The Resurrection

[Angrboda]

[John 6IX Breezy]

So this is different from a full resurrection of the body which the Bible seems to describe. Although Paul says that the post-Resurrection body will be different, and Jesus's noli me tangere episode seems to indicate that he also may be in a new and improved physical structure. 

Anyway, if the discussion is about the technological feasibility of living on after the death of the body, that's the kind of tech I would look to.

Yes; this concept of transformation has always fascinated me. During my last days of grad school, the idea of embodied cognition had taken a hold of the psychological world. In summary, the mind is dependent on and influenced by body. For example, we explored its implications for AI, a disembodied agent, and whether embodying it in robotics was necessary to advance it, etc.

Now, the Christian God is very concerned with sanctification—with actually, almost surgically, removing sin out of a person. For Christians that believe in souls, like Catholics, something like purgatory is where the soul is purified. However, for churches that do not, like mine, where the mind and body are not separable, this requires bodily transformation. It is as though repairing the body is a pre-condition to healing the mind. Take memories for example, if you've suffered from traumas those experiences are physically and visibly forged into your brain. The experience itself is threaded across neurons. And so, a God that wanted to psychologically heal you would need to physically transform you. And what embodied cognition suggests is not just transform your brain but the entire body.

[Paleophyte]

As I recall there are Silicone Valley types who think they'll soon be able to upload their consciousness into a computer, and live on that way after their body dies.

Jesus Christ on a silicon wafer

[The Grand Nudger]

God's just checkin under the hood. Tightening screws and turning bolts. Little tune up here, little tune up there...and that's how the soul forging is accomplished.

So...John, as a christian, do you believe that the only tools god has at it's disposal are technologically and biologically possible ones? Is this work that gods do, whatever it is, purely, mostly, or even a little natural?

[Sheldon]

Okay lol. Well if nobody believes resurrections are impossible, or that their mention in the Bible makes God fictional, then what has everyone been arguing over for the past seven pages?

This is a common tactic that's in vogue with religious apologetics, trying to reverse the burden of proof. I don't believe resurrections are possible, and I also don't believe deities are possible, and for the same reason. 

NB Those are not beliefs.

[Sheldon]

The abiogenesis argument alone seems to settle the debate. You cannot hold the position that life was able to emerge from a non-living environment, but reject that life is able to re-emerge in a structure with all the components of life present. You also can't hold the position that in the first case life emerged through an unguided process, but that it would not be able to emerge through a guided process.

Holding the first position seems to commit everyone to the second. Pessimism over how hard it is to do with today's technology seems beside the point.

This might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It certainly exposes a deep ignorance of abiogenesis and evolution to conflate the processes with the arbitrary reanimation of dead flesh.

Well stay tuned, in my experience when theists try to reverse the burden of proof, it can produce some comedy gold. 

@John 6IX Breezy You cannot hold the position that life was able to emerge from a non-living environment

I can however accept abiogenesis is more plausible than unevidenced superstition, since nothing proposed in it defies scientific facts, and it is supported by some objective evidence. I see nothing plausible in unevidenced archaic superstition, but then the word plausible would lose all meaning if I did.

Holding the first position seems to commit everyone to the second.

Nope, this is false dichotomy fallacy.

[Belacqua]

Yes; this concept of transformation has always fascinated me. During my last days of grad school, the idea of embodied cognition had taken a hold of the psychological world. In summary, the mind is dependent on and influenced by body. For example, we explored its implications for AI, a disembodied agent, and whether embodying it in robotics was necessary to advance it, etc.

Now, the Christian God is very concerned with sanctification—with actually, almost surgically, removing sin out of a person. For Christians that believe in souls, like Catholics, something like purgatory is where the soul is purified. However, for churches that do not, like mine, where the mind and body are not separable, this requires bodily transformation. It is as though repairing the body is a pre-condition to healing the mind. Take memories for example, if you've suffered from traumas those experiences are physically and visibly forged into your brain. The experience itself is threaded across neurons. And so, a God that wanted to psychologically heal you would need to physically transform you. And what embodied cognition suggests is not just transform your brain but the entire body.

This is interesting stuff. Certainly the concept of embodied cognition makes it clear that the computer guys are dreaming if they think they're going to upload themselves, and still be themselves. 

I don't know about rank-and-file Catholics, but I think that Dante would have no problem with modern science's view of mind/body. As I understand it, he believed in classical hylomorphism, so he's not a dualist. He doesn't think that soul is a separate substance, but simply the form of the body. And for him, "form" would include all of the bodily transformations -- memories encoded in neurons, etc. -- that form our minds. 

Where Dante requires a leap of faith (and where Aristotle would disagree with him) is when he says that the form of the body (the soul) can be transferred intact to a different bit of matter. But his Purgatory is a reformation of the form/matter combination. 

But I haven't heard about your church's approach to this, and I find it interesting that physical healing is involved. It opens up the possibility of different therapies, or even medicine, as soul-work. I see now why you're interested in bodily resurrection too.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Dante, schmante.

Boru

[Sheldon]

Belacqua: 

It opens up the possibility of different therapies, or even medicine, as soul-work. 

That's fucking hilarious, it was meant as irony right?

[Belacqua]

[...] I also don't believe deities are possible, and for the same reason. 

NB Those are not beliefs.

This depends on how you define "belief." 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/

Traditionally, "knowledge" is defined as "justified true belief." Here, "belief" is anything a person holds to be true. Knowledge is a subset of belief -- something one holds to be true which is also justified and also true. 

So everyone has beliefs, because we all hold some things to be true. And no one goes through an entire life in which everything he holds to be true really is true, so it's better to keep in mind that what we hold to be true is belief. 

In conversation, of course, people often use the word differently. "Belief" is used to mean something like "a thing other people hold to be true according to standards I reject" and "knowledge" is used to mean "a thing I hold to be true according to the standards I prefer." 

But of course materialist metaphysics, which you appear to believe, can't be proven through materialist methods. And empiricist epistemology can't be proven through empirical methods. So it's best to acknowledge them as beliefs.

I'm not saying they're BAD beliefs, only that they are things some people hold to be true.