Is resurrection possible under materialism?

[Ah ha']

Reincarnation is a component of the material world, the cycle of death and rebirth is one of its main laws, as it is the effect of karma.

The illusory material world is just the shadow of the true spiritual world. The goal of this life is to break the cycle of death and rebirth by transcending all karma (good and bad).

If you could imagine karma is a horizontal axis, with goodness and badness on either side the goal is to hit the 0 point and then go vertical. Then you’ll have eternal life in the heavenly realm.

Resurrection with the above in mind is also only feasible in the material world, as your eternal soul returns to its current body. The important point to remember here is that youre not a body that has a soul, but a soul that has a body.

 

[Meriasek]

Well, it's not Jewish, innit. Jews reject Christ, so it's a different religion, even though they technically worship the same God. Jews don't believe in resurrection and apokatastasis, do they?

 

[Brightstar777]

How are they failed? The only thing that's failed is your phony Jewish religion which can't save a single soul but has damned nation after nation with its evil subversion of the human spirit. No shit God doesn't care about race, that's why he can't be god because a real god wouldn't write Jewish ramblings like Galatians 3:28.

you can't comprehend the reality as it is, your perspective is limited, you are probably getting damaged by reddit propaganda.
you can't save a soul if she is unwilling to be saved.

 

[COME ON OUT YOU RAPIST]

In the biological sense, it's pretty likely we will be able to perfect things like cryostasis and effectively resurrect people who would otherwise (medically speaking) have frozen to death. Science moves forward and it's good at what it does. This is the easy answer.

The less easy answer is: I don't believe there is a way to resurrect (You) in the metaphysical sense outside of direct intervention by God, like what happened with Jesus Christ or Lazarus. And even if we forfeit resurrection to a strictly material thing, the question doesn't become any easier; as Heraclitus once explained, all of the elements that make (You) in this moment simply cannot be replicated, and the same (You) that existed a few seconds ago transitioned into the current (You). That former (You) is extinct, to the benefit of the current (You), and the (You) destined to follow. Which brings us to thoughts like:

Not really. If your mind is meat and electrical impulses, as per metaphysical materialism, that unique qualia is destroyed when you die. Reconstituting it, even perfectly, is arguably a sort of cloning. This is why the teleporter in Star Trek is one of the most horrifying and fucked up technologies ever dreamed up. Every time a person uses it, they destroy themselves and a new clone gets created thinking it is the original. There is no way to prove the continuation of consciousness and there is an argument against the idea that the original consciousness continues because it gets broken down (destroyed) each time the teleporter is used.

I have never seen any convincing explanations of how to transfer unique qualia, or how you avoid the identity problem explained above.

which I don't agree with. There's plenty of sci-fi fiction that explores multiple answers to the question "Does a teleporter kill you?" If you are strictly a materialist who does not believe in a soul (and that's honestly not an intelligent position to take, in my opinion; everyone from Plotinus to Hegel to Spinoza refutes atheism) then it would seem like taking apart your atoms, moving them, then reconstructing you would kill you. It even abides Heraclitus' explanation, in a way. The question then becomes how (You) continue to exist as a conscious entity who remains a continuation of (You), which Heraclitus also describes, as he acknowledged the existence of the metaphysical. What material faculties are responsible for your consciousness? Is it a soul?

The simplest answer I've ever come up with is: if (You) as a baby remain identical to (You) as an adult, including in a material sense that would abide by most materialist criteria (such as chromosomes or DNA) then there has to be some non-material element that ties it all together. This element wouldn't be affected by a teleporter and appears to be untouchable by technology, so it's both metaphysical and not something that can be plucked for the purposes of resurrection.

 

[sterben]

Quantum theory shows you cannot predict where to find the molecules

What made you think so?

Peter van Inwagen, a Christian materialism philosopher, has talked about this. I know that's not exactly what you're asking but it's interesting. Starts about 6:20.

I will always wonder what kind of existential dread this fucking idiot has going on. I can not take him seriously until he stops with the moronic coping. How can you adore inconsistency THIS much?

 

[sterben]

you can't comprehend the reality as it is, your perspective is limited, you are probably getting damaged by reddit propaganda.
you can't save a soul if she is unwilling to be saved.

There is nothing about soul that can even be saved, by god or otherwise. quit wishfully attributing qualities to things that don't have any

 

[Brightstar777]

There is nothing about soul that can even be saved, by god or otherwise. quit wishfully attributing qualities to things that don't have any

There is nothing true about what you said

 

[Meriasek]

What made you think so?

Mild misconception of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation.
It's true that for small objects there are two properties that can't be fully accurately measured at the same time, for example position and momentum. Basically, if you measure the position of a particle very accurate, the momentum can't be known very accurately and vice versa. Molecules are pretty large and complex, though, and particularly the brain is full of extremely complex relations that make the application of the relation less useful.
Quantum mechanical effects are unlikely to be of any significance in biological processes, the temperatures are too high and decoherence happens basically instantly, leading to classical behaviour.

 

[sterben]

The goal of this life

[in my dualistic & selfcontradicting religion's belief system]

The important point to remember here is that youre not a body that has a soul, but a soul that has a body.

You don't understand how this is a nondualistic take that you are trying to apply to an inherently dualistic state of being, which is impossible

(You)

"You as a soul" is the Thing ever that people(tm) keep repeating. Do you two want to stay completely logical while talking about something as ethereal as soul? If you're okay with contradicting and jumps and lapses, I will stop replying to this thread


Anything that can exist exists as paint on a wall. The wall and the paint aren't opposites. Objects don't have existence, existence has objects. Without light, there is darkness. But without darkness, there is nothing. My nondualistic understanding which afaik keeps logic intact(and which I feel feeds every single concept of god/soul so I take it as the base for Everything), the soul is as darkness. It is what enables something to exist, to occupy it, but itself as a whole is utterly boundless and complete. It is what makes you able to perceive. It is god, and it is god through You as a person(as an existing structural being with a brain that perceives). It is always there and has always been there. This is why you feel like Despite everything, you're still that bitch. It has no discernible (comprehensible) qualities itself but it allows itself to split/localise/be distinctive particles in order to let or make the world happen. If god/soul is to be logical, it cannot itself really be anything but everything at once. Something omniscient/all-encompassing cannot itself be distinctive of everything else. Please critique with something at least trying to be coherent

 

[CallmeCicada]

What makes you, you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

 

[sterben]

If matter exists within and from soul, and you are not the exact matter you've always been, and you are material, then the continuity of you is a scam and you can be you across time and space.

What makes you you personality wise is your brain structure. What makes you you as a knowing and perceiving being is the soul. Your soul is not discernible from the soul someone else has because it logically can't be

 

[Throng of Titans]

Materialism means no soul, which means consciousness is simply chemicals and processes acting together. By definition, you're simply a flesh machine powered by neurotransmitters, under materialism. So I'd assume no, there's no resurrection or reincarnation, because your very existence is just the result of finite processes that will end one day.

I'm not a materialist, but once you boil away the idea of the soul or unique consciousness, any attempt to try and talk about spiritual matters like reincarnation is pointless, because if you believe in such phenomena, you're no longer really a materialist.

 

[COME ON OUT YOU RAPIST]

"You as a soul" is the Thing ever that people(tm) keep repeating. Do you two want to stay completely logical while talking about something as ethereal as soul? If you're okay with contradicting and jumps and lapses, I will stop replying to this thread

I mean the jumping, lapses and contradictions are inevitable because this is a philosophical discussion. If this topic was as straightforward as a mathematical equation, philosophy and spirituality (things that have continued memetically for millennia) would not exist. It's done this, and it continues to do this, even with the knowledge we may never have a single 100% bulletproof answer to anything.

Anything that can exist exists as paint on a wall. The wall and the paint aren't opposites. Objects don't have existence, existence has objects. Without light, there is darkness. But without darkness, there is nothing.

We can torture this reductive metaphor all day and come to many different conclusions. Why are paint and the wall it's used upon not opposites? Paint is a liquid, a wall is solid. Does that example not already demonstrate some potential for "opposites" existing between the two? Is paint "opposite" of the wall because it was designed for a totally different purpose? Who delegated that respective purpose to paint and wall? Can this purpose be found in nature, or otherwise somehow inherently determined? Do these respective purposes (wall, paint) rely upon a more complex entity, such as man, the architect, or the paint company? Or is this decision that they are opposites reliant upon the absence of something, like your explanation of light, darkness and nothingness?

My nondualistic understanding which afaik keeps logic intact(and which I feel feeds every single concept of god/soul so I take it as the base for Everything), the soul is as darkness. It is what enables something to exist, to occupy it, but itself as a whole is utterly boundless and complete. It is what makes you able to perceive. It is god, and it is god through You as a person(as an existing structural being with a brain that perceives). It is always there and has always been there. This is why you feel like Despite everything, you're still that bitch. It has no discernible (comprehensible) qualities itself but it allows itself to split/localise/be distinctive particles in order to let or make the world happen. If god/soul is to be logical, it cannot itself really be anything but everything at once. Something omniscient/all-encompassing cannot itself be distinctive of everything else.

This seems like an Aristotelian rejection of a "personal soul" as Aquinas once described, or when Plotinus described God as a central concept that is more blatantly metaphysical vs. anthropomorphizing God as ancient texts do (possibly to make it easier for people to actually comprehend.) I'm not totally sure what you're driving at though. There's plenty of arguments for a singular (You) to continue existing even if you share a link to a holy totality, like how intellect used to be defined as something connected to the soul vs. the brain or body.

 

[Ah ha']

[in my dualistic & selfcontradicting religion's belief system]

You don't understand how this is a nondualistic take that you are trying to apply to an inherently dualistic state of being, which is impossible

"You as a soul" is the Thing ever that people(tm) keep repeating. Do you two want to stay completely logical while talking about something as ethereal as soul? If you're okay with contradicting and jumps and lapses, I will stop replying to this thread


Anything that can exist exists as paint on a wall. The wall and the paint aren't opposites. Objects don't have existence, existence has objects. Without light, there is darkness. But without darkness, there is nothing. My nondualistic understanding which afaik keeps logic intact(and which I feel feeds every single concept of god/soul so I take it as the base for Everything), the soul is as darkness. It is what enables something to exist, to occupy it, but itself as a whole is utterly boundless and complete. It is what makes you able to perceive. It is god, and it is god through You as a person(as an existing structural being with a brain that perceives). It is always there and has always been there. This is why you feel like Despite everything, you're still that bitch. It has no discernible (comprehensible) qualities itself but it allows itself to split/localise/be distinctive particles in order to let or make the world happen. If god/soul is to be logical, it cannot itself really be anything but everything at once. Something omniscient/all-encompassing cannot itself be distinctive of everything else. Please critique with something at least trying to be coherent

God isn't your soul, souls are distinct from God. But they are in his likeness, its a common new age trope for egotists to claim theyre “really god”.

God can be all-encompassing and transcendental to reality because he is god. Are you incapable of understanding this very basic fact? This is just one of the qualities of what is referred too constantly as The Supreme Absolute, as in there is nothing comparable.

You harp on about logic, but you have not made a case epistemologically at all, your response sounds like mentally ill New age bologna.

Maybe if you want to learn about my Religion instead of relying on “what you think you know” you should humble yourself and study sincerely instead of this incomprehensible vomit.

 

[sterben]

you should humble yourself and study sincerely instead of this incomprehensible vomit.

The difference between us is how I attacked what you said and you went for the personal attack. Except it's only you finding it completely incomprehensible, and I dare say it's because you have zero inkling about how nondualism could work. So it goes both ways

God isn't your soul

What did Brahman do again? My understanding of hinduist scripture is that he made you from a piece of himself.

God can be all-encompassing and transcendental to reality because

Because he is reality. The universe is within god or god is the universe are one of the only conceptions of god that allow logical consistency

Do these respective purposes (wall, paint) rely upon a more complex entity, such as man, the architect, or the paint company?

They are all within existence, they rely on the canvas of existence

 

[sterben]

It's done this, and it continues to do this, even with the knowledge we may never have a single 100% bulletproof answer to anything.

It being fractured parts of humanity, but you don't have to abandon logic whatsoever to continue philophosizing this into oblivion. You can expect logical progress in this field. You may not know about concepts just yet, and nondualism is one of those that I know will see widespread sharing one day. It's just not very easy to understand and explain, and I'm not doing a particularly great job. It seems to me noone has nailed down a reliable way of teaching it, seems that different people need different breakdowns of reality to grasp it, which seems because everyone understands reality in a very personal way. So one to teach it needs to be able to really connect with another's worldview.

Can this purpose be found in nature, or otherwise somehow inherently determined?

The only thing the universe as a whole really does, is evolve

Or is this decision that they aren't opposites reliant upon the absence of something,

The wall and paint are both physical and metaphors , but what underlies atoms, particles, the canvas in which they exist, is something physical yet beyond physical. It's something whole, something that's everything, and that kind of everything can only be inherently nondual because everything in it is dualistic

 

[sterben]

I have recently come to the understanding that hinduists don't like nondualism because it doesn't let anyone fall into naraka and doesn't tell them exactly what to do with their lives. Sorry about hijacking. Hope you stop with the arrogance. Ramanuja was a coping idiot who never grasped nonduality but still liked it a little too much :-)

 

[Osmosis Jones]

In a materialistic world it’s hard to imagine that there is even such a thing as a consciousness. If my brain is a computer for my body and what that computer does is respond and react to outside stimuli, then I’m no different from a dog or a fly, just with more complex networks. So then consciousness is not another tangible object, it’s merely a phenomena resulting from the coexistence of a physical body and a computer with which to control it. If the system shuts down (I.e. death) and it is to be rebooted in place, there would be continuity, as it’s the same system as before, created and adapted the same way.

In a material world, humans are very complex learning machines. To oversimplify a bit using contemporary examples, LLMs and other “AI” software can have the same programming and architecture from the start and only represent different things when programmed over time based on different inputs. Within this material world you cannot be perfectly replicated or maintain continuity. Another one of you is just that… it’s an other. At any point when one becomes two it does not matter if the old self is dissolved and forgotten, one has become two and divergence means differentiation and a destruction of continuity.

Now, how the fuck do you teleport a soul? Is teleportation possible in an immaterial world? How can I destroy this self and replicate it elsewhere and signal to my soul that my physical self is elsewhere now? Would the new physical self be without the soul? Can a physical self exist without a soul?

 

[Overly Serious]

I have not read the opening post, I haven't read any replies. This is deliberate - reading them would affect my initial response. I will read later.

I would say it's not merely possible but near inevitable, given persistence of roughly similar society. Materialism would dictate that there's no intrinsic soul that has an absolute discrete existence from any other soul. A person is merely an assemblage of traits none of which are unique. The reoccurrence of a given combination may be more likely or less likely, but nothing prevents it from happening and it is therefore possible. Allowing some tolerance for how precisely you determine the individual, e.g. if you were the same person but with a different accent would that not be sufficient to say you are the same person? After all, one could become so just by making a small conscious choice of how to speak, then the reoccurrence of the same person but in a discontinuous way (i.e. they didn't exist for some period of time between when they did) seems pretty probable.

There are eight billion people on the planet at any one time, after all.

This is the consequence of removing the unique identity granted by the idea of some non-materialistic identity granted to an "individual". For the software people, suppose a database table without a unique key. A unique key or primary key might have no actual value or relevance to the functioning of the data but it is a marker to a single set. It makes that set uniquely identifiable even if otherwise the same. Materialism states all that there is, is the data that affects things (i.e. is observable). No unique keys. Therefore duplication can occur.

EDIT: I have now read the opening post. This is not a question, this is a canvasing of opinions on an already set out interpretation. And therefore likely to close off an array of answers. My statement aligns in many ways with OP's. However, OP seems to think the question of where the necessary level of precision lies is external to the person asking the question. That the boundary has some kind of actual point. I'll demonstrate that it does not by the simple pointing out that any level precise enough to disqualify the possibility would also likely be precise enough to disqualify someone being the same individual from one week to the next. If the OP rejects the concept of continuity of the self, then they negate the premise of their own question which requires a self in order to be resurrected. N.b. I think reincarnated would be a better term to have used. Resurrection suggests some sort of physical restoration which seems to lie contrary to some of the OP's musings.

 

[Meriasek]

Therefore duplication can occur.

Yes, but I think it would be practically impossible. Consider the materialist 'soul' as the time evolution of the collective state of the body. It means that the each neurochemical state and potential in every nerve and neuron is determined by all exterior influences and all previous states. Replicating this exact state would basically require the exact replication of the entire world and universe, and while approximations might be possible, it wouldn't be a duplication since the combination space is too large.
If the universe was truly infinite, there would be another Earth with another You somewhere, though.