Particles of the Spirit, Some particles have the ability to phase

Whats up? I'm new.

I'm trying to formulate a theory of the Human Spirit and how it's existence can be accepted Scientifically -- at least as a possibility.

I believe I read that gravitons have the ability to travel out of this dimension -- correct? What other particles have the ability to phase in and out of our physical boundries? How many more are likely to exist undiscovered?

Is it not possible the human spirit is of these same type of particles, and at death it leaves our reality?

I recommend reading The Phenomenology of Spirit by GWF Hegel. He discusses much about the purpose of science and religion, while trying to reconcile both as legitimate areas of knowledge. If you don't feel like reading it, the "ending" is


SPOILER WARNING









science and religion are incompatible because they are based around fundamentally different ideas of the meaning of "concept" and "truth." Trying to explain religion via science, or science via religion, only serves to destroy during the conversion the very idea that you're trying to convey. So, please, save the theologizing for religious message boards.

PS - gravitons haven't even been discovered yet. Their expected properties are a matter of dispute.

Kalibur -

As far as I can see, JavaTool is correct on both points.

FYI - you can't formulate a "scientific" theory on anything (and this part is critically important) that cannot be measured. Science is science b/z you can measure something(s). So, carrying this fact to its Socratic end, if you can measure G_d then you've discovered G_d's existence.

See the problem?

This is why creationist, ID, spiritual, Biblical arguments never work, since any "evidence" presented needs to be measurable in order to be considered "scientific".

Thanks. I see the paradox. Imagine though: the particles that make up the spirit being discovered -- would that not be remarkable and revolutionary?

I'm not religous but I am spiritual. I contradict myself because I fancy myself a man of logic. Spirituality is not logical. So I search for a logical possibility that what I feel as my spirit -- really exists.

A world where it doesn't is grim.

Do not think of spirit in the conventional, idealistic or religous nature. Just think of an energy force existing. A force coherent in life that transitions at death. In my way of thinking, a conscious spirit is very illogical and unlikely. However the endurance of energy is fact. Unfortunantely there are no observations of this spiritual energy.

That is what I search for.

On the gravitons: Can you direct me to any sources containing that information?

I read (probably a year or two ago) that someone actually weighed a very minute difference in a person before and after death. At the moment the person died, the body became minutely lighter. But that probably won't get you any closer even if it is a fact. As others said, science is science and it probably can't even be proven that the weight difference is from the loss of a "spirit".

Good luck on your quest!

While searching for the true spirit may be pointless in a scientific sense, there's still a lot of fun to be had. Science and religion don't necessarily have to contradict; they merely need to have exclusive scope.

With that, you're free to assert that some type of "spirit" thing exists, and keep it religious. BUT... the body is, without question, a physical thing. With those two assertions - at some point, some where, there *must be* some type of physical interface between the two; some method where straight biology/chemistry/physics can provide a mechanism for this spirit to interface/attach/interact/etc.

And what's neat about that is that we can then identify and duplicate this interface, since (by definition of the body being purely physical) all that's needed to "host" this spirit is stuff that's physically present. Any way you slice it, sooner or later, the body is just pieces-parts, and those parts must be sufficient to pull this off.

The implications of this will vary, based on how complex you make the assumed spirit. If the spirit is merely a "sense of being", then we'd pretty much be limited to creating a "virtual host". But if you assume a more complex spirit, much more fun ensues.

If you assert that the spirit is capable of actual behavior, literally acting as some type of "control device" for the brain, then that means that (somehow) there's a datapath from the brain (to the spirit) to provide information, and there's a datapath from the spirit (to the brain) to assert control (or whatever). This becomes fun because we know the "brain half" of the connection must be do-able with straight, simple matter. And if the body can build this interface, then we can build an emulator.

This leads to an interesting concept of creating a virtual body for a spirit. No actual body would be required; merely a "black box" that "looks and feels" like the interface, since the spirit wouldn't know the difference. Doesn't sound incredibly interesting, but it's interesting. At best you'd probably end up with a new "ghost porn" industry, but who knows.

More fun would be along my line of work - namely, exploitation. If we hold that the spirit and body are "separate" with some sort of link, and that (clearly) the body's interface must be simple matter - then *we* can attack that communication path. We can inject false information into the stream "received" by the spirit; we can inject false directives into the stream "received" by the body. Or more basically, we could perhaps just "jam the signal". More interesting would be to deny the path, and inject a "replay attack" of a previous (or engineered) stream. I'm not convinced that any of these would be immediately useful outside of warfare, but other applications where "remote presence" is helpful (such as gaming or medical diagnosis / treatment) would also benefit. It could also be useful for training in dangerous environments, or (asserting a *very* complex spirit-model combined with a replay attack) criminal rehabilitation / payback - literally, put the aggressor into the victim's shoes.

Like I said, the "spirit" might well be outside the scope of science - but the body is not, which means (if you assert a "persistent" spirit exists) the interface between the body and its spirit are not. Sooner or later, the body's half of that interface must be purely physical; that means we can reverse engineer it, and that means we can emulate it.

Thoughts? Ideas?

hello-

as THEY mentioned, there really is a reduction in body mass due to death. But from a normal, mundane thermodynamic sense (see the first and second Laws), this is perfectly logical. From specific relativity, energy and mass are interconvertible, so you SHOULD see this reduction (no wispy magic or spirit here, just straight thermodynamics).

Remember, ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is the human's workhorse energy molecule, produced in all the mitochondria we have. If we were to pile up all the ATP made by the average adult in a 24hr period, we would have over 85kg of it! We are intensely energy-dependent creatures w/ some serious energy needs for our brains. Hell, even when we're sleeping our brains use 11kcal/hr. Wow.

S

It's funny, I don't believe in an afterlife, god or religion but I consider myself to be spiritual. We have all been put in life changing situations where we find ourselves asking why?... why me?, such as the death of a loved one in a tragic accident. Due to our emotions we want to believe that there is something beyond our knowledge of life that has some control over these travesties.

If the world found out today that scientists had found proof that a spirit and soul do scientifically exist would people accept their fate or strive to be good people? Likewise, what if the world knew that people had no soul, would chaos reign?

I feel like the soul (pardon the pun) purpose of a spirit goes hand in hand with religion. Without religion people would not be fearful of doing wrong and having it affect their afterlife, whatever that might be. Obviously in this case, only good souls make it to heaven.

When cavemen were dragging their women around by their hair and having their savage ways with them. I'm sure that not for one second they believe that what they were doing was wrong and that they could be divinely punished for it after their death.

It wasn't until the introduction of religion to mankind that people were taught about having a soul and making sure that they repent their sins and do more good in the world than bad. Religion molded people to think this way, having a spirit is a mere bi-product of this.

Personally, I think religion and spirit are irrelevant. I sure don't need them, since the universe has so much cool stuff in it that can be figured out. I find the notion of religion, in and of itself, quite restrictive - putting oneself inside a box w/ rules that rarely make any sense, particularly nowadays. I find organized religion a real albatross. It's a crutch that isn't needed, provided the individual is up to the actualization of their own potential, a la A. Maslov.

Take Judaism, for example. The rather restrictive rules regarding the strict separation of meat and dairy were very cleverly built into the religion as a matter of self preservation. When people were dying and no one could figure out why, process of elimination found some correlation b/t meat and dairy on the same plate. Now we know that the wood plates they often used (when kilns weren't readily available to fire clay, like when youre on the go fleeing the Egyptians!) carried microbes like c. botulinum, aspergilis, bacillus, e. coli, etc. Then, if you look at modern Judaism, those same restrictions are in place, but science has figured out what was up. Now it's a pretty artifact and should be honored for its really clever mechanism, but you've now limited that person for artificial reasons.

If you have grown up in a religious environment (like I did) and then realize that the restrictions are pretty artificial - like I don't need a tablet to tell me not to kill, steal, etc. - you shed the religious artifact and realize how freakin' liberating it is. You look at the world in a remarkably enlightened manner, and the religious stuff just nice stories. Look how much trouble humans get themselves into by taking the religion/spirit stuff too seriously: gay bashing, global terrorism, global war - all of it directly attributable to religion. Spirit is nice, but it is overwhelmingly tied to religion. If spirituality was just that and not tagged to religious nonsense, we'd be fine. Ahh, but this is NOT a perfect world....

I don't think this arises from taking religion "too seriously". I think this arises from psychological dispositions of the people who adhere to the religions. What causes one Christian who believes homosexuality is wrong to campaign against gay rights and another Christian who believes homosexuality is wrong to let people live the way they want without interfering? What causes one person to translate the Christian message as compassion for others and stern self-expectation, and another person to translate it as a justification of self-righteous aggression?

I suggest it's the same thing that can cause one child of an abusive parent to grow up well-adjusted while the other continues the cycle of abuse. People's personalities are susceptible to a certain amount of external influence when they are young, but the importance of introspection and reflection cannot be denied. It's what prevents identical circumstances from producing identical people.

In short, I think that if someone adopts a hateful outlook, it's because they have the physical and mental capacity for hatred, not necessarily because they were told to hate.

hey, WB -

sure, but religion is soooooooo often and sooooo easily used as the excuse or nowadays, the vehicle. You can't discern b/t the two, just like it's next to impossible to see where the religious line ends and the spiritual line begins. Totally blurred, like photoshop blurred

You know, that weight loss at death thing has been around since the 50s, I think I first encountered it in one of Frank Edwards books.
It might be urban legend.

Howsomever.

A nice fruit-loop theory would tie in dark matter with psychic phenomena, I would research victorian engish ecto-plasm. (Those people believed in that sort of thing.)

I say this as a psychic (hey, intertainment purposes only) who really is more interested in the physics on this forum than the spiritual hoo-ha.

Otherwise, I too would be making the fruit-loop posts.
(have a smily. )

ss-

The problem I had with your post was really this statement:

All hateful attitudes, all terrorism, all war is due to religion? That's simply and unequivocally untrue. That may not be what you meant, but that's what it sounded like, and that's a big problem I have with the anti-religious movement. They make careless use of hyperbole and people get swept up in it. It makes for a big, easy target. It creates a false black-and-white polarity out of what is a grey issue. Anti-religious people are often adamantly opposed to black-and-white judgement in every other area. Why is it okay against religion? It's a double-standard, and it's not fair, and people take it to hateful levels, just like every other ideology. It's just as dangerous.

What about the religious people who don't pursue these aggressive lifestyles? What about the religious people who actively perform acts of generous kindness and compassion? Is that directly attributable to religion? I don't think you can say one without the other. But if you say both, you've got inconsistency. Can religion be both good and evil? I don't think religion is anymore good or evil than science is. But people can be good or evil. And evil people will use whatever tool is available for their evil.

I think religion is often like the CIA. People don't care about or notice the successes. But every single failure comes under the microscope. The thing no one likes to admit, on either side, is that a failure of religion usually comes down to the failure of a person. Which, incidentally, is why I don't like organized religion. Too much trust in people. Just ends up being a dictatorship. These religious dictatorships are a problem, yes. But that's because people give them that power. It has nothing to do with religion. It just has to do with the fact that people flock to ideologies and like to have leaders in them. The Nazi movement wasn't a religious movement, it was an ideological movement, and it was arguably as insidious (or moreso) than the infamous religious equivalents throughout history.

But not every religion is like this. I think there's an argument to be made that the ones that are, are "dangerous". Just don't start persecuting religion as a whole. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A frightening number of significant figures in history who were homosexuals were also pedophiles. So should we outlaw homosexuality to prevent pedophilia? What about the ones that aren't pedophiles? And what about the heterosexual pedophiles? See? This type of blanket action doesn't solve the problem. No more than the Patriot Act solves the U.S. security problems. The sacrifice is too great. You're throwing out a lot good things to get rid of some (not even most!) bad things.

Getting rid of the religion will not get rid of the problem. In fact, I'm inclined to think that if we replace the world's religions with relative moralism, you've just exchanged one usurpable ideology for another. People will still justify their actions by saying "this is right for me".

I dunno, WB...

Getting rid of religion would really solve a lot of problems. Over 3000 people died directly b/z of religion on 9/11 - several of whom were really close friends of mine. Pick a place in the world that hasnt been scarred by religion-based slaughter. US - yes, Sudan? - absolutely. How about the 250k people slaughtered as a result of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia just a few years back? yup. 6m Jews in WWII? 1m Catholics? The Crusades? The Spanish Inquisition?

?How about recently - David Kopp killing off the physicians in buffalo in 02? Paul Hill, same deal in Florida in 98? Women being shot in Morocco by their own fathers, because they were raped!! Perfectly legal in Moroccan law, since it's Shariah law. Sunni v. Shia currently in Pakistan (Muslims blowing up Muslims, no less). 1500 yr old Buddhist statues destroyed in Afghanistan...

So, you say that the non-aggressive (i.e., "good") ones go underreported. Well, I don't consider the Catholic church, or for that matter, the Coptics or G.O.s, religious-based terrorist organizations. Yet talk to most R. Catholics and they'll tell you it's a sin to be gay. The five heads of religious organizations in Jerusalem all made the front page of the New York Times in their unified opposition to a gay-pride parade in Jerusalem.

How about all the nonsense w/ changing my kid's school curricula (actually buying into the Intelligent Design nonsense), simply b/z good-hearted religious say that it has to be due to ID, despite the copious evidence directly proving the evolutionary model. Even my old HS (all-boys, Catholic priests and brothers) pursues homosexuality as a disease.

My point is that when you get down to it, you are actually referring to a really small subset of the total religiously active population who are truly "good" and even those (the Pope?) are, for example, against homosexuality as 'unG_dly'. Give me specific examples of good and I'll show you an agenda they represent.

I completely agree w/ you that I appear binary in this, but where are the shades of gray? Is it "ok" that my deeply religious friends organize the Saints' feasts and say their novenae and give to charity only to harbor hatred for gays (which they do)? Where can one draw the line? It would be a really crooked one, trying to navigate around all the nonsense. Talk about your proverbial n-edged sword!

If all the religious people out there just happily practiced their religions and didnt try to impose their collective will on society, just b/z they "believe" it would be better for all us sinners, I would be cool. But we both know that will NEVER happen. Like you said, man, if they JUSt said "this is right for me" that would be fine...

I have never seen any maniacal chemist running down the street trying to blow me up (and he's the one who can make the explosive!). Or a physicist, or biologist. Recall the WWII aftermath? How many physicists were opposed to nukes? Like, uh.... all of them...

Genocide in East Timor, the Siberian gulags, Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot in Cambodia, the civil wars in Africa... all of these were not provoked by religion and cost millions in lives.

PS, if anyone got the wrong impression, I don't mean religion and science are irreconcilable ideas. I meant one can't explain the other, and are best left separated in usage.