Lopting, I think I figured out where my difficulty in understanding you comes from. See, I see the whole spiritual life-after-death as a sort of doggie-bag. Whatever I don't get to finish now I get to do at some later point. And I will try to keep the generalizations to a minimum but I think (although I am not sure) that most people who do have some sort of religious belief (doesn't mean we all get along, but that's another discussion) have it for a similar reason. There just is too much life out there to experience for life to simply be restricted to one minute, brief point of consciousness, which is what I feel left with your view.

You tell me you are happy being a existentialist when to me, that's like being given a cancer diagnosis (terminal) and getting one visit to Disneyworld. To top it off, you only have like 2 hours to do whatever it is you have to do and that's it, because you aren't coming back, EVER. That is how I metaphor your situation and yet, while I'd be running around trying to suck the marrow out of every sight and sound and feeling and trying to make it last, you seem very 'think I'll take a slow stroll to that brightly colored map and spend a few minutes simply gazing at the colors.' Your lasize faire worldview, in my mind, contrasts with the very existential ideas you purport to have. For someone who doesn't expect to be around, you don't seem all that charged to burn the living candle at both ends? That is what would make sense to me, if one were an existentialist?

Or does your existentialism create the idea that since it's all going to end, why rush around like mad anyway? What calms me down is knowing (believing, for the sake of argument) this isn't all there is to life, that if it rains today, tomorrow will be sunny enough to go to the park. I'll piss and moan and rant and rave about it raining but I won't jump out a window because it is and I missed my only chance. I guess I could see an existentialist's point of view if they were someone like the Buddha whose life had the ring of "Been there, done that, made the t-shirt and a fortune selling it" but anyone else, especially if they died young or before that moment, it would seem wasteful. And it is so easy to waste life, accidentally or on purpose, either through one's own actions or through the actions of others. To allow a single life only, to say that 'this is it, whatever it is,' is hardly bringing good into the world since it doesn't assuage the existential loss that it creates? Isn't good also about not letting the 'bad' win, which is what would happen if one existential life, or the belief in it, was all there was? That's just my view of it.

Xol: Glad you brought up the whole quantum mechanics field. I wondered myself how science would try to deal with the very logical belief that if something has to come from something, what actually is the smallest piece of something in existence? How many times can you divide the slice of 'pi'? In theory, you can always divide a number into a smaller number, but can you always divide a piece of existence into a smaller piece of existence? Is that a technological limit or an existential limit, like a hand trying to scratch the back of itself? And if it takes a quantum mechanic to understand a quantum mechanic, how close does that become to a religious belief (Oh high priest of the Positron, tell us what the quarks are telling us today) since it starts to exclude more and more and more of the population with regards to being educated enough to understand, validate and thus recognize and accept it en masse?

And I do have a slight problem with God being a philosophical question. You say that God is a philosophical question but isn't that evading, since science could never explain or validate anything philosophical? If science sticks God in the 'unprovable' category, doesn't that convienently let it off the hook of at least attempting to try to prove it? Technically, if God is more than a philosophical argument, treating it only as a philosophical argument is hardly going to get it the proof that science requires? So what sort of scientific conditions have to be fulfilled in order for a deity to exist? Furthermore, how do those conditions ensure that it is a deity and not some simply spirit on steroids in comparison to normal human beings? I mean, flight is not humanly possible but being able to fly is a pretty low standard for any celestial being, wouldn't you agree? Even Superman was conceived of as being able to fly and he wasn't thought of as proving God, theoretically speaking.

I don't mind holding the spirit world to a set of standards (the more impossible the standard, the greater the burden of proof it bears) but holding it to no standard is hardly scientific either. I can understand science being skeptical but being outright exclusionory is hardly rational either. As bad as priests and believers being unwilling to subject their claims to scientists (as though their God did not also invent the laws and rules of science to begin with, which would undercut their argument as to why he should be afraid of them) are scientists unwilling to create some sort of God standard most could readily accept. Simply calling religion and/or religious beliefs a philosophical argument is taking the easy way out.

Jarod: I think we stand completely different in life. I understand how you would want to go at it like mad, if you felt it was going to end, soon. Me.. I'd rather just relax and enjoy myself.
Part of it is: After I'm dead, everything I learnt doesn't matter, anymore. So I learn because I enjoy it. Not because it helps me some eons in the future. I'm a very curious person, and my curiosity is my reason for learning. If I were to need information soon, then I'd learn like mad. When I've got a dead-line to make (no pun intended) I work like crazy until it's finished.. Then I relax. In short: I plan for life, and, failing that, I'm dead, so no big deal. That's just my view on the matter; it's what I feel comfortable with.

Of course; I would lóve to believe in an after-life, and a loving, caring deity. I just.. Can't.

Smallest unit? Energy.

And the current theory of origin is that everything in the universe came from nothing. But this doesn't mean "Out of nothing came something like magic", but rather "If we were to assign this thing a value of '1', and it's opposite a value of '-1', we will discover that, when added, the universe = 0."

Now that thing is still yet to be determined. So far, string theory seems to be dominating the field of theoretical sciences, since it fits mathematically...

...But then, so did the plum pudding model of the atom, until new observations were made.

We can speculate that because a vexing scientific question has no answer, or its answer seems strange to us, that it means there is proof of philosophical items of debate (a soul, god, etc.), but it doesn't. It means we haven't progressed far enough to discover the mysteries that lie and wait.



That's the beauty of the scientific field. Rather than having a mass of people competing for followers, scientists are a mass of people competing for grant money. And if they want to be taken seriously, they will not publish results that are not replicable, that swing the pendulum of science into the realm of faith, or start a church. They publish what they discover, and possibly give their opinion about the discovery to the press or other scientists (Scientific papers are devoid of opinion...Writing them is a bitch and a half, but there are no clearer results). Nothing more.



Science is the tool from which philosophy gains its proofs. Yes, God is a philosophical debate, but nothing more. Science itself ignores the questions, but scientists (on their own) love to debate such things.



How would you go about proving something like that?

If there is a God, I imagine trying to prove it now would be like asking cave men to try and find a unified theory of everything. There are limitations to what we can do at any one particular time.



What proof? Show me some proof. How can you prove what is, essentially, immeasurable?

Science doesn't say 'there is no god'. What it does say is 'We have no proof of god'. There only exists an absence of proof from the realm of science, which means that if you wanted to decide the answer for yourself, you can only use philosophical arguments to do such.



We have yet to even prove a soul, if such a thing exists. inb4 21 grams, not proof of a soul, only proof of a loss of mass (and the scales themselves were not as fine tuned as one would hope...). Let's put off trying to prove god for another day, m'kay?



I'm confused as to the point you are trying to make...Sorry...



We need proof. That's what it is; proof.

There is no scientific conspiracy against spiritualists or the religious or dualist philosophies. There is a lack of proof, so therefore, scientists do not waste much time and energy on trying to discover it.

I mean, if you were a scientist, and you discovered something as ground breaking as the spirit world, souls, or a god, would you publish it?

I would. I would in a heartbeat. Other scientists will nay say, and ridicule, until they replicate your experiments themselves. After such a time, and they find that you are right, and that there does indeed exist a dualist universe, not only will your name be perhaps the most immortal and revered throughout human history, but you'll win more money and awards than all the other scientists combined.

But no such proof exists. There is, for the time being, a gaping hole of a lack of evidence.



No, it's taking the appropriate way out. If a god or soul is ever recorded or measured in the same conditions scientists hold everything to, and it meets the same standards, then we can call it a scientific problem. Until then, it's nothing more than philosophy.

Wait...so just the mere existence of a thing called a soul is a philosophy??

So would that mean that the existence of quantum parallel dimensions is a philosophy too?

No, it's currently a theory, as we know the quantum universe exists, and that by applying some logical guesswork, one of the theories is, as you mentioned, the parallel dimension theory.

There has so far been no evidence for a soul, and therefore, we do not know if it exists (remember, science only deal with things that have some measure of proof). If it ever was found to exist, then all unknown guesswork done regarding its nature shall be theories.

Xol: I understand your arguments but why can't science even begin a speculation of what might constitute proof for something it is unsure of in the first place? Isn't science supposed to create standards and theories even for things that may or may not exist? It does so for every other supernatural phenomenon. We have ghost hunters (real and kooks) UFO debunkers, mythological creature deniers and every other Supernatural phenomenon investigated and explored and part of every method used to explore them includes a theory.

It is why the discovery of trillions of planets out there has led some scientists to speculate on alien life forms. It doesn't mean they don't call a fake a fake but the physical evidence of trillions of planets does allow for science to say that if life could appear on Earth, then life appearing on other planets, and the evolution of that life into possibly sentient beings, is not entirely out of the question. Just because science debunks just about every UFO sighting out there doesn't mean it doesn't have an opinion on aliens and how they might have evolved. Granted its only a theory but then everything beings with a question and a theory.

That's basically what I was asking for, a scientific opinion like the one science has for alien life but with regards to other phenomenon. If such-and-such exists, this is how science thinks it is possible to prove it or what science needs in order to consider it proof to begin with. I don't see how that isn't a simple request?

It does. In order for it to be considered scientific, it must adhere to certain standards of observability (be frequently observed. Dreams, until the 1950's, were unprovable through anything besides anecdotes), or replicability (This is the most tried and true method). There are standards for the soul and god, but I do not know what they are right now (I remember reading it in Mary Roach's book "Spook").

They just have not been met yet.



Right, and you may even have scientists actively participating in these hunts, but they do it of their own accord.

Think of science as a computer, and each scientist as the components within (resistors, inductors, capacitors, etc.). No individual scientist = science, but the sum total do.



Yes, but these speculations are statistics. In fact, if we we discovered a universe completely devoid of life, then there would be something seriously wrong with how we view the universe and its natural laws.

But these are statistics. As in, there exists enough space for the conditions of life to more than likely occur elsewhere.

The soul is mere speculation. There have not been enough consistent anecdotes of its existence, no way to measure it...Nothing.

Now scientists, and science itself is open to the idea of its existence, but there is nothing to debate here. Until something is discovered, we can't speculate about nothing. Philosophers can, and if we wanted to carry this debate on in the fields of philosophy, then let me know.

But as a person versed in the sciences, I can tell you that a soul is not scientific, and never will be unless observed in a consistent and quantitative condition, or in some way measured.



Life: Theory states it formed as a result of the combination of nucleic acids in a methane rich atmosphere, in a bubbling cauldron of water.

Experiments conducted, shows replicating the conditions of an early Earth atmosphere do yield the creation of such acids.

The universe is large, and these elements are abundant.

Thus, it is likely life exists elsewhere.

The soul: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so upon death, where does it go?

Converts to potential energy. Dispersed in the earth through decomposition. No proof it exists in an ordered state.

Now, you may be discussing consciousness, and not necessarily the transferal of energy. In that case, science as a whole, as far as I'm aware, has no comment on how it works. Speculate as you will...