J'Jor Da'Wg
KILL-EM-QUICK
RISE of LEGION
648
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Posted - 2012.09.11 21:39:00 -
[1] - Quote
My personal thoughts:
In order to answer this question, you have to ask yourself something. What gives our brains creative thought? What makes us intelligent? Is it your physical brain and the processes?
Or do you believe that humans have a "soul", a extraphysical personal self that is not attached to this world but rather the supernatural?
This comes back to our belief system. Most religions tend to believe in an afterlife, which requires a soul to be a human and "pass on". This would tie the "being" of the clones to the soul, and that after dying, you are not truly given a new body, but you pass on.
Your collective memories and experiences and stored information is passed on, and the clone whose body your legacy of a mind has been passed on to simply believes it is you, but is in fact a different person. The only way to distinguish this would be to experience it yourself, and after that its useless if true anyways because you can't tell anyone that your soul is gone, but your memories live on.
In other words, once you die, is it TRULY you who wakes up on the other side, of merely a poor soul who believes it is you because its own brain has been "formatted" and given your memories?
Now, to go a secular route, once killed, your "conciousness" is copied and pasted into another clones brain. Since you have no higher or supernatural part of you, whether you are dead or not doesn't matter, because either way there is someone who walks like you, talks like you, and believes its you. The problem is a moot point because the question of ethics has been thrown away.
Personally, I tend to think along the lines of the first one, but that is due to my personal belief system and my research into logically and rationally defending religion. While I will not force it on anyone, if the technology ever came to reality, I believe that you would pass on and look at the universe from "the other side" and lament how foolish you were to think you could be immortal.
So, theres my personal little thoughts. Feel free to discuss. |
J'Jor Da'Wg
KILL-EM-QUICK
RISE of LEGION
648
|
Posted - 2012.09.11 22:10:00 -
[2] - Quote
KAGEHOSHI Horned Wolf wrote:I think I rather leave religion and other problematic weirdness out, and just keep things based on science, and physically grounded philosophy.
Also, I don't want this thread getting locked because a holy war starts.
Its a misconception that because religion deals wih the supernatural, it isn't possible to be rational with it. As long as conversation remains courteous, then there should be no problem. The problem arises when someone allows themselves to get offended that you disagree, and tries to shut down the opposing opinion not through logic but by smearing it.
Contrary to popular belief, science does not preclude religion, but merely opens more unanswerable questions. Its a form of kick the can, where the basic problem only gets pushed further down the road. Of course, it answers many questions we have about the natural world also.
As Aristotle said; "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it."
/rant, back to DUST! :D |