X-Message-Number: 26648
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 10:13:49 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: To RBR: why you believe in a soul

More for RBR, specifically:

You may think you are a materialist and believe that you don't believe
in a soul for that reason. 

However everything you say shouts at me your belief in a soul. Why do
I say this? If you are read off as full, precise information into
a computer (yes, I agree that we're still very far from being able
to do this) and then killed, and afterwards recreated from the 
information stored in the computer, just what is the PHYSICAL or
MATERIAL difference between this copy and yourself? Remember that I'm
not talking here about a duplicate existing at the same time as
yourself, but a copy made after you've been annihilated (for the
sake of this question, annihilated while unconscious).

In this situation, the only difference between the copy and the
you original would consist of the individual atoms which made you
up. OK, we can even reuse those atoms, or simply wait long enough
that you would have in your own metabolism exchanged them for
new ones.

In short we make a copy of you with no material or physical difference
between the copy and yourself. If we can do this (I would point 
out thousands of practical problems and unknowns, but I'm assuming
they have been overcome) then just what difference makes this
copy not yourself?

This reeks of belief in a soul. Not one that lasts forever at all,
but one that still makes you YOU rather than someone else, and
one which cannot be duplicated or copied or handled in the way
we handle matter and energy of all kinds.

It is I who really don't believe in a soul, of any kind or form.
Copying someone exactly enough would take far more technology
than simply suspending them; I have alluded to all the practical
problems we'd face if we tried to do that. But fundamentally, 
if I were annihilated without knowing so, and a copy of me
were made by some technology centuries (I mean it --- too many
think such things are simple) in the future, I would say that
the copy was the same as me. 

It would be the same as me because it differs in no way from
what I was before my annihilation centuries ago. 

           Best wishes and long long life for all,

              Thomas Donaldson

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