From: Robert Owen (rowen@technologist.com)
Date: Sat Nov 13 1999 - 23:53:30 MST
J R Molloy wrote:
> From: Replicant00@aol.com <Replicant00@aol.com>
> >Just because we can fantasize about reincarnation does not make it plausible.
> >We can say "someday we may find out the moon is made of cheese", but it won;t
> >make the moon any more cheesy than it really is.
> >I see absolutely no reason to believe in an afterlife. None. Zero. Worse, if
> >it was true, it is of no use if we can't remember it, so what's the point of
> >this fantasy anyway?
>
> If we _can_ remember it, does it then acquire a point? What point?
Of what use is your belief in your current temporal life; how do you
know, as opposed to imagine, that there exists a distinct substance
having the attributes denoted by "Replicant"? Introspect: don't you
find that every referent of the pronoun "I" is a memory, and that you
cannot perceive any object called "Replicant" except a complex of
images and associations referred to the past of this non-existent
object by means of recollection?
There is no difference whatever psychodynamically between recalling
the past of your postulated current existence and recalling a postulated
personal existence that existed in the past. Who you once were, now
are, and will be may all be involuntary fantasies which do not exist in
"your" consciousness but simply in the stream of "a" consciousness.
And, if the above it untrue, what empirical evidence can you cite to
falsify it?
=======================
Robert M. Owen
Director
The Orion Institute
57 W. Morgan Street
Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA
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