do ghosts-spirits really exist?

[anaklio]

@S. Earl Martin: Sorry for your pain. Glad you are here to share with us today as that's all any of us really have ... today.

I've been able to use death in a positive way. I often think of how fictional vampires are bored with life. That's because our lives have no meaning without death.

van Laack (2009) just published an interesting new report.
[Near death experiences do not have a purely physiologic explanation]
Unfortunately, it's in German and was difficult to get through.
But the fascinating title reveals many topics for conversation.

[S. Earl Martin]

Thank you for your concern. I actually have learned to live with the pain. Staying busy and still doing what I can do is a good distraction. Plus if it gets to bad I have pain medication, but it doesn't help the emotional pain though. LOL!
I was on another chat room and I was debating the existence of God with several Atheists. Their belief was in science and they purported that when we die that our life just disappears and dissolves into nothingness. Their evidence was that the body dissolves into dust and disappears so does everything else. I proposed to them this. To sustain life takes a lot of energy. When something dies it is obvious that the energy is no longer there. So were does that energy go? It has to go somewere, it cannot just disappear. Energy is never lost just changed. This put them in a quandary. They debated it amongst themselves and changed their belief to the energy is recycled. This is reincarnation. When I pointed this out they got real defensive. That it still didn't prove the existence of God. Many years ago Delpha and I were having a meeting with a business colleague.  He realized we were Christians. We didn't beat people over the head with our faith, but we didn't hide it either. He said that his mother died and she didn't believe in God. Delpha said without hesitation"well she does now". I can still feel her presence. I can sometimes hear her voice. Not like I am hearing voices etc. More like remembering things she said. I take great comfort in knowing that I will be in Heaven with the ones I love and that this nightmare that we call life will be over. No more pain, no more worry, perfect peace. I have had people tell me they think Heaven will be boring. That Hell will be more exciting. No Heaven will be beyond our imagination. Just to have access to the Acasic records will take forever to explore. We can take part in the creation of new universes or create life. Ask anything in my name and it will be given to you. Oh no I am not afraid of death. On the contray. The greatest adventure awaits. I am not going to do anything to speed up the process, but I won't regret it either. I don't want people to be sad for me. I understand that is part of the human nature to have compasion. I feel for other people who are suffering too. It is like I have been waiting in line to get to Heaven and I am almost to the head of the line. That is a good thing. Peace.

[liza123]

Thank you for your post, S Earl Martin. that is the same question which I asked others. the reaction was basically the same as you received it. sometimes, i go deeper. like, is it just energy that is making us leave/die? what determines the timing of the energy to leave/die? i keep asking questions and somehow or rather, people do get stuck here and there. some time ago, an article was publish in the Scientist magazine called Man, Science and God. the debate was about the existence of the universe involving the opinions and sayings of Stephen Hawkings, Einstein, etc. Guess what...the conclusion was Einstein and even Hawkings(if i am not mistaken) did not deny the existence of God and admitted to the existence of a power beyond (since there were a number of unsolved mysteries and explanations!)...which they could not explain.

Then, there is a book by Readers Digest called "Unexplained". In it,  a lot of the mysteries of the world including religious mysteries were mentioned. Scientist said this and that ...conclusion :they could not explain the religious mysterious. Hence, it became "UNEXPLAINED".

Well, I do feel compassion for your suffering and pain. I am human after all. But, I do not feel sympathy. You have led an interesting life, a rich life in some ways. You are lucky in some ways. There are blessings for you to count!
Keep on posting and sharing

[S. Earl Martin]

Yes Stephen Hawkings has stated that he believes in intelligent design. That all things must have been created by some form of intelligence. Einstein was a firm believer in God and that is why he tried so hard to find the unified energy theory. Because he wanted to prove that God is in control and that there is an order to the universe. Even Darwin believed in God. That is why he waited so long before he proposed the "theory" of evolution. I believe evolution does exist and is responsible for changes in life over time. If it didn't we couldn't have high breed plants and animals etc. However it is not capable of creating life. Nor is it responsible for all of the effects in nature attributed to it. One of the problems with mankinds knowledge is that we learn something and believe eureka now we know. Then we learn something else that changes what we know and do we say "you know we might have been wrong?" No we still believe we know everything. As long as imperfection exists we will know very little in deed. This is one of the main goals of the D-Text. To give people that are using it a standard of measurement. So they can quantify change as it is taking place and to keep track of what they know, what they think they know, what they don't know and what they can't know. Unfortunately I feel that my work will be like Bullion algebra. This was a form of math proposed back in the 40's or 50's I think. It simplified math and Bullion I am not sure of the spelling of the name, but he designed this thinking it would revolutionize math by simplifying it. No one noticed his work and he died with his dream unfulfilled. Later the age of computers arrives and they needed a math that would be adaptable to bioinary numbers. Bullion algebra to the rescue. I know the potential of the work we did. I have spoken with a number of people with masters degrees that were really impressed by it, but once again I am at a dead end as to how or were to go from here. Oh well another day and I need to get busy with the day to day. Later

[voodoo scientist]

do flying pink elephants really exist.

of course, we cannot actually say they do or do not we can only interpret out experience. the nature of flying pink elephants and the experience of the phenomena is an entirely subjective one and science is inherently sceptic of the very words flying pink elephant.

but these experiences are very common and many people do beleive flying pink elephants are out there in the skies.

does anybody have such experiences they can share or any strong opinions about the subject?

[liza123]

Hi, S Earl Martin. We have sort of deviated from the title of the thread. There is another thread called "Who believes in God?"(I started that thread). Let me copy and paste your post there(hope that you do not mind!).  We can continue there....

PS-Sorry, SWM for all our deviations....

[anaklio]

>Their belief was in science and they purported that when we die that our life just disappears and dissolves into nothingness.

An atheistic opinion is flawed. That's the perfect example. This thought (that we just disappear) is no less of a opinion than re-incarnation etc. If you are wise and  you have no idea what's going to happen, you should say "we'll know when we get there".

[voodoo scientist]

voodoo science sighted: acquiring target.

Your statement is what's flawed. There is nothing indicating a physical basis for anything to "pass on" or "reincarnate" after we die, and negatives can't be disproven. Indeed, the last decade of neuroscientific research points to the perception of cognition being quite grounded in neurological processes, processes which cease when we die.

If you are wise and you have no idea what's going to happen, you'll act on the information you have as best as you can.

[anaklio]

What's the rush to decide? Is important that you know what will happen when you die? Why not focus on living instead of dying?

[voodoo scientist]

There's no rush to decide, only a rush to act. The information all points one way, no information points the other way, but it's too early to make a final conclusion. That's still plenty of information to act according to the evidence we do have, because there is no demonstrable risk or disadvantages to doing so.

The decision itself is ultimately pointless if it simply proves the evidence right anyway, which is probably why it feels like a meaningless subject to you. However, there is still reason to pursue a final conclusion, because if it does unexpectedly contradict the evidence we have now, all the conclusions derived from that evidence also come into question. Information should never be discarded until you have it.

[S. Earl Martin]

On the contrary. A lot of evidence points that life requires a great deal of energy to operate. This energy is no longer evident when something dies. We know by the laws of thermodynamics that energy is never lost, but has to be either changed or relocated. It cannot just cease to exist. That would contradict the very laws of nature. Now setting aside the debate of if Heaven / God etc. exists and returning to the subject at hand. Might this energy be what people experience as ghosts or spirits? Somehow this energy transmutes or changes into these phenomena?

[anaklio]

This brings up a simple solution to the idea of re-incarnation. It does scientifically exist if you take a very broad approach. You die, you break down into small particles, and these small particles make new organisms.

[S. Earl Martin]

Actually we are approaching research I have been involved in for sometime. You see my belief that I have been working to prove is that matter doesn't exist in the sense that it is solid. Everything we see or experience to a degree is made up of oscillating bits of energy. Not only electricity, but various forms of energy. An EKG measures one kind of energy, electrical impulses. When something dies or if a leaf is removed from a plant those impulses stop immediately. If an image is taken using Karlian photography, the energy fads more gradually. This image is not directly related to heat as some people propose. So it is a different form of energy. I have been at places were people and animals died and the rate that the heat left their body was pretty fast. Karlian ( I hope I am spelling that right) photographic images can fade very quickly sometimes and other times can take a long time. This has been proven to not be related to heat transfer. It is possible that there are other kinds of energy involved in the life process that have not been measured and studied as of yet. If all these could be measured and documented it in theory might be possible to create or recreate life. Dr. Frankenstein anyone. LOL!

[anaklio]

Scientists have long studied the initial conditions which gave birth to life on this planet several billion years ago. They've come no where close to replicating that amazing phenomena, but it's seems like a possibility. Such a discovery or the contact with alien life are the few things that will shock me, but I hope to see them in my lifetime.

[voodoo scientist]

This brings up a simple solution to the idea of re-incarnation. It does scientifically exist if you take a very broad approach. You die, you break down into small particles, and these small particles make new organisms.

Oh, what a lateral thinker you are. Instead of stopping where it gets uncomfortable, you could take your logic to the real logical conclusion and conclude that reincarnation does not and can never apply to humans, because it implies we're a single coherent entity (that there's a "you" to reincarnate), and not simply a construct of matter and energy that decays and rebuilds. We're "reincarnating" constantly because we're losing and reconstructing ourselves 24/7.

Death is not all that significant an event, it simply occurs when one or more vital points of failure in the body reaches its damage threshold and ceases to function. There is no difference from that and a broken car engine other than the construct's complexity.

[S. Earl Martin]

Voodoo Scientist: You avoided my point. Were does the life energy go? It has to go somewere. Further I believe you are referring to there not being a "You" as the theory of cosmic one ness. That everything is made of the same stuff and just transferred from thing to thing. There is some truth to that, but it doesn't explain why things don't just spontaneously come to life as easily as they die. Things do come to life, but it takes life to make life. When something dies were does that life energy go? Do you believe that when you or anything else dies it just stops? That everything that was the energy powering it just disappears?  That contradicts the laws of physics.

[voodoo scientist]

Voodoo Scientist: You avoided my point. Were does the life energy go? It has to go somewere. Further I believe you are referring to there not being a "You" as the theory of cosmic one ness. That everything is made of the same stuff and just transferred from thing to thing. There is some truth to that, but it doesn't explain why things don't just spontaneously come to life as easily as they die. Things do come to life, but it takes life to make life. When something dies were does that life energy go? Do you believe that when you or anything else dies it just stops? That everything that was the energy powering it just disappears?  That contradicts the laws of physics.

There is no such thing as "life energy." It doesn't just "stop," because it never "started." At the end of the day, it's atoms and energy moving around. That's it, that's all there is to it. When the giant multi-discipline reaction we call life "ends," nothing changes, the energy and atoms just shift around and do something else.

We perceive things in terms of life and death because those apply to the context of human existence. The concepts thus only make sense in terms of intra species interaction. When you try to extrapolate those terms into world and find scientific meaning in life and death, you end up with nonsense. That's also why we call broken devices "dead" in slang (virtually all languages do this): It's an easy connection to make, because the difference between a dead human and a dead engine is arbitrary and semantical at best, essentially coming down to a difference in complexity only.

Additionally, it doesn't "take life to make life." This is a misunderstanding of the rules of causality called the Watchmaker's Argument (look it up, it's fun and very common). It takes amino acids and the right environment to make life. We'll do it within the next century.

[S. Earl Martin]

Again you are ignoring scientific evidence that I have already mentioned that proves life energy does exist. When an engine stops the energy that was powering it stops. Even though the flow of energy stops moving the engine the energy still exists. Be it electricity or fuel etc. So following your example in order for a human engine to be powered it must take some kind of energy. In fact it takes several different kinds. I also am familiar with the watch makers argument. I believe if my memory serves me. That it takes a conscious mind to create a complex device. That was not my point. It takes a sperm and an egg of some kind to continue life. These have to be alive in order to replicate. A dead cell even though it contains all the same physical and chemical components can not reproduce. There for it takes life to make life. Requiring energy transfer of some kind. On one hand you say that there is no such thing as life energy. Then you state that "it is atoms and energy moving around". This is a contradiction.

[voodoo scientist]

Again you are ignoring scientific evidence that I have already mentioned that proves life energy does exist. When an engine stops the energy that was powering it stops. Even though the flow of energy stops moving the engine the energy still exists. Be it electricity or fuel etc. So following your example in order for a human engine to be powered it must take some kind of energy. In fact it takes several different kinds. I also am familiar with the watch makers argument. I believe if my memory serves me. That it takes a conscious mind to create a complex device. That was not my point. It takes a sperm and an egg of some kind to continue life. These have to be alive in order to replicate. A dead cell even though it contains all the same physical and chemical components can not reproduce. There for it takes life to make life. Requiring energy transfer of some kind. On one hand you say that there is no such thing as life energy. Then you state that "it is atoms and energy moving around". This is a contradiction.

Life originated from amino acids, yet amino acids are not "alive."

[S. Earl Martin]

Life theoretically originated from amino acids. This has no more been proved than your assertion that the existence of God hasn't been proved. It also doesn't explain the role of Mitochondrial DNA and it's origin.

[voodoo scientist]

Life theoretically originated from amino acids. This has no more been proved than your assertion that the existence of God hasn't been proved. It also doesn't explain the role of Mitochondrial DNA and it's origin.

Your basic methodology is flawed.

[S. Earl Martin]

No yours is!

[voodoo scientist]

No yours is!

Well, okay, let's take it for a spin.

I advocate that life originated from amino acids, one of the building blocks of life. You advocate that life originated from life energy, an undefined and heretoforth undetected source of energy that supposedly powers living organisms. Obviously, based on your explanation, I don't have much reason to believe in your side, so there must be something you're not telling me, something you're using to substantiate the belief in this "life energy" in the face of a challenge to it.

If there was truly nothing else than what you've told me supporting the existence of a "life energy," the only possible conclusion is that you're an idiot for believing in that, and you don't seem like an idiot - thus my insistence you provide evidence and reasoning. Is it a philosophical definition of energy? I.e., it's not energy in the same sense that the sun has energy, but energy in the sense that amino acids could be part of this "life energy", or what? I don't get it.

[S. Earl Martin]

Actually it comes back to your reference to the Watch makers argument. I didn't say life came from or originated from life energy. I said that life energy exists and has been proved to exist by several scientific tests. As far as my personnel belief in the origin of life I see several possibilities. Regardless of how life first came into existence I believe a higher power was responsible. This power could be called God. The exact process used by this entity is unknown and can only be theorized on. You see no one alive today actually witnessed the beginning of life and there is no actual detailed record available. So we can only speculate or theorize on how life began. Whatever process we believe is responsible requires faith in the process. A belief in the unknown as it were. Man has a number of theories as to how life works or originated. This is a comfort mechanism as a response to the unknown. When humans believe they think they know how things work they feel empowered and in control. Safer and more intelligent. This is why humans try so hard to defend their beliefs. Weather it is religious, political, or scientific beliefs. But they are still beliefs. We as a people have so little we can actually know for a number of reasons. Life is so complex that much of what we claim to "know". We actually just think we know. You see even if you were correct that life origanted from amino acids and just spontaneously came into being it could never be proved. Even if it could be replicated in the lab it would not prove that is how life originated. It would indicate a possibility, but would not be proof. It would still be a belief based on faith in a theory.

[voodoo scientist]

Actually it comes back to your reference to the Watch makers argument. I didn't say life came from or originated from life energy. I said that life energy exists and has been proved to exist by several scientific tests. As far as my personnel belief in the origin of life I see several possibilities. Regardless of how life first came into existence I believe a higher power was responsible. This power could be called God. The exact process used by this entity is unknown and can only be theorized on. You see no one alive today actually witnessed the beginning of life and there is no actual detailed record available. So we can only speculate or theorize on how life began. Whatever process we believe is responsible requires faith in the process. A belief in the unknown as it were. Man has a number of theories as to how life works or originated. This is a comfort mechanism as a response to the unknown. When humans believe they think they know how things work they feel empowered and in control. Safer and more intelligent. This is why humans try so hard to defend their beliefs. Weather it is religious, political, or scientific beliefs. But they are still beliefs. We as a people have so little we can actually know for a number of reasons. Life is so complex that much of what we claim to "know". We actually just think we know. You see even if you were correct that life origanted from amino acids and just spontaneously came into being it could never be proved. Even if it could be replicated in the lab it would not prove that is how life originated. It would indicate a possibility, but would not be proof. It would still be a belief based on faith in a theory.

Some beliefs statistically lead to more instances of good results than other beliefs. That is why we have "reasoning" underlying most, but not all beliefs: to predict how predictable the conclusions we have are. So, very well, you no longer contest my assertion that life originated from amino acids, or at least find it irrelevant to the argument. We will drop the point and agree to disagree. You maintain that "life energy" exists, and cite unnamed scientific studies. If you will provide me with authors or titles to any of them, I can acquire the relevant papers through my own subscriptions.

[S. Earl Martin]

EKG's measure electrical impulses in the body. This is no mystery. Karlian photography "I am not sure I am spelling that correct" measure a different kind of energy. You do know what an EKG is? I said this before in my previous posts. So they are not un named.

[voodoo scientist]

Kirlian photography does not scientifically measure anything. An EKG measures the electrical impulses in the heart, not the body. The common denominator for EKG and Kirlian photography is electricity - so electricity is life energy?

[S. Earl Martin]

No it is not. if life energy was simply electricity as I have stated before it could be measured and replicated in the same way. Here let me put it in the little sub headings so you can understand it.
1: Life requires certain things in order to function.
2: DNA is a blueprint to guide the life process to put it in simple terms.
3:Chemical energy works to trigger certain processes in the body, hormonal and others and to store long term memory.
4: Electrical energy impulses work to trigger reflexes and chemical energy to operate.
5: EKG's don't just measure the heart. That is only one of there functions.
6: The entire central nervous system functions on electrical impulses.
7: The whole body operates by a combination of electrical and chemical energy. Regulated by the DNA.
8: You stated before that when something dies it breaks down into basic chemical components to paraphrase. I will agree with this to a point. If the electrical impulses that sustain life were simple electricity you could just plug a dead dog into the wall and it would be alive again. You can restart a heart, but only for a certain amount of time. This proves it is more. Were does this energy go when you die. It has to go somewere.
9: Kirlian photography has been proved to measure body functions scientifically. Just because a lot of western scientists refuse to accept that does not mean it is not true.

[WildChild]

Maybe..........

[S. Earl Martin]

Maybe What?