I had an interesting discussion last night about this. A woman told me that the five year old child that she was is dead. So I asked her if a flower blooms is the bud it bloomed from dead and she said "yes". I suggested that the bud wasn't dead but rather it had transformed,

So, if something has transformed is the previous state dead?

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

was she speaking of being a five year old child that died at the age of five...or is she talking the five year old that she was in this life is no more..is dead.....

to be of this life and when one was five being dead i dont suppose it matters if you use that term...it is but a word...and there is truth that the five year old as a five year old is no more yet to some degree still exsists of the growth having been a stage of the process of being...in terms of the new language ...there is nothing but the moment and then it is but no more...according to those with new thinking there is but the breath you are on at any given second...as far as what we keep alive would be i guess up to us..and we are learning that we have some control over that...the ability to change are thinking to move in a more positive direction....to least see the good if we are yet breathing...

anyway curious what else came of that coversation more understanding why what was being said was being said...

Good question! Some say that everything is God. I say God is everything. So, in that sense either nothing dies or everything dies. Just two different perspectives of the same thing : )

__________________
May your awareness be perfection

I would say that the previous state no longer exists. I have left the body of a child, and have accepted a new body; one day, I will have a middle-aged body, and then an old man's body. One day that body will turn to dust, and I will accept a new body.

__________________
http://www.fireinthehapter.co.uk - A hapless webcomic

No, it's previous state is not dead because the previous state is the cause of the present state. So, the previous state still lives as the cause of the new one.

__________________
"I fully comprehended the power of the human mind at the exact moment I came to the realization that I'm totally insane and have no idea what I'm talking about."

I agree with this. This woman said when a flower blooms the bud is dead. I just don't agree with that. The flower is made up of the same material as the bud, it's just a different form.

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

The body changes gradually from birth to old age. Those changes involve the catabolism of old cells and their replacement by new cells. Skin cells, blood cells, and endothelial cells are constantly being shed and replaced by new cells.

Even the Neurons which we once thought were all present at birth and decrease over time, is wrong. We actually do lose neurons and grow new ones according to latest research. Even our bone is eroded by circulation and deaths of cells, replacement of the constant loss of Calcium.

So if you are over 50 as I am, we are possibly composed of 90% or more replacement cells and our infant cells are largely gone. Even cells that live a long time are constantly metabolising, exchanging nutrient molecules and excreting by-product or waste molecules. That means elements like Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Sodium, Potassium, Chloride, Calcium, and Sulphur on the atom level are excreted and replaced over time.

We constantly eat food and then poop out many atoms and molecules that we ate last year, last week, and yesterday.

So I am likely not the 5 year old lad who many years ago watched fish swimming up the River Spey in Badenoch. I certainly am connected to him and have many of his memories but he is really not around anymore.

For Star Trek fans, if James T. Kirk beams up from planet Romulus to the Enterprise, he steps into a space between two transducers that dissolve his body with all the codes of his anatomy. The beam is sent at the speed of light to the receiving station on ship. Then beams of particles over several seconds reassemble into James T. Kirk with all of his memories. But is he the same James T. Kirk who was on Planet Romulus? Or is the James T. Kirk back on the Enterprise an exact copy of James T. Kirk while the old James T. Kirk died on Planet Romulus when he was broken down into subatomic particles possibly quarks? Does Kirk, Spock, and Scotty each die every time they beam up or beam down?

It looks at death from a very non-traditional basis. The 5 year old boy may never die if we consider all of his body, each and every atom. Humans and other animals are composed of very stable atoms. So that 5 year old boy's atoms are still "alive" or exist even though they may be scattered across the World by now and are components of worms, slugs, snakes, horses, grass, trees, rocks, and seaweed, and may actually be in other human beings. LK may have some atoms in his body that were once in Eratosthenes, Aristotle, Plato, and Moses.

Does that mean he died after age 5 or sometime between age 5 and age ** today?

Amergin

__________________
Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

Good post! Actually, I think this woman came to this conclusion that night. The atoms can't be destroyed.

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

What you are overlooking is that we are not matter. We are the information(mind) within the matter(body). The matter is the hardware and we are the software. The information within our old cells is transferred to new cells when the old cells die. So, you don't die at age five.

If James T. Kirk is beamed up the matter is unimportant. The matter could be totally different matter but as long as the information within the matter is the exact same it is still James T. Kirk. If the matter is the same matter but the information is just a copy of the original information then James T. Kirk is dead. So, if you beam the exact matter but copy the information then you only get his body on the other side and if you beam the exact same information but copy the matter you get James T. Kirk without his original body.

__________________
"I fully comprehended the power of the human mind at the exact moment I came to the realization that I'm totally insane and have no idea what I'm talking about."