Members abelisle Posted February 14, 2011 Members Share Posted February 14, 2011 My wife says it goes back to God since she thinks our consciousness is simply a variant of the breath of life that keeps us alive. I'm leaning toward a form of reincarnation since I believe our consciousness is of a metaphysical nature and superior to the physiological functions that keep us alive. In light of this "original" idea, I'm worried that my consciousness will reincarnate into a being that exists at a much lower level than I exist now And lastly, I wonder if what most refer to as our souls is really our consciousness? Alex Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SivartM Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 Consciousness is created by our brains. When our brains stop functioning, so does our consciousness. Our minds aren't some non-physical substance; if they were, then they wouldn't be able to interact with the physical matter of our bodies. Quote "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde�Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." - Jesus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teresaq Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 I fully believe and trust Ellen White when she says that our personalities will be preserved upon death. How exactly God is able to do that I have no idea, nor will begin to speculate. I do not believe in reincarnation at all, but in this case, upon resurrection, yes, I guess our personalities will be "reincarnated" into our new bodies. Quote facebook. /teresa.quintero.790 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teresaq Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 It just now occurs to me that perhaps the pagan belief in reincarnation is a perversion of the resurrection? Quote facebook. /teresa.quintero.790 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 14, 2011 Are you sure about this? How about the reality of physical awareness we have in our dream worlds? Have you seen the movie "Inception"? Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SivartM Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 I haven't seen Inception, but what do you mean about physical awareness in dream worlds? Like, lucid dreams? Dreams are very imaginative and realistic hallucinations that we have when we are asleep. Quote "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde�Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." - Jesus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 14, 2011 A very atute observation, I must say! Adventists believe that only our characters(personalities) will go to Heaven, right? Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 14, 2011 I agree with you that our consciousness is created by our minds, but I'm not sure it is an organic substance? Its epistemological qualities points more to self reflective awareness, I suppose? Maybe "I think, therefore I am" should have been " I am aware of my existence, therefore I am." BTW, Sivart, I think you'd love the movie Inception. Go rent it. Alex Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SivartM Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 It's not really a "substance", but a process; the collective activity of the 100 billion neurons in the brain. We do have the incredible capability for self-reflection, but we don't need to be ethereal beings to do that. "I" is really an illusion anyway; since we're multicellular organisms, we could really think of ourselves as communities. Quote "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde�Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets." - Jesus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teresaq Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 It isn't my understanding that only our personalities go to heaven...I do hope Adventists have not become "immaterialists" along with the rest of the Christian world. We do still believe that we will be in heaven for the 7th millennium, right? Personalities inside of bodies, not outside of bodies. (worried, lol ) Quote facebook. /teresa.quintero.790 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Bravus Posted February 14, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 14, 2011 Yes, Adventism, like Judaism, is holistic, and believes in a unitary mind/soul/body/self, not an immortal soul housed in what is essentially a disposable body (the latter is more of a Greek belief adopting by Catholicism). The Bible says that the breath returns to God who gave it. We tend to speculate about this, but I see it as just a poetic way of saying that God is the source of all life. I don't think 'pneuma' in this sense means 'consciousness'. I'm with SivartM: when we're dead, we're dead, and our consciousness is not anywhere. It is snuffed out. Well, it is one place - within the mind of God. God is outside space and time, and is literally omnipotent: he remembers us, and he has the power to reconstruct our mind/soul/body/self at any time he so chooses. Well, that's my 2c. Quote Truth is important Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 14, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 14, 2011 Hmm . . . "the mind of God" Now that's one inscrutable place I bet! Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonny Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Nothing goes back to God! The Bible is full of metaphors. When we die everything ceases to exist. We return to the dust of the ground. Our only hope is the resurrection and our restoration to immorality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoAspen Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Are you sure nothing goes back to God? Memories, characteristics, physical being, etc., certainly seem to be ascribed to those who are raised from the dead as being the same. I can certainly see God as having a 'repository' of all those bits of information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonny Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Nothing needs to go back. God can recreate and He will without sin at the resurrection or translation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Bravus Posted February 21, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 21, 2011 Two things on this: 1. The Bible *says* something goes back. People around here seem to be pretty strong on the Bible and what it says, so the text that says "The breath returns to God who gave it" needs to be accounted for, not just dismissed. 2. On the other hand, from my perspective God is through all space and time, and knows absolutely everything about us all through space and time. When we die, our bodies, minds, souls and consciousness cease... but we are still within God's mind/memory/self. He can recreate us at any time. Quote Truth is important Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoAspen Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 I could go that way....interesting thought! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sonny Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Yes, the Bible says "The breath returns to God who gave it", but you must read that within the whole context. If you do you'll notice it's written with many metaphors: "Remember him--before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, 7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit [breath] returns to God who gave it." I hope I didn't break any rules here, but I can't simply prove my point if I paraphrase the context. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 22, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 I don't think anyone is trying to "prove" anything but rather express/share ideas. For me consciousness is both epheremal and substantive. It's intangible qualities puts it beyond our ken. Yet its substance is what makes us self-aware organic beings. It even allows us to formulate the inscrutable idea that a God exists In a pragmatic sense, it's purely biochemical but in a more philosophical/platonic sense, it allows us to access reality and in and of itself is the source for the ontological argument for God's existence. I simply feel that there's more to consciousness than the "pneuma" we call the breath of life. An idea, not a fact, not a proof. Alex Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Bravus Posted February 22, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 22, 2011 I think that can be true but that that 'something extra' can still be extinguished at death. To me, our consciousness is necessarily conscious, and therefore aware of its surroundings. If our consciousness went somewhere after death we would know and experience, and the Bible also says 'the dead know not anything'... (not trying to shut you down with proof-texts, Alex!) Quote Truth is important Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 22, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 Isn't it interesting that the most used and popular proof text is taken from the wisdom literature genre? These proverbial sayings/adages/maxims surely can't be the primary foundation for establishing a hermeneutic re: consciousness, can it? Alex Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Bravus Posted February 22, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 22, 2011 Oooh, dude, dangerous ground! Quote Truth is important Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cardw Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 I don't believe that consciousness is biochemical. It may express itself in this realm through the body, but when we dream we see without eyes and hear without ears. One of the reasons I don't believe that consciousness is a function of the brain is because neuron firing is too short to contain memory. It is a great switch. I think the brain is mainly for process control, not thinking itself. The reason I believe this to be true is that our consciousness does things with such rapidity that the calculations required, even with the complexity of the brain would raise the temperature of the brain too high. The clock rate is simply not there to do things like face recognition, object identification with shape, process all the visual data, tactile data, make and weigh decisions, engage with new ideas, process patterns, etc. etc. The body seems to have some primitive hard wiring for early reflexes, but memory storage and data processing doesn't seem to be present for all that we can do with consciousness. There is far more actual evidence for some type of reincarnation than any other theory of the afterlife. I posted a link to a documentary on the boy who lived before that presented a couple of cases studied by Dr. Jim Tucker. I believe that he has case files for over 2000 children reporting similar experiences. Here is a link in case you are interested. The boy who lived before Quote Rich http://tiny.cc/CM2j8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuff sed Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Where does the 'dark' go when you turn on the light? Where does the 'light' go when you turn it off??? Nuff sed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abelisle Posted February 22, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 22, 2011 The "dark" remains as potential quantum/photon/wave energy. The "light" turns into kinetic quantum/photon/wave energy. Nuff sed Quote We are our worst enemy - sad but true. http://abelisle.blogspot.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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