What are your religious views?

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Consciousness without body would eventually die too. My GUESS at an after life would include many periods of oblivion and a sudden appearing somewhere, followed b more oblivion and repeat the process. I have no clue, just like noone else does, but I refuse to believe in a pure equilibrium of any state, and that includes consciousness. As to the mechanics, I would be one of the last people to ask.

Consciousness is a physical process or at least the effect of a physical cause. There is no consciousness without some physical matrix in which the process of being conscious operates. Sorry. There nor no Spirits, Ghosts or Spooks. There is just matter and energy operating in the Void over Time.

ruveyn

But if living things were actually multidimensional over 5 dimensions The section of the physical being that succumbs in one set of universes may not succumb in others. Admittedly this is a far out theory but it deals with physical beings.

And if my grandma had balls, she would be my grandpa.

When you find a fifth physical dimension, I hope you will write to us and tell us about it.

ruveyn

So any proposed concept, in your view, must have actual data to be considered even though much data can be ambiguous.I guess that rules out string theory.

At this point, String Theory (so-called) is a mathematical model and is physical conjecture. There are no physical experiments doable at this time which would support or refute String Theory. Since there are five main flavors of String Theory evidence would have to be gather to disambiguate this cluster of models.

Lee Smolin wrote an interesting book in quite he presents a very critical and pessimistic view of String Theory. See -The Trouble with Physics- by Lee Smolin. The main claim in favor of String Theory is its mathematical elegance and beauty. That is not sufficient. One must have hard evidence from experiments that test the theory.

The main reason for going to higher dimensions is to have a theory with enough "room" to accomodate all the known interactions -- electromagnetic, strong, weak and gravitational. Right now gravity just won't fit in with the other three. There have been several valiant attempts to produce a quantum theory of gravitation but all have either failed or are not testable with current technology.

The untestability of theory is a tricky point. When Wolfgang Pauli proposed the neutrino as a particle in order to preserve the conservation of momentum and energy no means existed to find the little pests. It took thirty years to develop the technology that finally detected neutrinos. So the lack of testability, in and of itself, is not a refutation of a theory. But without evidence it is difficult rely on such a theory.

As the old saying goes: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

ruveyn

Very good, then we agree that a four dimensional observer in a multidimensional universe might well not be aware of his multidimensionality and presume the demise of a small fraction of himself is the demise of his totality which may not be true. I claim no valid evidence for this, merely that is is an extremely far fetched possibility and perhaps never to be validated by data.

i consider reality to be a cyclical pattern. the probability that matter and energy will recreate what i consider "me" is not zero but i wouldn't make any claims beyond that. if that's a religion, we've probably got the laziest zealots.

If I see a god, I'll poke him and lick him until I get an opinion. Of course, I'm tainted by experience, and most gods I've encountered have left a bitter taste.

In the old days back when Moses messed about anybody with a laser or a submachine gun or an iPod probably could convince a bunch of people he was a god. Especially if he arrived by helicopter. These days it would take a bit more and in the end would probably be identified as a visitor from an interstellar advanced civilization with an ego problem. The god business is a bit more difficult to get into currently.

This pretty much sums up my view on religion and politics.

[img][650:800]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.gif[/img]

I think the army should be under the "we eat for you" class in that picture.

Sometimes the army shoots them too.

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and proud of it!

As for the question of what defines a religion, my definition is a person's set of beliefs concerning the existence of a higher power and how they act as a consequence of said beliefs. By that definition, atheism would also be a religion.

Scientology.

"They associate all Christians, regardless of denomination, with people like Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps."

Fred Phelps.. ughhhhhhhhhhh....

I came across his group of people at a ballet I attended while in graduate school. His group was protesting the ballet on the grounds that gays and lesbians were performing in the opera and all kinds of other things. I almost got into a fight with them, until I realized it wasn't worth being on the front page of the newspaper the next morning. I went inside and enjoyed an awesome ballet.

I went to Westboro's website afterwards, and could not believe all the hate I saw on it towards all groups of people. Made me just about want to puke.