A lot of sci-fi books implement teleporting, beaming, whatever, as some sort of disassembling and reassembling of a person's molecules. I've always wondered though. . .is that not death? If you get sliced in half with a sword, your molecules aren't where they're supposed to be anymore, and you're dead. I can only imagine the same is true on a grander scale, when NONE of your molecules are where they're supposed to be.

That said, when they're reassmbled on the other end, you apparently get a being that looks and acts just exactly like you. To the outside observer, you've been teleported. But have you? Is it really anything more than killing someone, and making an exact copy of them somewhere else? Maybe every person stepping into that teleporter is actually killed and sent on to the afterlife, and no one ever knows about it because by all appearances, they're just fine on the other end.

I guess that calls into question, though, where the "soul" or "self" or whatever you believe in resides. Obviously people can be clinically dead for several minutes and still be revived, so maybe it's possible transporting molecules, too.

Creepy.

Personally, I do believe that everyone has a soul, and I'm not sure whether you could transport that by molecule reconstitution. BUT I suppose I think that, if you couldn't, whatever came out on the other side would not seem like you. You'd get a ragdoll, or a zombie, or something of that nature. I guess. Maybe.