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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <1606@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Sep-85 22:15:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1606
Posted: Mon Sep 16 22:15:59 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 00:49:04 EDT
References: <1590@umcp-cs.UUCP> <726@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 115

In article <726@utastro.UUCP> padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) writes:

>>>You claimed that "you" would be resurrected. That is a statement implying
>>>identity transfer. By all that you continue to say, you being resurrected
>>>is the same as you being generated from all the data that describes you,
>>>i.e., a copy is made of you. Therefore, by your own reasoning, identity is
>>>transferred through the copying process. The issue is not whether the copy
>>>has similar attributes, but whether it is "you"? You claim that it is,
>>>which is absurd since multiple copies can be made from the same data that
>>>the first one was made from.

>> So what?  What is absurd about it?  What is this "you" thing, anyway?  I
>> thought you were supposed to be a strict materialist.  All of a sudden
>> there's this "you" which somehow makes one copy of me unlike another.
>> And I don't recall God promising to raise up "exactly one" of me.

>Now Charles, whether I am a strict materialist is beside the point, so
>stop digressing. As far as the absurdity is concerned, I will spell it
>out for you below.

>> I thought you were supposed to be a strict materialist; now you're talking
>> like some sort of Platonist, since you have rather suddenly started arguing
>> for the supernatural existence of things like numbers, programs, words,
>> etc. If you are going to make that kind of argument, then you might as well
>> express a belief in souls and be done with it.

>What I believe has nothing to do with the internal consistency of
>your claims. To bring this up is just an attempt to change the topic.
>I am showing you that severe problems exist with your set of beliefs given
>the assumptions you make.

So many promises.....

>>>You continue to refuse to face up to the problem that there is a sense
>>>of identity that has to be ascribed to each object produced by a template
>>>on an assembly line that allows one to refer to a particular one as "it"; 

>> Well, of course there is, and the fact that you raise this objection
>> indicates that either you didn't read what I said or didn't understand it,
>> as evidenced by the following:

>>>To follow your matter transfer analogy a bit, would you say the
>>>guy at the other end  was resurrected? What if the machine made copies?
>>>Which of the copies is "him"? 

>> Both of them are distinct "him"s.  One is a "him" that was not
>> matter-transmitted, and the other is the "him" that was.  Each of them is
>> the person that went to the matter transmitter, but they are not each
>> other; they are distinct human beings, even though they are both the same
>> person as "him" in the past.  It is not a transitive relationship.

>Now here's the absurdity bit. Suppose your wife meets you after you
>have been resurrected into two identities say, which one does she 
>identify as being her husband? 

Oddly enough, scripture has an answer for that.  A Sadducee asked Jesus what
happens when a woman marries 7 men, and then dies.  Which is her husband in
Heaven?  Jesus replied that the question was ill-formed, that marriage
didn't exist in Heaven in the form we know of.

To make the question more difficult, let's go back to the copy model again.
Unless you want to take a supernatural view of marriage, I think it's quite
arguable that either (a) she is married to both, or (b) she can only be
married to one, and therefore must choose.  I think it is significant that
both the copy and the original will identify her as being their wife;
in fact, each will know her to be his wife.  Sure, there appears to be
absurdity here, but isn't it possible that the absurdity is in the notion of
marriage instead?  And since when has absurdity been a standard for truth?

>> Again you have misrepresented my thoughts.  I said it was NOT NECESSARY to
>> believe in souls to be a Christian.  THe fact that many (even most)
>> christians do is of no relevance.

>Perhaps, but it is most unusual. Since Christ is supposed to have spent
>much time trying to "save" us, and "died for us", it does seem somewhat
>absurd for someone to call themselves christian and ignore all his
>references to salvation.

Which is a quite irrelevant unless you can demonstrate that only souls can
be saved (maintaining the definition of soul as you and Rich have all along).

>>>Why don't we take a poll on the net (which I will do immediately) to
>>>see who's in tune with christian thought on the issue?

>> The fact that you think that in any way resolves the issue indicates that
>> you have no appreciation of the diversity of views within Christianity.

>Well look here, the recent Don Black also claimed to be christian; are
>christians to be associated with the likes of him just because he lays
>claim to the name? There has to be some set of criteria against which
>such claims are to be assessed. The set traditionaly has contained
>the existence of god and the existence of the soul. It has also
>included concepts such as salvation, sin, love etc.

The simplest definition of a christian is that he or she is a person who
believes in eternal life given through Jesus Christ through the resurrection.
THis even includes what are generally considered to be heretical sects.
"Traditionally" is a word whose usage is quite dubious when a particular
denomination is not being referred to; on questions of theology, differing
denominations have held often quite contradictory views on almost every
subject.  The existence of souls is one of them.  Various doctrines change
too; the Episcopalians have just this past week struck the "filoque" clause
from the Nicene Creed.  So the fact that the RC church has asserted souls
for 10 centuries does not in and of itself signify anything.

>I suppose that there is little else to be said on this topic since
>it boils down to a matter of opinion on both sides. However I am still
>fascinated and am curious as to why the concept of soul has been dropped
>by you. Its explanatory power is tremendous, and is just as plausible,
>perhaps even more so than the resurrection. It does have the disadvantage
>of forcing the introduction of sin, punishment etc. into ones viewpoint.

I have my reasons.  THey are not relevant to this argument.

Charley Wingate


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