Alan McDougall

Nice post , thanks!

My idea, which I admit is far off the scale of normal logic, assumes things can get infinitely smaller or infinitely larger,and what is a fundamental particle, in our particular universe a super-string, would not be able to subdivide into smaller particle strings within the confines of our particular universe. However, given super-string theory and the possibility of an infinity of other as yet unknown dimensions that also might make up the rest of existence, "outside"(For lack of a better word) our universe, the super-string(Fundamental to our universe) might rap/bend/twist/rap,itself into countless other dimensions, resulting in other universes, some bigger some smaller, all maybe very odd and different from each other and so on! Just trying to think out of the box, sometimes physics seems illogical or ridiculous, but take the idea that a proton shot out of the hadron collider at 99.999 the speed of light, to collide with another hadron in the middle,which was shot out from the other end at the some moment, also at 999.999% of the speed of light.. Logic would tell us these two protons should meet or collide at more than 199.999% (Almost twice), the speed of light, when in realty they will meet/collide against all logic at 99.996% the speed of light. Some really crazy ideas have proved useful over the ages.. Of course I assume you are aware of the light speed constant and the above example is given for those that might not have an understanding of it!

Really are you sure, show citation please? http://home.web.cern.ch/about/physics/standard-model Matter particlesAll matter around us is made of elementary particles, the building blocks of matter. These particles occur in two basic types called quarks and leptons. Each group consists of six particles, which are related in pairs, or “generations”. The lightest and most stable particles make up the first generation, whereas the heavier and less stables particle belong to the second and third generations. All stable matter in the universe is made from particles that belong to the first generation; any heavier particles quickly decay to the next most stable level. The six quarks are paired in the three generations – the “up quark” and the “down quark” form the first generation, followed by the “charm quark” and “strange quark”, then the “top quark” and “bottom (or beauty) quark”. Quarks also come in three different “colours” and only mix in such ways as to form colourless objects. The six leptons are similarly arranged in three generations – the “electron” and the “electron neutrino”, the “muon” and the “muon neutrino”, and the “tau” and the “tau neutrino”. The electron, the muon and the tau all have an electric charge and a sizeable mass, whereas the neutrinos are electrically neutral and have very little mass.

Just when we have stopped doing what you say we were doing and began to be more tolerant with each other, you come in with an unwelcome comment of yours as reflected, in the quote above! Are you trying hijack the thread, none of us are big brained parrots or drunk, this forum consists mainly of intellectuals and serious seekers of truth. Why not join us in that mission? If you have nothing to say then just follow the topic until you do!

In reality from the child we were,we have become a completely different physical entity, by the time we become a fully formed adult. Nearly every cell in our body has died and been replaced, except maybe brain neurons. However the atoms that held our being together have all been replaced over time. Even our consciousness is radically different, so are we really the same being, now as an adult, from the being we were as a child?

You make some valid points, there is some disagreement in scientific circles that the fundamental constants are really constant, careful timing of the the speed of light might differ over time and seem to suggest that it might be slowing down. I will return with citation later? see below link? http://opfocus.org/index.php?topic=story&v=8&s=4

A possible model for infinity is that there is an infinitely large void (for lack of a better word) which contains "all of existence", in which an infinity of mega and micro universes stretch or condense infinitely, larger or smaller within all dimensions Thus; each universe is relative to some other universe in size or volume. The absolutely smallest indivisible fundamental particle in our universe, might make up countless separate, infinitesimal tiny finite universes, that become the fundamental particles or building blocks of still larger and larger universes, within the mega-void that makes up all of existence.. There could be an infinite number of these relatively infinitesimally tiny universes, getting ever and ever smaller, or the reverse getting ever larger and larger infinitely. However, each universe could be a complete universe in its own right equivalent to ours except relatively smaller or larger. I see the size of an object, including one as large as the universe being relative to what you can compare it to, thus at the moment of the big bang singularity, the singularity was not only the smallest object, but also the largest in our yet to be born universe. A mouse is huge relative to an ant, but tiny relative to a mountain Our universe could be just one tiny quantum fundamental particle or building block of a much larger universe One would never to the point of finding some a final mega or micro universe because there would always a next larger or the next level smaller universe, into infinity, this I call "Existence". Breaking this theory into its simplest expression would be, Everything in existence is just a fundamental particle Alan

In what way do we differ as adults, from the time we were a small children?

You make a valid point, one should take great joy at the gift of life and the love we experience in the form of our friends and family especially our children. When I look into the eyes of an innocent child, I don't just see a machine perfected by eons of evolution, but the light of a living soul looking back at me I wrote this little essay on how unlikely it was for us to come into existence and it concurs with your statement of how unlikely it was for any of us to come into existence re you a fluke" Well lets us consider that, of the possible almost infinite number of worlds in this unimaginably vast universe and how you were lucky enough to be born on planet earth that just might be the only world that can harbor life within all its vastness. Of the seven billion people on earth, you are the offspring of only two people, namely your mom and dad. Of your mom's some twenty thousand eggs you arose from just one of them. Out of your dads half billion or so sperm cells, only one reached that one specific egg to create the absolutely unique human being that you are. No one else has or will ever have your exact DNA code. There has never been someone exactly like you in all creation going back fifteen or so billion years namely; the estimated age of the universe. In all eternities going into the infinite future there will never be another exactly like you. Lastly you were fortunate enough to come into existence in a universe beautifully balanced to harbor human and other life and live as a totally unique sentient being. You are right, I did not think of how our words,actions and thoughts never die, even though if they are forgotten or not recorded in the books of human history, we all make a significant impact on the reality we exist in, even in the short space of time we have on planet earth.

Some never see the light or have a bite at what they seek.

You no longer exist in the true sense of the world, most people are forgotten by the time their great grandchildren are born. Of course there are the exception of people who have had a great influence on human history, it is true that these extraordinary people might be remembered in one form or the other long after their demise, but even they, given the vastness of time, will finally fade out of human consciousness and vanish from history. Homo-sapient, only evolved from more primitive forms of primitive man, into modern man, about 150,000 years ago,and at most we have had pockets of civilized humans, for less than 15,000 years. This is like a quantum flash in the unimaginable vastness of the time scale of our planet coming into existence some 4.5 billion years ago. Thus my statement that we blink out and cease to exist still holds in the long term, if no sort of afterlife awaited us after death. We are then just little islands of temporary negative entropy, until total entropy takes hold again and our physical bodies get old, decay and die. It seems cruel to me when one compares the ridiculously short human life span, to that of vast age of the universe. Nature, if you like, has only allowed us to open our eyes, become aware for the briefest moment, and then perish before we could impact anything in cosmic meaningful way. We are children of the universe yet it forbids us to alter it or interfere with its evolution. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, thus the quantum particles of our physical bodies on death are dissipated into the cosmos, it could be possible that some unimaginably powerful supercomputer could reassemble these particles in some far off future, maybe we already exist as some sort of complex computer code. The DNA is very similar to an advanced computer code?

You are wrong those who have a strong belief in an afterlife fear death the least, this can easily be noticed in those who have had a near death experience, most of them claim the event was wonderful and beautiful and they had a profound desire to remain in the afterlife of their perception. Both my late parents had a deep love for God who the believed was benevolent, their deaths were peaceful without fear right up to their last breath . My moms sister who used to say religion and god were just a load of crap, died a slow and painful death, full of fear and self- loathing.What I meant by not liking the idea of death, is the process of death. The atheists in my family that have passed on have always had a much more traumatic process of dying than those who had some believe in a loving higher power. Even if they were wrong and no god or afterlife awaited them after death, why burst the bubble of hope and convince them that the moment you die, you blink out of existence?

Ahh ! So you are really human and get very hot under the collar, especially when when I don't give answers to questions that are obviously impossible to prove. Your poetic license is appalling and insults reveal how great your ego is and how easily it can do offended. Still you remain stubborn and refuse to take advice to be polite and continue to swear in the forum , I wonder if forum rules permit this unpleasant method of communication between members. Your statre4ment that I am puritanical is total garbage t I have lived a life full of fun, unbound by any religious dogma or scientific dogma in fact! Before referring to someone as asinine, go and take a good look in the mirror, in one of your posts to me when I said "I was curious why an obvious atheist like you haunts a religious forum and if you had an agenda', your reply was some in the line of freeing deluded theists from ignorance. Thus you have elevated and exalted yourself as a source of truth and made it your purpose, to free the peasants from superstition. We humans have been programmed by evolution to perceive what we need to perceive in order to survive in the environment of planet earth. A chameleon, likewise perceives what it needs to perceive and its brain, via its eye, only responds to movement.This god who you state I have not given even one iota of proof for his existence, is beyond my ability of perception, Why do you insist on some sort of scientific proof for an entity that cannot be scientifically proved. Maybe you have a hidden desire from someone to come up with an absolute truth that a personal god indeed exists and that he loves and cares for you deeply! You dismiss that consciousness exists in the confines of your brain, yet we know scientifically that just by observing a quantum particle, we alter its state and the state of other particles to which is connected. Much of science makes no logical science yet we accept it as fact, maybe the god who makes no sense to you, exists despite your logic that says he does not. Thus consciousness is relevant to this thread, in that we communicate with God using our consciousness and the personal god is a telepathic conscious entity that listens Sir James Jeans once quoted that ' "The more I look at the universe the more it looks like a great thought than a great machine". To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour (William Blake) I mentioned entropy here, because it is relevant to both the existence of a personal God, thus;if god exists, how does he avoid the steady loss of energy dissipation, that leads to the eventual total; chaos or maximum entropy of the universe and all that it contains. Thus if such an entity exists, and is eternal, it must sustain itself by some other means, that might be outside our concept of time, energy or space. The post in which brought up entropy was also a response to another member, who said that he/she believed that matter, time and energy have existed forever, and I said that was not possible because the flow of entropy would have dissipated all energy into the heat sink of the expanding void long ago. Our universe is unimaginably old, relative to us and our human civilization, thus it is within the bounds of possibility that out there in the great vast somewhere, exists a civilization of sentient being billions of years in advance of our and could easily pass themselves off as god to us.

Which question, question from whom??, as for me I will never answer a question that that starts with a curse or swear, pose it again in a polite manner and we might take it seriously!

I cant avoid thinking that humanity is something like a virus to our planet, as a virus is to its biological host. We are cutting off the hand that feeds and sustains us in an almost exponential rate.

Swearing by the use of abbreviation's is still swearing in my book!

There are also other highly studious, educated and reasoning, people, that have come up with a different conclusion to yours, so you might be right and they might be right, but neither of you know for certainty if there is an afterlife, you have to die to find out the truth of the matter. I like the idea of heaven, but don't want to die to get there!

Well if you are right in that time and matter existed for eternity, how do we get over the entropy barrier etc in an eternal reality?

You state above that "Consciousness is almost certainly chemo-electric and where it is located, that means you dont really know. What that led you to that conclusion?. While consciousness is a topic of another thread, I mentioned consciousness here, because, it just might be non-physical, like God is supposed to be."God is a Spirit" God might be pure "thought"

Thanks Moontanman, and happy Christmas to all the other members of the forums

Thus you , unlike most people have never had a person that you looked up to with some awe, never exalted another human, such as Albert Einstein, which I assume you might have thought as one of the greatest or even greatest theoretic physicists of all time. My heroes have changed a lot since I was a boy.

Well I perceive you in the same way you perceive me. I think a person should examine himself before assuming that anyone who differs from his position on any topic is wrong. Try to admit that you could be fallible at least some of the time. I know nothing about your thinking powers, other than what I read in your posts. I also find it very curious that an obvious atheist haunts a religious forum and wonder what your true agenda might be here. I have no knowledge of your cogitative abilities, but I am really interested if you could reference some of the sources or the investigation you have made on your own, that led to your rejection of the possibility of an afterlife of some sort or the other. Consciousness is not a physical thing and neither is mathematics, yet the exist as a reality of our universe.

How can you make such a hurtful and judgmental comment to a person who you know nothing about, he just might be much more informed than you are in subjects of his expertise. It will help if you tried to be a bit more friendly! http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2bDetailsoforigin.shtml

Really don't agree with you, we humans make gods out of our heroes, any suggestion that differs in the least from yours is always faulty? Now a real zealot can be found in the person of Richard Dawkins, his books are everywhere, 'The god delusional", The selfish gene" Go onto YouTube and you find his videos everywhere. What puzzles me about this very intelligent man, is his agenda, does he want to remove hope from the otherwise hopeless, does he want society to bend to his concept of godlessness? Is he an evangelist of some sort of new religion called "New Atheism" ?? Just like all the other self-righteous preachers with their own particular perception of truth and reality, I will never follow him or his teachings and reserve the right to make up my own mind, without his help or input into my life. Enjoy Christmas with your family God Bless Alan

Thus; you are the only rational, critical and reasoning person in the forum, who has explored this idea of life beyond death, to its logical conclusion and as a direct result dismissed it, how do you know for sure pink unicorns don't cause erections in leprechauns? Did you also explore this possibility? Don't beat about the bush you rejected the idea of heaven outright without , without a thorough investigation into the possibility, your post clearly indicated that to me.