Immortality

[klaus54]

Nope, only three - same category.

Nope, four.

Elijah was taken to heaven on a visible chariot of fire. Enoch was "translated", whatever the heck that means.

K54

[Teallaura]

Nope, four.

Elijah was taken to heaven on a visible chariot of fire. Enoch was "translated", whatever the heck that means.

K54

Neither died: three.

[klaus54]

Neither died: three.

Those alive at the Parousia would have not died either.

So, Two or Four. You're (Edited: "Your") choice.

K54

[Sam]

Of course this would become a philosophy of mind discussion. Nerds.

[Duragizer]

All that's needed now is a discussion on whether or not Star Trek transporters kill the people who step into them and then this thread will be complete.

[Sparko]

I already am immortal. All of us Christians are.

[Cerebrum123]

All that's needed now is a discussion on whether or not Star Trek transporters kill the people who step into them and then this thread will be complete.

[Jedidiah]

All that's needed now is a discussion on whether or not Star Trek transporters kill the people who step into them and then this thread will be complete.

Too late. Already done.

[shunyadragon]

I already am immortal. All of us Christians are.

Which ones?

[Duragizer]

Which ones?

The ones who put the spirit of Jesus' law before the letter of it, hopefully.

[Sparko]

Which ones?

all Christians. Like I said in another thread, there are those who claim to be Christian but are not. But all who are Christians are saved and will live forever.

[Carrikature]

This assumes that we really know all about what consciousness really is. You will find differences of opinion on this.

But not from a scientific perspective. We've found 0 evidence that there's anything going on that's not physical. We're to the point that we can specifically trigger certain neurons and get a resulting action. Belief in souls or some metaphysical aspect of consciousness is arrived at from other beliefs, not from the science.

Both Teal and Cere have touched upon this. A copy of you is not you really. If I enter a device to make a copy (more than just a clone) when I exit I will be able to see another person who looks just like me. But it is not me. There is now another person who will continue to live while I presumably continue to age and die. You can play games with it but it is not me.

There's too much here that's been over-simplified. The only sense in which you can claim that a copy is not identical is spatial location, but there's no indication I've seen that this is really a deal breaker. Any copy is identical to you at the time which the copy is taken. If we were to copy you and kill you off, then put that copy into an identical clone, 'you' would not know that anything was amiss. I don't see a basis from which to claim that an identical duplicate of your body and consciousness is any way 'not you'. Your thoughts, memories, emotions, physical reactions...everything that makes you 'you' is identical. The only thing left is some concept of a soul, but again that's not remotely supported in the science. The typical protest is effectively that scientists can't look for such a thing, but that's simply not true. Even if scientific measurements of a soul are impossible, we should still see some gap in our physical explanations of the processes involved. So far, those do not exist, and there aren't any indications that they will. To some degree, I view the arguments over philosophy of mind with some degree of amusement given that the options are vanishing in light of what we're actually discovering in neuroscience. Most people fail to understand just how far along we really are.

[Sparko]

But not from a scientific perspective. We've found 0 evidence that there's anything going on that's not physical. We're to the point that we can specifically trigger certain neurons and get a resulting action. Belief in souls or some metaphysical aspect of consciousness is arrived at from other beliefs, not from the science.




There's too much here that's been over-simplified. The only sense in which you can claim that a copy is not identical is spatial location, but there's no indication I've seen that this is really a deal breaker. Any copy is identical to you at the time which the copy is taken. If we were to copy you and kill you off, then put that copy into an identical clone, 'you' would not know that anything was amiss. I don't see a basis from which to claim that an identical duplicate of your body and consciousness is any way 'not you'. Your thoughts, memories, emotions, physical reactions...everything that makes you 'you' is identical. The only thing left is some concept of a soul, but again that's not remotely supported in the science. The typical protest is effectively that scientists can't look for such a thing, but that's simply not true. Even if scientific measurements of a soul are impossible, we should still see some gap in our physical explanations of the processes involved. So far, those do not exist, and there aren't any indications that they will. To some degree, I view the arguments over philosophy of mind with some degree of amusement given that the options are vanishing in light of what we're actually discovering in neuroscience. Most people fail to understand just how far along we really are.

So let's say I make a copy of you. Then I go to you, the original, and say "OK see that copy over there? He is completely identical to you as of 10 seconds ago. In fact he thinks he is you. So I am here to shoot you in the head because we are not allowed to have more than one copy of a person around at a time"

You would be OK with being shot in the head?


I recently read an interesting book about something like this. Where they scan your mind into a perfect android body. But the original is still left. Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer. It gets a little weird towards the end but it's a good sci-fi story.

I am currently listening to an audio book series by B V Larson, the undying mercenaries series, consisting of Steel World, Dust world, and Tech World.

The premise is like a mix between starship troopers and universal soldier. These mercs go around fighting wars for hire, but when they are killed their minds are transferred to a new body grown from a scan using some alien tech. Interesting.

[Jedidiah]

But not from a scientific perspective. We've found 0 evidence that there's anything going on that's not physical. We're to the point that we can specifically trigger certain neurons and get a resulting action. Belief in souls or some metaphysical aspect of consciousness is arrived at from other beliefs, not from the science.

I simply said we do not "really know all about what consciousness really is." This does not speak to whether it is all physical or not.

. . . If we were to copy you and kill you off, then put that copy into an identical clone, 'you' would not know that anything was amiss. . . .

If you were to kill me then I would be dead regardless of what this identical clone would know.

[Sparko]

I simply said we do not "really know all about what consciousness really is." This does not speak to whether it is all physical or not.




If you were to kill me then I would be dead regardless of what this identical clone would know.

I totally agree.

Someone once posed an interesting question though. How much of you can you replace or lose before you are not really you any more? For instance if you lose a leg and get an artificial one, you are still you. If you got organ transplants you are still you, right? But let's say you could replace all of your organs except your brain, would you still be you? What if you could replace your entire body (basically a brain transplant) into a clone of your body? Would you still be you then?
What if science found a way to replace damaged brain cells with cloned ones, or even some technological device (nanocells)? and they could replace them one at a time. At what point do you stop being you? Eventually they could replace every brain cell with an identical copy one at a time. So eventually your brain would not be your original brain any more.