Posted by J.H. [JH] on April 09, 1999 at 08:58:33 {qzNMJDwJ.2HSG.vl05doHR5JhS9/hc}:
In Reply to: ****What Died Must Rise? posted by Cygnus on April 08, 1999 at 22:25:27:
Cygnus,
: What I meant was, what makes a person a distinct individual is the mind, ergo, our brains, the personality we inherit and all that we have accumulated over time.
Exactly.
: As you are well aware there is nothing necessarily 'spiritual' about those processes. Could a timeless and uninhibited God make 1+1=3
You mean, create a logical contradiction? No, of course not. 1+1=2 because of the very definitions of the symbols "1", "+", "=" and "2".
It would be just as absurd as the old chestnut: Can God create a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it? No matter what you answer, God isn't possibly able to create a logical contradiction, since doing so would mean he has nothing with which to create anything.
: and reinvent the wheel (i.e. recreate temporally qualifiable beings)?
I don't see how this makes sense.
: Why the heck not?
Exactly because it creates a pure logical contradiction, which is an impossibility of the highest order.
"In the beginning was the Reason" as John 1:1 may well have meant to say.
: I do, after all, subscribe to the WT's position of death: death being the complete opposite of "life" or existence, in whatever form.
Of course, so do I. And i also accept the necessary consequences of that position.