[jennyp]

Oh man, Limbaugh is so off-base...

1. And the Raelien cult, with which Boisselier is associated, believes that the human race was begun by extraterrestrials some 25,000 years ago. But we shouldn't let the comical aspects of this insanity overshadow its grave implications.

   Insanity? The Raelians believe in Intelligent Design, the up to date version of respectable-sounding creationism. What's not to like?

2. There is no such thing as a "soul" - not if he means some kind of supernatural organ that gets assigned to us when we're conceived (or when we kick our mommy for the first time, or whenever). The soul is an unnecessary reification of the abstract concept of our identity & consciousness. It's a similar conceptual error to the anthropomorphism that turns God into an old man on a throne in the clouds.

   The important thing is, the clone is a person, just like us.

3. It's "The Sixth Day", not "Total Recall".

Well, OK, transferring your thoughts & memories into another brain would not transfer your self. It would only make a copy, and the person (the collection of thoughts & memories) in that clone's body would be effectively killed, and you'd still be here stuck in your dying body. That would be murder, and a pointless one at that.

It'd be like having your cerebrum surgically removed from your cerebellum and transplanted into the clone's brain. You'd have a leftover cerebrum from the clone which would be destroyed. Obviously murder.

And yes, Brigitte Boisselier does look like a puffed up version of a combined clone of Morticia & Lily.

[JoeA]

No, it is Total Recall.

[go star go]

Even transfering all thoughts and memory would not recreate you. There are chemicals in your body that affected your recording of memory and your current intrepretation of those memories that would not exist in a clone. Even if the Raelians were to get a 90 second microwave clone of you they will never be able to recreate the chemicals that make you think and act like you do. These variable are based on your hormonal reactions to events that have happened to your in you life and your perceptions of what is going to happen to you based on your experiences recalled through the filter of your current chemical makeup. They can't remake you but they can make someone that looks like you. Kinda like plastic surgery only with implications for human survival that are much more intense. Because, who knows if we're kin or not?

[Domestic Church]

"The Raelians believe in Intelligent Design"

Only they have their UFO/Satan as the designer.(and so the serpent still passes the apples out.)

[Aquinasfan]

The soul is an unnecessary reification of the abstract concept of our identity & consciousness.

My soul is my identity and it is through the soul that I am conscious of myself. Otherwise, what is my identity? My identity cannot be my thoughts because I would have as many selves as discrete thoughts. Is my self a scanning-mechanism in the brain? Then I would have as many selves as discrete acts of scanning, et cetera, ad infinitum.