Christianity teaches us that we will surely die, but to fear not the first death as Jesus Christ, at a time known only to his heavenly father will one day raise all the dead back into life and usher the chosen into eternal life while the rest of us he'll condemn to the deepest, darkest bowels of bloody hell where we shall burn in unimaginable anguish forever and ever.
However, I think this is nonsense and I will illustrate why. Imagine for a moment a man, perhaps even you yourself. Tobias is walking home from the store through a dark street. A black van pulls up out of nowhere, four men jump out, surround him, overpower and drag him into the van. He's tightly bound, gagged and driven away. No one saw anything, no sound was made, he's just gone. At home his wife and kids are going about their lives, he's just gone to the shop and will be back soon, nothing is amiss. The men drive him a few kilometres and into a large warehouse. He's dragged out, stripped naked. And forced into a large white room where two giant vats stand in the middle. What seem like scientists and doctors are busy adjusting dials, typing on terminals and injecting large volumes of a clear thick liquid into the vats. He's forced into one of them and strapped down. No matter how much he cries and begs, none of them are moved by it, there's no sympathy in their eyes, no pity, no malice, just methodical purpose.
The vat is closed and slowly filled with the viscous liquid, until he's submerged. Although he panics at first he discovers that he's not suffocating, somehow he doesn't need to breathe. One of the scientists comes over to his vat and begins typing on a terminal. He feels himself compelled into a deep irristible sleep. When he wakes up, Tobias sees a man that looks exactly like him standing in front of his vat, looking staright at him. The man's face is blank, emotionless. They lead the man away like a child, pulling him by the hand. They place him in another vat where some kind of electric node thing extends over the scalp of his head and begins shocking him intensely. The man passes out. After a few seconds they stop the procedure and lift him out and on to a bed. Tobias watches as they clothe the man in the clothes that he was wearing and put his groceries by his bed side and push the bed away.
The four men that kidnapped Tobias put the unconscious man in their van and speed off, back to the place they nabbed Tobias. They take him out, lie him down along with his grocery bag and inject a serum into his neck, then they drive off. The clone wakes up, it's confused to find itself on the ground when just a moment ago it was walking down the street. It picks up the bag, looks around the street, there's nothing, no one. It goes on home, to its wife and children. The clone, Tobias, arrives at his home and goes about his regular routine. His wife asks him what took so long and he tells her that he fainted somehow. She doesn't believe him. Nevertheless life goes on, he grows old, watches his children grow up and get married, his wife passes away at a ripe old age and soon he himself.
Through all of it, no one ever knew that he was a clone, no one ever suspected the slightest thing. He was Tobias through and through. He thought like him, talked like him, acted like him, spoke like him, drove, slept, ate, laughed, cried, and even liked and hated all the same things. Not even his own mother ever felt or sensed anything amiss. All the while the real Tobias rotted to death a long time ago in a dungeon somewhere surrounded by unfeeling scientists pursuing their own ends.
But you see, we know! We know that the clone wasn't real, we know that even though Tobias was alive, really he died a long time ago! Suppose that some day the real Tobias escaped, that the scientists became careless somehow and he got away. He'd run straight home. What would he find!? If not he himself, smooching his own wife, laughing with his own kids! And what would they think? Hmm? Seeing this husk of a man who looks exactly like their Tobias standing in front of them, starved, bone thin, weeping his soul out, with the most outrageous claims! That the man they've known their entire lives is an imposter! A clone, a thing. That he's the real Tobias, that they simply have to believe him. He'd pleads with his wife, begging her to look at him, to remember him. He'd tell them about all the things they used to do, used to say to one another. Things that only Tobias could know. But the clone also knows, it can recite those things too! They'd never believe him. He'd be hauled away.
But you can see that these two people, though the exact same person are completely different! The only difference between the two scenarios is that in one the real Tobias never comes back so no one ever suspects anything. Surely if someone were willing to listen to the real Tobias' story they would get to the bottom of it. But it will not be so with Jesus Christ. Sadly the real you will be long dead, and the thing that he raises from the dead will be only a thing that, sadly looks like you, and has your memories stuffed in its brain. It will think it's you, it will act like you, it will even get on its abominable little knees and praise this God just like you. But it is not you! It's not you. Because we know the real truth! The truth that you are dead and gone. The only way for us to be truly immortal is to make these same bodies that we inhabit themselves immortal. Any other method that involves copying the mind, transferring it to some other body is really a risk that cannot work, at the end of the day those things are not you, they are just things that think they're you. Sure if if there's only one then everyone might believe that's it's you, but if what happens if another one shows up? Then which is which?
The two Tobias' could somehow live together, accepted by everyone, but they'd be living two different lives, the one that gets the wife and kids and the one that doesn't. They would develop differently from then on and at the end of their lives could be far too distinct to call the same. Being "you" is more than just a bucnh of memories crammed into a copy, other people's perceptions of you are also a part of you. The way they see you moulds you, or rather you mould yourself based on that, it is the dramaturgy.
