You don't type that in. You type in North, 20,000.... Joules, and the energy field of the atoms is no longer symetrically distributed about the nucleus, but pulled North to an equivalent of 20,000 Joules or MeV or whatever the unit would be. This would cause the ball to suddenly leap into acceleration, only ceasing its acceleration when the energy field was restored.

Hi Sam, so you just want to know how we would evaluate if the testimony is plausible, and not discuss what might be happening in NDEs?

Ok, well, how dogmatically they cling to the claim even when everyone else thinks they're nuts might be a good place to start, especially when they stand to lose something by saying so and have nothing to gain.

This topic has split into two different topics, both of which I find equally fascinating. The first is of motion and time and the second of the intrinsic inertial properties of an object.

The latter was my original intent.

If we start with the premise that you can type an energy field and direction into an object and have it spring into acceleration - is that a feasible premise irrespective of time?

The former is a lot more confusing for me. To be honest with you, I spent an hour reading through the wave particle debate, got about half way through it and understood about half of what you were saying. But, it's great reading and I'll go over it a few more times before I'm done. I might ask you some questions along the way if that's ok.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting John.

The boundary is a cloud. There is no hard boundary though there is a continuum of substantiality. Physicists have acknowledged this in their research of particles. In fact, everything seems to be connected, even non-locally. Daoists arrived at the same idea but observing the macro and how everything flows from one to the other. I flow directly into the rest of the universe. — Rich

You guys really know your philosophy, but I'd like to add to this boundary question the idea of 0.9 repeater. It goes on for infinity, but it never reaches 1. Surely 1 is a fuzzy boundary that is not crossed.

I also think its intelligent design, but I don't think we are the sculpture, or anyone or anything else. I think the design is in atoms. The outcome is left to chance. Atoms self-assemble into sentient beings.

I don't understand how the observations by gob smacked scientists as they run around cataloging all the changes and postulating where from and where to somehow rules out the idea that atomic dice were cast and perhaps someone's waiting to see if they roll a seven when its all over.

THAT is the primary problem - that you, and every other believer in a god, do so as a result because it feels good and gives you purpose. This is the primary symptom of a delusion - beliefs in things that cover up reality to make you feel better. Religion is an adaptation for handling stress. — Harry Hindu

Hi Harry, I think we have two issues here that are often conflated here by science. Firstly is an innate sense of a God in a lot of people from all walks of life. The second is religion, which has latched onto this idea and ran about claiming it had all the info and all the answers on the subject. If there wasn't the initial sense of a God, religion would not have persisted, but just like us, people sought answers to the question and religions seized the opportunity. Nowadays we can look at religion and go, "Yeah, I don't think so," but for thousands of years they were the only one who had set up shop in the space.

Saying there is no "proof" of natural selection is simply not true. The selection of particular traits in populations of organisms in response to particular environmental pressures is well-documented — Arkady

Hi Arkady, that's not proof. That's some collated samples that have been admitted into evidence. The burden of proof as required by science has not been met. Evolution and God, neither has been accepted by science at true, only by scientists.

Hi Praxis, I take your point. That sounds like the better explanation.

So, in order for these apparent contingencies to have been built into the evolutionary process from the start, we now must posit God not only seeding life in that "warm little pond," but also have Him moving asteroids around the solar system in order to strike the Earth at just the right time, have him manipulating the Earth's orbital parameters and/or solar output in order to tweak the climate just so at certain stages in the history of life, have Him decide when animals would colonize land from the oceans (it's probably difficult, if not impossible to have sentience or civilization without fire, and it's hard to build fires in aquatic environments), etc. Very quickly, we come to see that there is nothing "natural" about natural selection, and we must ask again why it would be that God chose to create humans through one of the few pathways which makes him seem unnecessary to the process. — Arkady

Hi Arkady, I agree, that God created Man and said bah to every other lifeform is nuts. Rather than God created the universe I propose that God is the universe. It is a sentient level of energy that science has no clue exists but permeates everything right down to the atom and beyond, right up to the galaxies and beyond. Do you really believe in a big, dumb universe? It's teaming with sentience at all levels in all manifestations in all quadrants. Natural Selection says B went to C went to D, and is only a theory as there is no proof - a requisite of science or so I'm told in this thread. So both views can be accommodated, no?

If I understand then, your question is how does the arrow get from one point to the next. — Metaphysician Undercover

I've been thinking a lot about your pointilism problem, and it seems like an easy fix. First, here's what I think the problem is. Between each interval there are an infinite amount of intervals. So 0.9 can become 0.99 can become 0.999 but never reach one. In a nut shell is that it? That an infinite amount of time would be required to transverse the infinite number of intervals?

If so, the easy fix would be to make time a quanta. Give it a fixed value, then you can summate it.
Yes? No?

The brain's job is to interpret its sensations. There are reported incidents of people losing part of their vision and the brain literally filling it in with garbage, like Mickey Mouse. There are reports of people experiencing intense religious experiences such as walking with Jesus when their temporal lobes were stimulated (also in epilepsy which can be a temporal lobe seizure).

Is it not perhaps more prudent to boil these experiences down to the baseline feeling - how did these experiences make them feel? Much of what you describe sounds pretty cozy to me, and is line with what I've heard about the massive flood of endorphins that happens near death.

Out of body experiences fall right into this category when in the room. The ears are passively picking up sound, the occipital lobe is trying to put an image to it.

There is also the expectation that they did see something. Perhaps they may choose to interpret their feelings in line with what their expectations are?

Having said that, I have heard some pretty whacky stuff too often throughout my life about clocks stopping, people knowing of a death at a distance - people with nothing to gain by saying so and a lot of credibility to lose.

Its a great mystery, and a great topic.

On the idea of good and bad, it seems like that is in the eye of the beholder. I someone wants to stop you and they throw a rock at you, but I catch it. I've done good for you, but bad by them.

There was this guy I know. His name was Pavlov. He had a dog too.

Symbolic language is the common language of all animals. It is the most fundamental aspect of language. Animals read gestures and make gestures to be read.

It sounds like you're living the high life.

You two need to get out more.

Scientists are not in the business of proving the non-existence of supernatural entities. If a scientist attempts to do so, they've crossed over from science and into transcendental metaphysics. Even if they don't realize it. — darthbarracuda

Hi Darthbarracude, Richard Dawkins doesn't agree. He is the one bringing the fight. Check on YouTube.

I don't think that man is a biological parasite that has wormed its way into self-replicating women's lives, simply because they wouldn't have been women. They would have been some hybrid self-pollinating creature that at best diverged into men and women.

They say, as you said, that sexual reproduction evolved to share the gene pool. Monoclones are incredibly susceptible to disease. One cold could wipe out an entire population - like the potato famine in that happened in Ireland in the 1940s.

A genetics professor also pointed out, and this is an aside, that it is impossible to sustain the perfect person or race of people, because one you have the perfect person, you would have to mate them with someone else genetically different and so on to avoid imbreeding and you end up with just another mixed gene pool. So it works both ways, I guess.

Yeah, to say that a God created man in his own image is a bit of a stretch. To ascribe the qualities of man to God is even more of a stretch. Nonetheless in this game called our lifetime you have to look up into the night sky and think "Holy Cow".

That a rock given enough time and pressure can change into another rock type is fine. That atoms given enough time self-assemble into living sentient beings is absolutely amazing. The inanimate has become animated. Just a fluke? All Darwin's theory tried to explain was how the lifeforms evolved after the process was started.

I find it very hard to believe that you really understood evolution at 12 years old to make a decent argument for it when your father confronted you about it. — Harry Hindu

You're right. I might have been 13. But seriously, I'm not here to debate religion. Religion is more about people controlling other people through rituals, promises and threats then anything else. It has its upsides, like bringing people together at Christmas - that's always nice, but any thinking person has to shut one eye and raise one eyebrow when they read through the Bible stories or other stories.

We have repeatedly observed the expansion of the universe and the background radiation that is evidence of the Big Bang. — Harry Hindu

I can repeatedly watch the pendulum of a grandfather clock swing back and forth that that gives me no more insight into harmonic motion then I had at the first sight of it. Besides, I don't think we have repeatedly watched the universe expand. Expansion is only a theory based on some doppler observations in this limited tiny tiny spec of space we can measure.

When asked how God came into existence, the answer is, "He has always existed." How is that any different than saying the universe, or the multiverse has always existed? — Harry Hindu

- Good, so we agree that both scenarios are equally plausible.

It's even more simpler, as it doesn't need that extra step of adding God as the final cause. If God doesn't need a creator, then why does the universe need one? No theist has ever been able to answer that question. — Harry Hindu

I don't need sugar with my coffee, but that doesn't mean I don't have sugar with my coffee. I think Lisa Simpson over popularised Occam's razor.

If you want a definition of God, then why don't we say, it is the sentience of the universe. It is in everything. It is everything. The sentient atom. Perhaps a sentient universe is passing through a universe of a different energy - like Time - causing little bubbles of interference to pop up like the bubbles that pop up when you run your hands through the water. Maybe those bubbles are our physical universe. Who knows? Its good to wonder though.

Thanks guys, a lot to think on.
For the time being though: Motion is relative, which is a good thing, because on both arrows I placed a tracker that is recording all the atomic information of the arrow. To the tracker the arrows are not in motion. The tracker is beaming information to a teleporter which through the trackers activates the teleportation of both arrows. When they materialise at the new destination I suspect the arrow in motion will continue to fly while the other won't. Is this a feasible work around for the pointilism vs continuous problem of time? If so, how can we account for the movement of the arrow in flight, or do you think they will both drop lifelessly to the ground?

The robot has been programmed to assess threats to its structure. As its impossible to program for everything, part of the program says if the unidentified object is mobile and unidentified, activate the fear response. It has identified the snake which is in its list of threatening objects and thus the program has activated. A physiological response is occurring within the robot.

The code of the robot has been divided into a simple executive program that can activate a range of other codes. All the executive code has to do is call on the correct program and it will execute as a hard wired reflex. As it sits atop these other programs the executive code is not 'aware' of how they operate (one program is written in C++ and one in Cobalt and except for the interface they are incompatible). In a way, there is a mask separating them. All the executive programs knows is that after identifying the snake, the hydraulic pump sped up, the large conduction velocity wires began to hum, its vision became brighter, and other background programs such as do the vaccuuming have shut down. It is also aware that the snake may cause damage to its shell and it is programmed to avoid that.

Hi Janus, how do you know animals aren't self-aware of their pain?

Hi Pegasys, I'm a bit lost with your meaning here. Are you saying that centralised control of the masses by the government is analogous to holding back a wave that wishes to eminate from this single source (God), thus causing the wave to fracture into particles, which the masses are unable to piece back into a cohesive meaning except through the use of the internet? And that because the centralisation is happening directly under the source of God that it must be evil, representing the devil?

What about if we designed a robot that could act scared when it saw a snake? Purely mechanical of course. Part of the fear response would be the hydraulic pump responsible for oiling the joints speeds up, and that higher conduction velocity wires are brought into play to facilitate faster reaction times. This control system is regulated through feedback loops wired into the head of the robot. When the snake is spotted the control paths in the head of the robot suddenly reroute power away from non-essential compartments such as recharging the batteries and into the peripheral sense receptors. Artificial pupils dilate to increase information through sight, and so on.
This robot has been programmed with a few phrases that let the programmer know what is happening in the circuits, "batteries low" that sought of thing. In the case of the snake it reads all these reactions and gives the feedback "I'm scared."

Is is really scared?

Before you answer, and as you probably know, a long long time ago they did live vivisections on dogs and other animals because they did not believe they actually felt pain. The pain response- all that yelping and carrying on, was nothing more than a set of reflexes programmed into the animals, the scientists and theolgists argued. Only humans, designed in God's image actually felt pain as we know it.

Thanks JupiterJess and Rich, I've read through the paradoxes. They would make a great topic for another debate. The arrow one you pointed out does have a similar framework to what I am trying to say, but what I am saying is also different.

If we took the arrow in flight analogy. I do want to freeze frame it, just like the paradox. But I want to swap it out for an arrow that is not in flight:One that I pull out of my quiver. When I release time again, the swapped out arrow will drop lifelessly to the ground while the in flight arrow will continue its flight.

As both arrows are identical in appearance, it is my contention that the difference between the two arrows must have to do with a difference in the energy fields of the atoms within the arrow. Could it be that an asymmetry in the energy field of an atom (pulling all the energy fields in a singular direction like a magnet) is creating the motion.

If we can accept this assumption then we can elaborate on it further to say, an initial change in the direction of the energy field creates acceleration. The restoration of the energy field thereafter maintains a velocity at the point of release, a further tug will cause further acceleration.

That being said, I can envisage a futuristic programmer typing a value and direction of the energy field into an object and causing it to spontaneously leap into a state of acceleration.

OK, thanks Rich, I'll check it out.

Hi Jess, beats me. What are Zeno's paradoxes of motion?

So vision is active, not passive? We blast out a huge quantity of energy to illuminate the image? How do we then perceive it once it's illuminated? That's a bridge too far for me.

You crack me up Rich. What the hell is a reconstructive beam?

That's a pretty good position on the argument Pegasys, if I understood it correctly. The Quantum Mechanics argument that the mere act of observation causes electrons to act like particles and not waves? Therefore the very act of trying to define God reduces it to a weaker form? Or did I completely misunderstand you?

Sure Rich, I get it. The holographic field is a good way of visualising the atomic framework of objects and introduces a wave property that is otherwise hard to imagine.

Hi Sam,
I think you're right. One thing that has become abundantly clear in this talk is that science is trying to punch way above its weight when it takes on subjects like God, simply by virtue of the limitations of proof it places on itself. It's scope is limited to the observable and testable, but when we continue into the immeasurable science cannot follow and maths has to kick in. Maths on the other hand makes no claims one way or the other about God, and with the amount of crazy stuff they are coming out with its no wonder.

Thanks Andrew, that's a good explanation.
However, I want to go bit further than a Newtonian explanation. Words like impulse and momentum while providing a great working schema, do not really address what is happening fundamentally. Even the idea of energy transfer really does not say much. Atomically - interatomically or subatomically what are those energy fields doing? How have them been altered to create the movement and resultant impact force?
Maybe I should repost this so the topic is a little clearer.

I can point to hoof-prints in the sand and say that a unicorn made those, and that they could only be there for us both to see if a unicorn passed by here. There can be no other explanation. But there is, as a horse could have made those same impressions in the sand. — Harry Hindu

That is true, or a unicorn could have made them. Science gets a little conceited with itself because it observes a little string of facts and marries them together into a plausible story then claims its the truth.

The same goes for the claim that the universe is evidence of God's existence. There are other, better explanations for the universe being here. — Harry Hindu

Really? Better ones? I am yet to hear them. There is a little string of observations such as red shifts and background microwave radiation that have been sewn together into an elaborate theory. Is that the better explanation because it has a few more parts to it? It also has a few more holes in it. Quite big ones.

If the results are repeatable and cannot be falsified in any way, they survive. If not, they are discarded. — Harry Hindu

Have we repeated the Big Bang? I'll have to check my notes on that one.

It's true that we need a singular definition of God to please the scientists. This is their main bone of contention, they don't know what to attack and so they call it all a lie. But in creating a definition of God to please the scientists we of course will make it fit with the observable, so in the very act of defining God we prove its existence to science. Do we not? Science cannot win this.

And what would be at the other end of this continuum of substantiality?

So, you are suggesting a sentient universe that permeates the physical universe?

Hi Rich,
Can you elaborate on point 2? I don't quite understand your meaning.

I take your point that the two statements, as you chose to interpret them, are indeed incompatible. I also see you have provided a definition for God and through this definition have sought to disprove God or Relativity. It's a good way to go about it, but in this instance it's a pretty long bow to pull I think.

I would contend that your definition of God through this archaic reference written by men thousands of years ago may need some modification.

Here's something to consider. In the Old Testament, when Moses asked God, who are you, God answered "I am that I am". "I am" commonly refers to being at the present. Further, many people interpret Einstein's special theory of relativity as stipulating that there is no such thing as the present. These people, if they hold and believe in the truth of special relativity, deny the possibility of God under this fundamental definition of God. — Metaphysician Undercover

Okay Metaphysician Undercover, I have your statement. I have glossed over it a bit too easily, so I'll take another look at it even though we are talking religion here and not God.

To say that "I am" commonly refers to being at the present, by your own admission does not predicate it in every instance, and while I am sure you are correct in this translation, it seems a bit of a stretch to me. You say that many people interpret Einstein's relativity as stipulating no such thing as the present, again if I do concede this to you, "many people" is not all people. So we have one highly ambiguous statement stacked upon another ambiguous statement, drawing from a document written by Israelites thousands of years ago in Babylon and juxtaposed against a theory of the universe written in the 1920s in order to draw out a contradiction on the nature of God.

I admire your tenacity, but its a bit all over the shop for me.