Fenster writes:
Scientists have been able to move/teleport atoms in that magical way characteristic of advanced physics. Don’t ask me if the atoms moved, or were destroyed and recreated, or were just in both places, or in different states, or whatever. I can’t follow it.
But this kind of thing has people asking whether teleportation is possible. Some scientists argue that yes it is. Or at least that there is no inherent technical limitation.
This, from HowStuffWorks:
Consider for a moment that teleportation hasn’t been strictly sci-fi since 1993. That year, the concept moved from the realm of impossible fancy to theoretical reality. Physicist Charles Bennett and a team of IBM researchers confirmed that quantum teleportation was possible, but only if the original object being teleported was destroyed.
Hmmm . . . If you believe, as I do, that consciousness is a function of the brain, then isn’t this less a matter, so to speak, of movement and more one of destruction and copying? Doesn’t the destruction in effect kill you, or at least cause a cessation of the consciousness that comprises your experience? Your friends won’t know the difference and neither will the new you. And the old you won’t be around to raise an objection.
So while the idea has a certain utilitarian appeal–Kirk is needed down there on Ceti Alpha V!–I find it unappealing.
Or, as John Lennon sang in Revolution, don’t you know that you can count me out. In.
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Reblogged this on Patriactionary and commented:
A good buddy of mine raised this objection, and I agree. It’s murder, with all the moral implications therein.
And then some – what would happen to the soul of the original you? Would the copies also have souls? There are therefore theological implications, just as with cloning. (This would be a kind of cloning, though one that also murders the original.)
Ban transporting humans now! We oughta pass legislation to that effect, in every country!
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You’d basically be committing suicide and just creating a xerox of yourself. Pass.
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Exactly.
And then your clones would do the same, over and over…
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I’ll pass on that. Don’t beam me up either.
However the answer to this question depends on how the soul is connected to the body . Mystics believe the soul is connected to the body via a silver cord or other means and can find its way home. If this true than a destructive upload teleport would not be harmful per se. The soul would just slip back in .
The real concern in that case would be if the soul had finished being here on Earth and something or someone else decided to take over the body,
I suppose the only way to find out is to test on volunteering atheists and check for radical personality drifts (which would make the process unsafe by any measure) or find out what happens if we make a duplicate, not that we need more atheists.
Also re: dupes our current philosophy has no real idea on the divisibility of the soul. For all we know one soul can inhabit many bodies. The bible doesn’t have anything to say about this but it has little to say about the soul anyway.
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And on what basis do such mystics believe such things?
Certainly not Scripture, which is silent on the relation between body and soul, other than to acknowledge simply that there is one, in some capacity.
And what is a soul, and what connection is there, if any, between it and personality?
Can any such thing be measurable? Testable?
Of course not!
Why suppose any mystics have any better understandings of such things than the rest of us?
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Bones was right all along!
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