Dualism (Identity)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, March 15, 2015, 20:40 (3540 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: I am bewildered. Consciousness is spirit or energy or wind, and therefore NOT the product of materials. And yet it dies (does not survive) when the materials die. But the data of which it is conscious and which form the identity of the person who had them continue to exist independently of the materials and are somehow attached to the blob of energy that has returned to God, although the blob is not aware of them. Individual consciousness has died, but it has survived. Your computer analogy of a back-up disk really doesn't help, I'm afraid. How does your blank spirit have and not have its individual data? 
> -
Where are you getting this "blob" from? Any energy can contain information. That is how RAM on your computer works. Let me try to simplify this. -Components of a human: Energy, Matter, Information, & Consciousness. 
At death, the energy (spirit) departs, returning to God with a backup of the information. The material body and the information contained with it deteriorate. Without the presence of energy, information, and the mechanical body, there is nothing there to support consciousness. It simply ceases to exist. This is no different than what would happen if you were to back your computer up to an external hard drive and then smash the computer to bits. The data exists, but there is nothing acting upon it until/unless that data is restored to another computer.-
 
>DHW: In your response to David on the subject of NDEs, you say “the spiritual realm is said to actively interact with the material realm that we are all familiar with” and perhaps “we also receive information from the world around us that is routinely drowned out by our known five senses.” I find the latter quite an attractive explanation, but it cannot constitute interaction between the material realm and the spiritual if the five senses are drowned out and consciousness is spirit. Then it can only be interaction between spirit and spirit. Furthermore, if NDE spirits communicate with other spirits, they have all kept their identity, independently of the materials that embody the five senses. You can't have your NDE spirit communicating with blanks! 
> -I never said consciousness was spirit. 
 
> Xxxxxx
> 
> To David: in your response to Tony on the subject of NDEs (which chimes in with much of my own), you say that I giggle at the idea of the soul expressing the appearance of the dead person. I don't. (See above.) I take NDEs very seriously, and I would only giggle at the idea of an afterlife in which the dead person does NOT retain his/her identity. There has to be recognition. I don't have an explanation for NDEs, and am quite open-minded on the subject.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.