Dualism (Identity)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 05:37 (3537 days ago) @ dhw

DHW: And the backup? You have said the spirit has no consciousness, so what and where is this wretched back-up with all the information about me?-From a biblical perspective, the spirit returns to god, much like taking the back up of your computers hard drive and putting it in your pocket. Why? Well, because (from a biblical perspective) there is the prospect of resurrection. In order to resurrect someone, you would need a back up of their critical data, no? Otherwise you wouldn't be restoring someone, you would be creating someone new. -> 
> DHW: None of this would make any sense if you believed even one NDE, in which patients claim to have communicated with dead people. In your post last Friday you argued that because the patient was still alive, consciousness was not yet dead. But the dead person's spirit would have to contain the information relevant to its identity, including memories, and would have to be conscious of these in order to communicate with the NDE patient. So in that case, consciousness could not have “simply ceased to exist” when that particular person died. No doubt I am being obtuse, but perhaps you could dispense with images and, just as plainly as you have said that consciousness dies with the body, tell us either how you think the spirit (energy) can retain its identity without consciousness or, alternatively, confirm that in your view the spirit (energy) that survives death has no identity.
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> TONY: I don't believe that I have ever claimed that I DID believe that anyone communicated with the dead. I believe they saw something. I believe that, when the 5 senses we use predominantly are switched off, we have access to more information than we are typically aware of. I also never claimed that the spirit retained it's identity separate from the other parts that make up the whole. I said that the spirit, the energy, makes a backup of your data.
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> But you say the spirit has no consciousness. How can it even know my data, let alone record them, if it has no consciousness? It's a blob of energy that according to you survives my bodily death and returns to God without “me” but carrying this mysterious backup.-
How does a back up hard drive know what was contained on your computer at the moment that it made the backup? Is the back up hard drive a computer? Does it function like a computer? No, it does not. Data can be written to it, or recovered from it, but it has no 'consciousness'. -
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>DHW: As regards NDEs, David tells us that many patients claim actually to have met dead people. You have referred to them as providing support for your analogy, so you must know this. Are you then claiming that those patients are lying, or deluded?-Deluded or lying are both very negative statements. Perhaps misled, misguided, or even conned might be better put. I think that they see something. I think that they believe what they see is really what they think it is. So no, I do not think they are lying or deluded. However, from a biblical perspective the are not speaking to the dead.

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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.