Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

If you look at that statement, (which is a fact)
it brings me to the conclusion that "we" have always been here since the begining of time, only in different form.


Everything you're made of has existed before you.
The Trillions of atoms that you consist of were simply put into a certain, complex order and you are the result.

Think of it like a car.

You start with scrap metal.
That scrap metal is turned into a car.
The car eventually breaks down and once again returns to being scrap metal.

Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

That's not the same as "Your never born, you never die." Unless you're going to redefine what it means to be born, or to die.

Yea, well everything changes form - in the end it just leads to max entropy.

But as kilopi pointed out you need to redefine what it meas to be alive.

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www.Farkin.net - Australian Mountain Biking :)

a fact? how sure are you of that cryptospy? maybe its only a fact within our own time.

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"How much does electricity weigh?"

Try combining matter with anti-matter, then tell me if it can be created or destroyed


You can be converted to free floating heat in space quite easily. That energy no longer has any element of a pattern recognizable as "you". Certainly the energy that made you up is still there, but you aren't the energy, you're the pattern of matter formed from that energy.

Sorry, lad, but you can die quite easily. Stay away from tall buildings.

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Contrary to the opinion of the press, the public, and their mothers, most scientists are dull and uninteresting people.
- James Watson

You sound like a denizen from the Vorlon Empire!

Energy is released from the reaction, however.


Adam

Okay this may seem off topic at first but bare with me...

There's a really cool series of comic books called Watchmen by Allan Moore. I highly recomend the graphic novel if you haven't read it yet. It's even studied by some university writing corses, a true comic book classic.

At any rate there is a character in this comic called Doctor Manhatan. He's a scientist who basically becomes a walking a-bomb, or at least that's the short description the comic gives.

The most interesting aspect of this character, for me at least is that he knows every moment of his life past present and future. This is beacuse after his "accident" he is in control of all the atoms in his body. Since all of those atoms have always existed in one form or another at every point in time, he has been at evey moment in history in which those atoms, have existed. do exsist, or will exsist. He can only see the events in his life, because his conciousness is controling the atoms, and before he was born that conciousness didn't exsist. Or at least that's the way I saw it, it was quite a revelation the first time I read it, reading this post reminded me of it.

~Atticis05

The candle may still be there, but the flame is out.

If you have ever been with anyone when they die, believe me, there's a difference between the shell and the contents.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Yes, but the matter's no longer there.

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Contrary to the opinion of the press, the public, and their mothers, most scientists are dull and uninteresting people.
- James Watson

(blurblewhizzletweep)Yes.(tweepwhizzleburble)

The next question is existence.

Is "existence" real or just perceived by us?

In my opinion, we are nothing more than biological computers.
There is no such thing as pain, sadness, love, hate etc.....
we're just programs.
A computer can also be programmed to express these feelings, though do you for one second think it truly does? Of course not.
Thats why people with brain damage can lack emotions.
Their brains are the same thing as damaged motherboards

Again, only if you redefine what we mean by pain. For instance, I'm in a lot of pain right now--and you're saying you think that there is no such thing?

I don't think there is such a thing as word games. You're just wrong.

Even if we were just "meat computers," we'd still die, and feel pain. No need to go to an extreme.

I think you're wrong. A computer can indeed act much like the brain does but there's no reason whatsoever that a computer program would become self aware, even if it could act in a way that appears sentient. As far as science is concerned, there's no reason that the processing going on in the brain would create consciousness. I'm not saying that Science can't explain what the brain does, it CAN. I'm sure we could even explain human behavior. (Indeed, we can.) What I'm saying is that there's no logical reason for what we call "the picture in the brain". There's something going on that we haven't figured out yet and I'm not entirely sure that it's falsifiable. Since just about any test you could think of to explore consciousness is largely subjective it doesn't really fit most of the criteria we would want for an experiment. If we really were just automatons, biological computers, I don't think we would be sentient. We would quite possibly act exactly like we do, but I can't see any good reason for us to be self-aware. There's something fishy going on someplace in our heads... :-?

You're in pain right now because thats what your brain is telling you.
If you were to have a frontal lobotomy tommorow, I could punch you in square the face and you wouldn't even notice. Explain that.

When a car is produced, is it claimed to be born? No.
When the car later ****s the bed, does that imply death? No.
Why are we different?
We are merely "pieces" that eventual and temporarily form into a complex structure, which eventually breaks down with wear and tear and once again becomes billions of independent pieces.

Right, that's what we mean by "pain." You can look it up in a dictionary.

That means there is pain.

PS: As I said before, that does not mean that we are not meat computers, as you seem to assert. Just that there is such a thing as pain. Almost everybody knows what we mean by pain.
That's the big question. The answer is unknown--it is not necessarily "we are not different," although it could be.

But what I'm saying is that pain is only a perception.
Certain types of brain damage can inhibit people from feeling pain.
You could beat them with hammers until the cows came home.
Is that pain?

On the other side of the scale....

Other types of brain deficiencies can cause pain when in fact nothing is wrong with the person. Is that pain?

When you throw a rock and it hits the ground, is that pain?

You only experience pain because that is what your brain processes.
without the brain,(or, the certain parts of it that convey pain) there is no such thing.

We're not different. We're part of everything and everything is a part of us.
Your brain is tricking you into thinking your special just because you have the ability to think.

Nothing you're made out of is special. Theres no "secret sauce" of human beings. We're just old stuff arranged in a new way.

OK, but love and hate are bound up with perception too. But that doesn't mean there is no pain, nor love, nor hate.
Yes, I understand that's your claim. If you can prove it, you'll have a Nobel prize. I imagine it will take the creation of artificial humans, and it may take dozens if not hundreds of years before the Nobel committee is satisfied, though.

Is consciousness just a physical process? Is it a process we don't understand yet? As scientists, we don't know the answers to those questions, yet.