Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

Andreas Johansson palsalge
>Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:
>
>> Isidora Zamora scripsit:
>>
>> > Orthodox Christians do not
>> > cremate those who have fallen asleep for this very reason.  It's not that
>> > God cannot resurrect a body which has been completely destroyed, as by
>> > modern methods of cremation, because He can, but it is shows disrespect to
>> > God to go to a great deal of trouble to destroy something that you know He
>> > is planning to use again.
>>
>> It will be destroyed in any event, unless the general resurrection comes
>> within a century or so.
>
>This reminds me of one of the less convincing "proofs" that Christianity must
>be false I've heard; a guy argued that the general resurrection would be an
>extremely messy affair, since alot of atoms are going to belong to multiple
>people's bodies. That, in turn, reminded me of Feynman's suggestion that all
>electrons are _one_ electron, which goes back and forth in time (much like
>Marvin!). But back on the previous OT track, what this rises is the question
>in what sense my body on two different occasion is "the same" (particularly if
>I've been cremated and resurrected in between!). The actual material
>components of a body are not normally considered important for this kind of
>identity - over the last year, a big proportion of the atoms in my body has
>been replaced, but no-one would say I've acquired a new body in the process. I
>can see no other conclusion that the identity - and there must be an identity,
>if resurrection is to mean anything, and this whole discussion of course
>presupposes it does - rests rather in the "structure" or "organization" of the
>body. But that is pretty fundamentally altered at death - I do not think what
>it would be controversal to define the death of a multicellular creature as
>the cessation of the entire-body level organization. What all this leads to is
>the question if cremating my body makes it meaningfully less "me" than simple
>death.
>
>It of course also ties in to the sometimes advanced idea that after-life
>really is a simulation of sorts - if the structure/organization is the
>important thing, it makes little difference if it's realized as electrons in
>God's laptop* or an as actual material body. Which raises the counterquestions
>i) who's to say the present life isn't a simulation too, and ii) what exactly
>is the difference between a simulation and a "reality"; both consist of a
>number of elements interacting according to some rules.
It's simpler than that. You take any movement paradox you like and add the
caveat that time comes in discrete amounts--it's digital rather than analog.
Then you get many universes, each made of one "frame" of time. You get a new
universe every time. Thus, there are two methods of resurrecting people in
their own bodies:

1) Forge them. Just make new ones. Does the difference really matter? I've
had a billion times a billion bodies just writing this message.

2) Yank them out of an unused universe. Since that frame's already been
experienced, who needs it?

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