Time, death and the universe

[thir]

I have always found that 'time' is a difficult concept, and yesterday I saw an interesting program about it that kind of made it more complicated ;-)

So what is time? Movements on a watch's face? If you take the watch away, is there not time? Well, there are the seasons, due to the earth's travel around the sun. So, if you have no earth and no sun, is there no time???

You measure it by the movements of stars and planets. So if there aren't any, is there no time?

They say time moves foreward, never backwards, but no one knows why..The example was a gletcher from which ice broke off to land in the sea. It never hops back into the gletcher again - why not? According to Brian Cox, physicist, nothing in the natural laws prevent it.

He talked about how a lot of stuff was brought into motion by the big bang (no one knows how that happended or why, or from what) and that those reactions run along still. Stars collaps and explode. He said the star 'died'. He talked that way about many things, and I do not quite understand, but then I do not understand 'death' either. It is said to mean the end of whatever died, finished, gone. But in reality it always seems to mean change.

The star stops being a star, ok so far, but it does not vanish, what is was does not disappear, rather it is spread over a big area. When we die, we are also spread around. Even before we are spread around - by DNA if we have off spring they have bits of us in them, as we have bits of others in us in a long chain backwards. And when we die, what we are made of does not vanish as such, the combination we were does, but our stuff goes into other stuff. Nothing vanishes, as such. It changes.

That is why the only way I can understand 'death' is as 'change'.

This guy talked about the end of the universe, which I think must be an old theory. Leo9 says the 'heat death' theory dates before the discovery of the the black holes, and I would be grateful if you would say something about that Leo9, please? It does not compute that 'something' becomes 'nothing'. That matter disappear, or energy disappear.

Right. So, does anyone understand what 'time' is, and can tell me more?

Does anyone understand what 'death' is, and can tell me more+ Surely there is more to us that our bodies - where does it go? Join the rest of energy, as our stuff joins other stuff?

And what about the universe? What started it, and from what? Where will it go?

Oh, and happy new year :-)

[Thorne]

Wow! Such shallow topics to start off the new year with. Won't hardly even have to think about this one. Much. [/snark]

Okay, I'll start. Time. I guess the simplest way to understand it is that it is tied in with the expansion of space. As the universe expands, so does time. But remember, this is one of the ones that has the scientists blowing their brains out over, too. Does time advance in discrete increments? Does it flow seamlessly? CAN it move backwards? I suppose we can look at it like a drop of water running along a channel. The channel slopes down slightly, so the water moves. You cannot get the water to move backwards, up the channel, without adding energy to it, and right now we don't know of any way to reverse time. Will we? Can't say for sure. Probably not, but there is so much in the universe that's counter-intuitive that there's no way to say for sure.

So, death then. I agree with you, thir. Death simply means change. Stars don't literally die, since they don't have life. But they change, sometimes drastically, and become different. The bigger ones will explode, blowing off a lot of their mass, and collapse into white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. The 'corpse' remains, but technically it may not be a star. Same with a planet. Is the moon dead? There's very little change going on there, except that which is imposed from outside. Is the Earth alive? It's teeming with life, and there is a lot of geologic activity, which is change as well. Hell, there are some organisms, like viri (viruses) that don't fit comfortably into our definitions of life. But death is definitely a change. On the personal level, our bodies decay, our consciousness fades out with the death of the brain. We gradually melt back into the chemical components of which we are made. But as you say, pieces of us remain through our descendants.

I would disagree that there must be more to us than our bodies. Everything we know (which I will grant is not everything there IS to know) says that when our bodies die, so do our minds. There's no evidence for anything which survives after death that could contain our consciousness, other than the molecules and atoms and energy which made us up to begin with. There is no evidence for a soul, in other words. Only wishful thinking. On the other hand, there are atoms within each of us that have been a part of other people in the past, going all the way back to the first stirrings of life on the planet. Hell, the atoms in our bodies were once part of stars, probably many different stars. As Carl Sagan once said, "We are star stuff." And the atoms which make up our bodies will someday be a part of someone else. So there is a kind of immortality after all. We just won't be aware of it. The 'I' of me, my consciousness, my mind, will end.

So, on to the universe. What started it? No one knows. Scientists can calculate the actions of the universe from the first milliseconds, even picoseconds, after the 'Big Bang' but there is no way, as yet, to determine what happened to initiate that expansion, or what came before it. Was there a 'before'? We just don't know. Scientists have observed pairs of particles being 'created' out of vacuum, basically popping into existence from nothing. The term, "Nature abhors a vacuum" seems to be quite literally true. As to where it will go, again, we can only speculate. The trend seems to be towards an eventual heat death, where all of the energy in the universe has fallen into its lowest state, and all of the matter has degenerated to the point where there are no more reactions going on. Everything is spread out and hovering at just above absolute zero. But if there are particles constantly popping into existence, perhaps they will renew the universe, keep it fresh, like replacing the air in a sealed room. Or perhaps, in some far, far distant future, all of the matter and energy which makes up our universe will all swirl together again, slowly building up to that massive singularity which will eventually become another big bang. Perhaps this cycle just repeats, over and over again, space literally expanding and contracting, recreating time and stars and galaxies and life all over again.

And that's about as philosophical as I ever want to get!

[ksst]

Why I believe in reincarnation: eventually parts of me that were once other things will be parts of something else.

There is so much we don't know. I just heard that scientists recently spotted neutrinos going faster than the speed of light. Now, since this has always not just been the limit, but the law, and they appear to be breaking the law, what is this going to mean for us? What other things can go faster than the speed of light? If this is not just a mistake in measurement but is real.

What is time? That one I don't even have an answer for, except that it always seems to go forward, our experience of time is relative to our state of mind, thus time flying or time seeming to stand still, or dragging.
And most profoundly:
"Time and tide melt the snowman".

[leo9]

I have always found that 'time' is a difficult concept, and yesterday I saw an interesting program about it that kind of made it more complicated ;-)

So what is time? Movements on a watch's face? If you take the watch away, is there not time? Well, there are the seasons, due to the earth's travel around the sun. So, if you have no earth and no sun, is there no time??? Yes, there is. People living for long periods in deep caves, intentionally not using clocks, still live by regular routines from the passage of time that they feel in themselves.


They say time moves foreward, never backwards, but no one knows why..The example was a gletcher from which ice broke off to land in the sea. It never hops back into the gletcher again - why not? According to Brian Cox, physicist, nothing in the natural laws prevent it.
Well, he's stretching the truth there. A massive reversal of entropy like that, by pure chance, is theoretically possible, but you run out of zeroes to say how improbable it is. On average, the arrow of time always points in the direction of increasing entropy.

But to me a much more interesting point is that, theoretically, there is no arrow of time. Physicists model events by space-time diagrams which don't have any points on them marked "Past" "Present" and "Future": those concepts are irrelevant. You cannot find anything in science to tell you why "now" is different from "then," it is something that only happens in our heads. Time as a linear scale is objective, but the passage of time is completely subjective, a shared hallucination of thinking beings. One of the things I mention when atheists argue that subjective experiences like spirituality can't have any serious importance...

He talked about how a lot of stuff was brought into motion by the big bang (no one knows how that happended or why, or from what) and that those reactions run along still. Stars collaps and explode. He said the star 'died'. He talked that way about many things, and I do not quite understand, but then I do not understand 'death' either. It is said to mean the end of whatever died, finished, gone. But in reality it always seems to mean change.When my children were little, when I had to explain to them that something was broken or worn out beyond repair, I would tell them it was dead. I felt that besides giving them a useful conceptual tool for knowing when to give up on things, it would prepare them for the time when they had to encounter a living thing's death. They would already understand that sometimes things are finished and can't be brought back, however we may want them.


The star stops being a star, ok so far, but it does not vanish, what is was does not disappear, rather it is spread over a big area. When we die, we are also spread around. Even before we are spread around - by DNA if we have off spring they have bits of us in them, as we have bits of others in us in a long chain backwards. And when we die, what we are made of does not vanish as such, the combination we were does, but our stuff goes into other stuff. Nothing vanishes, as such. It changes.

That is why the only way I can understand 'death' is as 'change'.That works for me.


This guy talked about the end of the universe, which I think must be an old theory. Leo9 says the 'heat death' theory dates before the discovery of the the black holes, and I would be grateful if you would say something about that Leo9, please? It does not compute that 'something' becomes 'nothing'. That matter disappear, or energy disappear.OK, the old idea of the "heat death of the universe" was a simple extrapolation of thermodynamics. Entropy must always increase (on average), therefore there must come a time when general entropy is so high - energy and matter are so evened out and mixed up - that there are no concentrations of energy or matter left to make anything happen, and the universe will settle into a permanent flat calm.

This was always philosophically awkward, because it left cosmology with a beginning but no end, and people have been thinking up ways round it ever since. One such theory notes that black holes break the rules: however the general entropy level rises, a black hole remains a reservoir of negative entropy. So it's been suggested that, since the flow of matter into black holes is irreversible, eventually they must mop up all the mass in the universe, then draw themselves together, till everything there is is packed into one vast black hole... which might be the seed of a new universe?




Right. So, does anyone understand what 'time' is, and can tell me more?"Time is what stops everything from happening at once."


Does anyone understand what 'death' is, and can tell me more?

A boy who worked for a Zen master dropped the master's favourite cup. When the master returned that evening the boy said "Master, why is there death?"

"People die when it is time," said the master. "It is meant to be."

The boy brought the pieces of china from behind his back and said "Master, it was time for your cup to die."
Surely there is more to us that our bodies - where does it go? Join the rest of energy, as our stuff joins other stuff? Mind is not just energy. Like a candle flame or this document on the computer, it is energy in an orderly self-maintaining pattern, and when the pattern breaks down (the mind dies, the candle goes out, the computer closes down or crashes,) the energy is conserved but the order is gone.

In my book on the afterlife, I suggested that the spirit plane - being, according to all the world's mythologies, the place where patterns of order go when they are lost to the material world - balances the material plane's increasing entropy by accumulating order and decreasing entropy. I haven't followed that thought through, but it seems to have possibilities.


And what about the universe? What started it, and from what? Where will it go?


{levitates gently to the ceiling chanting OM} It is a cosmic mystery, my child...

[leo9]

Why I believe in reincarnation: eventually parts of me that were once other things will be parts of something else. If you believe in homeopathy (I don't, but if...), then matter retains some kind of memory of other forms of matter it was once in contact with. (A similar argument has been advanced to explain hauntings: the materials of the place hold a memory of the thoughts and feelings that occured around them.) So maybe some memory of us could cling to our atoms? If so, it wouldn't be reincarnation in a specific other body, but a mixing with every other spirit and merging into the spiritual atmosphere of the world... which sounds good to me.

[Thorne]

People living for long periods in deep caves, intentionally not using clocks, still live by regular routines from the passage of time that they feel in themselves.
Humans have evolved within a 24 hour diurnal world, and our bodies' clocks retain that timing. However, without outside references, this timing can be changed, stretched to longer periods, or compressed to shorter periods. While they may perform regular routines, without any kind of objective reference there's no way for them to perform them at regular intervals.


Time as a linear scale is objective, but the passage of time is completely subjective, a shared hallucination of thinking beings.
I think that the passage of time is less an hallucination and more of a memory. Having had a couple of surgeries, with anesthetic, I experienced no sense of the passage of time until I began to wake up. And even then there were gaps until I was fully awake. The same happens when we sleep. If you wake up during the night, without looking at a clock or some other means of measuring the passage of time, you cannot know how long you've really slept. One hour or four, or only a few minutes?


One of the things I mention when atheists argue that subjective experiences like spirituality can't have any serious importance...
Not sure I understand this reference. Subjective experiences of any type can have tremendous importance to the person having them. But without some kind of objective evidence there's no way to tell if they were real or simply a false memory.


however the general entropy level rises, a black hole remains a reservoir of negative entropy.
According to Hawking, though, black holes do NOT remain. They eventually evaporate. I don't claim to understand the physics, but there is one thing that does escape a black hole: gravity.


In my book on the afterlife, I suggested that the spirit plane - being, according to all the world's mythologies, the place where patterns of order go when they are lost to the material world - balances the material plane's increasing entropy by accumulating order and decreasing entropy. I haven't followed that thought through, but it seems to have possibilities.
Maybe, if you had any objective evidence for the existence of this spirit plane. But we already know that energy cannot be lost to the material world. It can be changed and dispersed, but not lost.

[Thorne]

then matter retains some kind of memory of other forms of matter it was once in contact with.
One of the big problems of homeopathy (as well as other "mystical" explanations) is that they have never been able to demonstrate such memory, nor explain how this memory is retained. They simply state it as fact and expect people to accept it.


the materials of the place hold a memory of the thoughts and feelings that occured around them.
I have seen and heard of instances where certain items which were undergoing some kind of stress were able to act similar to a phonograph, recording sounds which occurred around them during that period of stress. I would guess that something similar could happen with electromagnetic impulses. But this is a physical process, not a spiritual one.


... which sounds good to me.
This is the best reason in the world to suspect this idea. Without actually having objective, reproducible evidence, you can make up anything that feels or sounds good and claim it to be true. Can you envision a mechanism that allows some kind of memory of our consciousness to cling to atoms? Can you demonstrate it? Or can you at least come up with something that would show it to be false? Without those things, it's just speculation and wishful thinking.

[Thorne]

I have seen and heard of instances where certain items which were undergoing some kind of stress were able to act similar to a phonograph, recording sounds which occurred around them during that period of stress.
While rereading this I had a somewhat terrifying thought. Steel is a very durable material, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it could, under the right conditions, act as a sound recorder. (I don't know if this is true. I'm merely speculating.) If such a thing were possible, can you imagine what the steel from the WTC might have recorded during it's fall? Then, take all of that steel and transport it to a dump site, piling it up willy-nilly and wait for just the right temperature change, or just the right tremor in the earth. Imagine what a nearby listener might hear if the steel were to suddenly begin screaming!

I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight.

[ksst]

I don't think I like that thought either. screaming steel, the end beginning of the universe and the memory of atoms. I don't see how atoms have actual memory, like we have memory. They probably have some record of some things that happen to them, but not like I could remember being a star, can you?

[Thorne]

I don't see how atoms have actual memory, like we have memory. They probably have some record of some things that happen to them, but not like I could remember being a star, can you?
I don't see how they could have memory either. Atoms are basically made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, and as far as I know there is no way to distinguish between one electron and another, or one proton and another, etc. True, electrons can change energy states, going from a stable condition to an unstable one, but under normal conditions they tend to quickly revert back to the stable state. Not sure if that could be considered memory, though. But then, I'm not sure they know how human memory works yet.

[denuseri]

If time and death are fun wait until you get into quantum entanglment lol.

[ksst]

I read about half the book where the guy explains quantum physics to his dog. That was as far as I got. Maybe someday I'll read the other half. I was afraid my brain was going to explode.

[ksst]

http://dogphysics.com/book_info.html


This one

[ksst]

Any science that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.

[IAN 2411]

Why do humans ask answers to the unexplainable?

Why do we need to know why and how this supposedly big bang took place?

Does it really matter that the clocks go forward or backward? Or what about when we pick something out of a line we go left to right? Dates go forward in their count, age does the same thing, and the reason it is done that way is because we want it to. The mortal made the words and the literate people wrote it for prosperity. It is the natural thing to do that is planted in our brains, but when scientists question this normality, I wonder if they have found their correct vocation in life.

Is it going to change things? Does anyone other than these people getting paid by tax payers really give a damn when the big bang was? The answers when found out might just be more frightening that the not knowing. However, it will be too late then because these same pratts will have published in the Scientific Journal for all to read that infinity is a myth and the end really is just around the corner. [Good on them]

Then you have the fools that are sending atoms round in circles so that collide just to see what takes place. What’s the reason for this? Answer knowledge. Yea right, so it causes a black hole or the world as we know it implodes very clever but dangerous people. They are playing with the world of the unknown with the world that does not belong solely to them. Is this experiment going to help the world, no I doubt it? It is most probably being done because they have x amount of £/$ to spend and damn all else to do with their sad lives. They have spent more on that damn machine than the UK borrowed a few months back, and all they have achieved is a few pretty colours on a plasma screen that they all probably went home to jerk off over. I now do mean... “God help the human race, because they surely do need it.”

Is there a life after death? Well I really do hope so because there are a few people about that I must come back and haunt. I would hate to know that there really is a hell and that’s where we are all bound. Just think, last week ignorant and this week we have the knowledge that when we die we are going to be whipped until infinity [that we still have] while feeding the fires of hell. Just think of the anarchy and noise of the knowing screams, when twenty thousand old people[Of the Vanilla population] are about to die worldwide every day as they plead for a few more years. Then on the other extreme there is [the BDSM family standing naked at the end of the bed shouting, "Bring it on"]. No I believe in certain circumstances ignorance is a blessing, and this whole thread is far too spooky.

Be well IAN 2411

[Thorne]

Why do humans ask answers to the unexplainable?
So we can explain them, of course!


Why do we need to know why and how this supposedly big bang took place?
Why not? Don't you know where and when you were born? If you're one of those who does not, wouldn't you like to know?


Does it really matter that the clocks go forward or backward? Or what about when we pick something out of a line we go left to right? Dates go forward in their count, age does the same thing, and the reason it is done that way is because we want it to. The mortal made the words and the literate people wrote it for prosperity.
Yes, these are all cultural phenomena, and have nothing to do with the NATURE of time, only in how we perform the record keeping. But why do all the planets revolve around the sun in the same direction? Why does the sun keep burning, keeping us alive? Don't you think this kind of question is important? Or at least, interesting?


Is it going to change things? Does anyone other than these people getting paid by tax payers really give a damn when the big bang was?
I imagine there were those who questioned Pasteur's experiments, especially when he infected milk maids with cow pox. Yet without that kind of experiment we would not have a better understanding of germ theory, and we would still be dying of vaccine-preventable diseases. Just because we may not be able to define a tangible purpose for gaining knowledge doesn't mean we won't develop some purpose.


The answers when found out might just be more frightening that the not knowing.
Unquestionably! The answers are almost ALWAYS more frightening than not knowing. That's why people make up feel-good explanations for things rather than try to find out the truth. Personally I'd rather KNOW the truth than carry on mumbling into my soup about how wonderful it all is, only to have it smack me in the face later on.


However, it will be too late then because these same pratts will have published in the Scientific Journal for all to read that infinity is a myth and the end really is just around the corner. [Good on them]
Does that idea scare you? Why? Again, I'd rather know that the end was coming, so I could prepare myself for it.


Then you have the fools that are sending atoms round in circles so that collide just to see what takes place. What’s the reason for this? Answer knowledge.
But without this kind of knowledge, understanding the basic forces that make the universe work, we wouldn't be having this conversation on computers, or cell phones. Without the search for knowledge we would still be sitting around the fire in our caves, trembling at the howling of the wind, living out our short but violent lives in fear and ignorance.


Yea right, so it causes a black hole or the world as we know it implodes very clever but dangerous people. They are playing with the world of the unknown with the world that does not belong solely to them.
Yeah, yeah. And television was going to corrupt our children. And pornography turns men into rapists. Fairy stories to frighten the gullible.


Is this experiment going to help the world, no I doubt it?
Who knows? One thing for sure, if you DON'T do the experiment it definitely WON'T help the world.


“God help the human race, because they surely do need it.”
If there were a god he could just instill all this knowledge into us, and we wouldn't have to do the experiments. But your God wasn't even bright enough to inform his chosen people that it might be a good idea to wash their fucking hands before they ate!


I would hate to know that there really is a hell and that’s where we are all bound. Just think, last week ignorant and this week we have the knowledge that when we die we are going to be whipped until infinity [that we still have] while feeding the fires of hell.
But wouldn't it be nice to actually KNOW that there is no hell? That it was all a lie told by evil people to control the ignorant? Do you know how many people actually live out their lives in terror of doing something stupidly silly that will send them off to hell, because it might offend their "loving" god?


No I believe in certain circumstances ignorance is a blessing, and this whole thread is far too spooky.
I have to disagree. Ignorance is NEVER a blessing. And this is far from spooky.

[IAN 2411]

Why not? Don't you know where and when you were born? If you're one of those who does not, wouldn't you like to know?
The date I was born was 1947 ad JC. That is undeniable. Now if I was born in 1973 ad JFK recognised worldwide, then I might be younger but it would still be undeniable. I know I am this age because it is an Earth measurement of age and time [“Note” not a universal measurement]. A universal measurement that is most than likely worked out in a word that has never been invented yet, because the scientists have no idea whether the one is correct that they are using on earth.


But why do all the planets revolve around the sun in the same direction? Why does the sun keep burning, keeping us alive? Don't you think this kind of question is important? Or at least, interesting?
I was always under the impression that the magnetic pull of the sun held them where they where and moved them at different speeds in a clockwise rotation, or if you are looking at it from underneath anti-clockwise. If the planets were travelling the other way at the start [Big Bang] we would still, be going forward but in a different direction. Yes, you are corect, the same question, why?


Does that idea scare you? Why? Again, I'd rather know that the end was coming, so I could prepare myself for it.
No it doesn’t scare me, but neither do I want to know the day when I stick my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye.

But without this kind of knowledge, understanding the basic forces that make the universe work, we wouldn't be having this conversation on computers, or cell phones. Without the search for knowledge we would still be sitting around the fire in our caves, trembling at the howling of the wind, living out our short but violent lives in fear and ignorance.
Communications has nothing to do with trying to unravel what happened so many whatever, when the Big Bang took place. Finding the source or the why the Big Bang took place has no possible use to mankind, it is a useless bit of information that the minority want to know, for whatever reason if it is only to satisfy their sad mind.

No doubt there is another planet somewhere that is closer to the eye where the Big Bang took place, and a trillions years ahead of Earths technology, and with their own sad cases looking for the same answer.



Who knows? One thing for sure, if you DON'T do the experiment it definitely WON'T help the world.
Neither is there the chance of it messing it up.




If there were a god he could just instill all this knowledge into us, and we wouldn't have to do the experiments. But your God wasn't even bright enough to inform his chosen people that it might be a good idea to wash their fucking hands before they ate!
My God!!! You have no idea who or what my god is...for all you know it was your god that fucked up...whatever or whoever that is...? Don’t make assumptions based on your own beliefs.


But wouldn't it be nice to actually KNOW that there is no hell? That it was all a lie told by evil people to control the ignorant? Do you know how many people actually live out their lives in terror of doing something stupidly silly that will send them off to hell, because it might offend their "loving" god?
It is their belief and if that is the way they want to live then so be it, it does not bother me and neither do they. Why is it right for a person that has no beliefs to prove disbelief to another? I think that the only persons that wish to find out if there really is a hell or a heaven to disprove the theory are the ones that truly believe in their existence, but are hoping they are wrong.



I have to disagree. Ignorance is NEVER a blessing. And this is far from spooky.
Bullshit; Do you, really think that if my wife knew 12 years before she died, that if her suffering in immense pain every day for 12 years would still end in death no matter what? Do you honestly think in your mind that she would have fought so hard to live?

Be well IAN 2411

[Thorne]

I know I am this age because it is an Earth measurement of age and time.
We agree on this, certainly.The way we measure time is an artificial construct of humanity. It has no meaning anywhere else in the universe.


I was always under the impression that the magnetic pull of the sun held them where they where and moved them at different speeds in a clockwise rotation, or if you are looking at it from underneath anti-clockwise. If the planets were travelling the other way at the start [Big Bang] we would still, be going forward but in a different direction.
Gravity, not magnetism, and the Sun and planets came long after the Big Bang, but otherwise correct. Again, many of these concepts are man-made, to help us understand and communicate ideas better.


Communications has nothing to do with trying to unravel what happened so many whatever, when the Big Bang took place.
No, but it has a lot to do with quantum physics and subatomic particles. And even before that, it had to do with learning new things, new ways to communicate. Many of those ideas were wrong, and many had unexpected benefits. But if you don't try to learn, you don't find any of those benefits.


Finding the source or the why the Big Bang took place has no possible use to mankind, it is a useless bit of information that the minority want to know, for whatever reason if it is only to satisfy their sad mind.
Something you cannot possibly know. A valid opinion, yes, but without knowing what we might learn along the way, failing to even try is guaranteeing that we'll never know.


My God!!! You have no idea who or what my god is...for all you know it was your god that fucked up...whatever or whoever that is...? Don’t make assumptions based on your own beliefs.
You're right, I made an assumption. My apologies. But you also are assuming that I have a god. I do not.


Why is it right for a person that has no beliefs to prove disbelief to another?
Questioning belief is not the same as trying to prove disbelief, whatever that means.


Bullshit; Do you, really think that if my wife knew 12 years before she died, that if her suffering in immense pain every day for 12 years would still end in death no matter what? Do you honestly think in your mind that she would have fought so hard to live?
I didn't know your wife, and I'm sorry to have brought such tender memories to the surface. I can only guess that, since she spent those 12 years fighting, she must have felt there was something worth fighting for.

[leo9]

Is this experiment going to help the world, no I doubt it? It is most probably being done because they have x amount of £/$ to spend and damn all else to do with their sad lives. They have spent more on that damn machine than the UK borrowed a few months back, and all they have achieved is a few pretty colours on a plasma screen that they all probably went home to jerk off over. I now do mean... “God help the human race, because they surely do need it.”

The last major breakthrough in quantum physics led to transistors, microchips, solar electric panels, LEDs and a great many other things you probably imagine were the work of some hard-headed engineer working for some corporate research lab. And nobody knew in advance that any of this would come from what looked like blue-sky pure research (or as you might have put it, throwing money down the drain.)

Will CERN produce some breakthrough that will save the world (e.g. a practical recipe for microfusion)? Probably not, but the one thing that's certain is that if we don't do the research we'll never know.

[leo9]

One of the big problems of homeopathy (as well as other "mystical" explanations) is that they have never been able to demonstrate such memory, nor explain how this memory is retained. They simply state it as fact and expect people to accept it.I agree, which is one of the reasons I don't believe it.



I have seen and heard of instances where certain items which were undergoing some kind of stress were able to act similar to a phonograph, recording sounds which occurred around them during that period of stress. I would guess that something similar could happen with electromagnetic impulses. But this is a physical process, not a spiritual one.Leaving aside the fact that all attempts to explain telepathy and related effects elecromagnetically have failed, it's a moot point whether finding a physical explanation for hauntings would remove it from the realm of the spiritual.



This is the best reason in the world to suspect this idea. Without actually having objective, reproducible evidence, you can make up anything that feels or sounds good and claim it to be true. Can you envision a mechanism that allows some kind of memory of our consciousness to cling to atoms? Can you demonstrate it? Or can you at least come up with something that would show it to be false? Without those things, it's just speculation and wishful thinking.The fact that I started the post by invoking a theory which I stated I didn't believe in, and then referenced an idea I put forward in a work of fiction, should have made it clear that I was playing with ideas and not putting forward hard theories.

[Thorne]

Leaving aside the fact that all attempts to explain telepathy and related effects elecromagnetically have failed, it's a moot point whether finding a physical explanation for hauntings would remove it from the realm of the spiritual.
All efforts to show that telepathy actually exists have also failed. Some people still believe in it. But developing a physical, measurable, reproducible explanation for anything automatically removes it from the spiritual or supernatural. By definition.

[thir]

According to Hawking, though, black holes do NOT remain. They eventually evaporate. I don't claim to understand the physics, but there is one thing that does escape a black hole: gravity.


The biggest known concentration of stuff just evaporates?



But we already know that energy cannot be lost to the material world. It can be changed and dispersed, but not lost.

And so I cannot understand how the universe (or anything else) ran 'run down' ?

[thir]

One of the big problems of homeopathy (as well as other "mystical" explanations) is that they have never been able to demonstrate such memory, nor explain how this memory is retained. They simply state it as fact and expect people to accept it.


Not quite that simple. I, for one, do not believe in it. I was talked into trying it, which seemed a huge waste of time, but for the sake of argument I did. And it had a violent impact, and I felt like a fool, and still do, being influenced by something I am sure is nonsense!

]

[thir]

If time and death are fun wait until you get into quantum entanglment lol.

And string theory..

[thir]

All efforts to show that telepathy actually exists have also failed. Some people still believe in it. But developing a physical, measurable, reproducible explanation for anything automatically removes it from the spiritual or supernatural. By definition.

Ehm, I don't think so. What about the creationists?

[Thorne]

The biggest known concentration of stuff just evaporates?
Try this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Evaporation)
Still pretty hypothetical, but Hawking radiation has been observed.

[QUOTE]And so I cannot understand how the universe (or anything else) ran 'run down' ?
Imagine striking a match in a large room. The heat around that match is pretty high, enough to burn you. As the match burns out the heat dissipates. Eventually, the infrared radiation will spread throughout the room, leaving the same amount of energy, but spread over a far larger volume. Pretty much the same as the universe. The energy remains, just much more spread out.

[Thorne]

Not quite that simple. I, for one, do not believe in it. I was talked into trying it, which seemed a huge waste of time, but for the sake of argument I did. And it had a violent impact, and I felt like a fool, and still do, being influenced by something I am sure is nonsense!
Not sure what kind of impact you're talking about here. Basically, homeopathic medicines consist of water and sugar. Unless you're a diabetic, there should be no impact at all. There's a group in England, the 10:23 group or campaign, which periodically performs a mass "suicide", in public, by overdosing on homeopathic poisons/sleeping pills. To date, every attempt has resulted in failure to suicide.

[Thorne]

Ehm, I don't think so. What about the creationists?
What about them? They have no physical, measurable, reproducible evidence for creation. Only their holy books and wishful thinking. And even their books are contradictory and completely at odds with observable evidence. They rely on the supernatural explanation, without evidence.

[ksst]

Homeopathic suicide? It seems like it ought to work sometimes, if only from the placebo effect. LOL

[thir]

[QUOTE=thir;960215]The biggest known concentration of stuff just evaporates?
Try this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Evaporation)
Still pretty hypothetical, but Hawking radiation has been observed.


Imagine striking a match in a large room. The heat around that match is pretty high, enough to burn you. As the match burns out the heat dissipates. Eventually, the infrared radiation will spread throughout the room, leaving the same amount of energy, but spread over a far larger volume. Pretty much the same as the universe. The energy remains, just much more spread out.

As I understood the theory, they meant no energy left. This is what is so weird.

[thir]

Not sure what kind of impact you're talking about here. Basically, homeopathic medicines consist of water and sugar. Unless you're a diabetic, there should be no impact at all. There's a group in England, the 10:23 group or campaign, which periodically performs a mass "suicide", in public, by overdosing on homeopathic poisons/sleeping pills. To date, every attempt has resulted in failure to suicide.

I got quite seriously ill. Stopped. After getting better, tried again, because I could not believe it could be that stuff. And it happened again. And rather later, again.

Go figure.

[thir]

What about them? They have no physical, measurable, reproducible evidence for creation. Only their holy books and wishful thinking. And even their books are contradictory and completely at odds with observable evidence. They rely on the supernatural explanation, without evidence.

Well, that was what I meant. Science aside, they still have their own version, meaning proof does not make any difference.

Or are we at cross purposes here??

[Thorne]

As I understood the theory, they meant no energy left. This is what is so weird.
That doesn't sound right. There would be no FREE (as in usable) energy left. All energy would be bound up in small particles of matter, which would require an input of energy to release, or spread out so thinly throughout the universe so as to be useless. A homeopathic universe, if you will!

[Thorne]

I got quite seriously ill. Stopped. After getting better, tried again, because I could not believe it could be that stuff. And it happened again. And rather later, again.

Go figure.
Were they pills? It could be a reaction to the filler materials. My mother-in-law couldn't take generic meds supposedly because they used lower quality filler materials, and she would have an adverse reaction. Personally, I think it was psychosomatic, but I never tried to prove that.

Since homeopathic medications are diluted to the point where there is a near zero probability of their being a single molecule of the medication remaining in the pill, there would be nothing of the active ingredient for you to react to.

[Thorne]

Well, that was what I meant. Science aside, they still have their own version, meaning proof does not make any difference.
It doesn't make any difference to them, certainly. It does make a difference to science.

The group Answers in Genesis (http://www.answersingenesis.org/about) specifically states:
"The Bible—the “history book of the universe”—provides a reliable, eye-witness account of the beginning of all things, and can be trusted to tell the truth in all areas it touches on. Therefore, we are able to use it to help us make sense of this present world. When properly understood, the “evidence” confirms the biblical account."

And in their Statement of Faith (http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith) they specifically state:
"By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information."
So any information which contradicts the biblical account must be wrong, because the "fallible people" at AiG have declared it to be so?

[IAN 2411]

Okay I have had time to think about a few things. Now take it that I was never the brightest boy in the school and somewhere about post [20] I got lost. I am trying to figure out what homeopathy has to do with [Time Death and the Universe]. I know what homeopathy is and I cannot see where it fits with the heading, maybe I am a little thicker than I thought.

Time goes forward, IE: - an annual plant buds, an annual plant blooms, an annual plant wilts, an annual plant dies, The End. The dead plant gives energy and life to the soil, so where’s the end? Weeds grow. Reincarnation?

Time waits for no man? Is that right, or is man moving faster than time which causes him to age, deteriorate and die. The universe gets bigger by the moment, is that time moving or is it standing still and the universe is moving?

Death; if during our lives we learn as much as we can, and at the end we die. Then to realise that unless our names are linked kin to Einstein, then what is the point of it all? Am I to believe that it takes 100,000 people to be born just to find one Albert Einstein? Are the other 99,999 just bad seeds, and again what would be the point of the one good seed? I have to believe that there is a reason everyone has a brain and a mind of their own in the broader view of the universe. The universe is here, I am here and there as to be a better reason than just being one of the 99,999 that are not the super brain of the world. I have to believe that the mind and thought are there for a reason and because it is an essence it will live until it finds a young host to manipulate. Reincarnation?

Am I crazy? Possibly, but no more than those that say death is the end, and until we get there no one knows the truth.

The universe, it is expanding as we speak, maybe it is no better than a balloon and one day it will pop. But until then....

Be well IAN 2411

[ksst]

I think it would be a pretty boring world, and not functional, if we were all Albert Einstein. I mean, he was good at certain things, but there are millions of other people that are good at what they do and just as important for different reasons.

[Thorne]

I am trying to figure out what homeopathy has to do with [Time Death and the Universe]. I know what homeopathy is and I cannot see where it fits with the heading, maybe I am a little thicker than I thought.
No, it really doesn't have anything to do with it. Just another way for some people to accept what feels good rather than what's real.


Time goes forward, IE: - an annual plant buds, an annual plant blooms, an annual plant wilts, an annual plant dies, The End. The dead plant gives energy and life to the soil, so where’s the end? Weeds grow. Reincarnation?
The dead plant returns nutrients to the soil, and some stored energy, but not life. Life is made (in the form of seeds) before the death of the organism.


Time waits for no man? Is that right, or is man moving faster than time which causes him to age, deteriorate and die. The universe gets bigger by the moment, is that time moving or is it standing still and the universe is moving?
I suppose we should view time as a construct of man, a way to explain why things happen in a linear manner. Why are we born, live our lives, then die, and not the reverse? Because "time" flows in one direction only.

I have to believe that the mind and thought are there for a reason and because it is an essence it will live until it finds a young host to manipulate. Reincarnation?
As soon as you say, "I have to believe", you've stepped away from reality. What we believe may have absolutely nothing to do with how things are. People WANT to believe there's a reason for their existence, a reason that's bigger than themselves. Unfortunately, there's nothing to show that such a belief is true. Einstein was a great mind, no question. He advanced our knowledge of the universe immensely. That doesn't make him any better or worse as far as the universe is concerned. And it doesn't mean that we all have that kind of potential.


Am I crazy? Possibly, but no more than those that say death is the end, and until we get there no one knows the truth.
Crazy? No, not at all. Deluded? Not unless you allow your beliefs to interfere with your understanding of reality. And yes, until we get there, no one knows the truth. But there are a lot of conmen and shamans who want you to believe that THEY know! And what they have to say may make you FEEL better, but that doesn't make what they say true. The universe, as far as we can tell, is supremely indifferent to our existence, whether as individuals or as a species.


The universe, it is expanding as we speak, maybe it is no better than a balloon and one day it will pop. But until then....
There are billions of stars in our galaxy, and we are just starting to find out that many of them have planets. There could be thousands, even millions, of life-bearing planets in our galaxy alone. And there are billions of galaxies out there! To believe that all of this was made just to achieve us is the ultimate egoism. Humanity is a minor waypoint in the long process of evolution, and one day we will be as extinct as the dinosaurs. But the universe doesn't care. When we are gone, the universe will not miss us.

[IAN 2411]

As soon as you say, "I have to believe", you've stepped away from reality. What we believe may have absolutely nothing to do with how things are. People WANT to believe there's a reason for their existence, a reason that's bigger than themselves. Unfortunately, there's nothing to show that such a belief is true. Einstein was a great mind, no question. He advanced our knowledge of the universe immensely. That doesn't make him any better or worse as far as the universe is concerned. And it doesn't mean that we all have that kind of potential.

I have to believe that the mind and thought are there for a reason and because it is an essence it will live until it finds a young host to manipulate.

Okay, try this, we know that there are possibly things programmed in the brain at birth, IE: -breathe or die the same with all animals I would think. At that moment the brain is kick started into life with a slap on the ass, or I think these days a blast of clean air, but it is fully functioning and running. Are you trying to tell me that we are born with a thinking mind and it’s laying dormant. When a child starts to say words like dad, mum, that is not thought it is copying. When a child starts to put words together like, I want food, that is thought and the mind starting to work. We have no idea why or how that takes place, there are theories but not all theories are fact. Theories are just someone else’s thoughts, and yes some of the obvious are realised as fact. I have yet to hear a theory about how the mind and thought generate or what kick starts that.

My quote [I have to believe]. My belief is my theory, and it will remain a theory until proved fact or fiction. Fact; is the accumulation of several theories of the same content being proved correct after repeated experiments.


There are billions of stars in our galaxy, and we are just starting to find out that many of them have planets. There could be thousands, even millions, of life-bearing planets in our galaxy alone. And there are billions of galaxies out there! To believe that all of this was made just to achieve us is the ultimate egoism. Humanity is a minor waypoint in the long process of evolution, and one day we will be as extinct as the dinosaurs. But the universe doesn't care. When we are gone, the universe will not miss us.

No, you misunderstand me; I agree that the universe never evolved just to produce man or beast. Evolution will eventually take over and the human race as we know it now will disappear. There will be an intelligence of sort on earth unless man destroys himself. I was merely pointing out that with each birth the amount of learning and information stored in the brain is greater, and the question I asked was what is the point if we die and that thought and knowledge is wasted? Yes i agree that what we write down is passed on, or rather some of it that complies with the thinking of the minority of would be geniuses'.

When we are gone, the universe will not miss us.
That is your belief, or is that fact and proved to be true?

Be well IAN 2411

[ksst]

Babies are thinking way before they can make words and express thoughts that way. They communicate through eye movements and gestures. I taught both my kids sign language (baby signs) for simple things before they were able to talk. For that matter, animals are thinking although we don't always know what they are thinking.

My thought was the reason none of us remember being babies and thinking baby thoughts is that there is no language ability to hang memory hooks on. That is, as adults, part of remembering things is the ability to rehearse them in your mind using language. And since babies don't have that ability yet they don't remember things in a clear manner, just possibly as sensation and emotion.

[Thorne]

We have no idea why or how that takes place, there are theories but not all theories are fact.
If you want to be scientific about it, then there are many hypotheses about it, but none of them have accumulated enough evidence to actually qualify as a theory. Any scientific theory has been tested and tested and tested again until it has become the next best thing to fact. But scientists know that it would only take one new piece of evidence to overturn their theory, so they do not claim it to be fact.

There are many different hypotheses about how the mind works, but no really definitive theories as yet. That does not make it all right to just insert any wishful thinking you want and claim it to be just as valid as any other hypothesis. You have to have data, evidence, that what you are saying is likely. So far, I've not heard of any that supports the continuation of the mind after death.


My quote [I have to believe]. My belief is my theory, and it will remain a theory until proved fact or fiction.
Unless you can provide evidence for it, it must remain at best an unproven hypothesis, at worst a fiction.


Fact; is the accumulation of several theories of the same content being proved correct after repeated experiments.
Sorry, no. A fact is an observed phenomenon, recordable and measurable by independent sources. A fact is a data point which is used to determine the validity (or not) of an hypothesis. When an hypothesis accounts for ALL of the facts, and predicts new facts previously not known, only then does it graduate to the level of theory. One of the beauties of Newton's Theory of Gravity, for example, was that it accounted for all of the known motions of the planets, and was used to determine the existence of Neptune before it was actually observed. One of the beauties of Einstein's Theory of Relativity is that it exactly explained the one fact which, it was found, Newton's theory could NOT explain: the advance of Mercury's perihelion.


I was merely pointing out that with each birth the amount of learning and information stored in the brain is greater, and the question I asked was what is the point if we die and that thought and knowledge is wasted?
I don't understand this point. How do you mean, the stored information is greater? As near as I can find, when we are born we all have about the same information stored, and much of that is autonomic reflexes, things which are 'hard-wired' to keep us alive. Yes, there is more and more information that is available, after we are born, to fill up our brains, but we don't generally accumulate all of that information. A 17th century man, for example, would likely know how to care for a horse, how to hunt for food, how to do a myriad of things that the average man no longer does. We don't, as a rule, learn all of that information. We learn how to put gas in our cars, where to find the grocery stores, and the myriad of things we need to know to function in our world. Sure, some people will learn archaic skills, by choice. But none of that knowledge is present when we are born. And you still ask the question, "What is the point?" without showing any reason why there SHOULD be a point, other than your wishes.


That is your belief, or is that fact and proved to be true?
Let's call it an observation, based on the lack of any evidence for the universe, as an entity, having any kind of demonstrable intelligence. There's just no evidence that the death of any individual, or group, seems to have any measurable effect on the universe as a whole.

[IAN 2411]

There's just no evidence that the death of any individual, or group, seems to have any measurable effect on the universe as a whole.
To take that a little further if you like, the universe is a beautiful growing [for want of a better word] item. Human life could be compared to the bacteria on an out of date boiled egg that has been exposed to the atmosphere too long. Throw the boiled egg away, and you’ll never miss the egg and you won't think of the bacteria. The bacteria will grow somewhere else but it won't be the same. Meaning we are a by-product of the expanding universe and of no importance.

It is a very hard way of looking at life and mankind. That theory would make all that we do of no importance. The computer is an aid, it’s solid and manmade, but it is an aid for us to do what? Find the end? There has to be more to it than that, but just maybe that is what life is all about.... Believing; believing in something, believing in anything, because there is no way of knowing for certain what is ahead only death.... and we all cling on to life because of the uncertainty of what death is.

Be well Ian 2411

[ksst]

The universe is a big damn scary place. We are a bunch of bacteria clinging to an egg. I think I'll go hug a puppy.

[ksst]

And all better now, whew. You know what Cinder says (she's my old puppy)? Work hard, play hard, and enjoy your tummy rubs because tomorrow we may all die.

[MMI]

Best thread in a long time! I was gonna give up and take up an interest in bdsm or something ... but, hey, this brings me back.

So many questions, and not a single answer (except that homeopathy is bunkum). Not that anyone can really expect any, but we do, Ian, get the chance to air our views and to pick up ideas from others.

I don't have much to contribute at this stage other than to offer a few observations.

While there is no reason in physics why time cannot run in any direction, I suggest that once it starts, it can only run in one, and cannot change. But that's just an idea. It might help explain why things never grow younger, or why coffee goes cold, but does not heat up.

The ice block falling back up into the glacier ... surely gravity trumps time here? (As I make this glib suggestion, I am struck by the thought that, in order to reverse time, maybe we have to reverse physics entirely!)

The arrow of time tends towards entropy (chaos, waste). Does it? Throughout all of elapsed time so far, it seems to me the universe has evolved, not disintegrated. Maybe that will change, but will it affect the direction of time?

"Death" (and "life") is frequently, and I believe was in Brian Cox's programme, used as a metaphor for the stages of a star's existence, or that of the universe: while active, the star was passing through its lifetime, and after it ceased to exist, or became a brown dwarf/pulsar/black hole or whatever, it had "died". We all know that stars do not live, and only living things can die. On that assumption, I believe it is a mistake to link the end of life too closely with physical disintegration. It is taking the comparison (which is useful) too far.

The cause of the Big Bang/Nature abhors a vacuum: Nature is part of the physical universe and there is nothing to suggest it "predated" the Big Bang. Whatever caused the universe to come into being is/was not bound by the laws of physics - and as such is/was not prevented from being an uncaused cause, nor is/was it bound to leave demonstrable evidence of its precise nature behind in its new creation. (I say this as an atheist.)

Nothing escapes a black hole: Thorne suggests gravity can. I also seem to think that black holes can be identified by the material they eject back into space in their polar streams.

Will the universe dissipate into (virtual) cold nothingness, or can it be brought back into being somehow (e.g., by another Big Bang?). I think the current theory is that it will spread out so far that it will almost cease to exist. As I understand space and time (which might be not at all well) both would continue to expand (or elapse) indefinitely. If there were to be a second Big Bang in the space created by the first one, would there now be two times running? Would they both be bound to run in the same direction.

Will I live again? I think not. Maybe some of the atoms making up my body at the moment will be incorporated into another living being sometime, but I suspect the chances are small. If it will happen, then it will most likely happen here on Earth before our sun goes supernova (will it do that?). After that, those atoms are most likely to become part of some other star, and then another, and so on. The likelihood of any of them becoming part of another living creature is too remote to contemplate.

Why do we ask these questions? For the same reason we asked that one!

[ksst]

Best thread in a long time! I was gonna give up and take up an interest in bdsm or something ... but, hey, this brings me back.


Hey, you have to take a break from the beatings sometimes, right?

[ksst]

At dinner tonight Master postulated a new theory, new to me at least. The universe actually gets created tomorrow, and all of this stuff that we think happened will be implanted as false memories then. It's a good thing I was drinking sake or my head would hurt.


I also heard someone say that eventually the universe will start to contract again and it will all end in a Big Crunch. And not Nestles either.

[Thorne]

Meaning we are a by-product of the expanding universe and of no importance.
Meaning we have to devise our own meanings for what we do. We are important to others in our lives. I have a wife, two children, and two grandchildren. Plus a large family. Plenty of meaning for me.


It is a very hard way of looking at life and mankind. That theory would make all that we do of no importance.
No importance to whom? Some nebulous being in another plain? Who cares? All that we do is important to US! That should be enough.


The computer is an aid, it’s solid and manmade, but it is an aid for us to do what? Find the end?
Or perhaps to find the beginning. Or the middle. For whatever WE decide is important to us, in the here and now. It's all we have! Let's make sure we use it well.


There has to be more to it than that,
Why? Because you want it to be? Then use that computer, use that brain, and find the proof that there IS more to it than that. But don't just guess at it.


but just maybe that is what life is all about.... Believing; believing in something, believing in anything, because there is no way of knowing for certain what is ahead only death....
Yes, believing in something can be important. Believing in just anything sounds desperate. As for knowing what's ahead, find out. Study. Learn. Experiment. Find the truth, whatever it may be. But make sure you're prepared to learn the truth. It may not be what you expect.


and we all cling on to life because of the uncertainty of what death is.
I have found (and from many things I've read, I'm not alone in this) that shedding the religious claptrap that I was indoctrinated with has removed that fear, for the most part. Oh, sure, I sometimes wonder, I sometimes question, but I no longer have that fear that saying the wrong word, or doing the wrong thing is going to send me to some horrific punishment. I know nothing of an existence before my birth. I fully expect that I will know nothing of an existence after my death. I'll simply cease to exist. I still fear the process of dying, but the idea of death is no longer frightening.

[Thorne]

And all better now, whew. You know what Cinder says (she's my old puppy)? Work hard, play hard, and enjoy your tummy rubs because tomorrow we may all die.
Quite the doggy philosopher, your Cinder.

[Thorne]

Best thread in a long time!
I have to agree with you there.


It might help explain why things never grow younger, or why coffee goes cold, but does not heat up.
But coffee does heat up! You just have to add energy to it. Perhaps time can be reversed by the proper application of energy?


The ice block falling back up into the glacier ... surely gravity trumps time here?
Same problem as the coffee. If you apply enough energy, at the right time, you can push that ice block back onto the glacier.


The arrow of time tends towards entropy (chaos, waste). Does it? Throughout all of elapsed time so far, it seems to me the universe has evolved, not disintegrated. Maybe that will change, but will it affect the direction of time?
The law of entropy only applies in a closed system. The universe as a whole is a closed system, since it contains everything in existence. Parts of the universe temporarily reverse entropy, which is why we have life on Earth, for example, but overall, entropy rules.


Whatever caused the universe to come into being is/was not bound by the laws of physics
We don't know that, though. There could be (and probably are) physical properties which we have yet to unravel. There are many cosmologists who are speculating about how the universe could have formed, using what we know about the current universe. One, or more, of these speculations could prove to be right.


Nothing escapes a black hole: Thorne suggests gravity can. I also seem to think that black holes can be identified by the material they eject back into space in their polar streams.
That material is taken from the accretion disk of material whirling around the black hole, not from the black hole itself. But Hawking hypothesized that the black hole would give off radiation on it's own, and I believe this radiation has been detected. This is what would cause the black hole to evaporate.


Will I live again? I think not. Maybe some of the atoms making up my body at the moment will be incorporated into another living being sometime, but I suspect the chances are small.
Actually, the chances are quite large. Most of the decay of your body will be caused by the organisms both inside of you and in the ground in which you are buried. If you go the cremation route, some of your molecules will be distributed into the atmosphere, and be breathed in by many creatures. All of your waste products eventually wind up in the gut of some form of bacterial life. One thing life is good at is recycling.


If it will happen, then it will most likely happen here on Earth before our sun goes supernova (will it do that?).
No, it won't. It will eventually expand into a red giant, probably encompassing the Earth itself, before collapsing down into a white dwarf.

[Thorne]

At dinner tonight Master postulated a new theory, new to me at least. The universe actually gets created tomorrow, and all of this stuff that we think happened will be implanted as false memories then. It's a good thing I was drinking sake or my head would hurt.
Sounds a lot like Last Thursdayism (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism)



I also heard someone say that eventually the universe will start to contract again and it will all end in a Big Crunch. And not Nestles either.
There was some speculation about that during the early days of the Big Bang Theory, but current measurements show that the speed at which the universe is expanding is actually increasing, which would indicate that there will be no Big Crunch.

[ksst]

An extreme case of Last Thursdayism.

What I wonder is how can the universe actually be expanding. Like a lot of physics, this makes no sense to me. Our data comes from the red shift of distant objects, right? So what if there is some other explanation for this apparent red shift that we just haven't discovered yet? The universe may not be expanding at all.

[Thorne]

What I wonder is how can the universe actually be expanding. Like a lot of physics, this makes no sense to me. Our data comes from the red shift of distant objects, right? So what if there is some other explanation for this apparent red shift that we just haven't discovered yet? The universe may not be expanding at all.
Believe me, there's a lot of physics that doesn't make sense to me, either. There's a lot of physics that doesn't always make sense to physicists, too, which is why they keep studying it. But as for the red shift, scientists have searched for any and all possible causes of it, including gravity and dust, and they try to take all of that into account, but there is still shifting which occurs. There may, of course, be something which they haven't discovered yet, which may change their measurements, and it could show that the expansion of the universe is slowing rather than speeding up, but the expansion itself, as of right now, is pretty much solid science. A lot of the doubt comes from the discovery of "dark matter" and "dark energy", horribly named by some publicist no doubt. All it means is matter and energy which has been detected but which they have yet to learn anything about.

Even the term "Big Bang" is misleading, since it really wasn't an explosion so much as an expansion. Which is still going on.

[IAN 2411]

Now a few years back I think it was before my wife passed away, I watched a TV program, it was a documentary about time and space in the universe. One of the many things they spoke of is another dimension to the ones that we know. This was an almost double of our own universe that ran parallel to the one we are in. it was very interesting and I remember there was a great deal of well known mathematicians and scientists. The theory was that this doppelganger world was identical to a point but with things added or missing, not big things but say a difference of one person in a crow. Say you would be stood in the street with you wife and two sons, but in the doppelganger world you would still be that street but with only one son and your wife. There were a lot of reasons why they said this would be so, but at the time it was well above my head.

One of the things that stuck in my mind was that these professors of science, physics, and maths all agreed on one thing. “Ghosts” This dimension had a flaw that things seeped out into the real world [our world] as we know it. They were not specific in what seeped out but they were very sure that it did because they had done tests and found this new dimension to be very unstable. It was very interesting as I have said but as time went by I had forgotten it until now.

About twenty five years ago I was driving home from a relations, it was about 7 pm and dark. The wife was with me in the car and the headlights were on full, neither of had been drinking and nor were we tired. I came around the corner on a back lane, [This is a UK back lane about 15 feet wide]. There was a man in his forties riding a bicycle with his rear red light down near the rear wheel. He was all over the road and riding in long straight lines from the left side of the roar to the right and then he ended up in the middle of the road. I remember the wife saying “You had better slow down he’s drunk.” I did and followed him for about 200 yards, and tooted my horn but he never took any notice. Then the strangest thing happened, he disappeared right before our eyes.

Now going back to my second paragraph I am starting to think. Was this guy from that other dimension and following his own road? I am not a great believer in ghosts but I have to admit what took place that night was as real as me sitting here now.

Your thoughts

Be well Ian 2411

[Thorne]

I am not a great believer in ghosts but I have to admit what took place that night was as real as me sitting here now.
Late at night, a dark road (and if they're anything like the back roads around here it was DARK), he's riding all over the road, and you're staying back to make sure you don't hit him. Many different things could have happened, without resorting to alternate universes bleeding over into this one. Perhaps he swerved to the left while you moved to the right, and he drove off the road into a culvert without you noticing. Or he went to the side and stopped, while you weren't looking right at him. Almost anything could have happened to cause him to seem to disappear.

One thing we have to remember is that, if this other universe is mingling with ours it would have physical, measurable effects on our universe. People have been seeing ghosts from the beginning of human history, yet no one has ever been able to actually measure one. Or even capture one! I went on a "ghost" hunt once. Middle of the night, a dark field, half a dozen of us looking for ghosts. Everyone else saw them, or claimed to. All I saw was patches of mist drifting over the field. Because the weather was cold, and the air was damp. Water vapor, not ghosts.

People have a tendency to see patterns in random images, like seeing a face in the swirls of paint on a wall. When they see a vague shape, their brains tend to equate that shape with something familiar. Doesn't make what they see any less real, only brings into question their interpretation of what they saw.

[ksst]

I had a ghost experience once. Of course, it was a dog ghost. We had this dog, Baron, who used to follow me around the house and stick his nose on the back of my leg (dog my steps) as I walked. He got cancer at 3 years old and we put him down. The week after that I was walking through the basement and felt a cold wet nose on my leg, turned around and there was nothing there, my leg was not wet, just nothing. Of course, I don't believe in ghosts, but it was some trick of the brain to make me think he was there.

[IAN 2411]

Late at night, a dark road (and if they're anything like the back roads around here it was DARK), he's riding all over the road, and you're staying back to make sure you don't hit him. Many different things could have happened, without resorting to alternate universes bleeding over into this one. Perhaps he swerved to the left while you moved to the right, and he drove off the road into a culvert without you noticing. Or he went to the side and stopped, while you weren't looking right at him. Almost anything could have happened to cause him to seem to disappear.
1/ that road was dead straight with a twelve foot laurel hedge either side running for about three miles. No gates, no houses, no roads. I am talking of a country road not the back streets of New York. I drove that road the following morning and I know the latter to be true. I have driven that road three times a week for 30 years and it has never changed.
2/ the man was no more than ten feet in front of me.
3/ I was travelling 3-5 mph...I could have walked faster. I stopped the car an got out, nothing and with the car headlights I could see nothing ahead.
4/ 7pm is not late at night, its early evening and been dark for about two hours.


One thing we have to remember is that, if this other universe is mingling with ours it would have physical, measurable effects on our universe.
Why, because you say that or you don’t believe it could be so. You have no knowledge of tests that have been done or what they were about, but you can rubbish their findings out of hand? I would also like to point out that if a phantom of another universe mingled with ours and you saw the phantom, then I would think that it is affecting our universe. You amaze me Thorne, you can believe a load of theories that you read about, but something that you have not or it does not comply with your thinking, then you rubbish out of hand as a load of twaddle.



People have been seeing ghosts from the beginning of human history, yet no one has ever been able to actually measure one. Or even capture one! I went on a "ghost" hunt once. Middle of the night, a dark field, half a dozen of us looking for ghosts. Everyone else saw them, or claimed to. All I saw was patches of mist drifting over the field. Because the weather was cold, and the air was damp. Water vapor, not ghosts.

People have a tendency to see patterns in random images, like seeing a face in the swirls of paint on a wall. When they see a vague shape, their brains tend to equate that shape with something familiar. Doesn't make what they see any less real, only brings into question their interpretation of what they saw.

I never said I saw a ghost, I said my wife and I saw something that we could not explain. We never told anyone about that night although years later while sitting in the lounge I brought it up a few times.

Just because you went on a ghost hunt and got cold and saw a few vapours you assume that seeing something like the wife and I saw is not possible. I was not looking for ghosts and it is you that is saying I saw a ghost. To go on a ghost hunt is in my mind lunacy anyway, what the hell were you looking for in a field? Ghost rabbits...whooo spooki, Brings to mind the start of Watership Down.

I have just thought of something else these guys said, not a sound echo but a visual echo. Yes, it’s even harder to believe than ghosts, but we know very little about the world we live in and even less about the makeup of the universe. I have an open mind and until a thing is proved with no shadow of a doubt I will remain sceptical.

Be well IAN 2411

[Thorne]

I would also like to point out that if a phantom of another universe mingled with ours and you saw the phantom, then I would think that it is affecting our universe.
That was my point as well. If you can actually see it, you should be able to photograph, or measure, or get some kind of data from it, since it's interacting with our reality.

I'm not denying that you saw something, and I obviously cannot explain what you saw or how you saw it. I'm only saying that jumping to the conclusion that was some kind of supernatural event or strange mingling of parallel universes or something should probably be at the very bottom of your list of explanations, barring any real evidence.


You amaze me Thorne, you can believe a load of theories that you read about, but something that you have not or it does not comply with your thinking, then you rubbish out of hand as a load of twaddle.
Not my intention at all. True, I probably didn't see the program you mentioned, but I have read about alternate/parallel universes, and while there may not be any laws of physics that prohibit them from existing, there is also no evidence that they do in fact exist. Speculation, even when done by reputable scientists, is still nothing more than guesswork.


Just because you went on a ghost hunt and got cold and saw a few vapours you assume that seeing something like the wife and I saw is not possible. I was not looking for ghosts and it is you that is saying I saw a ghost.
Sorry, just using the term "ghost" as shorthand. And I'm not assuming what you saw isn't possible, just that it's not likely to be explainable by invoking the idea of a parallel universe, at least until other, more mundane, explanations have been exhausted. I believe that you saw what you say you saw, I'm just not willing to accept the idea that it was some kind of mingling of universes without exhausting all other explanations first.


To go on a ghost hunt is in my mind lunacy anyway, what the hell were you looking for in a field?
LOL. We were young, at a party with family, someone said they had seen ghosts at this old field before, so we bundled up and went. Walking through a dark field, moonlight reflecting off of the dew, keeping my girl warm. Best ghost hunt I ever had.


I have just thought of something else these guys said, not a sound echo but a visual echo. Yes, it’s even harder to believe than ghosts,
Actually, that's easier to believe. I have heard of some weird reflection events where lights seem to appear where there should not be any lights. A visual echo, if you will. I don't recall ever hearing of an echo like what you described, but I suppose it might be possible. Again, I would find that easier to accept, given our current knowledge of this universe, than that we are bumping uglies with some other universe.


I have an open mind and until a thing is proved with no shadow of a doubt I will remain sceptical.
Then you must remain skeptical. NOTHING can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. We can only accumulate evidence to show that something is very likely to be true, or not. And it is impossible to prove that something does NOT exist. You can show all the negative evidence that, for example, there are no unicorns, but all that evidence wouldn't mean a thing if you turned the next corner and bumped into one. But if you don't get some hair samples, or capture the thing, or maybe get some pictures, along with a lot of corroborating evidence, I'm still going to question whether you actually saw what you think you saw.

I try to keep an open mind as well. I just don't let any old explanation fall in unless there's good evidence for it.

[denuseri]

One thing we have to remember is that, if this other universe is mingling with ours it would have physical, measurable effects on our universe. People have been seeing ghosts from the beginning of human history, yet no one has ever been able to actually measure one. Or even capture one! I went on a "ghost" hunt once. Middle of the night, a dark field, half a dozen of us looking for ghosts. Everyone else saw them, or claimed to. All I saw was patches of mist drifting over the field. Because the weather was cold, and the air was damp. Water vapor, not ghosts.



Actually seeing these things is a form of measurement.

If what's being seen is from some weird kind of quantum entanglement between so called potentially parallel universes (which as I understand the main related theory means it's not so much "parallel" as dimensions warped up inside the space in between our own on the Plank scale) ...then it makes sense that the phenomena isn't fully recordable via normal means.

Furthermore: If it's been happening through out human history...then one can conclude that:

A) It is just what people seem to think it is IE the supernatural etc (which also means our understanding of physics is still a lil off since it needs to include the study of such things in more than just a fringe way..

B) It's a naturally occurring phenomena of the physical world and we humans are categorically misinterpreting what we are seeing or hearing etc and we just haven't figured out a way to substantially "measure" events....(or the act of attempted measurement is changing the results just like it does in the famous split screen experiments).

C) It's a relatively uncommon yet natural occurring element of human experience to "see ghosts" or at least "think one has" on occasion.

D) Some combination of the above with or without adding other unknown factors or postulations.

[ksst]

Actually seeing is not always reliable, or feeling. Hallucinations, for example. Reading a book on the brain, some of those by Oliver Sacks are really good, can make you doubt your ability to experience reality as something really real. Everything passes through our brain filter, and sometimes gets a little distorted, even for people who entirely sane and with normal brains.

[Thorne]

Actually seeing these things is a form of measurement.
Not exactly. It's the first step, certainly, but contrary to popular belief, seeing is not always believing. There are some pretty good optical illusions on You Tube that demonstrate that very well.


If what's being seen is from some weird kind of quantum entanglement between so called potentially parallel universes (which as I understand the main related theory means it's not so much "parallel" as dimensions warped up inside the space in between our own on the Plank scale) ...then it makes sense that the phenomena isn't fully recordable via normal means.
While this is, of course, a possibility, there would have to be a way for us to record such interactions, since they are physically impinging upon our universe. If what we think we are seeing is actually there, then it can be recorded. It might be that this entanglement is interacting directly with our brains, and we don't have the means to record such interactions, but then how do you separate them from hallucinations?


Furthermore: If it's been happening through out human history...then one can conclude that:

A) It is just what people seem to think it is IE the supernatural etc (which also means our understanding of physics is still a lil off since it needs to include the study of such things in more than just a fringe way..
The supernatural is, by definition, above nature, and therefore not subject to the laws of physics as we know them. In which case, they do not impinge upon our universe and can be considered on a par with hallucinations, as mentioned above.


B) It's a naturally occurring phenomena of the physical world and we humans are categorically misinterpreting what we are seeing or hearing etc and we just haven't figured out a way to substantially "measure" events....(or the act of attempted measurement is changing the results just like it does in the famous split screen experiments).
Not an impossible situation, certainly, but the fact that people tend to see different things (unless "prompted" by the visions of another person) tends to put this kind of viewing back into the realm of hallucination. The brain sees what's familiar. Cultural differences in such viewings seem to confirm this.


C) It's a relatively uncommon yet natural occurring element of human experience to "see ghosts" or at least "think one has" on occasion.
This is the most likely explanation, as far as I've been able to determine. We have a natural tendency to see things that aren't really there. It's part of our survival mechanism. The best explanation for this I've heard is the story of two primitive humans on the plains. They see movement in the grass and one of them sees it as a lion and runs away. The other sees it as wind in the grass and stays. If it's only the wind, both are OK. If it's really a lion, the one who stayed is dead. We are descended from those who ran away.

[Thorne]

Actually seeing is not always reliable, or feeling. Hallucinations, for example. Reading a book on the brain, some of those by Oliver Sacks are really good, can make you doubt your ability to experience reality as something really real. Everything passes through our brain filter, and sometimes gets a little distorted, even for people who entirely sane and with normal brains.
It gets even worse than that. Memories, after a period of time, can become "contaminated" by other memories, or by our own desires, or by outside influences. What you remember may not even have happened the way you remember it.

[ksst]

You don't have to tell me that. I have the world's worst memory. I actually call my Master "my memory". He remember poems he memorized in junior high. He remembers which movies I've seen and whether I liked them. I barely remember last week unless something significant happened. I have never successfully memorized any poem, and I've tried. I can watch movies with surprise endings repeatedly and enjoy the surprise all over again. That is pathetic.

[ksst]

I wanted to add that probably the main reason I write, journal, diary, blog, post thoughts and take photos constantly is that without those types of rehearsals everything would be gone for me. I have written a diary and kept a photo album since I was 9. I don't remember anything that happened before that age except for stories people in my family tell. It made my mom kind of sad. She said "We worked so hard to give you a happy and memorable childhood". I'm sure it's there somewhere though, in my happy personality :)

[MMI]

MMI: Best thread in a long time!


I have to agree with you there.

Again!?


MMI: It might help explain why things never grow younger, or why coffee goes cold, but does not heat up.
The ice block falling back up into the glacier ... surely gravity trumps time here?


But coffee does heat up! You just have to add energy to it. Perhaps time can be reversed by the proper application of energy?

Same problem [for the ice block] as the coffee. If you apply enough energy, at the right time, you can push that ice block back onto the glacier.

I'm not sure I can accept that boiling a kettle, or even counteracting gravity, amounts to reversing time (especially if you have to wait for the "right time") ... but I did allude to reversing physics in my earlier post: same thing but more?


MMI: The arrow of time tends towards entropy (chaos, waste). Does it? Throughout all of elapsed time so far, it seems to me the universe has evolved, not disintegrated. Maybe that will change, but will it affect the direction of time?


The law of entropy only applies in a closed system. The universe as a whole is a closed system, since it contains everything in existence. Parts of the universe temporarily reverse entropy, which is why we have life on Earth, for example, but overall, entropy rules.

I'm way out of my depth here, but it seems to me that the whole of the known universe is at pretty much the same level of chaos. So why not the rest of it?


MMI: Whatever caused the universe to come into being is/was not bound by the laws of physics


We don't know that, though. There could be (and probably are) physical properties which we have yet to unravel. There are many cosmologists who are speculating about how the universe could have formed, using what we know about the current universe. One, or more, of these speculations could prove to be right.

So the hypothesis is that the laws of physics precede physicality itself?

...


MMI: Will I live again? ... I suspect the chances are small.


Actually, the chances are quite large ... One thing life is good at is recycling.

Good point


No, [the sun won't go supernova]. It will eventually expand into a red giant, probably encompassing the Earth itself, before collapsing down into a white dwarf.

Thanks for the info. It suggests that once Earth has been absorbed, the chances of Earth-life being recycled any further are minimal.

[denuseri]

Not exactly. It's the first step, certainly, but contrary to popular belief, seeing is not always believing. There are some pretty good optical illusions on You Tube that demonstrate that very well.

I should have been more specific please forgive me: In quantum physics the act of something so seemingly passive as "seeing" something is akin to bumping it's photons which are all entangled down on the plank scale with the thing being seen and hence automatically count as a "measurement" that influences what is precieved. Much like as espoused from the numerous experimental results from things like the split screen test etc. Said test being a well known and proven means of determining how light photons act as a wave until "measured" and then at that moment become like particles.


While this is, of course, a possibility, there would have to be a way for us to record such interactions, since they are physically impinging upon our universe.

There are plenty of experiments which show that such things do in fact "not" need to be measured to behave in such a manner on the ultra-tiny scale and effect experiences measured on the macro scale. Sometimes the only thing about something that can be recorded is its speed, or its spin, or its charge but not at the same time be able to determine it's position. If the position is known then one cannot know its charge etc.

If what we think we are seeing is actually there, then it can be recorded. It might be that this entanglement is interacting directly with our brains, and we don't have the means to record such interactions, but then how do you separate them from hallucinations?

You don't and they are then possibly tantamount to "god" or "something" magic what have you...making you see what it wants as much as they could be holographic (which is another theory on the ultra tiny scale where strings vibrate and things are in more than one place at the same time, fuzzy like a dancing pixel board with particles dancing around and teleporting through space and time in a little storm and wave like as opposed to being like particles until an aspect of them is detected and then poof! they turn into a particle in a specific location or of a specific charge etc. Almost as if the hand of god is always at work making your precieved reality seemingly out of nothing.


The supernatural is, by definition, above nature, and therefore not subject to the laws of physics as we know them. In which case, they do not impinge upon our universe and can be considered on a par with hallucinations, as mentioned above.

Only by such a strict definition can one avoid the ultimate philosophical question of what existence is and how does the universe work. In science one must be prepared to objectively follow where the information one discovers takes them without reservations. Which doesn't mean that which we for so long thought was "super" natural turns out to be just as much a part of ourselves as it is a part of all things ...ironically both seen and unseen. In which sense being super means more of something or better of something or simply that which was once thought of as being beyond our human understanding.


Not an impossible situation, certainly, but the fact that people tend to see different things (unless "prompted" by the visions of another person) tends to put this kind of viewing back into the realm of hallucination. The brain sees what's familiar. Cultural differences in such viewings seem to confirm this.

Hallucinations which could be induced by as of yet not understood stimuli as in the case of mass hallucinations? Where a group obviously sees something in common.


This is the most likely explanation, as far as I've been able to determine. We have a natural tendency to see things that aren't really there. It's part of our survival mechanism. The best explanation for this I've heard is the story of two primitive humans on the plains. They see movement in the grass and one of them sees it as a lion and runs away. The other sees it as wind in the grass and stays. If it's only the wind, both are OK. If it's really a lion, the one who stayed is dead. We are descended from those who ran away.

I think however it is a limited approach to such things to have and maintain preconceptions with some phenomena being prematurely discarded because they do not seem at first to be the most probable especially considering the quantum possibilities.

[denuseri]

Again!?

Hey it even happens with me some times lol!






I'm way out of my depth here, but it seems to me that the whole of the known universe is at pretty much the same level of chaos. So why not the rest of it?

Yes! Why not?





So the hypothesis is that the laws of physics precede physicality itself?

Well on the ultra small scale they do sort of. Like the laws break down into smaller constituents and then even smaller break downs continue further. Like Time should have its own probability particle wave just like gravity or the nuclear forces etc. It's postulated that everything at one point was compressed down to the size of the smallest of things first and then expanded with no evidence being possible at this point of what existed if anything before, why it was compressed or why it suddenly decided to expand or even if it oscillates back and forth.

...









Thanks for the info. It suggests that once Earth has been absorbed, the chances of Earth-life being recycled any further are minimal.

The latest I heard is that it is more likely that as the sun's fuel is exhausted and it expands into its red giant phase it's warping of gravity around it will also change and that the earth and other planets may not fall into the sun but surf the expansions pressure wave into more distant orbits that may or may not involve collusion with the outer planets which being already more distant and massive may not react as quickly.

[Thorne]

Originally Posted by Thorne
I have to agree with you there.

Again!?
See? Miracle CAN happen!



I'm not sure I can accept that boiling a kettle, or even counteracting gravity, amounts to reversing time (especially if you have to wait for the "right time") ... but I did allude to reversing physics in my earlier post: same thing but more?
That wasn't what I meant. Just that it may someday be possible to apply a certain type of energy at a certain level to reverse the entropy of time, just as by adding energy to that kettle can reverse the entropy of the water.


I'm way out of my depth here, but it seems to me that the whole of the known universe is at pretty much the same level of chaos. So why not the rest of it?
The size of the universe is, literally, unimaginable. The amount of contaminants (matter) is incomprehensibly small by comparison. According to this page (http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/question221.htm), "0.0000000000000000000042 percent of the universe contains any matter." Looking from the outside (Outside the universe? Try wrapping your head around that!) the universe is virtually empty!


So the hypothesis is that the laws of physics precede physicality itself?
The "laws" of physics are man made. They are simply statements of observations, which so far have held true under normal conditions. Calculations suggest that under the immense gravity of a black hole, or at the time of the Big Bang, these laws would not necessarily apply. So I would say no, they do not predate physicality, but are an integral part of it.

[Thorne]

In quantum physics the act of something so seemingly passive as "seeing" something is akin to bumping it's photons which are all entangled down on the plank scale with the thing being seen and hence automatically count as a "measurement" that influences what is precieved.
You're talking the uncertainty principle here, right? My knowledge of quantum physics is very sparse. But what you're saying applies to individual photons, certainly, but as a group all of their characteristics can be measured. By taking enough such measurements you can make predictions for virtually all photons.


You don't and they are then possibly tantamount to "god" or "something" magic what have you...making you see what it wants Almost as if the hand of god is always at work making your precieved reality seemingly out of nothing.
But there's the problem. If you allow yourself to accept hallucinations as coming from some non-physical realm, whether god or something else, then you would have to explain just how this non-physical realm interacts with ours. And such interactions, if they are real, should be able to be measured scientifically, which removes them from the supernatural. A far more likely explanation is that they are just hallucinations.


Only by such a strict definition can one avoid the ultimate philosophical question of what existence is and how does the universe work.
The question of "what existence is" is a philosophical question, for sure. I'm not equipped, either educationally or temperamentally, to discuss philosophy. I find it tedious and contradictory, with little or no evidence of having any real value, at least to me. However, "how does the universe work" is strictly a science question, one which mankind has been asking, and finding answers to, from the very beginning.


super means more of something or better of something or simply that which was once thought of as being beyond our human understanding.
Ultimately, I'm not sure we can honestly conclude that there is anything beyond human understanding. If we apply our intelligence, I think we can eventually learn how everything works. And it is quite possible that, someday, we will learn that some of the things we've ignored as being supernatural are, indeed, natural. But that does not mean that we should accept every supernatural explanation for something we don't understand. Doing that will only restrict our ability to find out what's really happening.


Hallucinations which could be induced by as of yet not understood stimuli as in the case of mass hallucinations? Where a group obviously sees something in common.
There have been numerous studies done which show that:
1) People will see patterns in random data, such as faces in clouds.
2) What people claim to see can be influenced by environment, culture and expectations.
3) People can be made to see a specific pattern when influenced by another person.
Most mass hallucinations are caused by some combination of these three, and other influences. Sightings of the Loch Ness Monster are like this. People go there expecting to see it, so anything they see which is different and unexplainable automatically becomes Nessie. But when you go there and try to find her scientifically, there's nothing to see.


I think however it is a limited approach to such things to have and maintain preconceptions with some phenomena being prematurely discarded because they do not seem at first to be the most probable especially considering the quantum possibilities.
I'm not saying we should discard an idea just because it doesn't seem probable. But when you propose such an idea you have to have some way of showing that it is even possible. You can't throw something out there and say, "Now go and prove me wrong." You have to provide evidence for it first, otherwise it's purely speculation, and hardly worth the time of someone else to investigate.

When Alfred Wegener first proposed the idea that the continents drifted, spreading apart and colliding like bumper cars, he was laughed at, his idea ridiculed. After all, what could be more solid than the ground beneath your feet? But he had the evidence, the observations, the tests. Everything that was needed to convince the scientific establishment to look deeper. If he had simply come out with a statement that the continents moved, with no evidence or data, the ridicule would have been justly deserved.

When astronomers look out into the universe and detect distant galaxies, and stars, and planets, even, they have solid science to back up their conclusions. Their data are checked, double checked and triple checked. Their conclusions are torn down and rebuilt, to insure that the science is right. Only then are they able to say with any confidence that they are PROBABLY correct. All scientists know that future observations, future advances in measurements, may turn their theories upside down. But everything we know tells us that, as far as we can determine, THIS is how the universe works!

[Thorne]

The latest I heard is that it is more likely that as the sun's fuel is exhausted and it expands into its red giant phase it's warping of gravity around it will also change and that the earth and other planets may not fall into the sun but surf the expansions pressure wave into more distant orbits that may or may not involve collusion with the outer planets which being already more distant and massive may not react as quickly.
I haven't heard this one before, but I can see the possibility. I'm not sure such pressure waves wouldn't be just as likely to suck the Earth deeper into the Sun, though. Let's face it: the Earth is pretty massive, and moving at a pretty good clip. That's a lot of momentum to overcome. And I'm not aware that they have even shown that such "pressure waves" can be produced by gravity. Not saying they can't be, but I'd like to see the explanations.


Thanks for the info. It suggests that once Earth has been absorbed, the chances of Earth-life being recycled any further are minimal.
It may not be that bad, actually. I suggest you find a copy of Phil Plait's book, "Death From the Skies". He delves into all the different ways that the universe can kill us, including the Sun's expansion. But he also says that we may be able to move the Earth away into a more distant orbit, to buy us a little time. It's good reading, and not overly technical.

[denuseri]

The pressure is provided by the sun (the sun wont expand until its own pressure overcomes it's own gravity)...but they are finding that just like electrons will only find stable orbital shells at certian distances so it is with stars and their planets.

[Thorne]

The pressure is provided by the sun (the sun wont expand until its own pressure overcomes it's own gravity)...but they are finding that just like electrons will only find stable orbital shells at certian distances so it is with stars and their planets.
Then you're talking about the Solar Wind, then? Basically, material ejected from the Sun and streaming outwards into space. I would think this would make it even less likely to move a planet. Most of the particles of the Solar Wind are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, and so wouldn't actually provide any drag, or push, to move the planet.

On the other hand, the Sun's gravity isn't going to change significantly, but as it expands it will spread out with the material of the Sun. It might possibly reach a point where the pull of the Sun's gravity will no longer act like a point source. I wouldn't want to even TRY to calculate the results of that!

As for orbits, a single planet can orbit it's star at almost any distance, depending only on the mass of the star and the speed of the planet. When you add additional planets things become more complicated, and there will indeed be optimal orbits formed. But remember, as the Sun expands it will easily engulf Mercury, and Venus. These changes will have an effect on the Earth's orbit as well.

And you still have the problem of the Earth's momentum. The Sun's expansion will be fairly rapid, on an astronomical scale. I don't know if there would be enough time to move the Earth aside before it became engulfed.

[thir]

Were they pills? It could be a reaction to the filler materials. My mother-in-law couldn't take generic meds supposedly because they used lower quality filler materials, and she would have an adverse reaction. Personally, I think it was psychosomatic, but I never tried to prove that.


It was a liquid. The idea that it was psychocsomatic seems the only one, but a bit unreal in the face of how much of a fool I felt, and how little I expected anything to happen at all. I mean, water into water..



Since homeopathic medications are diluted to the point where there is a near zero probability of their being a single molecule of the medication remaining in the pill, there would be nothing of the active ingredient for you to react to.

I know!

[denuseri]

Then you're talking about the Solar Wind, then? Basically, material ejected from the Sun and streaming outwards into space. I would think this would make it even less likely to move a planet. Most of the particles of the Solar Wind are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, and so wouldn't actually provide any drag, or push, to move the planet.

On the other hand, the Sun's gravity isn't going to change significantly, but as it expands it will spread out with the material of the Sun. It might possibly reach a point where the pull of the Sun's gravity will no longer act like a point source. I wouldn't want to even TRY to calculate the results of that!

As for orbits, a single planet can orbit it's star at almost any distance, depending only on the mass of the star and the speed of the planet. When you add additional planets things become more complicated, and there will indeed be optimal orbits formed. But remember, as the Sun expands it will easily engulf Mercury, and Venus. These changes will have an effect on the Earth's orbit as well.

And you still have the problem of the Earth's momentum. The Sun's expansion will be fairly rapid, on an astronomical scale. I don't know if there would be enough time to move the Earth aside before it became engulfed.

Sighs a lot of the stuff your speaking off is only in effect if you use only the outdated Newtonian physics (which in a lot of cases is perfectly ok on the normal levels of the macro scale) ...a lot of what Im talking about is using Relativity and quantum physics. Where gravity and space-time act much differently than just a bunch of spinning planets with mass and velocity. Space -time has wrinkles and gravity pressure waves (the arms of the galaxey wouldnt exist without them btw). The natural outward pressure of the sun thats driving the solar wind currently doesnt generate all that much force...enough to push bad particles through the atmosphere or burn off any planet's atmosphere that doesnt have a stong enough magnetic field but over all not so powerful. Now when the sun transitions to red giant status, its gravitational aspect will change, the allready existing pressure waves that act like troughs in the fabric of spacetime that the planets orbit within...will also change. Theorehtically unless there is a mass ejection wave none of the planets should get swallowed so much as shoved out as their orbitale trough moves.

[Thorne]

Sighs a lot of the stuff your speaking off is only in effect if you use only the outdated Newtonian physics (which in a lot of cases is perfectly ok on the normal levels of the macro scale) ...a lot of what Im talking about is using Relativity and quantum physics.
I'm familiar with the differences between Relativistic physics versus Newtonian, and you're right, Newtonian physics works perfectly well except in high gravity fields, generally stellar masses and above. I'm not all that familiar with quantum physics, I admit, but I don't think there's all that much of an effect on a macro scale. More reading for my list, I suppose.


Now when the sun transitions to red giant status, its gravitational aspect will change, the allready existing pressure waves that act like troughs in the fabric of spacetime that the planets orbit within...will also change. Theorehtically unless there is a mass ejection wave none of the planets should get swallowed so much as shoved out as their orbitale trough moves.
More reading for me! I'm not up on the effects of gravity waves, and planets moving in the troughs. It seems to make some sense, if indeed gravity is wavelike in nature. I'll have to look into it more deeply, when I can get the time.

[IAN 2411]

Now when the sun transitions to red giant status, its gravitational aspect will change, the allready existing pressure waves that act like troughs in the fabric of spacetime that the planets orbit within...will also change. Theorehtically unless there is a mass ejection wave none of the planets should get swallowed so much as shoved out as their orbitale trough moves.

A lot of this is way above my head, but it doesn’t really matter whether the earth is sucked in or pushed aside and possibly smashed into another planet. It is the end of earth and end of man as we know it now. Unless of course by that time man has mastered space and can transport the human race to another world.

Then again you have to ask yourself, that if this could be done, would this be the correct thing to do morally? Contaminate a virgin world with corrupt minds, war like races, felons of all denominations and sickness. Would it be Mortal survival or New World corruption, contamination and finally distruction? It might be that the unwritten law of the universe is for all life to live and perishon on the same planet.

Be well IAN 2411

[Thorne]

It is the end of earth and end of man as we know it now. Unless of course by that time man has mastered space and can transport the human race to another world.
By the time this happens, the human race will be as far removed from where we are now as we are from those tiny mole-like creatures that outlasted the dinosaurs. Assuming we haven't gone completely extinct before that.


Then again you have to ask yourself, that if this could be done, would this be the correct thing to do morally? Contaminate a virgin world with corrupt minds, war like races, felons of all denominations and sickness. Would it be Mortal survival or New World corruption, contamination and finally distruction? It might be that the unwritten law of the universe is for all life to live and perishon on the same planet.
Depends on whose morality you're talking about. Settlers from Europe did the "moral" thing and virtually wiped out those pesky pagan natives in the New World. The British did the "moral" thing and sent their convicts to Australia, overwhelming that native population. I suspect that, if we ever achieve the capability of moving out into the galaxy, the "moral" thing to do will involve very similar attitudes.

[IAN 2411]

I have had a burning question on my mind now for over two weeks since this thread started. This clockwise theory has been coming up every time I hear someone say clockwise. Why do we say the planets go around the sun in a clockwise motion? Do they, and who says so? The universe is vast and for all we know in the giganticness of it all we might be standing up on end and looking at ourselves from the wrong angle. There is no left, right, front, rear north, south, or east, west to the universe. We could be looking at the solar system from the wrong angle completely, and we could be going up and over or anti clockwise.

We seem as a space age world to spend a lot of money sending drone ships with telescopes that can see a billion light years away. However, I have yet to see a photo from one of these drones that is pointing to our own solar system, or maybe I am wrong in thinking that we have a probe that far out. If not, why not? We as a world have spent enough money sending rockets here there and everywhere? But the earth is still a little blue blob and going clockwise.

I think I would be right in saying that about 80% of the world’s oceans have never been mapped. We make all these rockets and probes to chart the universe and the interesting stuff is right on our own doorsteps. We can send men into space and bring them back into our atmosphere without them getting burnt to a crisp, and that’s after travelling 800.000km + round journey to the moon. Yet I notice we cannot send a manned submarine down to the bottom of some oceans. We know very little of our own world yet we want to know that other life exists.

I can only hope that we never find a plannet inhabited, because if history is anything to go by there won't be much left if they find a third world, world. No doubt by then the space ship will be made up of people from the new world order and colonise it. Then after the initial battle with the spear and stone throwing aliens, real population can be pushed onto reservations or into ghettoes. I think that is what the British and Irish settlers did in America, Australia and most points east.

Then again they might just get their ass kicked. Nothing new about that either LoL.

Be well IAN 2411

[Thorne]

Why do we say the planets go around the sun in a clockwise motion?
Actually, they move counter-clockwise! But it's merely convention. Since most western astronomers were in the northern hemisphere, they simply defined North as "Up". Using that convention the Earth turns towards the East, or counter-clockwise. Therefore, by convention, all planets, and the sun, are defined with East in the direction of their rotation. The North pole of the sun is defined as being "Up" relative to the solar system, so we conventionally view the solar system by looking "down" on it. Therefore, counter-clockwise rotations and revolutions.


We seem as a space age world to spend a lot of money sending drone ships with telescopes that can see a billion light years away. However, I have yet to see a photo from one of these drones that is pointing to our own solar system, or maybe I am wrong in thinking that we have a probe that far out.
There are two probes which have left the solar system, the Voyagers. But they are not telescopic probes. And one of them, Voyager 1 I believe, DID turn back and snap a picture of the solar system. Look at Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HKf56ZVJ4w&feature=related). The telescopes you're thinking of are either in orbit or on the surface.


If not, why not?
It wouldn't work, really. You need to have the telescopes close enough to communicate with Earth in almost real time. The further away you get, the longer the communications take. And the narrower the bandwidth available to send back images.


I think I would be right in saying that about 80% of the world’s oceans have never been mapped.
I think it's much lower than that. I have a map of the Earth on my wall, showing all of the trenches, ridges, scarps, faults and other features on the bottoms of the seas. They may not be mapped to the nearest meter, at least not everywhere, but actually, it's cheaper, and easier, to map the moon than to map the ocean.


Yet I notice we cannot send a manned submarine down to the bottom of some oceans.
The Trieste, a manned submersible, descended to the bottom of the Marianas trench in 1960, reaching about 11km deep. Two more expeditions also reached the bottom, the latest in 2009. So we CAN do it. It's not easy, nor cheap, but it can be done.


I can only hope that we never find a plannet inhabited, because if history is anything to go by there won't be much left if they find a third world, world. No doubt by then the space ship will be made up of people from the new world order and colonise it.
It's pretty obvious that there's no world habitable by humans in our solar system. Anything beyond that is far out of our reach, at least for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, if we ever do achieve interstellar travel, we'll have learned to be more humane towards indigenous cultures. I won't hold my breath, though.

[IAN 2411]

Thanks for the link Thorne, very entertaining, but it was nothing new really from what I thought about, and what others thought was true when I was 10 years old. To be told the same thing again now I am 64, just shows the progress we have made in our thinking in 54 years. Well there is one change, because it has reached the dizzy heights of “You Tube” so it’s now official. Well if when we die we end up as little atoms floating about out there in the great black yonder. We might be able to meet up and check the rest of the cosmos out between us. Lmao.

Be well IAN 2411

[michaelwarlock]

there is no time ... time is something we've created to measure the years we live cause we are scared of death .and we think death is the end .
so no there is no such thing as time . we separate day from the night , we separate our hours in a day . we think those are different because we are doing something different .

I think death is just a beginning . I believe we all are one . in different bodies . but our souls are pieces of a big puzzle one united ball of energy called Universe.
not just us humans we all are one as In the Universe and we are one we all are part of it . we are universe in a shape of a human when we die we dont actually die we go back to our basic form . we reunited with what were were once . and I think our souls keep coming back until they are complete . until they learned that everything is nothing ...

As for what started the Universe .... I dotn think anyone knows but I have myh own theory that The Universe is unlimited there is no end nor no start to it . It always have been here and always will be . I know believing this theory is hard cause we have a tendency to find things starts and ends because out minds are limited its trapped in a bone shaped skull . we know there are other planets except for ours but what happens to them do they stop existing after a certain point > then after that what will it just be space ? still space is something so you know what I mean when I say Unlimited ?

[Thorne]

there is no time ... time is something we've created to measure the years we live cause we are scared of death .and we think death is the end .
A rather simplistic view. What you're talking about is a construct of humans, yes, but time is a fundamental part of the universe. How we measure time is not. And we measure it, not to mark the hours to death, but to regulate our lives, so we know when to plant, when to harvest, when to hunt (the earliest developments of measurement).

so no there is no such thing as time . we separate day from the night , we separate our hours in a day . we think those are different because we are doing something different .
We are doing different things because there are certain things you cannot do during certain times of day. Though with artificial lighting, those differences have become much smaller.

I think death is just a beginning . I believe we all are one . in different bodies . but our souls are pieces of a big puzzle one united ball of energy called Universe.
Nice thoughts, and you're entitled to your beliefs, but do you have any evidence of this? For starters, I'd love to see evidence for the existence of the soul. Mankind has been searching for that since - well, since the beginning of time!

we all are one as In the Universe and we are one we all are part of it . we are universe in a shape of a human when we die we dont actually die we go back to our basic form .
Well, in some sense you are almost right. We are all made from the same materials, and many those materials were once joined in the center of a star, so technically we are a part of that star. And when we die our bodies will revert to those component atoms and molecules again. But believe me, we'll be dead.

I think our souls keep coming back until they are complete .
Complete how? And again, evidence for these souls?


As for what started the Universe .... I dotn think anyone knows but I have myh own theory that The Universe is unlimited there is no end nor no start to it . It always have been here and always will be .
Well, we can agree here, at least. Except that the universe as we know it now did have a beginning (the Big Bang) and, as near as we can tell, will have an end (heat death), but there is no telling what other universes may be out there, or whether all that makes up this universe will merge with those other universes, somehow.

(our) minds are limited its trapped in a bone shaped skull .
Without that skull it's doubtful we would even have minds. Getting into really deep metaphysics here, but our minds are an emergent property of our brains. Without the skull, it's doubtful our brains would be able to develop sufficiently to produce what we think of as mind.

we know there are other planets except for ours but what happens to them do they stop existing after a certain point
Some of the planets in our Solar System will be absorbed into the Sun when it expands into a red giant. Others may wind up being either sucked in or pushed away, doomed to wander between the stars. But eventually, many trillions of years into the future, the universe as we know it will probably be a cold, dead, expanding cloud of dust and debris, expanding into infinity, with nothing to show that it was ever more than that.

[michaelwarlock]

Yes your right but I'm not talking about science here you want scientific facts and evidence I can not give you that but as for the evidence for our souls .... I don't know if you've ever heard about astrology and out of the body experiences and how you can be in different places at once . I have experienced this and I still do . Or your past life and who you were before . I can't say here are the evidence you are looking for and for this reason they exist but you can experience them yourself to see that not everything is based on evidence something's you have to feel and touch .

[Thorne]

Astrology? Hokum. It's been shown to be phony. Get three astrologers together and you'll get three different readings, because it's not based in reality.

Out of body experiences? More bunk. People may be able to relate things that happen in the room they are in, or that someone in that room discussed, because the mind is still working, even if you are unconscious. No one, to my knowledge, has ever been able to show real knowledge of events completely outside of the room. Science has shown that every tested out of body experience is nothing more than a dream state. Hallucinations, in other words.


not everything is based on evidence something's you have to feel and touch .
If they can be felt and touched, they are evidence based. If YOU are the only one who can feel them and touch them, however, chances are you are not in touch with reality.

For many years, the Amazing Randy has offered a one million dollar reward to anyone who can demonstrate, under controlled conditions, that psychic powers, or out of body experiences, or any kind of so-called spiritual activities, actually exist. Few, if any, well known psychics have been willing to attempt this, and those who have tried have all failed. They all have some excuse, but the reason is that these things do not exist.

[Thorne]

After seeing this thread revived after two years, I had to go back and reread all of the comments. I'm amazed at how intelligent (and how stupid, sometimes) I sounded back then.

I've missed these kinds of discussions. They seem to have dried up since the Big Crash.

[michaelwarlock]

If you don't think they exist then they don't for you .
Just because someone's reality is different that others doesn't say that they are not in touch with reality . They reality is different . Maybe they are not in touch with yours which makes it ok cause let's face it they are not you . Science has been proving and declining a lot of stuff someday someone discovers these things doesn't exist the next day he declines it cause he's seen it and now believes in it . Yet another person rises up and say he has gone crazy....
Ofcourse I'm not saying that is a bad thing . I'm just saying that sometimes you need to believe in what you feel is true . Science can not prove God but millions of people still believe in it and they bring 1001 reasons that he exist .
Out of the body experiences are real . Even if it's in the room it's still out of your body . Seeing things before they happen is real you and I both have been in a situation where we thought that we have been in it before .
Ofcourse I'm not trying to prove anything here .... This is my personal opinion . Maybe you are right and all this is just a dream or hallucination . Then again maybe not.

[Thorne]

Just because someone's reality is different that others doesn't say that they are not in touch with reality . They reality is different .
There are some seven billion people in this world. Are you claiming that there are some seven billion different realities? I find that a little hard to believe. Yes, there may be seven billion different PERCEPTIONS of reality, but there is only one reality. Something isn't true just because we want it to be true. It's only true when we can show evidence of it, measure it, observe it, either with our own senses or with the machines we create to enhance those senses.


Out of the body experiences are real .
No, they are not. You may think they are real, especially if you experience one, but there is no evidence, anywhere, that shows they are real. There's a lot of evidence to show that they are hallucinations caused by stresses in the brain. Researches have been able to induce OBE's in subjects by stimulating areas of the brain. The subject actually believes he or she was viewing their body from above, but have never been able to present evidence that it did, indeed, happen. Researches would place an item on or next to the subjects body, after they have been blindfolded, and to my knowledge no one has ever been able to identify those objects after their experience. Yet, the experience they describe is remarkably consistent with those experiences related by patients in hospitals who have had OBE's.


Seeing things before they happen is real you
Nope. Again, plenty of testing has been done, and there is no evidence for precognition. Much of what is believed to be precognition is actually our brains "tampering" with our memories to fill in the blanks.


you and I both have been in a situation where we thought that we have been in it before .
This is deja vu, and it is a real phenomenon, documented and studied for many years. But there is nothing psychic about it. Again, it's our brain responding to a stimulus, maybe recognizing something we've seen before, even if we cannot consciously remember it. One thing that science has consistently shown is that our brains are very good at tricking us. Just watch the series "Brain Games".


Ofcourse I'm not trying to prove anything here .... This is my personal opinion .
And you are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But you should be aware that fuzzy thinking, like believing in things that cannot be proven, can be costly. Millions, if not billions, of dollars are spent each year by sad people paying charlatans to contact their deceased loved ones. Billions of people live in abject misery because some charlatans tell them it's what their god wants. Children in this country (USA) die from preventable/treatable diseases every year because their parents believe that prayer is just as effective as medicine. Fuzzy thinking that allows them to deny reality in favor of their feel-good opinions.


Science can not prove God but millions of people still believe in it and they bring 1001 reasons that he exist .
Which god? There are millions of them, you know. And yes, billions of people believe in them, despite the lack of any evidence to show that any of them exist. And you are right, science cannot prove that gods do not exist, anymore than it can prove that unicorns do not exist, or fairies, or any of a seemingly infinite number of other made up things. But it's not science that has something to prove, here. Science does not make the claim that any gods exist. All science does is show us reality, and how that reality works. And none of those 1001 reasons that people put forth can be called evidence. They are speculations, based on ancient books and fairy tales.

[thir]

I think death is just a beginning . I believe we all are one . in different bodies . but our souls are pieces of a big puzzle one united ball of energy called Universe.

Nice thoughts, and you're entitled to your beliefs, but do you have any evidence of this? For starters, I'd love to see evidence for the existence of the soul. Mankind has been searching for that since - well, since the beginning of time!

I happened to watch a program in which some physics argued that in theory it is possible to have a soul. To do with quantum, of course, that the same thing can be in more than one place at the same time, and that what happens to 'one' happens to the 'other', regardless of distance.

[thir]

we all are one as In the Universe and we are one we all are part of it . we are universe in a shape of a human when we die we dont actually die we go back to our basic form .

Well, in some sense you are almost right. We are all made from the same materials, and many those materials were once joined in the center of a star, so technically we are a part of that star. And when we die our bodies will revert to those component atoms and molecules again. But believe me, we'll be dead.

Depending on how you define 'dead', a thing that even for humans have become more complicated lately. But that is BTW.

But it is true that we are all part of a dance of material, the same material, in ever changing forms, and always will be. Grass, sky, human, stone, pig, rain, whatever. Same pool of stuff.

[thir]

Some of the planets in our Solar System will be absorbed into the Sun when it expands into a red giant. Others may wind up being either sucked in or pushed away, doomed to wander between the stars. But eventually, many trillions of years into the future, the universe as we know it will probably be a cold, dead, expanding cloud of dust and debris, expanding into infinity, with nothing to show that it was ever more than that.

And then another big bang? :-))

[thir]

Out of body experiences? More bunk. People may be able to relate things that happen in the room they are in, or that someone in that room discussed, because the mind is still working, even if you are unconscious. No one, to my knowledge, has ever been able to show real knowledge of events completely outside of the room. Science has shown that every tested out of body experience is nothing more than a dream state. Hallucinations, in other words.

The funny thing is that these experiences sometimes happen with people who are solidly brain dead, and that is a conundrum that science has yet to sort. How it can happen, and from where people come 'back', if we may put it that way.

[thir]

After seeing this thread revived after two years, I had to go back and reread all of the comments. I'm amazed at how intelligent (and how stupid, sometimes) I sounded back then.

I've missed these kinds of discussions. They seem to have dried up since the Big Crash.

Yes, me too.

[thir]

There are some seven billion people in this world. Are you claiming that there are some seven billion different realities? I find that a little hard to believe. Yes, there may be seven billion different PERCEPTIONS of reality, but there is only one reality.[/quote]

Now that is a [I]really interesting thought! :-)

[thir]

Which god?
They are speculations, based on ancient books and fairy tales.

And maybe on a need for something bigger or better than humans?

As our old discussions show, there is no proof of God/Gods but absence of proof is not proof of absence and, no one could proof that there isn't or aren't gods either.

Which, I think, makes it all rather interesting :-)

[Thorne]

I happened to watch a program in which some physics argued that in theory it is possible to have a soul. To do with quantum, of course, that the same thing can be in more than one place at the same time, and that what happens to 'one' happens to the 'other', regardless of distance.
Perhaps, at least theoretically. But you're talking sub-atomic particles, here, almost infinitesimally small. Not likely to be able to carry all of the hopes and dreams and memories of even a single human mind. And you would still need to demonstrate the existence of souls, which hasn't happened.

There are a lot of hucksters and con men out there who try to distort quantum theory to sell their snake oil. Quantum is not a quick fix for anything you can't honestly explain. Remember, as the physicists say, "If you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.


But it is true that we are all part of a dance of material, the same material, in ever changing forms, and always will be. Grass, sky, human, stone, pig, rain, whatever. Same pool of stuff.
True enough, but that doesn't mean that you can recreate a mind from that pool. As far as we know, once the brain is dead, the mind is gone.


And then another big bang?
Who knows? There's a lot of speculation out there, and some of it seems to have at least some evidence in support. And it's all way over my head!

[Thorne]

The funny thing is that these experiences sometimes happen with people who are solidly brain dead, and that is a conundrum that science has yet to sort. How it can happen, and from where people come 'back', if we may put it that way.
I don't know of any cases where a person was declared brain dead and then came back to report on such events. Not saying it can't happen, but I haven't heard of any documented cases. Only stories. Still, even if it did happen, all that tells us is that we still have a ways to go to understand what brain death really is. There may be (and probably are) processes going on in there that we haven't yet learned to measure. Perfectly normal, electrochemical processes.


And maybe on a need for something bigger or better than humans?
There are a lot of motivations. A big one is the need for people to believe that they are special, and being created by a magical being who wants to give them some eternal reward or something fills that need. But I think the biggest motivation for belief is fear of death. Some people just need the comfort of believing they will carry on after death.


As our old discussions show, there is no proof of God/Gods but absence of proof is not proof of absence and, no one could proof that there isn't or aren't gods either.
As I've said before, you can provide all the evidence against the existence of something and still not prove that it doesn't exist. And while the "absence of proof is not proof of absence", you could show that the absence of evidence for the existence of gods IS evidence of absence. Most people don't believe that unicorns exist, but you cannot prove they don't exist. It's the absence of any evidence to show that they DO exist that lets us claim that they are not real. And that can only be a tentative claim, though very strong, because we cannot prove that one will not pop up on the White House lawn tomorrow morning. Just don't hold your breath.

The same holds true for gods. No matter how many people believe that gods exist, the lack of any evidence to show that they exist is a big mark against them. The fact that there are so many different interpretations of gods is a very strong indicator that, at least, just one God does not exist. And the fact that even those who DO believe in this one God all have different opinions about his expectations of them is another large piece of evidence against Him.

So yeah, I cannot prove that anyone's god does not exist, or that any gods do not exist. But I'm not making the claim here! If I was to claim that gods cannot exist, then I could be expected to prove it. It is those who DO make the claim that gods, or a God, exist that need to provide the evidence. But all we get are suppositions and gobbledygook. And the charlatans continue raking in the money.

[thir]

Perhaps, at least theoretically. But you're talking sub-atomic particles, here, almost infinitesimally small. Not likely to be able to carry all of the hopes and dreams and memories of even a single human mind. And you would still need to demonstrate the existence of souls, which hasn't happened.


True, I was quite surprised myself at this theory, but found it interesting.



There are a lot of hucksters and con men out there who try to distort quantum theory to sell their snake oil. Quantum is not a quick fix for anything you can't honestly explain. Remember, as the physicists say, "If you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics.


These people were well known and respected physics playing around with theories. And they were not 'selling' anything - not even the theory.



True enough, but that doesn't mean that you can recreate a mind from that pool. As far as we know, once the brain is dead, the mind is gone.


Expressing myself clumsily. I wasn't thinking the mind here, rather all the 'soup' or 'source' of atoms that keep dancing around, changing expression, rock, grass, animal, human, cloud.



Who knows? There's a lot of speculation out there, and some of it seems to have at least some evidence in support. And it's all way over my head!

Over everybody's head I should think ;-)

[thir]

I don't know of any cases where a person was declared brain dead and then came back to report on such events. Not saying it can't happen, but I haven't heard of any documented cases. Only stories. Still, even if it did happen, all that tells us is that we still have a ways to go to understand what brain death really is. There may be (and probably are) processes going on in there that we haven't yet learned to measure. Perfectly normal, electrochemical processes.


I wish I had names, but my memory...But these were in fact documented cases, by at least one brain surgeon doing research, and others, doctors and some physicists. Totally scientific, no hocus pocus, which was what made it so interesting. The one brain surgeon got interested because he always claimed that people in a coma did not experience anything, then he landed in a coma himself and did experience things. Since that was contrary to everything he knew about the brain, he got interested.

I am not saying there is anything super natural about this, and I do not quite understand why that is always assumed. But, as I have mentioned earlier, death has become complicated! And people who have been D-E-A-D including no heart beat and no brain activity have actually come back. And finally the - IMO - rather dogmatic science have woken up to the fact that there really is something here they do not understand, and which aught to be researched.




There are a lot of motivations. A big one is the need for people to believe that they are special,


Well, we are. Scientifically proven unique ;-)



and being created by a magical being who wants to give them some eternal reward or something fills that need.


I think the longing for justice is also probably part of it.



But I think the biggest motivation for belief is fear of death. Some people just need the comfort of believing they will carry on after death.


No offense, but it is my impression that US people are unusually afraid of death, even to the worship-youth culture. Maybe not all take it quite so seriously. I have toyed with the idea that maybe Americans, being to individualistic, have less feeling of a continuity, or a feeling that things 'move on' after them??

I also have the feeling that the bad religions (as opposed to good ones harming no one) makes people afraid that there is in fact an afterlife, that is hell, and that they must be on the right side to avoid that.
No offense meant to religious people here, but that is to me the most abusive idea you can plant in anyone's mind!



As I've said before, you can provide all the evidence against the existence of something and still not prove that it doesn't exist. And while the "absence of proof is not proof of absence", you could show that the absence of evidence for the existence of gods IS evidence of absence.


I cannot see that logic. Do you think science knows = everything?



Most people don't believe that unicorns exist, but you cannot prove they don't exist. It's the absence of any evidence to show that they DO exist that lets us claim that they are not real. And that can only be a tentative claim, though very strong, because we cannot prove that one will not pop up on the White House lawn tomorrow morning. Just don't hold your breath.


They might have existed in much older times, hence the myths now ;-))



The same holds true for gods. No matter how many people believe that gods exist, the lack of any evidence to show that they exist is a big mark against them.


Scientifically speaking, but you know that faith is nothing to do with science.



The fact that there are so many different interpretations of gods is a very strong indicator that, at least, just one God does not exist. And the fact that even those who DO believe in this one God all have different opinions about his expectations of them is another large piece of evidence against Him.


I think it would be more weird if many different cultures had the exact same image and the same ideas..



So yeah, I cannot prove that anyone's god does not exist, or that any gods do not exist. But I'm not making the claim here! If I was to claim that gods cannot exist, then I could be expected to prove it. It is those who DO make the claim that gods, or a God, exist that need to provide the evidence. But all we get are suppositions and gobbledygook. And the charlatans continue raking in the money.

I am with you on the money thing, and I do think that bad religion is harmful - very much so.

Now, my God, or rather Goddess, does exist, and my Gods deliver. Because she is just another word for nature, and the sun does in fact deliver and gives us life :-) She is beautiful beyond belief and ingenious beyond belief and gives us access anything we need, but she does not cuddle her creations and does not pull her punches.

When I die, I do not know what will happen, except I will be a bundle of building blocks for her to play around with again. My individual being is gone, maybe, but my bits and pieces are eternal, and that is good enough for me.

[Thorne]

These people were well known and respected physics playing around with theories. And they were not 'selling' anything - not even the theory.
I wasn't talking about physicists. I was talking about people who sprinkle their inane sales pitches with words like "quantum" and "uncertainty principle", as if they really knew what it meant, in an attempt to convince people that their snake-oil is actually effective.


Expressing myself clumsily. I wasn't thinking the mind here, rather all the 'soup' or 'source' of atoms that keep dancing around, changing expression, rock, grass, animal, human, cloud.
I understand. Basically, every atom of our bodies, every atom we ingest or inhale, has been here on earth since the beginning, with a few additions from incoming meteors. Just think! One or two molecules of the water you drink each day could have been pissed away by some first century preacher named Jesus.

[Thorne]

I wish I had names, but my memory...But these were in fact documented cases, by at least one brain surgeon doing research, and others, doctors and some physicists. Totally scientific, no hocus pocus, which was what made it so interesting. The one brain surgeon got interested because he always claimed that people in a coma did not experience anything, then he landed in a coma himself and did experience things. Since that was contrary to everything he knew about the brain, he got interested.
Not at all scientific. It's all anecdotal. We are expected to believe, first of all, that these people actually saw something. Then we are expected to believe that they are telling the truth about what they saw. All with no real evidence! The fact that these viewings tend to follow cultural lines is also suspect. You don't hear about Christians getting an Islamic view of heaven, or Muslims seeing the Shinto version. And none of these people actually come back with any information that is not available through more mundane methods here on Earth.


I am not saying there is anything super natural about this, and I do not quite understand why that is always assumed. But, as I have mentioned earlier, death has become complicated! And people who have been D-E-A-D including no heart beat and no brain activity have actually come back. And finally the - IMO - rather dogmatic science have woken up to the fact that there really is something here they do not understand, and which aught to be researched.
I agree, our understanding of the brain, of the mind, is still in its infancy. There is so much more to learn. A hundred years ago, if your heart stopped, you were clinically dead. There was no method of resuscitation. Now, we have ways to restart hearts. Yes, there have been a few people, with no detectable brain activity, who have been revived under very unique circumstances. It's more common with those who have fallen into icy water, kept cold to preserve the physical structure of the brain. There have also been people who, after suffering clinical brain death, have lost portions of their brains to decay, and when revived are much different than who they were before. Everything points to the mind being dependent upon the physical structure of the brain. No magic involved.


I think the longing for justice is also probably part of it.
Yes, I suppose. I'd rather see justice in this world, though. Having to rely on some of the evil beings that religions have cooked up doesn't seem like justice to me.


No offense, but it is my impression that US people are unusually afraid of death, even to the worship-youth culture.
The fact that some 80% of Americans identify as some brand of Christian has something to do with this. It's been my observation, based upon my own feelings and of those I've talked with, that everyone fears the process of dying, being in pain, but that those who profess a deep religious belief seem to fear BEING dead more than those who hold no such beliefs.


I also have the feeling that the bad religions (as opposed to good ones harming no one)
There are no "good" religions. There are only some that are less bad than others. They all seem to require a belief in something that cannot be shown to be real. They all seem to promote poor thought processes.


makes people afraid that there is in fact an afterlife, that is hell, and that they must be on the right side to avoid that.No offense meant to religious people here, but that is to me the most abusive idea you can plant in anyone's mind!
I don't know. I think it runs a close second to telling people that they are born bad and can only be redeemed by believing in an invisible man in the sky who has a fetish for human sacrifice.


I cannot see that logic. Do you think science knows = everything?
Not at all, but I do think that "religion knows" = nothing. And I do think that science CAN come to know everything, eventually. Throughout mankind's history, things we didn't understand were consistently attributed to the actions of the gods. And religious leaders have tried to keep people believing those things. But over time, century after century, thinking people have learned what makes lightning, what causes earthquakes and volcanoes, where comets and meteors come from. Every bit of knowledge we've gained has pushed the gods further and further back. The religions have fought back, torturing and executing those who "blaspheme" against their teachings, but the progress of knowledge is inexorable, and always leads to natural answers, not supernatural. Now we have reached the point where it's time to realize that there are no gods, or if there are they have no interest in this little plot of mud around a nondescript star in a yawningly average galaxy.


Scientifically speaking, but you know that faith is nothing to do with science.
It has nothing to do with reality, either, when you apply it to beings such as gods.


I think it would be more weird if many different cultures had the exact same image and the same ideas..
Even if that were so, where are the cultural differences between Lutherans and Catholics? Between Baptists and Episcopalians?
Between Sunni and Sufi? These aren't cultural differences, they are religious differences. Different interpretations of the magical words of ancient books.


Now, my God, or rather Goddess, does exist, and my Gods deliver. Because she is just another word for nature, and the sun does in fact deliver and gives us life :-) She is beautiful beyond belief and ingenious beyond belief and gives us access anything we need, but she does not cuddle her creations and does not pull her punches.
And does she answer your prayers? Does she protect you from harm? Nature is a capricious bitch with no concern for our welfare. If we had to rely only on her mankind would still be huddling in caves, wondering where our next meal was coming from. It's from the advances of science and technology that we are able to build structure to protect us from nature's ravages; that we can transport food and medicines across deserts and oceans; that we can live well into our 80's and 90's rather than dying in our 30's. Anthropomorphizing nature doesn't make her a goddess. It's just more fuzzy thinking.

[thir]

I decided to cut this in two, as one part has to do with science, and the other with religion.



t:Not at all scientific. It's all anecdotal. We are expected to believe, first of all, that these people actually saw something. Then we are expected to believe that they are telling the truth about what they saw. All with no real evidence! The fact that these viewings tend to follow cultural lines is also suspect. You don't hear about Christians getting an Islamic view of heaven, or Muslims seeing the Shinto version. And none of these people actually come back with any information that is not available through more mundane methods here on Earth.

You are really stubbornly misinterpreting what I say in that this has nothing to do with religion! Ok?

You do not believe that anyone saw anything. You do not believe that they say the truth. You want it proved. So how are people going to prove that? It is not like you can record it on tape. The only thing you can do is gather such experiences, and there are researchers who do. Your belief has nothing to do with it, people either have or haven't had them. Now, why is it so impossible that people see things during these situations? We do not know enough about the brain to say that it is not possible.


T:I agree, our understanding of the brain, of the mind, is still in its infancy. There is so much more to learn. A hundred years ago, if your heart stopped, you were clinically dead. There was no method of resuscitation. Now, we have ways to restart hearts. Yes, there have been a few people, with no detectable brain activity, who have been revived under very unique circumstances. It's more common with those who have fallen into icy water, kept cold to preserve the physical structure of the brain. There have also been people who, after suffering clinical brain death, have lost portions of their brains to decay, and when revived are much different than who they were before. Everything points to the mind being dependent upon the physical structure of the brain. No magic involved.

No magic is implied. I find it unscientific to keep persisting in trying to make it religious or magical. Some people have had experiences that cannot at this point be explained. You (generic) cannot keep saying that people are lying or fantasizing without any proof of that either.

[Thorne]

You are really stubbornly misinterpreting what I say in that this has nothing to do with religion! Ok?
I'm not deliberately misinterpreting you, honest. But certainly you must be aware that the vast majority of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are religious ones.


You do not believe that anyone saw anything. You do not believe that they say the truth.
What I believe, or disbelieve, has no bearing on the matter. All that matters is whether or not evidence can be provided.

You want it proved. So how are people going to prove that? It is not like you can record it on tape. The only thing you can do is gather such experiences,
Yes, you can gather the stories, and investigate them. Did the person relating the NDE know anything that they could not have known through any other means? If they claim to have met relatives or friends, did those they met give them any information which they could not have otherwise known? There are many ways such experiences could be tested and verified, or falsified. To date, none has been shown to be demonstrably true.

Now, why is it so impossible that people see things during these situations? We do not know enough about the brain to say that it is not possible.
I don't mean to claim that it is possible or not possible. Only that there is no evidence to indicate that such things are so, therefore no evidence to believe such stories are anything but artifacts of the brain. The lack of ultimate knowledge, whether about the brain or anything else, does not leave the door open to whatever fanciful nonsense we like.

No magic is implied. I find it unscientific to keep persisting in trying to make it religious or magical.
When someone postulates a supernatural cause, without first demonstrating the existence of the supernatural, then magic is certainly implied.

Some people have had experiences that cannot at this point be explained. You (generic) cannot keep saying that people are lying or fantasizing without any proof of that either.
Again, the fact that they cannot yet be explained does not give anyone the right to dream up some fanciful explanation, either magical or not. And I don't claim that people are lying, at least not deliberately. They have, certainly, had some kind of experience. But at this point in time there is no evidence to suggest that these experiences are anything other than hallucinations, or lucid dreams, or tricks of a damaged brain. And the more we learn about the brain, and about memory, the less "miraculous" these NDEs seem to be. People can, and have, experience dream fragments, mingled with garbled memories, and the mind tends to weld these fragments into some kind of coherent whole. Our brains are very good at filling in the gaps, and what is filled in does not have to have anything to do with reality. And when people relate such experiences, they tend to fill in even more gaps, whether deliberately or subconsciously. The mind wants a smooth narrative, even if what was experienced was anything but smooth.

Again, I'm not saying such things cannot be real. Any more than I would say that ghosts, or Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster cannot be real. All I claim is that there is no evidence to suggest that such things ARE real, and so there is no justification in treating them as if they are. Investigate? Certainly! I have no quarrel with that. Just don't claim such things as fact until you have been able to prove them.

[thir]

T:There are no "good" religions. There are only some that are less bad than others. They all seem to require a belief in something that cannot be shown to be real. They all seem to promote poor thought processes.

I disagree. The religions that are non-dogmatic and which are considered private do not hurt anyone, and thoughts are free, you know. Religion has fuddled people's head's in the past and can do so now, agreed. But not necessarily. I think the reason I can be more tolerant here is that my home country is not very religious and my present one not much more. It is not a problem.

Thir: makes people afraid that there is in fact an afterlife, that is hell, and that they must be on the right side to avoid that.No offense meant to religious people here, but that is to me the most abusive idea you can plant in anyone's mind!
T:I don't know. I think it runs a close second to telling people that they are born bad and can only be redeemed by believing in an invisible man in the sky who has a fetish for human sacrifice.


Same thing. For many it is fear of hell that gets you in line.

Thir: I cannot see that logic. Do you think science knows = everything?

T: Not at all,

But yes. Your main arguments are 1) that science does not know of any such thing (people having visions while in coma or some sort of dead), therefore it does not exist, and when people say they have in fact had such experiences they are lying, or it is magic or religious humbug. Because the dogmatic book of science does not know of this, even if you also acknowledge that we know little about how the brains works.

Thir: [I]I think it would be more weird if many different cultures had the exact same image and the same ideas..
Thorne: Even if that were so, where are the cultural differences between Lutherans and Catholics? Between Baptists and Episcopalians?
Between Sunni and Sufi? These aren't cultural differences, they are religious differences. Different interpretations of the magical words of ancient books.

Oh yes, they are, there are major different cultures within a nations borders.

Thir Now, my God, or rather Goddess, does exist, and my Gods deliver. Because she is just another word for nature, and the sun does in fact deliver and gives us life :-) She is beautiful beyond belief and ingenious beyond belief and gives us access anything we need, but she does not cuddle her creations and does not pull her punches.

Thorne: And does she answer your prayers? Does she protect you from harm? Nature is a capricious bitch with no concern for our welfare.

Correct. Therefor no prayers, she is simply nature, and everything else.

Thorne: If we had to rely only on her mankind would still be huddling in caves, wondering where our next meal was coming from.

You do not get it, Thorne. Nature fed us, roots, berries, fruit, grain, occasionally meat. Where did that come from, if not nature?

Thorne: It's from the advances of science and technology that we are able to build structure to protect us from nature's ravages; that we can transport food and medicines across deserts and oceans; that we can live well into our 80's and 90's rather than dying in our 30's.

Where do you think your meals come from? Build in a lab? Where do the cattle graze, where does the wheat grow? Of course we live off nature.

There have been many technical advances - what has that got to do with anything?
Apart from the fact that we are now weak and cannot survive without our many technological incubators. If something major happens, we are lost.

Thorne: Anthropomorphizing nature doesn't make her a goddess. It's just more fuzzy thinking.

Well, I like to think of it that way. And I am not fuzzy headed, not for that reason anyway ;-)

[Thorne]

I disagree. The religions that are non-dogmatic and which are considered private do not hurt anyone, and thoughts are free, you know. Religion has fuddled people's head's in the past and can do so now, agreed. But not necessarily.
While these private religions may not hurt others, they can, and do, harm the person believing in them. They can create emotional/mental problems, even physical problems, by allowing the believer to bypass reality. If you believe that prayer alone will solve your problems, you can reach the point where you do nothing for yourself except pray. That's a problem.



But yes. Your main arguments are 1) that science does not know of any such thing (people having visions while in coma or some sort of dead), therefore it does not exist,
No, science DOES know of these things. They have been reported upon and studied. The phenomena exist, scientifically. The CAUSES are also generally known to science, and there a sound physiological explanations for them. They are, as far as can be determined, inner processes of the brain and not OBE's.


and when people say they have in fact had such experiences they are lying, or it is magic or religious humbug.
Not quite. When they report their visions they are, mostly, telling the truth. Their minds have, in all likelihood, experienced this thing. It's when they start writing books, going on speaking tours, claiming to KNOW what happened and it was all God, or something, that they devolve into misrepresentation and lying.


Oh yes, they are, there are major different cultures within a nations borders.
Yes, there are. And you can have these different cultures, side by side, all practicing the same religion. Sure, there might be minor differences in ritual between them, but the belief structure will be the same. You can also have representatives of a single culture with major differences in religions belief. Protestants and Catholics in Ireland are a prime example. Pretty much identical cultures, outside of their religions, but major differences in belief.


Correct. Therefor no prayers, she is simply nature, and everything else.
So what's the point in worship?


You do not get it, Thorne. Nature fed us, roots, berries, fruit, grain, occasionally meat. Where did that come from, if not nature?
But she gave us barely enough to feed the small groups wandering the plains. And often not enough even for that, resulting in conflicts between groups for the scant resources left.

Where do you think your meals come from? Build in a lab? Where do the cattle graze, where does the wheat grow? Of course we live off nature.
There have been many technical advances - what has that got to do with anything?
It's only when we began using our brains to cultivate the land, learned to protect our crops from weather and pests, became able to grow more than we need, allowing us to barter with others, that we began to progress. In spite of nature, not because of it.


Apart from the fact that we are now weak and cannot survive without our many technological incubators. If something major happens, we are lost.
It's true, our technology allows far more people to thrive than would be possible if we were dependent solely upon nature. I don't see that as a bad thing.

[thir]

While these private religions may not hurt others, they can, and do, harm the person believing in them. They can create emotional/mental problems, even physical problems, by allowing the believer to bypass reality. If you believe that prayer alone will solve your problems, you can reach the point where you do nothing for yourself except pray. That's a problem.


I do not see it that way. You seem to believe that all religions entail prayers of some sort, and that, if you pray, you are in danger of doing nothing. I think you are wrong. If you believe in gods, you might just as well believe that gods help those who help themselves.



So what's the point in worship?


The worship I talk about is more a love of nature and a realization that we live of her and need to not destroy her.



But she gave us barely enough to feed the small groups wandering the plains. And often not enough even for that, resulting in conflicts between groups for the scant resources left.


Why do you think there was 'barely enough'? There was plenty!
And not that many conflicts either..that came later, with much more people.



It's only when we began using our brains to cultivate the land, learned to protect our crops from weather and pests, became able to grow more than we need, allowing us to barter with others, that we began to progress. In spite of nature, not because of it.


The really bad thing was to go to farming. Far too many people, many of whom had a rotten and short life, and far too many people, resulting in far too many conflicts. We can now destroy ourselves in war, and we are busy destroying earth. That is not intelligence, that is greed and stupidity.

'Progress' is a manipulative word, meant to imply that everything that went before is worse than the new, and so that all new is good.



It's true, our technology allows far more people to thrive than would be possible if we were dependent solely upon nature. I don't see that as a bad thing.

I do. Because we are taking more than earth can regrow and using up resources that cannot be replaced.
We are on a wrong track.

[thir]

No, science DOES know of these things. They have been reported upon and studied. The phenomena exist, scientifically. The CAUSES are also generally known to science, and there a sound physiological explanations for them. They are, as far as can be determined, inner processes of the brain and not OBE's.


Yes, they have been studied some. I have managed to dig out the program I was talking about, in which several scientists talked about near or death experiences.
More of that later. My own conclusion is that the jury is still out on that one.

[thir]

After having seen various programs (asking questins, having no answers) I got interested, but I think we are discussing in east and west here, at least partially.

1) I have said nothing about afterlife or religion.

At least one researcher thinks that what people experience in these situations have to do with what they expect to experience, hence religious people see something religious, non-religious see something else.

Almost always something extremely good, though some have nightmares.

2) What I do say is that reason for these experiences is not known. Yes, there are many hypothesises (how do you spell that?) but no actual proof of anything. "We do not have have the neural correlate of consciousness."

3) I am very interested in the idea that consciousness is not actually restricted to the brain.
It is Pim Van Lommen who has come up with that idea, and obviously met with lots of criticism and skepticism.As far as I can follow this, the criticism is that it goes against what you know about the brain,. The reason it interests me even so is that he is a cardiologist who has researched these things for 20 years, by being a person who receives persons with a stroke and who resuscitates them if possible.
He has studied his patient's death symptoms (can you say that) people with no heart beat, and flat brain. And some of these people tell him things. I think that such a long period must count for more than people who argue out of their books.

http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm#results


My own conclusion: something is going on, and the jury is out in what.

[Thorne]

You seem to believe that all religions entail prayers of some sort, and that, if you pray, you are in danger of doing nothing.
Not at all! I was using prayer as an example. In fact, I do understand that prayer can have beneficial effects, similar to meditation. And, while there are those who do believe that praying is more important than actual actions, most people will generally try to do something first, then pray. Those deeply ingrained in religious thought then tend to credit the prayers, rather than the hard work, for any accomplishments.

I think you are wrong.
Is that even possible? ;)

If you believe in gods, you might just as well believe that gods help those who help themselves.
Which would negate the reason for prayer, would it not? Or for worship.

The worship I talk about is more a love of nature and a realization that we live of her and need to not destroy her.
We can find many beautiful things in nature, for sure. Mostly because we are evolutionarily inclined to find such things beautiful. Just as the dung beetle finds the droppings of other creatures to be beautiful. But such things are cultural more often than not. A desert-dwelling nomad may find the golden sand dunes to be extraordinarily beautiful, but might be dismayed by the ugly barrenness of the frozen north. The Eskimo, on the other hand, would have the opposite experience. In either case, it's the people who have adapted to nature, and not the other way around. Nature is not a 'she' or a 'he' or even an 'it'. It's merely a concept we have devised for explaining the natural world.

Why do you think there was 'barely enough'? There was plenty!
There was plenty for the limited number of small bands of people. As tribes grew larger, resources became more scarce. Which forced the tribes to move more often, creating conflicts with other tribes.

And not that many conflicts either..that came later, with much more people.
There have been conflicts for as long as there have been creatures. Conflict is also a part of nature. We humans have simply elevated it to an art form.

The really bad thing was to go to farming. Far too many people, many of whom had a rotten and short life, and far too many people, resulting in far too many conflicts.
Farming actually improved the lives of people, stabilizing the food supply, allowing for larger families, and groups of families, which meant greater protection against predators, the animal kind at least. And even against the human kind. Conflict has always been, and likely will always be, with us. It's a part of our 'nature'.

That is not intelligence, that is greed and stupidity.
Also a part of our nature, sadly.

Because we are taking more than earth can regrow and using up resources that cannot be replaced.
We are on a wrong track.
Then perhaps we should reduce the population of the world? Limit ourselves to only a few million people rather than several billion? Who is going to decide who will go? Are you willing to volunteer?

Or should we perhaps use our minds to make things better for everyone, while educating everyone about resource use? Just remember, going back to nature means going back to lives that were short, insecure and brutal.

[Thorne]

[QUOTE]1) I have said nothing about afterlife or religion.

At least one researcher thinks that what people experience in these situations have to do with what they expect to experience, hence religious people see something religious, non-religious see something else.
This is what I've been saying. Which is why most scientists think these experiences are subjective and internal and not actual OBE's.
And while you may not necessarily be talking about afterlife or religion, the majority of those who experience such things ARE talking about them.


2) What I do say is that reason for these experiences is not known.
Again, we agree. But that does not mean we can just decide to believe they are real events, in which an untethered 'soul' (consciousness) escapes the body. Almost all of the studies done seem to indicate that such things are internal, within the brain.


3) I am very interested in the idea that consciousness is not actually restricted to the brain.
It is Pim Van Lommen who has come up with that idea, and obviously met with lots of criticism and skepticism.
Skepticism is always justified. Perhaps the criticism comes from the fact that he makes the claim without actually showing any evidence for it.

As far as I can follow this, the criticism is that it goes against what you know about the brain,. The reason it interests me even so is that he is a cardiologist who has researched these things for 20 years, by being a person who receives persons with a stroke and who resuscitates them if possible.
He has studied his patient's death symptoms (can you say that) people with no heart beat, and flat brain. And some of these people tell him things.
His being a cardiologist does not necessarily qualify him to study psychological phenomena. And based on a scan of the study you posted, his conclusions appear to be somewhat premature, at least to an amateur like me. His own study shows that only 18% of those studied had an experience, or could remember having one, and even that number is inflated. He states in the study that it could be as low as 5% who actually have them. I'm not a statistics whiz, but that seems to be a rather low percentage. And even of those who had them, the depth, or intensity, of the experiences vary. I honestly don't see how he could conclude that these are anything other than subjective, natural, organic experiences.

I think that such a long period must count for more than people who argue out of their books.
It certainly counts for his skill and understanding of cardiology. I can't comment on his expertise in NDE's.

My own conclusion: something is going on, and the jury is out in what.
I agree, something is going on, and it should be studied. It HAS been studied, extensively. And from what I can see, the skeptical view is still justified. There's no reason to believe that these are anything other than natural processes within the brain.

A couple of comments on the study you posted:
He seems to include those who underwent CPR outside of the hospital. How were they able to determine that these patients were brain dead? I don't think EMT's perform brain scans while transporting patients.

He notes that the majority of NDE-type experiences can be induced artificially, whether through direct stimulation of the brain or through high stress activities (high G-forces, for example) but states that these "induced experiences are not identical to NDE". He doesn't seem to discuss the idea that the psychological stresses of the induced experiences are far different than those of someone actually dying!

So I'm going to stick with my skepticism. I haven't seen anything to show that these experiences are anything but natural processes occurring in an organic body, with no real evidence of a non-biological/psychological cause.

[IAN 2411]

Most people don't believe that unicorns exist, but you cannot prove they don't exist. It's the absence of any evidence to show that they DO exist that lets us claim that they are not real. And that can only be a tentative claim, though very strong, because we cannot prove that one will not pop up on the White House lawn tomorrow morning. Just don't hold your breath.

So very true, I mean, who would have dared predict one hundred years ago that a black man with Irish roots would pop up on the white house lawn as President of the USA. I believe in unicorns, I do, I do, I do.

[Thorne]

So very true, I mean, who would have dared predict one hundred years ago that a black man with Irish roots would pop up on the white house lawn as President of the USA. I believe in unicorns, I do, I do, I do.

LOL! Hell, there are people even today who still won't believe it!