Posted on 12/10/2005 4:31:01 PM PST by broberts
It's funny, I was thinking today how great it would be if there was some sort of way scientists in the future could look back into history to see things as they actually happened such as great catastrophic events, the creation of the asteroid belt, etc.
Right there, I lost interest in anything this organization had to say about God and consciousness. Bianca effing JAGGER, for heaven's sake?
The part is in the whole, and the whole is in the part. Just like a hologram. I don't find it all suprising that everything is connected in somewhay or another. Google "morphogenetic resonance" to get a better idea of this line of thinking. The memories of species (specieal memory) is particularly interesting. G_d does not play dice.
It's always good to hear of folks brought to G_d by science. I'm one of them. Universal constants and the weak nuclear force did it for me.
For those that said the transfer of knowledge is not enough, I pose a few questions...
Say we have a chip that enhances your memory. All it does is stimulates certain neurons to fire that enhance your recollection, giving you a perfect photographic memory. Now say I add a memory extension chip to that, it adds to the neurons that are already storing memories and it combines with them to store memories. Your experiences are now not completely in biological, nor artifical memory, but a combination of both. Say we continue this process as neurons die by replacing each neuron with an artificial one. At what point do you stop becoming you? Your physical form is still there, as are your experiences.
Now your heart fails, so it is replaced with an artificial one. Flesh is still there, now there is a machine pumping your blood. You lose an arm in an accident and it is replaced with a remarkably life-like prosthesis. The process continues until there is very little, yet still some, real flesh left on your body. Are you still you? Are you still alive?
I don't know. I'm not sure that anyone has the answer. The thing that makes this so difficuld, at least for me, is the fact that it's a gradual transformation. I don't know what causes conciousness. If it is the brain, if all of the information in a human brain is gradually transferred into computer memory, in your body, interacting with your biological brain, are you still you?
One of the interesting things is that there is nowhere in our bodies even one single cell that "knows" who "I" am, or really even "Knows" that it is alive.
So we have to be in some way more than just a sum of the parts, and I guess that's about as close as I can come to a definition of a "soul".
As I get older, I constantly find that one of the saddest parts about life is never having answers to some of the greatest mysteries.
"Say we continue this process as neurons die by replacing each neuron with an artificial one."
Your premise is completely loony. You can't replace a neuron, which is living matter, with inanimate matter.
"As I get older, I constantly find that one of the saddest parts about life is never having answers to some of the greatest mysteries."
Because we're looking for the answers in the complex, when, perhaps, we should be looking in the simple. In the simple may lie the solution.
Just a suggestion.
Each neuron is a cell that uses biochemical reactions to receive, process and transmit information.
If you understand, even on a base level, how a neuron works. You can conceptually think that we could build an electronic circuit that mimics a neuron. We're not there yet...note I said yet.
Just the simple fact that the brain works with what are essentially electric charges (energy cannot be created or destroyed [1st law of Thermodynamics] but it can change forms) means that a circuit could be created to mimic it's effects.
If I said to you 50 years ago that computers would be the size of a briefcase and easily accessable to the majority of the population you would have thought I was crazy. Think of everything we've known in the past. First we knew the Earth was flat. I think this gets my point across.
It's a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT. YMMV.
Just seems you can spend your life searching for answers, with an honest belief that if you do it faithfully and true, you will find something.
Then you find out the yolk's on you...
Depressing.
What happens to the energy of an active, healthy, human being upon death?
Returns back to God.
By far the most common is sucrose (I think that's the correct name, it's essentially simple sugar) C6H12O6. Your body absorbs the compound and a chemical reaction happens:
C6H12O6 + 6O2 -> 6CO2 + 6H20 + heat energy
You'll note that this is a reversible chemical reaction, where the reverse is photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 6H20 + light energy -> 6O2 + C6H12O6
That energy is what allows you to function. It is stored in many forms inside your body. When you die, by far the majority of energy in your body is stored in your muscles and fat. Now I'm just speaking of chemical energy at this point. So the chemical energy is still there when you die.
When you die, you lose heat. Heat energy is present in huamns as well. Right now you're approximately 98.6*F. When you (quite litterally) and I hate to be morbid about it, but you asked, go to room temperature, there is a large amount of heat energy released to the surroundings (ground, atmosphere).
And I'm not a biologist so I can't tell you about any other forms, but I'm sure someone else could chime in.
Sir. I am no youngster. I only reach 98.6*F when I have a fever.:)
"What struck me then, as now, is why every scientist in the world wasn't/isn't a devoutly religious person..."
Most of the brilliant scientists are. It is the muddle-headed ones who are not.
The same reason as always. Their sin gets in the way of them seeing the truth.
Thanks. You are on track to answer my question. I was just wondering where all the vibrant energy went in the process of decay.
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