Resurrection or re-creation?

by teel 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  VM44

  Ask yourself this question.

  Why should the original person living now have any anticipation of expericing the sensations of a "resurrected" person in the future?

  The resurrected person is a distinct individual, that just so happens to have the "life pattern" or memories of the original imprinted upon it.

  IT IS A COPY!

  If you had a perfect copy of a Ming vase, and the original was destroyed, would it be legal to claim the copy as the original?

  The Watchtower concept of the resurrection is bankrupt!
• 

  quietlyleaving

  VM44 I so agree with you

  When I was a dub, to clarify how God resurrects from his memory after a person has died, I remember using the illustration of video storage of info re people. I think the WTS does use this example to emphasize how resurrections are possible in the new system.

  But now I can see the problem that confronts God. Once he makes the transfer from his memory to a new body surely a change in personality will occur? Another brain, another body, will the person even sense who they were? I think that it is very possible that they will have something like amnesia and will have to be told who they were. What are the chances that they will rebel against being told who they were and decide that they want to be their own new person? (A bit like we are today I want to break free!!)

  btw the greek word for I is ego (εγω)
• 

  teel

  quietlyleaving, I've also heard that illustration several times, and it just highlights the problem more It is not me on that video tape, it is a copy of me.
• 

  inbetween

  so a resurrected person is somebody, who thinks he is me.....

  TOH: the problem with the life-force going back to god is, that it is interchangable, not personal, because if it were personal, whats the diffrence to a soul ?

  another problem: we say, emory will be restored too, but if I loose all my memory (amnesia) I will be a different personaltiy, but it still would be me....,

  I dont know, does anybody has some aspirin ?
• 

  Narkissos

  My perfect clone would recognize himself as ME, but would I be recognizing myself?

  This sentence (by teel) sums it up perfectly.

  But the same aporia is constitutive of the problem of identity and memory; it (re-)emerges as soon as you try to question, avoid or surpass mythological thinking of the "self" as "the little person inside," who was continuously there since you were born, night and day, who remained him/herself through all the changes, and who will be there till you die. Logically (mytho-logically) death is just another change for this "little person inside": he/she/it has to be there after you die; it can move elsewhere, up, down or into another body; pushing the "logic" one step further it even had to be there before "you" were born.

  Now try to dispense with this mythological self-image altogether. What makes the continuity of "you" except memory which works only "backwards," which is not even "something" that "remains" but a narrative and imaginary reconstruction? Where is "actually" the little boy or girl you were?

  Trying to escape mythology at this point only results in poorer mythology. This the WT version of re-creation illustrates. But the other versions, whether religious (soul, spirit) or secular (I, ego, self, subject) are only better inasmuch as you don't try to open the "box," i.e. to understand what your preferred word/notion for "you" actually stands for.
• 

  TheOldHippie

  teel - I know your comments on the 2 versus 100 % of brain usage are correct, I was just wondering if there has been any research into the animal reign as you mention; do the animals use their brain more "to the full" than we do?

  narkissos - "Where is "actually" the little boy or girl you were?" It is so strange, when I look at old photos of myself, I find myself looking at a stranger. I can see he has some physical familiarity - but I am looking at a stranger, perhaps at a distant relative. I look at the family members this "I" am surrounded by on the photos, or the schoolmates, friends etc. - and I recongnise and remember THEM - BUT NOT ME ..............
• 

  Narkissos

  TOH: For some reasons your post reminds me of two things:

  - Lacan's understanding of "self" as imaginary, "mirror" (speculum), hence reverse, projection. We could never see ourselves "objectively" as others did. Except by reversing a reverse image (adding a second mirror to the first); not in an immediate, but doubly mediate, reflexive, way.

  - One of Hermann Hesse's last short novels, where he describes a little boy in a town fair, captivated by the show he is watching to the point of forgetting everything about him-self. The reflection of pure exteriority in his eyes. Ek-stasis.

  I found an old classroom photograph in my mother's house recently; I was the only one not looking at the camera, but at one of my classmates (probably clowning about). That look -- which was all about somebody else, interested, alienated in a sense -- I recognised.

  Whoever loses himself finds himself?
• 

  Tuesday

  Hi there teel, I did a youtube video on this over a year ago, the question you have is the same one I had and it still hasn't been answered in the slightest.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7B14DsW9O4

  Check out the comments you might find something you like there.
• 

  teel

  Hey Tuesday, I saw your video before you posted it here (That's why I used the term recreation in my post - I am not native english speaking, so you helped me give it a proper name to it ) Your video confirmed to me that it is indeed a tough and deep question that comes up for many people independent of each other; it is not something to be shoved easily under the rug with a generalization, like "wait for Jehovah to clarify" or "we can't comprehend in our current state, wait until we're perfect".
• 

  jwfacts

  The Watchtower concept is not a resurrection as it is not bring the same person back to life. The term re-creation is a better description, since God would re-create a copy of what once existed. This is an unsatisfying concept as the copy is not actually myself.

  It parallels with a scan or photocopy. If I was to scan and save a document, and then print another copy of the document from the saved scan the contents would be the same, but it would not be the same document. I could burn and destroy the document and then re-print one copy or thousands of copies, or even keep the original and print off other copies.

  In like manner, God could re-create thousands of versions of us, and even do that while we are still alive. It brings up the question of who we really are and what it means to be alive. If God chose to re-create/resurrect several versions of the same person simultaneously, then they would start as identical clones, but then evolve into different beings. Since they could not all co-habit the same space at the same time, they would be forced to live different lives, take different jobs, marry different people and as a result over time with develop into different human beings.