Resurrection vs. Re-Creation... (page 3)

proplog2

Tuesday:

This isn't a problem for atheists. An immortal soul is a pre-scientific invention. If you believe in an immortal soul you are fooling yourself.

There is a natural tendency of humans to put emphasis on their "ego" stream of consciousness.

Reminds me of the comedian Emo Phillips "I had a thought yesterday that my brain is the most important part of my body. And then in dawned on me that it was my brain telling me that."

What if you had a disease that erased your memories and you experienced amnesia to the point that you couldn't remember much of your past although you maintained your motor skills. Would that still be you? What if you have alzheimers? Is that you?

And I repeat the question no one wanted to address. What happened to the 5 year old you? It died. You remember only a few situations in any given year. The brain is an efficient forgetter.

The reason why the clone with restored memories doesn't seem a very good resurrection is because of our inflated egos. The content of our brains is mostly a very poor recording of reality. Even if there was a god that created a clone of you with just a few memories you would soon invent the rest of your history.

So you can believe that when you are dead your thoughts cease (best of science). You can believe you have a soul that is going to carry your ego into eternity (myth) Or you can believe that there is a possibility of a clone with some memory restoration.(possibility with advanced technology).

Basically, re-creation isn't so bad - IF you don't think about it. And you wouldn't. It goes nowhere. Your clone would just start enjoying its life.

Narkissos

Consciousness is a dotted line anyway. "Memory" connects the dots, again and again, slightly differently at each narrative "recollection".

When I was a little boy I was afraid of the nightly dark. I could not help representing my "self" as something like the "soul" -- living and continuous, animalistic -- an "inner" reflection of the perceived "body," a smaller animal within the bigger one. Any hint of interruption raised the existential angst of identity, or ipseity -- am I the same; that is, am I at all?

It takes a few thousands of days, and all the nights in between, for one to realise that what really matters to you is the truth of some moments; those for which you would go through the whole thing again if that should mean anything. A truth which cannot exist, i.e., be said or thought, apart from the artifice of repetition which is, by definition, not the same. There lies the paradoxical essence of the myth -- re-surrection, re-incarnation, eternal re-currence, etc.: no singular event can be true without being doubled in imagination.

The major problem with all myths is that the figures (immortal souls, heavenly doubles, resurrected bodies, etc.) which were meant to represent your eternal truth(s) always tend to start a "story" of their own -- even if it is narratively minimalist, as in "happy ever after". Inasmuch as the "believer" identifies with that story (which is no more his anyway), he consents to the oblivion he had been scared of.

Sweet lullabies of death to us metaphysical insomniacs, as we dream ourselves asleep into the timeless eternity of time.

VM44

Some nights, after I have fallen asleep, the Aliens disintegrate my body and then re-create it exactly as it was before so that when I awake the next day I will not notice what they have done!

--VM44 (sequence number 278 from original)

Narkissos

VM44

Some nights, after I have fallen asleep, the Aliens disintegrate my body and then re-create it exactly as it was before so that when I awake the next dayI will not notice what they have done!

Actually they create entirely new persons with the illusion that they were there the day before... So whether they put it "exactly as it was" or completely different no one can tell for sure...

VM44

"So whether they put it "exactly as it was" or completely different no one can tell for sure..."

Narkissos, Good point!

--VM44 (sequence number 279 from original)

proplog2

VM - Narkissos and especially if Farkel is peeking:

Now that's what I'm talking about.

ex-nj-jw

I remember being told (when I was about 8) that people would rise from their graves (by my mother), when I asked her what about people that were cremated? she answered that that was why JW's did not get cremated. She became ill about a year ago and we almost lost her, my dad said that if she passed she wanted to be cremated. I told him that I was told JW's couldn't get cremated and he said "new light" was given on that matter and that changed, (it's been 24 years since I even discussed JW issues) so what do I know.

Anyway, he couln't give me a straight answer about the whole cremation and resurrection issue so I just dropped it, doesn't really matter to me at this point.

So, now that I'm trying to understand this whole thing, do JW's believe that the original body will be resurrected or that just memories, personalities and traits will be recreated in another body, that looks different? And if they are recreated in another body how will loved ones reconize that person? How will you know that it is your loved one if they don't look the same?

It's a shame that after being out of this cult for 24 years, being 42 years old, and having my own children, JW issues still confuse the H*** out of me.

kifoy

Well.

Taking into consideration the excellent comments of Narkissos... :-)
What are you, or your body?

If God (whatever) _can_ restore your body from the dust you have become because of decomposing, but _not_ the dust you have become because of cremation... I can't see the logic in that.

Then what about people that has burned to their death?

When I was a little girl, some 20 years ago, I remember my mother telling me that she wanted to be cremated. Because she was terrified of just beeing "apparently dead", and to be buried alive. When cremated she would be dead for sure.

So where this "new light" came, I don't know.

judith

VM44

I should find the Watch Tower articles in which Russell explained that a person's identity in the resurrection is the result of having the person's brain convolutions being molded the same as when they were previously alive.

Russell had some strange beliefs.

--VM44 (sequence number 280 from original)

Resurrection vs. Re-Creation...

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