A Ramble About Permissions

In my previous A Ramble About the Transmigration of the Soul I said this:

“Computer processors are made up of billions of transistors. The human brain is essentially a very complex, dynamic organic computer processor. If you've ever seen a picture of a neuron, of which the brain is made up of billions if not trillions, it resembles and functions much like a transistor. A transistor is essentially an electronic switch that uses an electrical impulse to either permit or deny the passage of an electrical current. It forms the basis of all logic circuits, which are the core of all computing devices in existence. Albeit a very highly sophisticated and complex transistor, the neuron is essentially a transistor nonetheless. Like the computer's processor, it functions by the transmission of electrical impulses along pathways of neurons. Inside a computer, these impulses are coded as “1” and “0” for “on” and “off”, if we could describe the internal coding of the neural pathways, it would probably not look much different in its simplest written form.

This internal coding of the human brain (the electrical impulses which course through our neural pathways) is essentially, for all intents and purposes, the human psyche or soul. It is the set of instructions which are formed from the input it receives through the five senses from its experiences and memories. It is programmed, compiled, and run on a single processor which is absolutely unique in terms of the internal arrangement of its “transistors” because every human brain, because of its organic nature and the way in which it forms and grows and changes throughout the course of a person's life, is absolutely unique.”

I had an interesting thought based on this understanding as to why one has only this life in which to repent and cooperate with God through Jesus Christ. It is only in this life and body where cellular change occurs. This body requires it in order to function normally. An organism which does not have regular cell death and regeneration is a dead organism. And organism with uncontrolled cellular regeneration has cancer.

When the body dies, the "software", that is the electrical impulses which make up the memories, thoughts, and personality of the person, is uploaded into a kind of emulator in order to keep it running until it can be downloaded back into a resurrected body. This much I've already described in the aforementioned Ramble.

One of the properties of certain computer files and programs is called “permissions”, Essentially, you can set a file that you create in such a way so that only you are able to make any changes to it, or even see it at all. This is called making a file “read-only.” On my computer, file permissions can be set so that even the administrator, the person who's supposed to be able to access and make necessary changes to the whole system, may not be able to rewrite them, but only the person who created the file.

In the case of a human being's conscious person, that person's coding is written by the person himself through his interaction with the external world and the processing of his own conclusions and calculations. When the person dies, the only one who has the rightful permission to alter the coding is the person that the coding itself describes. God respects our free will and conscious decisions so much that He will not make any alterations to it that the person himself does not authorize.

As a result, the coding, the software, outside of the natural physical body is "read-only" and unalterable so that the conscious person isn't lost in any way. Once the software is downloaded again into a resurrected, immortal, deified body and brain, it is still effectively "read-only" because the immortal body will not undergo cellular death and regeneration. The resurrected brain is like booting a computer from a live CD instead of from a hard drive. The data on a hard drive is magnetically positioned and so can be rewritten, but the data on a CD is fixed by a laser punching miniscule holes in a thin piece of metal foil. You can use the computer, access the programs, surf the net, play solitaire, etc, but you just can't. save anything or make changes to the OS because the boot disk is unable to be rewritten (a live CD is one option, for example, for using a computer without ever having to worry about virus infection or unwanted changes to the system).

One friend of mine questioned about Alzheimer's or dementia patients being locked into that state after death. But, unless I'm much mistaken, the memories and personality of said persons are still intact, but unable to be accessed as is demonstrated with reported "moments of clarity." Furthermore, if God is capable of uploading a human consciousness, certainly He's capable of repairing coding without making unauthorized changes to it.

This also may explain the reported behavior of ghosts (that is, those that can't be proven to be hoaxes or fraudulent in some way). In most cases, the ghost appears to not be aware that any changes have been made to its surroundings or the people which it tries to interact with. This would make sense if the ghost was a human consciousness uploaded as “read-only”, with no permissions given to alter the coding.

Finally, there appears also to be a difference with those who deliberately choose to follow Christ, giving Him permissions to make whatever changes He sees fit. That process of treatment of the human psyche for its inherent disorder, which requires changes to it, continues past the moment of physical death until the person is completely transformed to be like Christ, that is, deified and ready to be downloaded back into a resurrected body. God had already been given permissions through that person's explicit consent and cooperation to make the necessary and final changes prior to the person's physical death.

Thus, after physical death, the consequences of our choice to not cooperate with God by obeying the Gospel of Jesus Christ become unalterable. For God to "change" the person's software in the emulator or in the resurrected body without authorization would be to alter the person against their will, and He won't do that. It has to be our choice to obey or not.

(possible corroboration - here.)