infection. I need the technologies of tissue regeneration and organ cloning but your ilk gets so silly scared at the term "cloning" that they've attempted to outright ban ANYTHING at all with the term CLONING in it! How do you think that molds my opinion of you people?
There is no, not one single, rational objection to cloning. The most common objections invoke crimes against nature or god/s and repugnance. Repugnance is not rational, how repugnant! Clones are simply twins out of place with respect to time from each other. We have the technology to do the following: Suppose a woman was found to be slated to have multiple births but it was thought she could not survive and so likely the babies might not either having them all at once. We could cryogenically freeze them as embryos are frozen all the time today in IVF and so we could allow them to be reimplanted years apart and born one by one after the mother had recovered between each birth. These multiples would then be out of place in time from each other and thus no different than clones. No one, well maybe Kass, would have any objection to such a life saving technique being used but they object to cloning. Why?
Another objection to cloning is, "Someone will create an army of clones! Be afraid be very afraid!" Wrong, only a moron would do such a stupid thing. Suppose the original had hay fever, all the enemy would need is leaked knowledge or discovered knowledge of this and gain a huge advantage by picking a battle location amid a bunch of pollen! It's too simple to debunk these idiot claims. Another is, "Someone will bring back Hitler". Wrong, clones are not duplicates. This is a gross misunderstanding of the roles of nature vs nurture. Nature is strong but not that strong. A clone of me would not even look like me. Years of thyroid therapy as a child resulted in stunted growth becoming conquered quite greatly to the point I am huge! For a clone to be just like the original it would have to live every single moment the same as the original and that is not possible. Bring me any objection I can debunk it. Why clone me? Because I've been denied having children. If all else failed my clone could carry on my family line. This could help families facing extinction of their line.
Is the picture getting clearer as to what was on my mind when I read your ridiculous statement that belief in science is religion? I knew it came from the Intelligent Design folks you associate with. They use that propaganda technique to diminish unfairly evolutionists. I may believe my keys are on the table but that does not make that a spiritual statement. But, do I have faith in humanity and our science and technology and the rapid progress that might bring anti aging and cures for paralysis and more in my life time? Well, in some sense sure. However, that doesn't diminish it any whatsoever! As an aside it is mighty interesting to see religious folk lambasting rational folk for having faith. But anyway, my "faith" is not blind and the religious folks' must be. My "expectations" are based upon clear facts and mathematical theories and empirical observations. I have damn good reason to "believe" what I do!
It may or it may not be so, that there is no future in ESCR, however, neither you nor your friend Jim nor I know enough to make that call at this time. Just common sense alone would say that if there WERE no future in it everyone going down that path would already be quickly abandoning their projects and moving valuable resources to other methods. There are not enough resources to waste them on dead ends. I don't believe that is happening, do you?
Even you cannot believe that you can hope to stop scientific and technological progress. Can you? If so you would be employing more hubris than your friends Kass and Fukuyama accuse Transhumanists of. Can you really think that even a thousand years from now given even a tenth of the progress and pace of it we have today, that by then we would not have conquered aging? I just saw a documentary where Dr. Rose of fruit fly fame, says he fully expects us to be fairly well immortal in 500 years time. He just hasn't heard of the exponentially squared pace of progress we are in the middle of so 500 years is way too conservative an estimate. No society has ever, for long, halted the constant march of progress.
So then, if you and Kass, et al, cannot stop progress, what is the ultimate outcome of your and their efforts? It is this and only this, you DELAY it. Worse yet you delay it not for the entire world but for the United States and possibly some other kowtowed by the US western nations, putting them and the US further and further behind than already are rapidly sliding now. What is the cost of this delay? Plain and simply, HUMAN LIVES!
Will you and your kind feel remorse when the aging process is finally defeated and you are forced to realize your efforts have accomplished NOTHING other than killing the unfortunate folks that otherwise would be alive had you all just been wiser and shut the hell up? Had you only realized progress cannot be halted but still you ranted on and caused useless legislation to be formed only to later must needs be abolished. What is the cost? Will you feel remorse for misleading millions to follow your luddism blindly and thereby not take part in these technologies? Do you now mourn for Chris Reeve? In his own words; "If you had the FDA involved and everybody working, I am positive in 10 years I'd be on my feet. I would not be sitting here in a wheelchair. ...Bush's election is my death sentence."
--The late Christopher Reeve
How prophetic. How sad. I do mourn his passing deeply. I wonder if I shall follow him before a cure is fully developed that I can afford. Will the cruel irony mock me that it WILL BE available in China or Korea or Thailand but I cannot afford it nor logistically get there?
I wish narrow minded folks that fear progress and these technologies would take a course in empathy. At least you personally have your head in the right place when it comes to PETA and the stupidity of denying humans medicine while over respecting animal rights. I commend you on that at least. I was once on a local Town Meeting TV program discussing Cloning way back the mid 90's. One vapid wide eyed PETA person sat next to me and when asked if she would oppose cloning technologies that might cure me she says, "If it involved the harming of just one animal, yes I'd oppose it". Oh how compassionate and empathetic for her own animal species!
Oh before I close, in answer to your question of why I dismiss the current incomplete progress of adult stem cell and other non ESCR techniques it is this. I have the world's worst case of a bone disease called Heterotropic Ossification. This and the above mentioned issues means I need more comprehensive treatments for a number of issues. I need as I mentioned organ replacement through tissue engineering, something your ilk is trying to ban because it involves cloning. I need the advances of nanotechnology to remove the bone material that the HO causes. Nanotech would also make us physically immortal and your ilk also oppose that on many levels. [note: the use of the word immortal by any Transhumanist must come with the caveat we do not mean, "cannot ever die"] If I were to get partial nerve return it would only make me feel all the pain I now experience through the body's backup system Autonomic Hypereflexic Dysreflexia. This insidious ailment that plagues me constantly would also not go away but would be joined by normal pain. Why the pain? The HO causes bone material to be growing aberrantly throughout my body. It has fused my hips solid and reduced movement of my knees. This alone would prevent me walking if indeed all my spinal problems disappeared. But still I would welcome some pain if I could get only my hands back. I am typing this with two rubber tipped sticks stuffed between my dead fingers curled up into fists. In short my personal case is far too complicated to succumb to these feeble attempts to skirt true pluripotent stem cell use. I need too many different types of cells and I cannot risk tissue rejection by not using material from MY OWN CELLS.
But it's not only about just me. Everyone is different, every case is unique and no one should be forced to have to feed the pharmaceutical company's bottom lines with need for immune suppression drugs for life. There are too many different diseases requiring different answers and tissue types. We have to be robust in our attack on these diseases and not timidly dancing around only some people's, NOT BY ANY MEANS THE MAJORITY, opinions of appropriateness.
FQ
I think transhumanism is sad, really. But I don't care much about what people do to themselves. It is the transhumanist desire to eugenically alter progeny that I reject most. And the belief implied and expressed therein that we can determine what are "better" and "worse" human characteristics.
I wish you well.
Wesley J. Smith said...
"I think transhumanism is sad, really."
Sad? An extreme respect for all life is sad? Wanting all of humanity to never have to suffer the ravages of aging ever again is sad? Desiring to free us all from the until now inevitable ever encroaching, decrepitude, pain, loss of faculty, loss of memory and loss of loved ones. Workiing for an end to all this is sad?
No my friend, not having vision and hope and faith in humanity enough to see what we can accomplish, that is sad.
Transhumanism is unbridled hope for and enjoyment of life. It gives us real hope, for life and love and future. It is a hope we know that WE ALONE on OUR OWN with our own powers can make happen. It's not the false hope of religion that can never be proved. However, many within Transhumanism are still religious and more power to them, literally. You might say they have twice the hope.
Don't forget that the bible says we can and will do ANYTHING we dream.
"But I don't care much about what people do to themselves."
Oh really? So you're not opposed to euthanasia after all? Whether with the help of a knowledgeable technician or with one's own hand the choice to act is that of the individual and thereafter such a choice whatever act accomplishes the deed is their own responsibility alone.
"It is the transhumanist desire to eugenically alter progeny that I reject most."
You misunderstand it totally. You would rather that an anencephalic child be born unaltered to there immediately die because the poor thing has no brain? We would rather figure out the genetic mistake and alter the genes so the child has a chance for life. Do not mix us up with the eugenicists of the past. This is something totally different and done for the benefit of the progeny allowing life where there would be none, allowing full life where a marginalized one would be before. There is NO good argument for doing nothing and letting nature's cruel fate take it's course.
Eugenics was not about overtly altering anything. It was about disallowing life so that nature altered through unnatural selection. It was cruel and deplorable.
"And the belief implied and expressed therein that we can determine what are "better" and "worse" human characteristics."
Sure we can. You have the mistaken belief that only a god can tell what is best for a human being. This is as false as anything can be. We decide daily what is best for ourselves and for our loved ones and children. We have morals a judges that mete out justice for those that violate what is best for us. We have medicine for treating ailments that we judge not good and not better for us and our progeny. It is wholly silly to thinkwe do not all the time from time immorial "dtermine what are better and worse characteristics" for human beings. There is nothing more natural. We have been deciding what is better for our progeny since we gained sense enough to understand that a mate with certain characteristics was desirable so that their traits with our own would mingle and provide a healthy child and often a healthy child with powers greater than the mean. There is nothing wrong with this.
"I wish you well."
Oh really? But within only narrow parameters right? You don't wish me cured by certain forms of stem cell research that could be the shortest route to it. Do you? If I were to contract a brain ailment and wish to legally die via physician assisted suicide so that the ailment would be halted in its progression where then I could go into suspended animation, you would not wish me well in that way, would you?
Forgive me but, I think your wish for me is a hollow wish that depends upon the vagaries of a deity that I do not believe exists nor want the favors of regardless. Instead, wish me well by action. Do so by rethinking your stand and stand not in the way of human progress to address our own ills.
I will though wish you well in my own and more real way. I retract what I said in anger and revert to what I as an avowed Transhumanist have always wished for all of human kind including you. I wish you an extremely long and unbound life to live as you see fit.
FQ
Sad, because of the desprerate longing, bording as I said earlier, on religious yearning, to transcend what is human. Sad, because to transhumanists, people aren't good enough, smart enough, healthy enough, anything enough, but somehow we have the wisdom to set it all right. It's a no go.
Eugenics WAS about alterning the human gene pool to make a "better" race. Read, WAR AGAINT THE WEAK by Edwin Black. Transhumanism is an updated version of "positive" eugenics, that will lead to "negative eugenics."
Thanks for your thoughts.
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