Proof that I'm immortal

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

What Mathilda said.  If I have a plank of wood and reduce it to sawdust, it is still wood, but no longer a plank - the pattern is broken.  Similarly, what makes you 'you' isn't just matter and energy, it is a particular configuration of matter and energy. When you die and that particular configuration no longer exists, neither do you.

Boru

You disrupted the organization of the wood. Until it rots or gets burned, etc., it's still the same wood.

But it isn't a plank of wood.

Boru

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Energy is even less persistent. It's like saying that all the electricity that you have used up running your computer throughout its lifetime is also part of the computer.

Or another analogy, you can't step into the side river twice. All the water molecules that have ever flowed through the same river are no longer part of it once they leave the river.

But you would never look at the river water, and say that's not the river. You would never look at the ocean and say none of this water came from the river. We are ever changing beings.

*sigh*  Let me try this another way.  Suppose I kill you.  I take your corpse and grind it up. I take the resulting goo and burn it.  I take those ashes and reduce them with acid.  I take what's left and place it on a rocket and plunge it into the sun.  The total energy of the universe hasn't changed, but in what sense are you still 'you'?

Boru