Is a resurrected you really you or just a clone?

by donny 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  donny

  I was talking to one of the engineers who works here and we got into the subject of the resurrection. He stated that a resurrected body is not really the person who dies, but a clone and hence not the same person. He said it was no different than a person who is about to die who makes a copy of himself (with the same thoughts and memories).

  He said it was similar to the concept of the dematerializer transporter on Star Trek. He said the body that gets dematerialized is gone forever and the one that rematerializes is a new one who is an exact clone, but not the same person. He cites an episode where a guy gets beamed up but during the process a malfunction occurs in the memory banks and when the restoration occurs, two guys come out and they are clones of one another and there is no way to tell which is the "real" one.

  He says the same about the resuurection, if it were true. He said that if God recreates your body from his memory, he is in fact making a clone of the person who died. He stated that according to what he knows about JW teachings, the only ones who will be the same are the ones who live through Armageddon. Everyone else will be a copy of the original.

  He added that is why folks who want to be resurrected by science preserve either the whole body or the head because that is the only way the original "person" can live on.

  Comments please.
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  oompa

  clone for sure....and a stoopid fantasy prob..(course nobody really knows)........oompa
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  JimmyPage

  Even as a kid I thought the JW teaching of a resurrection didn't make sense because without an immortal soul what's coming back isn't you but a copy of you- and that only benefits the living! For those who die it is no help at all.
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  cameo-d

  Donny,

  this might interest you.

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/169768/1/The-Horrors-of-Resurrection
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  Leolaia

  JimmyPage....Yup, me too!! I was 8 years old and we were studying that Life book in the book study and I gave a comment about how it doesn't make any sense, how can it really be "you" if death is total non-existence. The book compared the resurrected "you" to copies like images on film or recordings on tape. That's just a copy, the original is still destroyed. Someone else is going to be living with my thoughts and memories. My question however wasn't really ever answered.

  Now I know that the biblical belief of resurrection did not posit such a thing. The Witnesses actually don't believe in resurrection; they use the term because that is what is used in the Bible, but the ancient Jewish and Christian belief was that something from the original, whether physical or (more usually) spiritual, survived death and was brought back to life. The notion that death is non-existence is what the Sadducees believed and guess what, they did not believe in the resurrection.
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  Farkel

  In fact, none of us are orginals of us. Contrary to the common perception of human bodies getting new cells about every 7 years, it happens more often than that. A liver can contain all new cells in only about 3 months. Through cellular reproduction we get brand new bodies every few years or even less.

  The notion of a pure resurrection is absurd. Every original molecule in a body would have to be found and somehow reassembled with all the other "original" molecules. The blood and other fluids that are drained out and put into the sewer by the undertaker would have to be relocated. The little buggies that eat into the body would have to be found and tracked up the food chain through thousands or millions of generations of animals to find this and that molecule from the original body so it could be included in the resurrection.

  If one lost a leg in say, France and died in say, Russia. The leg (or what's left of it) and missing pieces of the leg, would need to get packaged up and Fed-Xd to Russia for reassembly. It goes on and on.

  What makes us "US" isn't the body anyway. The body is just a container for "us." Besides that, what incredibly ugly person would want to get resurrected again as an incredibly ugly person?

  Farkel
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  mkr32208

  I've been mulling this topic over for years... In fact I first thought about it as a result of watching a situation similar to the star trek scene. It's been done many times most recently in 'the prestige?' I think that was the name of the movie.

  But you're correct if nothing spirit or 'soul' passes from one copy to the other then in what way is that copy YOU?

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/119530/1/Isnt-resurection-just-you-dying-and-leaving-behind-a-really-confused-clone
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  Anti-Christ

  Never mind the body, what freaked me out when I was a kid ( and later when i still believed) was they said that you would not remember your past life???? I was like well if I can not remember what it was like in the old system that means I would not be me any more because what happen to me shape who I am, I also never got a good answer.
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  Chalam

  Hi,

  This chapter is paramount to biblical understanding. You need to empty you mind of the WT teaching, read the text for what it is and listen to the Holy Spirit if you want to understand it.

  1 Corinthians 15

  Here are a few pointers

  42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
  If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

  We are body, soul and spirit 1 Thessalonians 5:23 The WT neither teach this nor want you to understand that.

  When you die your body perishes. When the dead are raised they will be imperishable (spiritual or heavenly bodies). The question is, will one go to everlasting life or everlasting (second) death

  Daniel 12:2-3 (New International Version)

  2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

  Isaiah 66:24 (New International Version)

  24 "And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind."

  Mark 9:47-48 (New International Version)

  47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where
  " 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'

  All the best,

  Stephen
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  TheOldHippie

  "Never mind the body, what freaked me out when I was a kid ( and later when i still believed) was they said that you would not remember your past life???? I was like well if I can not remember what it was like in the old system that means I would not be me any more because what happen to me shape who I am, I also never got a good answer."

  I think you must have misunderstood, if you refer to JW teaching, because the "not" in the first line definitely should NOT be there. You WILL remember your past life, you will be resurrected with all the memories, traits etc. that constitute you as a person. So either the ones talking to you, or your receiving mind misunderstood it completely.

  An article some years ago also pointed out that our language would be one of the traits that would make us - how should I put it - "remember who we are", in the sense of being an important trait of our personality.