Under consideration is Tom Balmforth’s article “From The Cradle To The Vat, Russia’s ‘Temporarily Dead’ Await Immortality,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 16, 2017 AD.
The modern day concept of cryonics or cryogenics was elucidated in 1962 AD by Robert Ettinger within his book The Prospect of Immortality, a title form which the premise is readily discernable. He went on to establish the Cryonics Institute where his body is still frozen.
In view is the Sergiyev Posad, Russia based company KrioRus which was co-founded by Danila Medvedev and Igor Artyukhov and with backing from the Russian Transhumanist Movement.
Medvedev is a former investment banker and it seems that such experience led directly into KrioRus as it is about making investments with no guarantee of a return—from the dead—and in fact, Artyukhov is skeptical of the whole endeavor.
Philosopher of science Alexei Grinbaum has stated, “This is definitely not science. It’s a worldview, an ideology, a set of beliefs, or a superstition — call it what you wish. Transhumanism talks about future technology, but it is not a scientific theory or a set of existing technologies.” There are certain technologies in use today which could certainly be categorized as transhuman and yet, indeed, the goal of a post-human future is just that: a future dream.
This is one reason that within my lecture Transhumanism’s Roots I focus upon its roots in theology, occultism, evolution, also how it is a slippery slope to postgenderism, considers it within pop-culture via movies, TV, etc. In this manner, one may discern just exactly what transhumanism is and be able to discern it when they hear about it under various terms.
Grinbaum further notes, “Transhumanism is an exaggerated form of rational thought — if you like, it takes for granted that all that is technically possible or simply imaginable will actually occur. It makes a leap immediately into a bright technological future.”
As Balmforth puts it, “He equates transhumanism with the revolutionary socialists who wrested control of Russia a century ago and ultimately established the Soviet Union, and also with the earliest Christian acolytes” in terms of the “promise of immortality made by Christianity.” In that sense Christianity is also transhuman but we must define terms as secular transhumanism has an Atheistic premise and views high tech as a manner whereby guide otherwise unguided evolution so as to make man (or, non-gender specific personages) in our own image.
Within KrioRus frozen corpses are called “patients” who are “temporarily dead” and if you chose to save some money and only have your brain or head frozen then you are a “neuropatients”—of course, some people have had their pets cryo-frozen.
Danila Medvedev with “Massive Thermos Flasks” in the background
A survey by the Russian Venture Company, “found that Russians are 20 percent more likely than Europeans to be ‘techno-optimists’” which is defined as “people who believe in the power of science and technology to solve economic and social problems.” I would imagine that this is due to decades of state sponsored Atheism in Russia which leads to technocracy: lives which are in service to the state and high tech as the solution to all problems—including the problem of mortality.
Danila Medvedev “found out there is forced labor in Russia” and so is involved in “activism against human trafficking” via a program called “social entrepreneurship” about which he states, “Just as the ancient Egyptians had the pyramids, but only for the pharaohs, our task is to make pyramids in which all the space would be used so that every year a million people in Russia can be cryopreserved and so that they can subsequently be reanimated.”
Igor Artyukhov brings up an interesting issue in asking, “What will this person be? Will it be a new person, or will it be exactly the same person?” And what will this mean for “every year a million people”?
As per a Christian worldview-philosophy-theology the souls of the dead are “absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5) and apparently not present with the Lord until high tech has them reenter their body.
So, who—or, what—will inhabit these millions upon millions of bodies? Are we looking at a cryo-zombie future? Or, more like a cryo-demoniac future?
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