'Blessed rest until the resurrection' — the problem with Xn dualism, theodicy

An old college prof, from my small Christian college, died yesterday.

And, among the comments at a Facebook page for alumni was one asking that "God grant him blessed rest until the resurrection."

And, that exemplifies the problem with ontological dualism.

If, per the parable in Luke, long-ago known as "Lazarus and Dives," the faithful person has an immortal soul that already goes to heaven, he doesn't need wishes for blessed rest. And, to go hyper-Platonic, he doesn't need a physical body in the first place. An omniscient, omnipotent god could have made him a soul-only creature, whose primal ancestor wouldn't be tempted by forbidden fruit because he didn't have a body to be fed anyway.

OK, fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, shot down.

But, what about "liberal Christians"? What do you believe is happening when a person  like this dies?

If he or she has a soul enjoying bliss right now, then the same as above applies to you.

Even if that soul is in limbo, if it's alive in some way outside a physical body, it applies to you. So, both liberal and conservative Catholics don't get off with the purgatory answer.

If said soul exists but goes into "soul sleep," for fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, then why did Jesus tell such a non-literalistic parable? For liberal Christians, if Jesus really was divine in a western monotheistic tradition, why didn't he spread Buddha-type enlightenment about the reality of what happens at the moment of death?

Otherwise, to riff on Susan Jacoby's great op-ed column, it's arguable that atheists can offer MORE comfort at a graveside than liberal Christians, in some ways. Or at least more sympathy, possibly more empathy.  Or, at a minimum, less muddle and pretense.

That said, liberal Christians continue to have available rejecting one fork of the dilemma of theodicy — either god is not all good, or he's not all powerful. But, despite embracing things like a "ground of being" or saying that Jesus' "divinity" may not mean what it was  understood to mean 2,000 years ago, even the intellligentsia of liberal Christianity don't seem lined up to make this choice.

Paul was wrong in 1 Corinthians — a belief n a divinity for this life only can still have power. That's even if it's the power of positive psychology, wishful thinking or self-deception. But, it requires keeping up appearances, or masks, as to what comfort is offered beyond this life, if any. It's just that literalists and non-literalists wear different masks for different situations.

For liberal Christians, for the dailiness of life in this world, does it offer that much comfort for a religious leader to say, I really don't know why those bad things are happening in your life? Does it offer that much comfort when you try to tell yourself that?

At the same time, if you reject traditional ideas of god, whether because you recognize problems with the "problem of evil," i.e., that a god can't be both all-good and all-powerful unless you want to put your own mind inside a permanently black box, does it really offer that much comfort for a life beyond this one? Are you able to offset that relative lack with the degree of comfort a god of less-than-all offers this life?

Or are you able to detach from such questions? And, if so, how do you square that with Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead in general, even if you reject a bodily physical resurrection?

You see, this is all part of what I went through on my journey from conservative Christian divinity student to secularist. In many ways, it was a psychological and emotional decision, after wrestling in those areas; it was by no means just an intellectual one.

But, just as I realized liberal Christianity had to use what Dan Dennett calls "skyhooks" to defend what in the bible it thought worthy of belief and worthy of semi-literal understanding, it had to do the same with questions of the justice of god, of theodicy. (Ditto, if you will, for liberal Judaism.)

And, so, in the face of a Newtown mass shooting, let alone if something even close to that happened in my life (and enough happened in my life at pre-adult level), I couldn't "stop" at say, the United Church of Christ, or even Unitarianism, as I left conservative Lutheranism.

If you'll click the "atheism" tag, you'll see in this blog a series of posts that go into more detail about that journey.

#StarTrek: Did the transporter kill Kirk?

Massimo Pigliucci, over at Rationally Speaking, actually raises this stimulating question, with the introductory device of an iPhone app that lets you play around with philosophy.

The theoretical question raised by the app is (as I understand it; per co-blogger Ian Pollock, see comments):

Put James T. Kirk on a transporter. Only, somehow, two different Kirks are simultaneously spit out on the other end. Is the original Kirk dead, or not? That, of course, would be a philosophical question even with a normally functioning transporter spitting out just one Kirk — is the post-transporter Kirk really the same guy or not? But dual Kirks on the other end intensify all the thought experiment questions.

The app offers several different answers for users to choose:
A) Kirk dies, a Trekkie cries
B) Kirk is Kirk1, or Kirk2, whichever you like
C) Kirk is (Kirk1 and Kirk2) before and after
D) Kirk is (Kirk1 and Kirk2) only after transport
E) Kirk is Kirk1 and Kirk is Kirk2, adios transitivity of identity
F) It’s “indeterminate,” in your favorite flavor
G) It’s “nonsense,” colorless, green and sleeping furiously
H) Insoluble paradox
I) Unsure which way to go
J) Huh? What’s this all about?
K) My favorite response isn’t listed (comments please)

And, so far, a definite plurality is opting for A. That's my answer, too.

But, I'm taking the game further. In a long response, I added further thought experiments. What follows is an edited version of those comments. If anything here isn't clear, go to the original post and read things in context as necessary.

The original Kirk is dead, and each of the two twins is individualized from each other.

Ian then raised the issue of actual vs. replacement Mona Lisa paintings, and in light of a classical philosophy thought experiment used by Dan Dennett and others as an intuition pump, raised the whole cell replacement issue. Assuming we want to concentrate on brain cell replacement, my comments focus on that.

Per Ian, the "replacement factor" of cells is fuzzy (assuming we're concentrating on brain cells, even, for simplicity's sake).

In one sense, the replacement of one brain cell by an outside process and not a natural degeneration of a cell with replacement by one theoretically identical due to natural regenesis is to create a different person, if you'll allow me a Forrest/Greene type eternally branching personhood rather than universes idea. My thinking Thought A rather than Thought B makes me a different person. That's whether it's voluntary (per Susan Blackmore and her excellent Zen meditation questions on consciousness) or a Clockwork Orange involuntarism.

That said, what replacement rate is necessary to say we've killed off the old Gadfly and created a new one? In the brain stem, or even the cerebellum, might be pretty high, eh? But, in the cortex, or a crucial noncortex area like the amygdala, might be pretty low, eh? Even without "replacements," I'm now thinking of Phineas Gage. Did his unfortunate accident kill one person and create another? (See what a thought experiment monster you've created!)

On the other hand, certain types of strokes have shown that (with the destruction of old neurons but without replacement of new ones) even the cortex can be quite plasticene. So maybe, like with the Star Trek transporter, the "replacement factor" involves "rate" by time as well as "rate" by ratio.

With Mona Lisas, though, I'd at least lean toward Ian. There, at least, we have a difference that makes no difference, to quote Spock and get back to Star Trek. Whereas, a transportation mechanism is going to make a different Ian, subtle as the differences may be.

That said, suppose an ambassador at the final end of the transportation has never met Kirk in person before. He has no way of knowing how much or how little the process changed this person, who I'll call Kirk-1.

But, wait, wait.

Spock would know any subtle difference, right?

However, Spock is also getting beamed to different spots, so Spock-1 would, even subtly, have different recollections of Kirk before his latest transportation. (See, you've created a second thought experiment monster.)

So, what if Scotty-Prime has never been transported? But, with Kirk's latest transportation, it was a bit less fail-safe than normal. Let's say Spock's was, too, but not so badly. So, can Scotty-Prime convince Spock-1 that Kirk-1 is ... "problematic"?

And, to throw a bomb in the mix ...

Per a Peter Singer, should we then euthanize Kirk-1?

Is Buddhism a religion?

If I can be allowed to redefine religion as a belief in metaphysical ideas, such as reincarnation or other things based on a system of ontological dualism, I would say yes.

But, I don’t think I have to go that far.

I think karma can readily be understood as an impersonal Higher Power/Ground of Being, one that is not worshipped but is nonetheless seen in some way as omnipotent, then it qualifies on that ground, too, in my understanding.

Let’s put it this way. If we call religion a focus on a metaphysical ultimate principal of organization (another way of saying Ground of Being), it qualifies.