By this reasoning, isn't it okay to kill someone (or at least to kill them in their sleep)? After all, if everyone's life is a constant sequence of different entities, what you're killing would have ceased existing anyway. You're just preventing a new entity from coming into existence. But preventing a new entity from coming into existence isn't murder, even if the new entity resembles a previous one.
By this reasoning, isn't it okay to kill someone (or at least to kill them in their sleep)?
You tell me.
If you don't like the moral implications of a certain hypothesis, this should have precisely zero effect on your estimation of the probability that this hypothesis is correct. The entire history of the growing acceptance of evolution as a "true" theory follows precisely this course. Many people HATED the implication that man is just another animal. That a sentiment for morality evolved because groups in which that sentiment existed were ...
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
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