Happiness vs. Salvation

[_honorentheos]

Good point, Chap. I think the question regarding self-identity and it's plasticity is a major problem for traditional western concepts of "life after death". If a person can become an entirely different people over the course of a life time, and even over night due to certain mental diseases, what does it mean for a human being to maintain a sense of consciousness after their body expires?

[_Hoops]

Couldn't a Mormon make the case that visions and dreams that depict the pre-existance are on equal footing?

No, I don't think so. And my comments reflect visions that support Mormonism or anything else. NDE's are a specific event at a specific time that, if they can be trused to some degree. Christianity makes the claim that at this point in your history this event will happen. Visions and dreams are something else entirely. Which is why most Christians' default position is to mistrust visions and dreams.

I'm not saying that all visions and dreams are false, I'm saying they must be filtered through the lens of scripture.

[_Hoops]

But there is plenty of evidence that shows that significant damage to the brain is associated with loss of mental function, often in very specific ways, to an extent that makes it seem very likely that thought cannot take place at all without a functioning brain being in existence

But that is not the Christian claim. Even if what you propose is entirely correct, it has really nothing to do with what Christianity claims.

A sad but clear example of this is the near total destruction of not only an entire intellect, but of pretty well all recognizable personality seen in severe cases of Alzheimer's disease.

I'm wondering how you, or anyone, could possibly know this. What you're actuall saying is that there is a deteriation of one's ability to express mental function, or coordinate various mental functions and then act on them. You really haven't commented on mental function itself.

It does look very much as though the destruction of my brain will mean the destruction of me.

If one were to say that a person is made up of one's body and the brain processes that manipulate that body, then i can see how you come to that conclusion. I think we are more than that. In fact, I think you're missing the best part of us.

[Guest]

I'm saying they must be filtered through the lens of scripture.

Mormons do filter their belief in the prophetic visions and dreams of the preexistence through scripture. Things like Jeremiah 1:5 are cited as scriptural proof of a preexistence.

I think you are just being arbitrary.

[_honorentheos]

I'm wondering how you, or anyone, could possibly know this. What you're actually saying is that there is a deteriation of one's ability to express mental function, or coordinate various mental functions and then act on them. You really haven't commented on mental function itself.

It does look very much as though the destruction of my brain will mean the destruction of me.

If one were to say that a person is made up of one's body and the brain processes that manipulate that body, then i can see how you come to that conclusion. I think we are more than that. In fact, I think you're missing the best part of us.

Hoops, there is plenty of research on the relationship of the brain to identity/mind. V.S. Ramachandran once provided a famous example of a split brain patient who's one hemisphere of the brain believed in God while the other hemisphere did not. People who undergo brain trauma do not alway lose function, they can change personality completely becoming basically a different person.

Even you, if you will take some time to consider it, must realize that the only thing that makes you think of Hoops-age 15 as the same person as Hoops 2011 is that you can reconstruct a series of memories back to that person. Eliminate all association with this memory and you would not share an identity with your old self.

[_Socrates]

What do you consider to be of more value:

Genuine happiness in this life

Or

Eternal rewards in heaven

?

It appears to me that the early church (Mormon) was selling a package made up of mostly eternal salvation. The modern church seems to be selling a different package, made up of mostly what they call "lasting happiness". If this is true, it is a very interesting change.

What kind of reward would exclude happiness, now or then?

[_zeezrom]

Sacrates,

Ask Helen K.

[_Hoops]

I'm saying they must be filtered through the lens of scripture.

Mormons do filter their belief in the prophetic visions and dreams of the preexistence through scripture. Things like Jeremiah 1:5 are cited as scriptural proof of a preexistence.

I think you are just being arbitrary.

If they had done that, there would be no Mormonism.

[_Hoops]

Hoops, there is plenty of research on the relationship of the brain to identity/mind. V.S. Ramachandran once provided a famous example of a split brain patient who's one hemisphere of the brain believed in God while the other hemisphere did not. People who undergo brain trauma do not alway lose function, they can change personality completely becoming basically a different person.

I understand. You still have to account for the energy that the brain produces. You can't.

Even you,

Even me. I'll try to open a book sometime, I'll really try.

[_Chap]

But there is plenty of evidence that shows that significant damage to the brain is associated with loss of mental function, often in very specific ways, to an extent that makes it seem very likely that thought cannot take place at all without a functioning brain being in existence

But that is not the Christian claim. Even if what you propose is entirely correct, it has really nothing to do with what Christianity claims.

A sad but clear example of this is the near total destruction of not only an entire intellect, but of pretty well all recognizable personality seen in severe cases of Alzheimer's disease.

I'm wondering how you, or anyone, could possibly know this. What you're actuall saying is that there is a deteriation of one's ability to express mental function, or coordinate various mental functions and then act on them. You really haven't commented on mental function itself.

You ask quite legitimately how I can be assured that this chain of inference is valid:

1. I observe person A, and note he is exhibiting deteriorating performance of certain tasks - such as recalling his own name, remembering strings of letters or numbers, reacting to a full bladder by going to the toilet to urinate, and so on.

2. I then conclude that person A's mental function has deteriorated. (I assume you and I have no problem is using that term).

Firstly, this is certainly not a logical chain of inference, but an exercise of practical judgement - the kind of fuzzy but evidence and experience based judgement we have to make every day to stay alive. Why do I feel it is pretty safe to make this jump between what a person does and what is going on inside their head (I use that phrase colloquially, not to refer to observable brain function, but to refer to their conscious experience)?

Well, I can only speak for myself. But I live my life on the basis that other persons exist, and that broadly they have the same kind of feelings that I do. I am sure you do the same, so we don't have to argue about how such a belief might or might not be legitimate, though others might. That means that it is probably not crazy to say that their experience of being a thinking mind associated with or arising from a physical body is probably not all that different from mine.

Now I find that my ability to think clearly, solve hard problems, or to remember things, or just plain "the way I feel" in general is crucially conditioned by my physical state. If I am tired, sick, or even drunk, there are lots of things I find I can't do as well, or do very differently, and I may relate differently to others in ways they may characterize as a change in my personality. I have a couple of times had the strange experience of delirium when in a high fever - my mental state morphed to an alarming degree. At regular intervals I (like you) become unconscious for hours on end - my consciousness just switches off, and resumes hours later. (Interestingly, I am not conscious of that cessation of consciousness - it is comforting to realize that death is probably like that).

So, since I believe that other people, including you, are like me, I find it reasonable to act on the assumption that the state of other people's bodies has a similar effect on their thinking as the state of my body does on mine. People who deduce things about my mental functioning by observing my behavior are correct - I know that from experience. So I can do the same to them. When I observe gross changes in behavior associate with brain trauma or disease in others, I have no problem in going from that to the idea that their mental function and experience of being who they are may also be very different from what it was before. When I see that all the cells of their brain have simply died, I have no problem about making the judgement that their consciousness has ceased in a permanent way.

It does look very much as though the destruction of my brain will mean the destruction of me.

If one were to say that a person is made up of one's body and the brain processes that manipulate that body, then i can see how you come to that conclusion. I think we are more than that. In fact, I think you're missing the best part of us.

With respect, people seem even more important to me on an everyday basis since I ceased to believe that they were likely to survive the death of their bodies. What you see is all you (or they) are ever going to get. Wrong done now, or love not given now, can never be made up later. Every moment is infinitely precious, since it exists only in the evanescent experience of living it, and once we are gone it is lost forever.

Going back to this part of your post:

But that is not the Christian claim. Even if what you propose is entirely correct, it has really nothing to do with what Christianity claims.

Would you not agree that there have been a number of different versions of "what Christianity claims"? Thus, it has been claimed (in the past and still by many today) that human bodies were inhabited by non-material souls, which were in some sense the real person, and which simply left the body after death in a way best interpreted as liberation rather than loss. So the fact that the brain was not working well told us nothing about the state of the soul temporarily trapped inside the malfunctioning body. But perhaps that is not your position?