Resurrection or re-creation?

by teel 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  teel

  This thing (along with Jehovah's capability to know everything before, wich leads to predetermination) bothered me the most while I was a practicant JW, and the topic of JWs mourning brought it back to me. Maybe someone could shed a light on how JWs cope with this problem. I've seen this mentioned at other places too, so it's not just me who thought of this problem.

  As we all know, JW doctrine tells that absolutely nothing survives the death. You have no soul that travels to God, your body is dead. At the resurrection you will get your body back in a perfect condition. Yet the original body is most likely decomposed by then. So this raises a problem: if nothing survived death, then the person that will be resurrected won't be me, it will be a perfect copy of myself.

  To give a parallel: let's suppose humanity develops a way to scan every single atom in my body, and to put a corresponding atom 1 meter away from me. This would be the absolutely perfect cloning system: all my memories (stored in the brain cells in my body) would be copied, along with my personality, my looks, etc. This is what according to JW doctrine God does when you die - copy every single little bit of you. But the catch is: it's still a copy! Taking that imaginary perfect cloning system, I'll be standing there looking at my perfect copy, who behave perfectly the same as I do, has the exact same memory as I do, but it's still not me!

  So what is the JW stand on this, anyone knows? As I see it according to JWs, you better not die before Armageddon, because by the looks of it you'll be dead forever, with no chance of resurrection. And you still have to do your best, so that a copy of yours can some day walk again the Earth
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  wantstoleave

  I think recent light suggests noone will be resurrected looking exactly as they did before, but that loved ones will be able to recognise the person as they will look similar. Don't mind if someone jumps in and finishes this off for me, I'm a bit rusty on things like this. But I'm fairly sure the thought had changed to this.
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  teel

  Ok wantstoleave, but that doesn't change the original problem, so now we're dealing with a copy that's not 100% of yourself, but it's still copy
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  wantstoleave

  I don't know. I don't pretend to know...lol. Strictly speaking though, you wouldn't be standing there looking at yourself if it were you...copy or otherwise...lol. That's IF this actually happens anyway. This kind of stuff makes my brain hurt...lol.
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  inbetween

  its so funny, because the other night, during some boring points in the meeting, I was pondering over the exact same question...

  it comes down to the question: what constitues an individual being ? just the "matter" or is there more ?
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  wantstoleave

  Now my brain hurts more :P.....lol
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  inbetween

  yeah, it hurts

  however, when the "soul" is just the combination of matter (dust from the earth) and an impersonal life-force , then a resurreection would be a re-creation right ? then you would be a copy of yourself, with all the memory restored, you would appear to others certainly as the same person, they could not tell a difference, but what about your real self ?

  what about the free will ?

  all this thoughts scared me actually
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  Deputy Dog

  teel

  You hit the nail on the head. I like to ask JWs if God could make a perfect clone (as you suggested) and have that clone stand next to them with all their memories. Would it be OK with them (since they have been ressurected/recreated) if I killed the original "them" with a very painful death?

  For some reason that never seems to go over well.
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  Narkissos

  There is a narrative/imaginary gap in JW doctrine which more traditional words/notions like "soul" used to cover. The abstract, impersonal, pseudo-technical substitutes (like "life pattern") are not psychologically satisfying to most.

  Imo it is really pointless to try to avoid mythical language in "anthropology"; "person," "self" or "I" is no less mythical than "soul" or "spirit": "we" are mythical by essence.
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  moggy lover

  It is true that the Watchtower leadership and its followers have not really thought this thing through to its logical conclusion, but instead plod along on a whole series of assumptions.

  1 The Watchtower teaches that death results in annihilation, that is, being reduced to nothing. A dead person is as much nothing as he/she was before he/she was born

  2 God cannot resurrect nothing. Why? Because there is nothing to resurrect in the first place. This is not to say that He cannot create them, or even recreate them from nothing. But resurrect? Nope. If God could resurrect out of nothing then He could square a circle, or create a stone so heavy that He couldn't lift it.

  Can God resurrect Luke Skywalker, or the Lone Ranger? Nope. Why? Because neither actually exist. They are nothing. Can He create them if he wished? Yes. But that is not resurrection.

  3 So what the Watchtower teaches, and what the rank and file believe, is recreation which by some curious alchemy that defies logic, they regard as resurrection. As you mentioned above, a recreation is a copy of the original, but not the original. My advice to all Watchtower followers is to enjoy this life, because this is all you get. Once you die, only a non-biological, empty series of memories of you remain, to be implanted into a copy of you that has no conscious link to you, except by implication.

  4 In order for the person to be resurrected, there has to be a clear biological and organic link to to the original. You can call this enduring link a "soul" a "spirit" an "id" "ego" whatever, but that link must survive physical death to make resurrection meaningful.

  5 The most demonic aspect of this recreation teaching is what they have done to Jesus. According to the Watchtower, when Jesus died for "parts of three days" he too, was reduced to nothingness. Thus, "parts of three days" later, since there was nothing of Jesus to resurrect, the god of the Watchtower, recreated a copy of Jesus, call this copy Jesus mark2, and simply poured the inanimate remaining memories of the original Jesus into the copy. So the jerk who is prancing about in the heavenly realms at the moment, enjoying the benefits of immortal life, did nothing to earn his immortality. The Original, who did earn this has vanished into nothing.

  Sad.