Belief in physical resurrection is less of a leap of faith today because we know God's blueprint for each of us lives on in a genome. Will it be manifested in some other form of matter or energy in the world to come? We can only speculate.
I personaly have a modernized "picture" of god and all those things myself.
My picture to help me visualize "god" and "ressurection" and all this is:
Imagine universe is a computer simulation. What is the best thing to describe "god"?
The programmer of the simulation? No. Only the computer would have all the abilities the bible claims god does possess.
some biblical (prophet books, not Moses books) claims:
- god is as big that he does not fit into the universe. But the universe is inside of god.
- god knows whatever is happening in the universe. He recognizes if a man loses one of his hairs aswell as he keeps track on every single hair in the whole universe.
- god "hears" all thoughts of every single human on the planet and he cant make it stop. He hates it. Humans make him angry and he wishes he could leave them, but he cant. (one of the passages where god rumbles in rage about how humans suck before his personality shifts again and he talks about how much he loves them)
No server admin in front of a screen does possess such absolute knowledge about every single bit in the simulation. Only the mashine itself would. If it also would possess selfawareness.
Hinduism calls a god that walks on earth in a human body an "avatar". Today we call the human shaped object we walk though a simulated 3D world of a game, an "avatar" aswell. In most Christian sects, Jesus is seen as an "Avatar" of god (though not called "avatar". But technically its an avatar) Perfectly fitting the "digital world" picture.
And if WE and all the world around us is digital anyways.... stuff like ressurection is easily imagineable. There simply could be a copy of our minds somewhere on the harddisk. (the "sheol" where the souls of the dead "sleep" until god resurects them at the end of all times, in a brand new world under a brand new sky.
This picture works wonderfully... with a single dark spot... if god is the mashine, who is in control of the mashine? Or did his Terminators (Michael and the others) kill of all the "Deamons" in his world? ;-P ... and there is only Skynet and his(its?) little "pet" in the whomb.
Ok, I stop it for now...Happy Eastern again. ^___^
I've always found the thought plausible that everything that can be copied cannot be the source of our personal identity. Because if a copy of that thing is possible, it's also possible while we are still alive, which would result in ourselves being two persons at once, an absurd idea. If we were two persons at once, one person would know what the other does, even if they are on opposite sides of the globe, and this would be physically hard to explain. Or if we could be two persons at once, whithout knowing it, then it might just as well be true that we are everyone without knowing it, but then the particular subjective perspective we're conscious of has no explanation - other than that it is coincidentally "our" perspective. But to whom does this our refer to, if we are really everyone? And if we are also someone else without being conscious of it, why should we believe that we will be conscious of it when we're dead? And doesn't this carry the idea that the other person is also us ad absurdum?
To continue this line of thought a litte: The brain could be copied as well. Someone who believes that the source of our personal identity is the brain might object that a copy, even if perfect, will always just be a copy and not the original. But what's the difference between a perfect copy and the original? The physical stuff. So, this would tie our personal identity to the piece of matter that our brain is. However, this solution will not help us much further, because the piece of matter can be split into two parts, and then again we would have to be both parts at once, with the same absurd consequences as in the case of copies.
In my view there are two possible strategies to overome these difficulties: Either the source of our personal identity is some kind of "soul", something that can neither be copied nor split into parts. Or there is something deeply wrong with our concept of personal identity and there is really no such thing, no self; that would be the Buddhist view.
6 comments:
Happy Easter.
Christos voskrese!/Christ is Risen!
Belief in physical resurrection is less of a leap of faith today because we know God's blueprint for each of us lives on in a genome. Will it be manifested in some other form of matter or energy in the world to come? We can only speculate.
Happy Easter!
@Tunguska:
I personaly have a modernized "picture" of god and all those things myself.
My picture to help me visualize "god" and "ressurection" and all this is:
Imagine universe is a computer simulation. What is the best thing to describe "god"?
The programmer of the simulation? No. Only the computer would have all the abilities the bible claims god does possess.
some biblical (prophet books, not Moses books) claims:
- god is as big that he does not fit into the universe. But the universe is inside of god.
- god knows whatever is happening in the universe. He recognizes if a man loses one of his hairs aswell as he keeps track on every single hair in the whole universe.
- god "hears" all thoughts of every single human on the planet and he cant make it stop. He hates it. Humans make him angry and he wishes he could leave them, but he cant. (one of the passages where god rumbles in rage about how humans suck before his personality shifts again and he talks about how much he loves them)
No server admin in front of a screen does possess such absolute knowledge about every single bit in the simulation. Only the mashine itself would. If it also would possess selfawareness.
Hinduism calls a god that walks on earth in a human body an "avatar". Today we call the human shaped object we walk though a simulated 3D world of a game, an "avatar" aswell. In most Christian sects, Jesus is seen as an "Avatar" of god (though not called "avatar". But technically its an avatar)
Perfectly fitting the "digital world" picture.
And if WE and all the world around us is digital anyways.... stuff like ressurection is easily imagineable. There simply could be a copy of our minds somewhere on the harddisk. (the "sheol" where the souls of the dead "sleep" until god resurects them at the end of all times, in a brand new world under a brand new sky.
This picture works wonderfully... with a single dark spot... if god is the mashine, who is in control of the mashine? Or did his Terminators (Michael and the others) kill of all the "Deamons" in his world? ;-P ... and there is only Skynet and his(its?) little "pet" in the whomb.
Ok, I stop it for now...Happy Eastern again. ^___^
I've always found the thought plausible that everything that can be copied cannot be the source of our personal identity. Because if a copy of that thing is possible, it's also possible while we are still alive, which would result in ourselves being two persons at once, an absurd idea. If we were two persons at once, one person would know what the other does, even if they are on opposite sides of the globe, and this would be physically hard to explain. Or if we could be two persons at once, whithout knowing it, then it might just as well be true that we are everyone without knowing it, but then the particular subjective perspective we're conscious of has no explanation - other than that it is coincidentally "our" perspective. But to whom does this our refer to, if we are really everyone? And if we are also someone else without being conscious of it, why should we believe that we will be conscious of it when we're dead? And doesn't this carry the idea that the other person is also us ad absurdum?
To continue this line of thought a litte: The brain could be copied as well. Someone who believes that the source of our personal identity is the brain might object that a copy, even if perfect, will always just be a copy and not the original. But what's the difference between a perfect copy and the original? The physical stuff. So, this would tie our personal identity to the piece of matter that our brain is. However, this solution will not help us much further, because the piece of matter can be split into two parts, and then again we would have to be both parts at once, with the same absurd consequences as in the case of copies.
In my view there are two possible strategies to overome these difficulties: Either the source of our personal identity is some kind of "soul", something that can neither be copied nor split into parts. Or there is something deeply wrong with our concept of personal identity and there is really no such thing, no self; that would be the Buddhist view.
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