I've done a lot of filthy Zionist Muslim-bashing recently, so I'd like to turn my attention to Christianity.

It seems to me that the fundamental tenet of Christianity is the afterlife; the soul of personal identity and continued existence. And of course, Christian moral teaching is all in the defence of the purity of our souls, in order to secure us a righteous place at God's side following our physical demise. However, it seems to me to be the case that this isn't the canonical afterlife.

The continued existence promised to Christians (and Jews) is one of physical, bodily resurrection and reconstitution and further examination of such an idea should reveal it as logically impossible.

First, let me establish that my claim to a bodily resurrection is supportable--if not absolute. It is true to say that most Christians believe in the soul and a spiritual, non-physical afterlife; this belief pervades 80pc of American Christians. Most Christians seem to believe that upon the moment of death they'll travel to heaven and leave their physical bodies behind; yet most Christian denominations (Catholicism and Lutheranism, to name two) believe that Judgement happens in one fell swoop at the End Times.

However, the idea of bodily resurrection seems better supported that this nebulous, spiritual idea. The only source I'm aware of which promulgates spiritual resurrection are the writings of St. Paul (mainly in Corinthians). However, the NT Gospels, the Book of Isaiah, the writings of the Jewish scholar Maimonides and St. Augustine's book City of God all profess a physical afterlife.

It's difficult to tell how even an omnipotent God would be able to sort this out, we go through a near-complete cellular reconstitution every decade or so and we have atoms belonging to us that existed within the bodies of Edgar Allen Poe, Napoleon, Goethe or any other great person you could name--it's difficult to see how this physical recreation could be logically accomplished. 

St. Augustine, luckily for us, however, goes into great detail about the nature of this physical resurrection. Apparently, everybody will be resurrected as they would've been at age thirty (emulating Jesus) and, he says of other things:

That all bodily blemishes which mar human beauty in this life shall be removed in the resurrection, the natural substance of the body remaining, but the quality and quantity of it being altered so as to produce beauty.

What am I to say now about the hair and nails? Once it is understood that no part of the body shall so perish as to produce deformity in the body, it is at the same time understood that such things as would have produced a deformity by their excessive proportions shall be added to the total bulk of the body, not to parts in which the beauty of the proportion would thus be marred.

How did he know this? The man was either dishonest or a lunatic, and we should probably disregard what he says either way. However, given the fact that the 325 Council of Nicaea gave no ruling on the nature of resurrection (and no other ecumenical council has done since, to my knowledge) it seems very unsettling for the Christian faith that they cannot decide on what sort of resurrection awaits them, and that the side which has the most scriptural and historical weight is the one which seems logically impossible.

I appreciate the effort but literally everything can be justified in some way or another. All you're doing is giving the opportunity for the religious to defend their beliefs, win (not be convinced by your arguments), and be further dug into their beliefs.

I'll still sleep soundly knowing my worldview isn't grounded in some non-empirical stratum.

ive always thought the biggest contradiction is that whole "our god is all-loving, but only those who worship him can enjoy peace in the afterlife" thing.

Quote from: HurtfulTurkey on January 03, 2015, 07:16:41 PM

So simply put, and I promise that I will revisit this after my honeymoon is over, the resurrection body is not the same one we had before, but a brand new one, one that is incapable of death and sin -- basically Human 2.0.

Sounds very similar to John Hick's Replica Theory (we don't have souls, God creates essentially creates an exact replica of our physical selves in the afterlife), which I have my own problems with >.>

And that sounds like it implies pattern-identity hypothesis.

Quote from: SexyPiranha on January 03, 2015, 07:52:07 PM

pattern-identity hypothesis.

elaborate

Hmm, it basically says that an individual is actually the same "individual" as another with the same physical pattern. Pattern referring to relations of physical components and OS. Based on computer science and neurology. When you've got two "copies" they differentiate due to experience over time and are no longer the same individual.

Allows for things like resurrection, mind uploading, and the like without appealing to non physical souls.

It's a conclusion commonly reached when considering the swampman/teleporter paradox.

Quote from: SexyPiranha on January 03, 2015, 08:37:39 PM

Hmm, it basically says that an individual is actually the same "individual" as another with the same physical pattern.

Essentially, yeah. I don't entirely understand how it's supposed to work to be honest, especially at the atomic and cellular level. And, when you are recreated, at what point in your life is the replica "you" recreated from? Would you still have the experiences you otherwise wouldn't have had by that age.

It seems to my eyes that such a theory engages in some sort of quasi-Platonism--it assumes some sort of egoistic Form or Substance in which the properties of an individual agent exist. I'm much more partial to the Humean bundle theory, and its conclusion that the togetherness of the properties themselves engender a sort of "substance".

I assume it would be from the point at which the data from which your pattern can be copied was gathered.

I suppose it could imply a sort of platonism but I've always sort of thought of it in the context of software, which is probably entirely wrong, where, barring anomalies, every copy is just the exact same software.