OT - Scientific proof that there is no afterlife!

[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:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
Do radio waves have mass?

I know this one.

Yes.

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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.

[Gozra]

Science can explain a lot of things.
I figure by the time Science can explain souls it will be too late. I may not be able to prove I have a Soul but I have Faith that I do and that there is a continuation of my being after my worldly death. We all live by faith. I have faith that the Sun will come up every morning that a seed planted will follow it's design parameters and grow. And I have Faith that politicians will get us into a deeper mess today than we were in yesterday. I have Faith that there is an Afterlife. And Once Science "proves" it Why then I guess I won't need faith then.