Saturday, March 31, 2012

Everything You Believe, It's Just Because You're Afraid of Dying

Here's a piece that's a bit Freudian in the broad sense of explaining grand sweeps of human action and belief in terms of obscure dark fears: specifically, that all our worldviews and cultures are attempts at achieving immortality. On the whole the article is a little silly, but it does make an interesting point: that the cognitive foibles that afflict humans do not spare atheists (true enough). In the context of discussing immortality, this immediately makes one think of cryopreservation, which I've written about before. And the question there is: are cryopreservationists usually non-religious? The few serious (i.e. pre-paid) ones I know are in fact atheists.

No comments: