OT - Scientific proof that there is no afterlife!

[dogscoff]

Who owns the intellectual property rights to my soul?

Microsoft, probably. Did you ever actually read any of those license agreements before clicking "I agree"?

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The silicon chip or magnetic tape has the same mass and number of electrons regardless. It's just that the little bits are in different positions depending on if they are ones or zeros.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Position is important, though. Take Uranium 235, for example. Now take roughly half the nucleons aside .
You have the same particles sitting around, but less mass and more energy than you know what to do with.

Doing so in close proximity to my body would certainly make it unsuitable for continued use as a storage device for my soul.

Geoschmo

[ August 18, 2003, 16:20: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Slick]

Why is it that people are insisting that photons have mass when all available evidence and theory are contrary to that? I just don't understand it.

SJ, nice try , but that calculation shows how much mass would be generated if the photon was completely anihilated. It does not show how much mass a photon has. This has been observed, by the way, in a process called "pair production". A photon (gamma) of at least 1.02 MeV can be transformed (E=mc^2) into an electron and a positron. There must be 2 particles due to conservation laws (momentum, spin, charge, etc.) beyond the scope of this discussion.

Slick.

[Tigbit]

If people only write what supports their views, how do you account for people critiquing their views - or even changing them? The implication seemed to be that people have their minds made up and are not interested in actual discussion and debate - where you run the risk of having your ideas proved wrong.

They may not be all that certain of their idea but have nothing else to go on. So they sieze upon someone else's that they like better. Let's face it, George Washington never did chop down a cherry tree (or was that an apple tree?). Someone liked the idea and the rest is in your American history books. At that time the people needed heroes, those that were honorable, those they could look up to and lead them. How would it have sounded... "Well, George Washington is this guy, see... who... well as a kid he... hmmm... did nothing special." So someone comes up with a story. OH! You know "Casablanca"? There's another one... in the movie Bogart was supposed to say "Play it again, Sam." But he never did. Not in the original script or in the movie. Yet people siezed upon it because it likely sounded good at the time and be damned the truth, anyway. There were tonnes of commercials years back where they used Casablanca as a theme and used that very same line! I think I rmember one of them being a small bulldog saying that line.

Anyway, I've rambled enough

[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by Slick:
Why is it that people are insisting that photons have mass when all available evidence and theory are contrary to that? I just don't understand it.

SJ, nice try , but that calculation shows how much mass would be generated if the photon was completely anihilated. It does not show how much mass a photon has. This has been observed, by the way, in a process called "pair production". A photon (gamma) of at least 1.02 MeV can be transformed (E=mc^2) into an electron and a positron. There must be 2 particles due to conservation laws (momentum, spin, charge, etc.) beyond the scope of this discussion.

Slick.

Photons have no rest mass. At rest, they have no energy either and don't exist anymore.

The relativistic mass is a different question.
See:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...oton_mass.html (University of California site)
Edit: better link

[ August 18, 2003, 16:44: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[geoschmo]

The question of whether or not photons have mass is not really that important to this discussion is it? The question was whether souls have mass, and more generally whether anything can exist that does not have either mass or energy. If photons do not meet the qualification of something that has no mass that doesn't mean souls have mass, unless we are sure souls are made out of photons.

If a soul is just information though it can exsist without mass or energy. It might take some energy to transfer it from one form of storage to another, and it's presence might cause the mass of the storage or transmission medium to alter position. But that doesn't mean the information itself has mass or energy. And it wouldn't require any fancy transdimensional particle waves or anything.

[ August 18, 2003, 17:10: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Loser:

quote:

---

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Do radio waves have mass?

I know this one.

Yes.

---

Energy has mass, yes, so it does distort space like matter. Oddly, Einstein didn't allow for gravity to have mass in his original calculations. He set it aside as 'special' even though there was no reason to. I guess he didn't like recursive equations. Recent experiments have shown that gravity does in fact propogate at the speed of light and otherwise behaves like energy. We just haven't isolated any 'gravitons' yet.

Originally posted by geoschmo:

I will accept this one without need for explanation. However, it still leaves open the question of whether the soul itself has mass. If the soul is merely information, in the same way that computer code is information, then a case could be made that the soul has no mass. If it can be stored without changing the mass of the storage device.

Even existing for a short time in the form of radio waves the information itself does not have mass. The mass of radio waves is not created at the begining of the transmission, and is not destroyed at the end. It's simply the transmission medium used to transfer the data.

Well, I think it's pretty obvious that the claim for the soul is for a 'substance' of some sort. Information cannot be 'immortal' after all. When the media it resides in is destroyed it goes poof.

Proof or disproof of the existence of this 'substance' is not going to be solved anytime soon, methinks.

Originally posted by geoschmo:


Who owns the intellectual property rights to my soul? Can an in individual be copyrighted?

Probably SCO by now. You'll be receiving court papers soon.

When you invent the Star Trek transporter let us know. The issue of 'copyright' of humans will then mean something.

[ August 18, 2003, 17:18: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Slick]

On that subject, I would have to quote the familiar:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

And would point out that it would be very presumptious to assume that all things are required to be made up of mass or energy. Just because we don't know how to observe something is not sufficient to prove it does not exist or to conveniently dismiss them.

A soul may or may not exist. We don't even agree on what it is, much less what it is made of or how to detect it. Therefore, there is not enough evidence to disprove it. As for proof, not enough evidence there either.

Arthur C. Clark (inventor of the communications satellite, author of 2001: a space oddesy, investigator of the mysterious) once had a rating system for mysterious things. It went from a +5 (being unquestionably true and provable to anyone) to a -4 (being almost certainly not true). His system had no corresponding -5 rating for the very reason that you can't prove that something doesn't exist just because you can't find it.

Now he did not apply this to mathematical "mysteries" where it is possible to prove that some things don't exist. He used this system for common mysteries like Bigfoot, Voodoo, etc.

Slick.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Well, I think it's pretty obvious that the claim for the soul is for a 'substance' of some sort. Information cannot be 'immortal' after all. When the media it resides in is destroyed it goes poof.

But that is my point exactly. The soul does not have to be a substance. And information can be immortal. Well, as immortal as anything can be. Because the "value" of any particular bit of information is not dependant on the media that contains it at any particular moment in time. The value of the information is contained in the particular "arrangment" of the little bits of matter and energy that make up the physical nature of the storage media, not in the little bits of matter and energy themselves. If the storage media is lost the information still exsists as long as it can be transferred to another storage media.

[dogscoff]

Jumping back to before this thread got Fyronised...

There's no problem with the heaven/hell model as long as Armaggeddon comes before all the mass runs out.

If you divide the mass of the universe by the mass of a soul, then figure out how fast souls are leaving the universe, you will get an estimate on the latest armaggeddon can be.

Soul-Drain.

There's scope for a brilliant story here, although it would have to be written by someone capable of drawing on religious, mythological, philosophical and scientific sources far more authoritatively than I ever could:

Anyway, here's the idea:
The above model turns out to be true, with all the stuff of the universe being gradually converted into souls and then drained away into the afterlife. Now, the universe is utterly vast (and according to scientists, still expanding), so it's hard to imagine it ever being completely consumed by current levels of soul-drain. However, as populations colonise and grow, the universe, the rate of soul-drain would increase exponentially with it. Eventually, the universe reaches a saturation point where expansion turns into contraction, and the universe starts to shrink. Eventually, with the death of the Last soul, the universe will shrink to a point where it can no longer support life and then- because there's no point to a universe without any souls- disappear, kicking off armageddon. Think of it as a theological big bang/ big crunch

A hundred million years from now we see the Last, dwindling few intelligent beings in the universe, which is absolutely tiny by now and shrinks further with each death. The story is about them as they await their demise and the resultant ragnarok.

Kind of like an anti-One over Zero=-) The Big Brother TV concept also springs to mind: The living are the contestants, the souls of the dead are spectators: You have been evicted from the universe, please leave immediately.

Some interesting points that come to mind:

-Maybe at some point in history some advanced and enlightened civilisation would try to balance their population rates in order to stabilise the universe (or even allow it to grow again). How could they do that though, short of massive genocide campaigns? Maybe this campaign is still in effect in the very Last days.

-Eventually it will come down to the very Last person, all on their own. With no other people and no society to provide tests and temptations, how can he/she live righteously and earn salvation?

-With all the souls in history already on their battlelines in the afterlife, would the fate of the Last few make any difference to the outcome of armageddon? Maybe the numbers are equal and it all hangs on the Last soul..?

-Being utterly alone in a tiny universe would probably drive this Last person completely mad. Assuming suicide isn't a valid option, is it really fair to be put in that position, especially if the outcome of armageddon depends on it? Maybe (s)he wouldn't want to reach heaven just out of spite.

-With all the souls in history already there, would the afterlife be all that different to this one?

-After armageddon and the end of the universe, what comes next? Maybe you get some kind of soul-singularity that reaches critical mass and triggers the next big bang...

There you go, fantastic story or what? if anyone thinks they can write this, I look forward to reading it. When it becomes an international best-seller though, just remember to throw me some change from the window of your speeding limo...