Is the soul existant in all things?

Z

Zik

Registered Member
One thing has been bugging me for quite awhile .. some people in the scientific community claim that immorality may be possible through churning your brain waves and patterns onto an electric chip- Basically a transfer of conciousness, so that when your body dies, you do not.

Is this keeping - YOU?
Yes, it can keep your mind- create an in fact duplicate, even.
Yet if you die, and the electronic conciousness awakens, will it be you, or a representation of what you were? When -YOU- are given to the chip, is it all of -YOU-, of just a copy? Would you wake up upon death to live in a world defined by electrons?
 
The key appears to rest in the accurate identification of 'you'.

Despite many thousands of years of searching no one has ever shown that 'you' is anything other than matter. So perhaps one day we will end up as chips.

Kat
 
I mean .. if we're merely a specific arrangement of matter .. if someone duplicated that matter .. would it be us? Could we exist at the same time? Hrmm?
 
Zik said:
... some people in the scientific community claim that immorality may be possible through churning your brain waves and patterns onto an electric chip- Basically a transfer of conciousness, so that when your body dies, you do not.
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Who, specifically, in the "scientific community" make such a claim?
 
It was like, in Scientific American two or three months ago. xx;;
They were considering immortality through simple Long Life (Essentially, Immortality..) Cryogenically freezing .. copying Brain waves, etc.
Or maybe it was National Geographic .. seems much more odd of a place to find the article, but I can't help but think that was it. xx
 
Zik said:
It was like, in Scientific American two or three months ago. xx;;
They were considering immortality through simple Long Life (Essentially, Immortality..) Cryogenically freezing .. copying Brain waves, etc.
Or maybe it was National Geographic .. seems much more odd of a place to find the article, but I can't help but think that was it. xx
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M*W: Zik, I have read several front-page articles in the scientific community which discussed longevity. Specifically, Nature, NEJM (I believe), JAMA (possibly), (these can be looked up on PubMed). Scientists agree that the length of the telomere on the genes indicate how long someone would live. The length is expressed as an enzyme telomerase. They are not sure at this point what determines the length of the telomere, but they are in agreement that it is programmed before life, i.e. hereditary. I studied in a laboratory that researched the importance in the telomere. Forget about eating right, exercising, and having a healthy lifestyle... Our fate lies in the length of our telomeres.

But that's not all... Let's not forget about stem cell transplantation into injured myocardium, hepatic tissue, skin, brain and pancreas. Even autologous transplantation of bone marrow stem cells has been proved to repair damaged tissue. We've just seen the tip of the iceberg on stem cells.
 
M*W - Quite true.

But, on the matter of brain copying into a computer...

It is feasible, but there are some things that need to be taken into account.

1. The computer would have to function EXACTLY like a human brain, down to the exact number of brain cells.
2. By functioning exactly like a human brain, it would be firing synapse-like triggers all the time.
3. The memory or hard drives would have to be able to record and erase constantly...
4. It would have to keep the personality and memories intact to keep it "you".
5. Sensory inputs would have to exist, otherwise it would be like a coma where the person were awake.

Humans just don't have this kind of technology right now, and probably won't for 100, 500, 1000 years... or ever, even. It is too complex.

But, hey, maybe I'm wrong.
 
RW, on another note, we have never lived a truly 'perfect' life. EVERY human dies from some sort of fault in their biological chemistry, it is not ever the cell-life from what I recall. Lack of supplemntal nutrition, lack of proper muscular tissue build-up, the brain cells may die after the cell tissue is slowly degraded. (The slow decompassing of cell tissue can easily be helped, though I admit the percentage of ease your body can send going into such a depression becomes limited over time)

So, really, before we can begin even daring to consider how long we can truly live, we must actually -Live.-
 
Brief note; I saw this is a post but forgot who the author was, sorry.

--Even if the computer may copy who -you- are; ie. mind, memory, impulses, heredity .. would it copy your living soul?

If YOU died, would you wake up? OR would a copy of you be waiting to be woken up whenever another human flicked it on to life. If not, then can we truly ever claim immortality? Outside of cybernetic implants and Sci-Fi Paraphy-whatever.. xx; Sh'tuff.
 
I remember there was an issue of Discover magazine talking about eternal life. In order to live forever in this universe, one has to stop motion completely to conserve energy and to avoid decade. But even that, the eternal life is not guarantee after 10^100 years.

On the other hand, when you wake up each morning, can you tell if you were a copy or the real one? ;)
 
Zik said:
--Even if the computer may copy who -you- are; ie. mind, memory, impulses, heredity .. would it copy your living soul?
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Your brain is who you are. Without it, you cease to be unique.
 
But through religous and philosophical perspective as well; would your soul be transferred? You'd be, essentially, a soul (The mind is often equated with a soul) yet the vessel would be different? Or would you be a false impersonation? Eh?
 
The mind has always been recognized as different from the soul and heart. For Jesus and the Torah say to love your God with all your heart, mind and soul.
 
A supernatural soul is only an idea. I do not believe there is anything of fact that could lead anyone to believe it is real.

The mind is to brain what a program is to computer. All are naturalistic and real.

Kat
 
okinrus said:
The mind has always been recognized as different from the soul and heart. For Jesus and the Torah say to love your God with all your heart, mind and soul.
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M*W: What about "strength?" That would include loving God with the body, too, wouldn't it? After all, our body is our "temple." It's where God resides. It's also where our heart, soul and mind reside. We should also love our fellow human being because God resides in them, too, just as we should love the heart, mind and soul of our neighbor. If we obeyed these two codes of behavior, we wouldn't need religions.
 
Jesus says that the pure religion is taking care of orphans and widows. The Church, loosely in the guise of religion, is necessary in order to transmit the faith properly and gather the nations under a proper sacrifice.
 
Okinrus,

Jesus says that the pure religion is taking care of orphans and widows.
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Only if Bush gets his way with faith based charities, which will be financed by us taxpayers. Until then social services does that job, and insurance companies.

The Church, loosely in the guise of religion, is necessary in order to transmit the faith properly and gather the nations under a proper sacrifice.
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Where faith is the teaching of ignorance and irrational thinking, and proper sacrifice is the suppression of one’s common sense and intellect.

Right?

Kat
 
Hmmm, haven't been here for a while...is seeming to like this Kat person that I don't remember from before...we agree on a lot of things, methinks

We would not be the same. Of course, there has been nothing to lead me to believe in the existance of "souls", but still: our perception is part of who we are. We would be completly identical (me and the chip), until time started and the chip was in a different environment than myself. Because then, the Brendan-chip may change pscologically, emotionally, whatever whereas I would change differently.

"God knows me. If I would be damned for being myself, so be it."
 
LostInThought,

Kat person? Hmm OK.

Two identical computers loaded with identical software, let's say accounting software. But each put to work on two different companies - the data will be very different.

Two identical chips each loaded with your brain waves (or whatever). Both will be copies of you - but then you both go your seperate ways and the data you absorb/use will be differnt and you will become two differnt persons.

Biology - take some DNA and create two clones - absolutely identical - two copies of the same person - then they go seperate ways and the information (data) they aborb will be differnt and they will become two seperate and different people.

I don't see any problems with any of this.

Kat
 
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