Where is your memory? II - Our Conversation

One very good thing about my company is that here we have a group of Christian people. I've started up the memory discussion, and people have some ideas, both Christians and non-Christians.

W: I must be terribly brain damaged, cause I have a shocking memory!

R: I choose not to attempt to answer the unanswerable.

Although isn’t it pretty much scientifically accepted that memories are in your brain – I think I read that somewhere

J: Nope. There is actually no proof that memory is in our brain. There is proof that damage what part would affect what faculty, and when thinking of what then which part of the brain use more energy. However from that we cannot deduce memory is locate in the brain.

M: Yeah, you probably read it in New Scientist and not New Philosopher :p

H: I’m curious about 1ai – i.e memory is in your brain, but have a soul. (I’m in this camp)

But, if your soul leaves your body, do you not remember anything then?
What about people that have near death experiences where their soul apparently leaves their body, and they come back to life and have a story to tell (retelling what they saw in the afterlife etc).
Where abouts were these memories stored?

Also, isn’t a lot of your memory which makes you who you are? But isn’t that also your soul?

My theory is that in this physical world, you need physical things for things to work, i.e cells in your brain to remember things.
Is that also why God works through naturalistic ways most of the time? Maybe the rules of this universe just require it.

But outside of that dimension – maybe the soul can take over in its own way in a way that we don’t understand.

A: Like… when the soul is going to leave the body it backs up what’s in the brain and goes into working offline mode?

Then it comes back and syncs with the brain whatever experiences it had “out there”

H: Yes exactly – maybe it’s that :P

And it does a sync when it comes back into dock.

I reckon that our body/brain is like a physical representation of our soul. So we as a person are essentially a soul, but because of the limitations of the physical world, God had to use infinite intelligence to construct pretty basic chemicals all together is ridiculously complicated combinations in order to mimic what the soul is capable of.

Can’t really think of a good example, but maybe it is like a piece of software, you have the complete program written in an abstract language – but when it comes to the grind, it has to be twisted around and converted to total other dimension (language) that the machine understands (in a series of 1’s and 0’s).

i.e it has to be compiled to suit whatever environment (dimension) it is operating in!

That’s something interesting to think about.
Our entity is outside this dimension that can be transported to any other dimension with totally different rules as long as we have the correct compiler :P

J: I believe our memory is in our soul, where brain is the tool for revealing/retrieving memory. So for brain damage, it should be damaging the channel or the retrieving device for a particular part of the memory in the soul. Memory lost indicates a blockage in the channel or maybe a short circuit in the device.

H: That’s a pretty interesting theory too.
I like it.

Also makes you think about someones personality, i.e people think it is 50% nurture, 50% nature. I.e 50% is your genetics and 50% is your life experiences.

So, continuing my last thread - we are like a database, where the schema/stored procedures are like our dna, and the data is our life experiences!
To get output though, you need a combination of the two!

So really, before we export to another dimension, we have to do a full database backup (including data/memory) as schema alone just wouldn’t be enough.

S: I think I tend to agree with H on this one. What good are memories? The allow you to recognise people (physically), they provide a basis for judgement, they help you decide whether or not to trust people or love people, they help you to code in C#, allow you to remember how to drive, what to eat, what will kill you, what won’t. They are effectively your way of knowing how to live in this life.

So perhaps they don’t belong to the soul at all. Surely I don’t need them when I die. What good is remembering how to drive after I die? Or remembering that I owe Robert $1. If we are in heaven surely I don’t need to remember if you murdered my mother or not?

In this life I love my mother more than I love your mother. In this life, the way I feel about people is determined by my memories of them. In the next life, aren’t I going to love everyone the same?

J: However if we do not bring any memory to the judgement after death, if someone were told that he/she has done something really bad and he/she didn’t truly receive God, that person may have no idea what God is talking about and cannot feel the responsibility on anything he have said about him/her.

S: Why would we need to feel bad at Judgement – wouldn’t it be a little like, ok fair enough – but why are you telling me now? What can I do about it?

A bit like now if someone told you that you had been a bad toddler because you spat out your food. As an adult you know that is bad manners, but as a toddler you don’t understand. Surely judgement will be the same – ‘I didn’t understand!’.

Are we meant to live our eternity in heaven in guilt for what we did on earth while we were still toddlers?

H: It would be really interesting to dig up some bible verses that indicate whether you still have your earthly memories or not.

I’m sure they are around.

Say though, if someone hung around Jerry Seinfield lots and ended up having an awesome sense of humour because of it and it sort of integrates into your personality until it is integral to who you are, and people like you for it – and you like your new you.

But then, but isn’t this learnt “you” part of your memories almost?
Would this be stripped away – and then people wonder where your sense of humour has gone?

Is there sense of humour in heaven?

J: I think there is, coz God himself has an awesome sense of humour.

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Obviously, H got a lot to say. I believe the main reason is that he is no longer in our company... so he can slack a little bit more. :D