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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What historical information could make you lose faith?
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
There's going to be a lot of fighting for atoms.
Yes - I will be part of fish and shellfish which get eaten by other people. In fact my atoms may be recycled many, many times - so who do those atoms belong to come the day?
I'm beginning to think there can't possibly be any connection between the two.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
There's going to be a lot of fighting for atoms.
Yes - I will be part of fish and shellfish which get eaten by other people. In fact my atoms may be recycled many, many times - so who do those atoms belong to come the day?
I'm beginning to think there can't possibly be any connection between the two.
And that's your prerogative, Boogie.
The whole thing is - is bound to be - a great mystery, however it happens. But I personally can't see how the alternative concepts of resurrection are any less implausible/"impossible" or staisfactory than the accounts involving substantial continuity/transformation. None of them are entirely comprehensible this side the grave anyway.
My intervention here was merely to point out that Leo's claim that St Paul somehow rejects the continuity/transformation account that the Gospels give us (empty tomb, stone rolled, discarded grave colthes, retention of some of Christ's wounds, etc.) is completely mistaken and cannot be borne by the actual text of his writings.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The false dichotomy is that you imply that either what Paul believed about the esurrection is true or that the resurrection body is substantially related to the dead body, but not both. But in fact nothing in Paul suggests that he does not think that the body in the tomb was resurrected as the Risen Christ. In fact, his analogy of the seed that is buried in the ground and "dies" implies a relationship between the seed and the subsequent plant that involves substantial relationship - the seed becomes, is transformed into the grown plant. If you found an acorn in an old drawer that someone else claimed had grown into the mighty oak tree which is in the garden, you'd have good reason to doubt him.
Paul's analogy if fact refutes your assertion that he thinks that there is no substantial relationship between the pre- and post-resurrection body/ies.
1 Cor 15:44 differentiates natural and spiritual bodies.
The former, in v. 47 is 'from the hearth' whereas the latter is from heaven.
v.50 the perishable doesn't inherit the imperishable
The seed is an analogy, not literal fact.
It all points to God creating a new body - in Jesus's case as the firstfruits of the new creation.
It all points to God creating a new body out of the old one.
God creates a new body - yes- out of the plans, the memoriees, the personality of the old one but not out of the molecules of cremated remains.
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
How about a more 21st century analogy?
"For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."
I hope for a reboot, after death, into a more powerful operating system. God will have all of our essentials on a data stick, perhaps. In due course when the OS in the new heaven and earth is up and running he'll download us all unto a system with much more processing power. And we'll really be able to do some stuff then!
I couldn't have put it better. It's an update of John Hick (but also of more orthodox thinkers) talking about a novel written in paper but thrown away and burnt. The author rewrites the novel on noew paper and with improvrmentsd to the chief character.
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My Jewish-positive lectionary blog is at http://recognisingjewishrootsinthelectionary.wordpress.com/
My reviews at http://layreadersbookreviews.wordpress.com
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
God creates a new body - yes- out of the plans, the memoriees, the personality of the old one but not out of the molecules of cremated remains.
Obviously a cross-post with what I was saying to Boogie, but, I'm sorry, leo - that just makes no sense to me.
Of course, maybe you're closer to the truth about this than I am - I can't say since I don't even understand what you just said even means - but, whatever else, you can't claim that Paul is your ally here. He clearly goes for the kind of transformative continuity model that you claimed he rejected, as I think I have demonstrated above.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Yes - I will be part of fish and shellfish which get eaten by other people. In fact my atoms may be recycled many, many times - so who do those atoms belong to come the day?
Let's do some back of the envelope estimates.
The current population of human beings is approximately 1/20th of the total number ever.
There are about 7.5 billion, each of whom is less than about 100kg. That's 7.5 billion x 20 x 100 kg = 15 000 billion kg = 1.5 * 10^13 kg.
About 70% of our bodies is water, or so we're told. There's an xkcd here about how much of the water in you has ever been drunk. You've drunk far more water in your life than currently forms part of your body.
I think if we ignore the water, the major elemental component of our bodies is carbon. There's a lot of carbon around in various parts of the carbon cycle. Let's just concentrate on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, since that's not part of anything else.
According to wikipedia the total mass of the atmosphere is 5.5 * 10^18 kg. 0.04% of that, or 1/2500 is carbon dioxide. So that's about 2 * 10^14 kg. (The Carbon Cycle gives a larger figure for carbon in the atmosphere; the rest is methane.) So the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere weighs ten times more than the total number of human beings that have ever lived.
If humans are 70% water, and everything that isn't water is carbon then the proportion of carbon in carbon dioxide and in human beings is about similar.
That's assuming all the carbon in people comes from carbon dioxide (and not all the rest of the carbon cycle). To say at most 10% of your carbon has once been part of another human being is very much an upper estimate.
So I think there are plenty of atoms to spare.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
There's going to be a lot of fighting for atoms.
Yes - I will be part of fish and shellfish which get eaten by other people. In fact my atoms may be recycled many, many times - so who do those atoms belong to come the day?
I'm beginning to think there can't possibly be any connection between the two.
Well then, you won't be you then. In fact, there will be no resurrection. God will just be creating a whole load of completely new people.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So souls are atomic?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Since this thread now seems to have fixed firmly on this tangent, let me put a toe in the water, partly with the benefit of previous Ship discussions on the subject (unfortunately, the memorably titled What happened to all the fish? thread is nowhere to be found).
1) A distinction needs to be drawn between ressuscitations (Lazarus) back to an earthly body, and resurrection.
2) A distinction may also be drawn between Jesus' resurrection body (which briefly inhabited this world before ascending into heaven) and the believers' resurrection body which Paul describes and which belongs to the incorruptible Kingdom of God. In other words, whatever process was involved in Jesus' resurrection is not necessarily exactly the same as what awaits believers.
3) While the very strong inference (to my mind) of the NT is that Jesus' resurrection body somehow used the components of his pre-resurrection body, nowhere does it actually say so. We have a body, then an absence of body accompanied by an announcement that "he is no longer here", then a resurrection appearance.
4) No matter how you look at it, that appearance is odd. Nobody recognises him. The end of Mark even suggests he appeared in different forms to different people ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
5) I think Paul's explanation in Corinthians makes a strong case for some sort of bodily resurrection, but does not require physical or biochemical continuity.
6) I have realised that the Bible doesn't actually say precisely whatever happened at the resurrection, whatever some people may assert. There is definitely a lot left unsaid and no doubt that's how it should be. At the same time, having been soul-searchingly round the question several times, I personally am back with Paul in affirming that if there is no resurrection, we are to be pitied the most among all men.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
I'm broadly with you on all that, Eutychus. I just want to comment on the last two bits.
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
5) I think Paul's explanation in Corinthians makes a strong case for some sort of bodily resurrection, but does not require physical or biochemical continuity.
6) [...] I personally am back with Paul in affirming that if there is no resurrection, we are to be pitied the most among all men.
Yup. It's just that, if there is no kind of transformative "physical" (if we quite know what the physical really is) continuity, I cannot see why it is a resurrection - rather than re-creation ex nihilo - at all. What is a bodily resurrection without some - albeit mysterious - bodily continuity? Again, in both the Apostles' and the Athanasian creeds we talk not of the resurrection of the person but excplicitly of the body.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
if there is no kind of transformative "physical" (if we quite know what the physical really is) continuity, I cannot see why it is a resurrection - rather than re-creation ex nihilo - at all. What is a bodily resurrection without some - albeit mysterious - bodily continuity?
I don't know the precise answers to these questions!
I think that the emphasis on the body is perhaps less to insist on actual physical continuity (that's my takeaway from the narratives of Jesus' resurrection stopping short of that) than to make the point that the hereafter will be tangible and not ethereal - embodied, in fact.
We are not looking at ex nihilo creation inasmuch as the resurrection body comprises at least some characteristics of the old one, right through into heaven - the Lamb that was slain. But I'm not sure even that implies physical, atomic continuity as we can apprehend it in our limited, three-dimensional understanding of things.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
Eutycus,
To pick up on one of your points, you say that we cannot necessarily equate Christ's resurrection with our resurrection. I would argue that we must. It is Christ's resurrection which gives us hope in the general resurrection precisely because it is of the same kind. He is the first of a new creation of which we will also be part, otherwise him becoming man was pointless.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The only continuity that matters is of me.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Yes - I will be part of fish and shellfish which get eaten by other people. In fact my atoms may be recycled many, many times - so who do those atoms belong to come the day?
I'm beginning to think there can't possibly be any connection between the two.
Originally posted by Ad Orientum: quote:
Well then, you won't be you then. In fact, there will be no resurrection. God will just be creating a whole load of completely new people.
Why couldn't God upload 'me' into a new, shiny, heavenly body?
<code>
[ 22. November 2014, 15:00: Message edited by: Boogie ]
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Boogie
Are you sure there is any you apart from your body?
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
Boogie
Are you sure there is any you apart from your body?
Jengie
Nope
But, like I said, my parents (now) and me (in the future) will have no body to resurrect - we'll be being used by others - ultimate recycling! Fish food all.
Are you saying cremation and scattering ashes is wrong?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
But your body, the physical atoms of it, are not very important. (Proof? You trim your fingernails, do you not?) Did someone upthread mention that every atom of your body has been replaced since you were born? At least three or four times, probably.
What is important is the =data=. You are not your keyboard, or your server, or your wifi. The real you is your program. And I am sure God does good backups.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
But, like I said, my parents (now) and me (in the future) will have no body to resurrect - we'll be being used by others - ultimate recycling!
I think even at a gross underestimate, it'll be at least eighty generations, or two thousand years, before that's even half true (assuming the population rises by another two billion before it levels out).
Though given that many atoms replace themselves throughout our body, it's true that continuity of the same bit of stuff is probably unnecessary.
[ 22. November 2014, 16:56: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Eutycus,
To pick up on one of your points, you say that we cannot necessarily equate Christ's resurrection with our resurrection. I would argue that we must. It is Christ's resurrection which gives us hope in the general resurrection precisely because it is of the same kind. He is the first of a new creation of which we will also be part, otherwise him becoming man was pointless.
That's not quite what I said. I said we cannot necessarily equate Christ's resurrection body, or the modus operandi of his resurrection, exactly with ours. I think it might be a case apart just as the person of Christ is a case apart. That doesn't stop it being one that opens the way for the hope of the general resurrection.
Another key difference is that I don't see our resurrection bodies hanging around on this earth and I think that line of thinking is hard to escape in 1 Cor 15.
Also, in the case of Jesus, there is clearly an important (if ultimately unspecified) link between his dead body and his resurrection body. This cannot apply so directly for people long dead and decomposed nor, as has been pointed out, to those cremated or indeed vapourised through no volition of their own.
It seems to me that making too dogmatic or physical a link between the old body and the new goes one step beyond Scripture and that this is one unhelpful step.
Like I say, I think the point is that we will have an embodied future existence just like we have one now, and that there will be some continuity between the two bodies - but a mysterious one.
That's why I don't entirely agree with Brenda Clough - we are more than the programme, otherwise the incarnation is meaningless and we are in danger of becoming gnostics.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The only continuity that matters is of me.
Flippin' 'eck, we agree on something!!
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif) ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
I think the discussion about atoms and reconstituting all the bits from which to make a resurrected body rather misses the point, don't you think, everybody?
In my mind, the doctrine of the resurrection is simply what Martin implies - that we will be continuously ourselves. Whatever and however life after death happens, I want to be 'Me'. An isn't that what the doctrine of the resurrection of the body actually means?
If you believe in reincarnation, you come back as something else.
If you believe in the immortality of the soul, 'shuffling off this mortal coil' and flitting around in heaven, then you are less than the tripartite being you were in life.
The resurrection of the body ensures that whatever you are in this world, you will be again, fully identifiable, fully 'you' in the next, only immortal, glorified and amazing!
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The resurrection of the body ensures that whatever you are in this world, you will be again, fully identifiable, fully 'you' in the next, only immortal, glorified and amazing!
Amen
I'll leave the atoms to God - as we all have to, in the end ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
The resurrection of the body ensures that whatever you are in this world, you will be again, fully identifiable, fully 'you' in the next, only immortal, glorified and amazing!
Amen
I'll leave the atoms to God - as we all have to, in the end
What's going' on? An early Christmas truce??
I agree with Martin and now Boogie agrees with me?
![[Angel]](graemlins/angel.gif)
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
By the way, the 'being me' scenario is exactly why Jesus was bodily raised and walked out of that tomb!
Remember he said to the disciples, 'It is I, myself.'
He could not have said that had his decaying corpse been lying behind a rock.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Brenda Clough: This is what I mean:
This article seems to refute what you claimed earlier, that the important bit is the data that are stored in or memories.
(I find speculations about the way in which we'll be restored rather pointless myself.)
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Brenda Clough: This is what I mean:
This article seems to refute what you claimed earlier, that the important bit is the data that are stored in or memories.
(I find speculations about the way in which we'll be restored rather pointless myself.)
Yeah, akin to how many angels can dance on a pin or whether fish have souls...
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
That's why I don't entirely agree with Brenda Clough - we are more than the programme, otherwise the incarnation is meaningless and we are in danger of becoming gnostics.
Likewise. The "soul as software" idea is riven with philosophical problems.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
No truce Mudfrog He COULD have said that whilst looking at His trashed body. But He didn't.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Stone me guys! Who's literalist now?!
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
Why should we think that Paul knew anything at all about how the resurrection will work? Maybe he just made up a bunch of pious stuff to reassure the Corinthians. Or maybe he was writing about how he thought it would have to happen, but had no special insight that is above challenge.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I think the least that can be said is that Paul's life story indicates he firmly believed in a bodily resurrection (it is a recurrent theme in his preaching) and that this belief was central to his faith as a whole.
Claiming he was just making pious stuff up in 1 Cor 15 of course calls into question his integrity and that of the other apostles, which takes us back to the issue in the OP and seekingsister's answer on page 1 - if the whole thing were proved to be a scam.
The idea that we might have mistakenly taken the Scriptures for some ancient Lord of the Rings from which the preface has fallen off at some point is one that occasionally dogs me, but I find myself repeatedly coming back to the conclusion, for several reasons, that this scenario is more implausible than the scenario of the Scriptures being written with honest intent, to tell the truth.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
My guess is that Paul, like any human, was answering queries of others in his writings.
Early Christians had been bubbling with enthusiasm prior to Paul's conversion and no doubt theories, and explanations of the unexplainable were shooting around in all different directions.
Paul didn't so much make stuff up, his attempt was to crystallize his own spiritual experience and incorporate it with testimonies of those who had direct contact with Jesus.
If we really want to get ultra cynical about people inventing stories and reject the the resurrection, then ought we not to be challenging Mary Magdalene, (always strikes me as strange that her name doesn't appear in Paul's letters).
Thing is can any *information*, historical or otherwise make certain people lose faith? In the same way as if some scientist were to come up with unequivocal proof that planet Earth and all it's inhabitants were a complete freak of the the Cosmos, therefore making our existence, activities and aspirations all utterly pointless. Would such a revelation make secular folk give up the will to continue?
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
Yes, it's true; Paul's letters often contain responses to questions or situations. In the case of the bodily resurrection though, Paul isn't making anything up, neither is he introducing a new Christian doctrine. He's merely repeating Pharisaic belief and introducing the Messiah into it at as a present reality not just a Jewish future hope.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The "soul as software" idea is riven with philosophical problems.
Do please elaborate...
You really think the soul is hardware ?
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
It's not actually software. It's an analogy! And is that not actually what we are using, when we talk about the resurrection of the body? We aren't saying that we want to be zombies, the meat reanimated and tottering around moaning about brains. We want to be really ourselves, really back and returned to a genuine life, as Jesus offers us. How He actually achieves this I am quite willing to leave up to Him and the angelic software engineers.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
You really think the soul is hardware?
No. I think the soul is the form of the body. But really, that's a tangent too far.
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
And did he actually read what i said? My allusion was to software.
Yes, "he" did - you can always ask him yourself, you know. As it happens, this is the very first time you've used the word software on this thread so I can only guess where that allusion is meant to be.
Not only did I read what you said, I responded. So far you haven't yet responded to my argument that you get Paul wrong. Naturally, you needn't if you'd rather not.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
A false dichotomy Eutychus. Just because we ALL make ALL of this stuff up doesn't impugn our integrity.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The "soul as software" idea is riven with philosophical problems.
Do please elaborate...
You really think the soul is hardware ?
I think that talking about the soul as a definite thing is a problem.
Of course, software isn't a definite thing either. If I've got a copy of Windows Vista failing to run on my computer, that doesn't stop anybody else having a copy of Windows Vista failing to run on their computer. So are the two copies of Windows Vista different pieces of software or the same piece of software?
Now suppose souls run on bodies like Windows Vista doesn't run on PCs. Can you have the same soul running on two bodies? But two copies of Windows Vista can't share information unless they're hooked up to each other. And even Windows Vista can parallel process when it's running on two different machines. That would suggest that two bodies running the same soul are more like two different people than they are like two instances of the same person. That doesn't quite seem to be what the analogy of the soul is aiming for in this discussion, since it would suggest that your soul running on a different body is a different person from your soul running on your own body.
Have you seen Dollhouse (the television series)?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
A false dichotomy Eutychus. Just because we ALL make ALL of this stuff up doesn't impugn our integrity.
What makes you think that we are all making all of this up?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
A false dichotomy Eutychus. Just because we ALL make ALL of this stuff up doesn't impugn our integrity.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
The "soul as software" idea is riven with philosophical problems.
Do please elaborate...
You really think the soul is hardware ?
I think that talking about the soul as a definite thing is a problem.
Of course, software isn't a definite thing either. If I've got a copy of Windows Vista failing to run on my computer, that doesn't stop anybody else having a copy of Windows Vista failing to run on their computer. So are the two copies of Windows Vista different pieces of software or the same piece of software?
Now suppose souls run on bodies like Windows Vista doesn't run on PCs. Can you have the same soul running on two bodies? But two copies of Windows Vista can't share information unless they're hooked up to each other. And even Windows Vista can parallel process when it's running on two different machines. That would suggest that two bodies running the same soul are more like two different people than they are like two instances of the same person. That doesn't quite seem to be what the analogy of the soul is aiming for in this discussion, since it would suggest that your soul running on a different body is a different person from your soul running on your own body.
Have you seen Dollhouse (the television series)?
Isn't it the spirit that is immortal, and the soul is its vehicle, just as the body is the soul's vehicle? So the body has an organic life and intelligence/consciousness, just like the soul has a soul-ish consciousness.
The body's identity/consciousness can fragment in certain circumstances throughout life, and the soul's consciousness can fragment less easily, but this still happens. And occasionally I have also seen two souls occupying one body, though that is not usually a happy meeting. Does one soul occupy more than one body in one lifespan? Maybe. I don't think it's a particularly useful question - we are supposed to get on with the life that we have NOW in this body.
It's not really possible to conceive of the soul as software - because if it is, it operates in a very different manner to the software we are familiar with. The body has life and most of our experience in this world i through the alive body and its senses - which living awareness includes emotion and a few other aspects that form a large part of what we usually think of as "us" and "consciousness". The soul is more a ghost in the machine, and in turn the spirit is a ghost in the soul's machine. But nevertheless we can be aware of more than one layer.
[ 24. November 2014, 06:17: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
A false dichotomy Eutychus. Just because we ALL make ALL of this stuff up doesn't impugn our integrity.
Martin, we didn't make God up. You are deceived if you think so and If you are, then God has allowed that as a judgement because you have turned your back on truth. This if true is very sad. The postmodern Zeitgeist is a chimera. It seems you want to find hope by letting go of certainty. As king Lear said nothing can come of nothing ..seeking truth through questioning reality drove Sartre crazy and it will drive you crazy too. You remind me of Gogo in "Waiting For Godot."
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
A false dichotomy Eutychus. Just because we ALL make ALL of this stuff up doesn't impugn our integrity.
Martin, we didn't make God up. You are deceived if you think so and If you are, then God has allowed that as a judgement because you have turned your back on truth. This if true is very sad. The postmodern Zeitgeist is a chimera. It seems you want to find hope by letting go of certainty. As king Lear said nothing can come of nothing ..seeking truth through questioning reality drove Sartre crazy and it will drive you crazy too. You remind me of Gogo in "Waiting For Godot."
And I'd counter that by saying certainty is a chimera. Nothing is certain. You do not, cannot, know that God exists. You do not, cannot, know that Jesus rose from the dead, or in what form. You do not, cannot, know that you've not got it completely wrong and the Quran is the true revelation of God. You do not, cannot know that you are not an entity floating through space misinterpreting random quantum stimuli for the physical universe you perceive.
You may be fairly sure on one or more of those, but you do not, cannot, know.
Certainty is at best an illusion, at worst an unattainable phantom.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
When I say all, I mean all bar One, and even then. It's not what I think, it's what I KNOW. For a fact.
Who feels what you feel?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
You haven't answered my question.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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leo
Shipmate
# 1458
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
this is the very first time you've used the word software on this thread so I can only guess where that allusion is meant to be....
Not only did I read what you said, I responded. So far you haven't yet responded to my argument that you get Paul wrong. Naturally, you needn't if you'd rather not.
Someone else mentioned software. My analogy was of a novel - 'incarnated' in ink and paper, thrown into the fire and then later rewritten. The novel remained in the mind of God.
If the analogy is to software, the whole 'person' continues to exist in the computer's hard drive - or even in the mainframe of a network = the mind of God.
As to getting Paul wrong, I don't think I have. On the contrary I think Paul was getting at something like the above.
Posts: 23198 | From: Bristol | Registered: Oct 2001
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
If we have a "soul" separate from the body and it is like software. Are you still "you" if we "run" you in a different body? Say you are male and we "run" you in a female body with its own brain. Is that still "you"? I don't think it makes sense to conceive of a "Soul" separate from your body.
And the issue of identity gets even worse. What if we put "you" body and "soul" in the Arabian peninsula 500 years ago and you grow up in an adopted family. Is that still "you"?
We are contingent beings made up of our circumstances and material body. There is no "essence" that you can find separate from both our body and circumstances that is still "you".
And by contingent I clearly mean there is no "eternal essence" of "you" like a "soul" or "spirit".
And if you disagree please answer the questions raised above.
[ 24. November 2014, 13:48: Message edited by: Ikkyu ]
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
And if you disagree please answer the questions raised above.
I don't disagree - I just want to know where God will get my new body from.
(I told Mudfrog I'd leave it to God, but the only way to do that is to stop reading this thread and over-thinking it!)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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