In my early years of atheism, I reveled in making fun of the "crazy" practices of the faithful. I cheered on the militantly atheistic writers who made fun of the religious or debated them. A news item like a Jehovah’s Witnesses parent refusing blood transfusion for their child were solid evidence for my view on religions.
And then I got older.
I began to appreciate how much religions offer meaning to lives. People of faith or otherwise, all of us know we are going to die. It is only a question of when.
To live our lives fully aware that we could die at any minute is a sure trigger for existential angst. Add to that the thoughts that make us wonder what would happen to us after we die. When we have to bury or cremate the body of one who was dear to us, when that person has become the body that will soon disappear forever, we know well it could soon be our turn to become nothing but the body.
Religions ease the angst with happy thoughts. Those who believe can take comfort that their father or daughter would be up there in heaven with god and the angels and all the other dead family members. A wonderful family reunion that one can look forward to, which takes away the pain from the loss of a loved one.
That framework also orients the believer to work every day towards ensuring attendance at the glorious family reunion, instead of being condemned to hell. (Whether or not the believers practice being good believers is not the point of this post.)
When a Jehovah’s Witnesses parent refuses blood transfusion, it is because both the Old and New Testaments clearly command them to abstain from blood. They "avoid taking blood not only in obedience to God but also out of respect for him as the Giver of life."
The older, and a tad wiser, me stopped making fun of such faith-based decisions a while ago. While I disagree with most faith-based practices, I acknowledge the important roles those frameworks play in the human condition.
The medical insight and technology that made blood transfusions possible continues to offer more advancements with which some people of faith might have problems. Like xenotransplantation, which is transplantation from another species. Like from pigs. Recently, researchers successfully transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a human, who lived two months before he died.
Pigs are a preferred xenotransplantation animal for several reasons: their circulatory system is similar to the human one, their organs are about the right size, they grow up fast, they breed easily, and, well, although they’re as sweet and emotional as our pet dogs—and often smarter—they aren’t closely related to us.
Pigs are not kosher, are haram, to Jews and Muslims, and to millions of Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists. As the technology advances, and the yield of organs and body parts obtained from pigs that are specially grown for medical harvesting becomes better, will the faithful sign not up for the procedures? Will their religious leaders be asked to clarify what god's intentions and directives are? Like Jehovah’s Witnesses, will people of other faith say no to the porcine parts?
Science will increasingly challenge what it means to be human. And, as our track record shows, we humans will continuously change our interpretations of what it means to be human.
I, for one, have no desire for life extension procedures.
I have lived a good life that was purely an accident. Every birth, in my atheistic view, is nothing but an accident, and not a physical body for a soul that god created. The combination of a sperm and an egg on any other day would have resulted in a person other than me. This product of a highly improbable union faces a certain end, postponing which has no appeal to me.
In my outlook, family reunions are in the here and in the now. There is no reunion in the after. Instead of spending money on porcine parts to extend my life, I would rather channel that into spending time with people who care about me before such reunions become physically impossible.
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