I’m with Bones on this one. The transporter kills you. If we have any sense of soul, or anything beyond the patterns in our biological computer brain, then the transporter kills that, and a facsimile of you is reconstructed on the other end. So you as a physical being still exists, but the ghost in the shell is destroyed. The Federation in Star Trek is full of soulless copies, and the only real people left are the minorities like Bones and Barkley.
I’m with Bones on this one. The transporter kills you. If we have any sense of soul, or anything beyond the patterns in our biological computer brain, then the transporter kills that, and a facsimile of you is reconstructed on the other end. So you as a physical being still exists, but the ghost in the shell is destroyed. The Federation in Star Trek is full of soulless copies, and the only real people left are the minorities like Bones and Barkley.
The very first Star Trek novel dealt with the issue. Spock Must Die! by James Blish. I read it years ago and enjoyed it a lot.