Reply #72: I've got to second trotsky on this...

[Silent3]

...because I am so very, very tired of hearing the concept of conservation of energy being offered up time and again as some sort of scientific defense of Eternal Life.

To the extent that one can apply physics to metaphysics at all, what's far more relevant than conservation of energy (the first law of thermodynamics) to any concept of the preservation of the self is the second law of thermodynamics -- ever increasing entropy.

What makes you you isn't energy so much as well-ordered patterns and arrangements of energy and matter. That kind of order is exactly what physics tell us is NOT conserved. Energy is conserved, but it becomes more and more dissipated and disordered over time. Conserved though it may be, the energy powering the functioning of your brain is constantly turning into nothing more than waste heat. When you die the last of that energy will turn into waste heat as well, no more special or personal or human than the waste heat from a car engine or a light bulb.