Does the Watchtower's doctrine of human existence uphold the dignity of man or destroy it?



The Watchtower says Jehovah fashions a body and infuses it with the breath of life. You become "you" over time as you develop your character, thought life, emotional and mental life. In other words, you start as a blank slate of a body and impersonal energy that combine to become the person who is you, made up of your life experiences, memories, tastes, passions, ideas, character, emotional makeup, etc. This doctrine of human existence is intensely mechanical and physical. "You" consist of the firing of synapses in the brain controlling the physical body fashioned by Jehovah, energized by impersonal energy originally infused by Jehovah but now maintained through the natural living processes of the physical body.



What happens when you die? The Watchtower says that the impersonal energy dissipates or returns to God and your physical body rots away. You cease to exist entirely. There is no more "you" to be found anywhere. This is a fairly consistent application of their theory of being that an individual consists of a body, the breath of life, and their collected memories and character. Since the body and impersonal energy are split asunder, there is nothing left of the individual as their character, thought life, emotional and mental life cannot continue in the absence of a container and energy.



What happens when you are "resurrected", according to the Watchtower? Remember, you do not exist at all in any manner after your death. There is nothing to raise again. It is not a resurrection in the sense of raising "you" up. There can only be a new creature who is somehow made to believe it is you. To accomplish this, the Watchtower teaches that Jehovah God fashions a new blank-slate body and infuses it with the impersonal breath of life. But at this point, the story of this new human diverges from your original creation. Rather than allowing this physical body/impersonal energy human to develop as you were allowed to, Jehovah steps in and implants the memories of your life, fooling this new human into thinking that it is somehow "you". This is not and can never be "you". It is a new human who has been robbed of its own existence and self worth. It has been tricked through implanted memories to believe it is truly "you" through memories that are not its own, character that is not its own, emotional and mental life that is not its own.



Does the Watchtower's doctrine of human existence uphold the dignity of man or destroy it?