Posted on 02/18/2002 4:59:53 AM PST by cracker
My brain hurts!
But seriously I was trying to answer more generically. I think you're right. A bound electron would end up in a finite energy state - it's minimum or zero point energy state. Off the top of my head, I don't remember exactly how to treat an unbound electron, but the uncertainty would put a non-zero minimum limit on its energy.
I'll telepathically summon the master.
scientific method will never be able to prove the past. It can't even prove whether a person has a soul or not. It will never ever prove a big bang though millions will and do swear that it does.
The same argument is true for things more mundane than evolution. Physics: did the sun rise yesterday? Will it rise tomorrow? History, literature, art, chemistry... how can we PROVE that things existed in the past, or that the laws of the universe are constant? Well, really we can't. We can never know that the universe wasn't just created by God yesterday, with all the evidence and memories merely here to fool us into thinking it is older.
But I doubt you would accept that as a reason to stop teaching history in schools. No one alive today was AT Valley Forge, but should we stop teaching about George Washington and the Constitution? You did not see Shakespeare write his plays, or Leonardo paint his art, or Columbus sail to America, or Pastuer culture his microbes. No one alive today can personally vouch for the existence of Jesus - none of us was actually in Judea 2000 years ago, but should we reject Christianity on that basis? Of course not. We accept these aspects of our historical record based on the evidence existing today for their occurrence.
Likewise, we accept the evidence of the natural world for events far older. We know Vesuvius exploded because we see the ruins, and the Romans made records, and also because the geologic evidence supports it. And we are finding out about the flooding of the Black Sea basin 6000 years ago on the basis of geologic evidence. These observations are no different from conjecture about the authorship of Romeo and Juliet, except that the pen used was not set by humans, but by the natural processes of the world. And so the evidence for evolution: observation of the natural world and experimentation. But you would not discard all of our history from the classroom for such a silly conjecture (the idea that God is a vicious jokester who delights in deceiving humans), so why would you discard evolution for the same reason?
I have my own ideas about what "spirit" means, which is a different subject and context to the thread. Somebody mentioned being created in the image of God, and somebody else commented about God having a physical body.
Since I am in no way an ancient Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek scholar, nor am I an expert in the culture and times of the writings of the Bible, I cannot say what the writers might have meant by the word "spirit", other than guess with my western perspective. Anyone can look for themselves if they're so interested.
Which only become "real" when "measured".
That, of course, segues into the real reason an electron cannot be at rest: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If an electron were at rest, it would be at a well-defined location with a well-defined momentum.
"Spirit" isn't matter. It isn't energy. So say those who claim to know such things. In other words, it isn't anything we know. Nor is it anything the "experts" know. I suspect therefore that it's nothing at all. [Always subject to the presentation of varifiable evidence, of course.]
Denise Duck says, "Hello, big boy"
Does it look like Panderichthys?
Clever turnabout of my post, which said ths same thing about "Spirit." However, although it's a nice try, it doesn't quite do what you hoped it would do. Consciousness, which is largely an unexplored and poorly understood phenomenon, is nevertheless quite different from spirit. Consciousness has an objectively verifiable existence (as spirit does not). We know, and can easily demonstrate, that consciousness has an electrical component. It appears to be electro-chemical in nature, and the objective evidence of its existence (all those graphic printouts) appear to cease when the host organism dies. So the evidence suggests that consciousness exists within, is a component of, and requires a living organism. None of this evidence exists for "spirit." It is sometimes suggested that consciousness has a "spiritual" component too, but the objectively verifiable evidence for that, as with spirit in general, does not exist.
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