Does some people's concepts of resurrection explain why they want to keep all their body parts even after an operation, to save for when they are buried. Does this mean all your original cells, etc., are the ones that will be resurrected. What happens if parts of you end up in the tree nearby, or the worms and insects, or the birds that eat the insects and worms? Seems like both concepts have their issues.
Resurrection or re-creation?
by teel 45 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Deputy Dog
blondy
Does this mean all your original cells, etc., are the ones that will be resurrected. What happens if parts of you end up in the tree nearby, or the worms and insects, or the birds that eat the insects and worms? Seems like both concepts have their issues.
You don't have any of the cells left, that you were born with today. But you didn't stop being you when your last baby cell died.
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blondie
Good point, DD.
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darthfader
DD: "But you didn't stop being you when your last baby cell died."
Yes, but there is a flow of information passed on to the subsequent cells. When we die.. all this information degrades into protein goo.. You might be able to clone someone from the remaining DNA, but their appearance will likely be different. The growing process makes us who we are physically as well as the DNA. Even Identical twins have the same DNA, but their environment was different. They share DNA, but their finger prints are different.
Darth Fader
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PSacramento
It so much simpler to accept that the spirit going back to God has all the ifo and traits needed to "revive" the ressurected body afterwards.
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Deputy Dog
darth
Yes, but there is a flow of information passed on to the subsequent cells.
I'm not denying that. In fact that makes my point. DNA doesn't make you you. Identical twins prove that. I believe our spirit/soul is the key.
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Leolaia
While the JW teaching suits modern materialist (non-essentialist) philosophy really well (that the "self" is a socio-psychological construction, not a "thing" with physical existence), it only poorly meshes with ancient ideas about a future resurrection which presume a tangible continuity between the original individual and the restored person raised from the dead via a postmortem intermdiate state (a continued existence of the "self" beyond death, whether physically or spiritually). For more on ancient Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian beliefs about the condition of the dead, see my comments here. The Society's position is designed to harmonize their belief that a person perishes at death (parallel to Sadducee eschatology, which did not include a hope for a resurection) with biblical ideas of resurrection (= Pharisee / early Christian eschatology), which ends up being an unworkable hybrid of the two.
Since the hope of a future resurrection presumes some sort of continuity between the person who died and the resurrected individual, the Society tries to establish this thread of continuity by conjecturing that God will remember the "life pattern" of the individual (stored as information in God's vast memory banks) and restore this same "life pattern" in a new body (remind anyone of the Schwarzenegger movie The Sixth Day?). A particularly weak attempt to ground this teaching biblically is to point to the use of the word mnémeion "tomb" (overtranslated in the NWT as "memorial tomb," since the word is etymologically derived from the word meaning "remember") as indicating that the dead would be resurrected out of God's memory:
*** w58 3/1 p. 159 Questions From Readers ***
[T]he principal thing is to be remembered not by humans but by Almighty God, to be retained in his memory as deserving of another life by the resurrection from the dead. Evidently when the Lord Jesus said: "The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment," he was referring to God’s memory, to the dead being retained in God’s mind. Our being retained in his memory is most important, because he is the only one who has power to raise the dead by means of Jesus Christ during his thousand-year reign over mankind. Because the Greek word used here by Jesus, mnemei´on, includes the thought of memory, we may have hope for those who are dead in the memorial tombs that they will be remembered by God with a resurrection.
But mnémeion is simply the word for "tomb," as opposed to "grave". It should be abundantly obvious such a word was coined by ancient Greeks (who had no concept of resurrection) because tombs were places where the deceased is remembered and eulogized by other people (cf. our English expressions "memorial park," "memorial service"). This word was not invented by Jesus; it had a long history in Greek as a word for "tomb". The whole concept of "God's memory" is entirely external to the text and is quite plainly being read into it here.
But regardless of whether this concept is biblical or not, it does not supply the needed continuity between the "resurrected" person and the one that had died. Such continuity could be posited by construing the spirit that returns to God as some internal "essence" of the person that transfers his individuality to God, who would later restore that individual "spirit" -- tho unconscious -- to a new body. But this too is denied by the Society. The spirit is merely an impersonal animating life force, like electricity. In the 1 September 1955 Watchtower, the Society says that "when the dead body returns to the earth as it was, that spirit or active force that animated that body returns to its source, it quits operating in that body," such that "the spirit that then returns to God is not an invisible, immortal counterpart of that mortal body, having all its characteristics" (pp. 538-539). If the spirit does not preserve anything from the original, then the original person is fully destroyed at death. Thus we read:
*** w50 5/15 p. 149 par. 19 Living Up to the Name ***
Man is a living, sentient creature and, like all other animals, ceases to exist when he dies. (Ezek. 18:4, 20; Eccl. 3:19)
*** w65 12/1 p. 708 Is Your Life Affected by Angels? ***
Humans who have died could not be included among these angels, because at death a man’s personality does not continue to exist. "The living are conscious that they will die," the Bible says; "but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all." And of the death of man, the Scriptures say: "His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts do perish." No part of man continues alive.
*** vi p. 13 par. 21 [1986] Victory Over Death—Is It Possible for You? ***
When the body dies, the soul is dead, it ceases to exist. Neither do you become a disembodied spirit, or atma. Why not? Because the atma is the impersonal life-force, or spirit, which animates the living soul, and which empowers the soul to think, move, and live. When the life-force, or atma, is extinguished within the living soul, the effect is similar to what happens when electricity is withdrawn from a light bulb. The light is extinguished. Where does the light go? It simply becomes nonexistent.
*** bh chap. 6 p. 58 par. 5 [2005] Where Are the Dead? ***
What happens at death is no mystery to Jehovah, the Creator of the brain. He knows the truth, and in his Word, the Bible, he explains the condition of the dead. Its clear teaching is this: When a person dies, he ceases to exist. Death is the opposite of life. The dead do not see or hear or think. Not even one part of us survives the death of the body.
Note that the Society is explicit that "not even one part of us survives the death of the body," for the person becomes non-existent at death. With the destruction of the original anything else has to be a copy. One could say that God's memory could preserve a most perfect record of a person's personality and characteristics, but it is still a copy. Nothing could logically prevent God from remembering my "life pattern" as of this moment and create another Leolaia with my memories and sense of individuality. Which of those two Leolaias is "me", or would both be two separate individuals? Would I have no fear of death because I know that I am already alive as Leolaia #2 and thus I would not really be dead if I jump from a bridge, as I am already living my life elsewhere? The only difference between this and the JW resurrection hope is that the "resurrected" person is created shortly before the original person dies. That's the only difference. And yet I think that you would be reluctant to think that such a doppelganger would continue to live your life if you should meet an untimely death. The JW resurrection hope is a hope precisely because it is supposed to comfort the ego fearing extinction by death; its psychological appeal is still rooted culturally in essentialist thinking (i.e. that there is an "I" that will still live beyond death). But the memory/copy model that the Society posits as restoring the ego after death is one that is at odds with our basic notions of individuality and selfhood. These topics come up frequently in this forum because people do notice the tension between the two.
I first encountered the JW teaching at the age of 8. The book was Life Does Have a Purpose (published in 1977) and we were considering it at the book study. And we came to pp. 116-117 which introduced the "God's memory" concept: "In order to resurrect a person, God has to know everything about him. Only with this information can God bring back the same person with the same personality, so that the individual will be himself and recognize himself". It sounded pretty clear here that there is a continuity of existence — the individual would BE the SAME person as before. This would be understandable if my existence has been preserved in God's memory and that God will restore this existence in a new body. But to illustrate this, the book has on the same page a picture of a film recording that quite clearly is a copy of the original voice and appearance of a person. This confounded me a great deal. I just knew instinctively that a tape-recording was not the same thing as the original, so how could a resurrected person be the same person that had died? Then a few weeks later, the book study covered the same concept again:
*** lp chap. 15 p. 175 par. 16 The End of Sickness and Death ***
As to the resurrected ones, God will accurately "re-create" each individual with his entire life pattern, personality and memory just as it was. The one resurrected will be able to identify himself as the same person. Also, his former associates will know him by his appearance and characteristics. He can then resume life after the interruption caused by his death, possessing the same motivations, leanings and traits that he displayed beforehand. However, his past sins and mistakes will not be brought up as charges against him. Why not? Because God’s purpose in bringing him back to earth is to provide opportunity for him to take advantage of Christ’s sacrifice and be freed of sin. Yet, what the individual did in the past, if bad, would have its effect on his personality, and the resulting bad traits would have to be overcome. The more unrighteous his past course was, the more he will have to change. Some may not take advantage of the opportunity to change.—Isaiah 26:10.
To the person who is resurrected, the time period that he was dead would be, to him, only an instant, since death is a nonexistence. It is likened in the Bible to a deep sleep. (John 11:11-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13, 14; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10) Thousands of years, or a day, would seem like only a moment of time. To the one resurrected, the experience would be like walking through a doorway out of the present wicked system of things into the righteous, orderly new system of things.
This only intensified my confusion. Here the book is saying that death brings "nonexistence" and that the resurrection involves God "re-creating" the person, not bringing back the original. So, again, how can the resurrected person be the same person who died if that person became nonexistent? The statement "the one resurrection will be able to identify himself as the same person" rang hollow. She may think she is the same person, but is she really the same person? So little 8-year-old me raised my hand to ask this question. I don't remember very many comments I made at the meetings, but I do remember this one. I turned their attention to the picture on p. 117 and pointed out that a tape-recording makes a copy of the original voice, so if that is a copy, wouldn't the resurrected person be a copy too? In what way is it the same person? I really wanted to know, because both of my grandmothers had just died and I wanted to know if I would see them again. But the elder presiding over the book study didn't give my a satisfactory answer, he just assured me that I would understand when I grow up. But I think I hit upon the very paradox of the JW resurrection belief.
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quietlyleaving
But I think I hit upon the very paradox of the JW resurrection belief. yes I too think you did
Also, his former associates will know him by his appearance and characteristics. what if none of his former associates come back? How lonely and isolated is he gonna feel? And those who'd prefer to forget their past selves will have the opportunity to invent a more glorious one. Princes/elders will be kept busy, identity cards will need issuing etc etc. The WTS' version of Jesus and Jehovah must be rubbing their hands in glee at the amount of control they are going to be called upon to exercise to keep people in line.
I'd much prefer to stay in my grave
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PSacramento
When Jesus resurrected Lazarus it was the Lazarus "of old" not a copy or what not, samething with the dead girl.
When Elijah ressurected the dead boy it said that "his spirit" came backto him and as such we can p[ossible conclude that the spirit is the key, it returns to God with all that a person is intact, upon the ressurection of the body, the spirit returns with all memories and qualites intact.
The ressurected body is now not just alive, but with its original soul and spirit.
The transfiguration of Christ on the mountain, when he shoots the shit with Moses and Elijah, gives us a glimpes of that "afterlife".
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wobble
What did Jesus mean when he said Lazarus was not dead,but sleeping ?
Surely in line with PSac's comment above he meant that Lazarus had not been annihilated, but lived on in a state somewhat like sleep, and so Jesus was able to bring back the real,original Lazarus.
Of course this shows up the WT doctrine for what it is, ill thought out hogwash.
Love
Wobble