Discussions toward a better understanding of LDS doctrine, history, and culture. Discussion of Christianity, religion, and faith in general is welcome.
This is an article claiming that the Large Hadron Collider disproves the existence of spirits. Basically, if there were particles or some sort of energy capable of carrying on human memories or our personalities, physics would have found them by now.
This is a quote from an online comment on another website's article covering the same topic. I think it just about covers it, pretty impossible to believe in spirits, at least the way the church describes them:
Can ghosts be seen? If so, do they emit or reflect light? If they emit it, where do they take the energy from? If they reflect it, they must be made of matter that interacts with light, surely? If they're made of matter, are they still ghosts? And how much do they weigh? And again, where did they take the energy from to form the ghostly body? And if they can't be seen, but only felt, how do they interact with neurons in the body of the observer? They again need to contain and lose energy in order to do that. Could such an energy be used in practice? Imagine a spaceship powered by the bodily energy of ghosts...
Once you start asking honest questions based on logic and rationality, the whole idea of ghosts crumbles like a house of cards.
My opinion is that "spirit" is an Eternal entity which is undiscoverable or measurable by temporal means as are many other things. God and His place of existence reside in a dimension outside of our own, that is only bridged at His discretion.
So it becomes a matter of faith, absolutely.
"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."
Could be that these spiritual beings operate on dimensional levels above our own 3-D conception of reality, and can only we detected them we add the element Mormonium as a catalyst.
Good faith does not require evidence, but it also does not turn a blind eye to that evidence. Otherwise, it becomes misplaced faith.
-- Moksha
We know that spirits are matter, and we know that because Joseph Smith said so and sometimes he could see it so he knew it was matter......so there. And maybe the devil messed with Hadron Colider.....so there. And don't forget what happened at the Tower of Babel.
God is Love. God is Truth. The greatest problem with organized religion is that the organization becomes god, rather than a means of serving God.
It is apparent as time goes on there is more and more reasons to discount the existence of an afterlife. Would be nice if I were wrong but science is doing their best to prove it one way or another. Can’t say God is doing much to persuade me he exists. But then again I still hope for something but don’t count on it.
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
― Thomas A. Edison
One of the best explanations of the soul I've heard came from a Jehovah's Witness. They said that there is no soul, but that God retains the memory of your mind and personality, like a live backup, and will simply recreate you after death. That takes care of the spirit problem, so now all you have to do is come to grips with the fact that a copy of you will have immortality, but you're heading into nothingness. Yay god.
“You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.” - Vonnegut
oliver_denom wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:46 pm
One of the best explanations of the soul I've heard came from a Jehovah's Witness. They said that there is no soul, but that God retains the memory of your mind and personality, like a live backup, and will simply recreate you after death. That takes care of the spirit problem, so now all you have to do is come to grips with the fact that a copy of you will have immortality, but you're heading into nothingness.
I was fascinated with this idea when it was explained to me by one of their representatives at my door some years ago. On the one hand, it neatly avoids a literal Hell. Those who don't merit an afterlife are simply not reconstituted and remain forever in oblivion.
But on the other hand, as you mentioned, it raises questions of whether it's really you who gets to enjoy the afterlife. I tried to explain this in several different ways at the time, but I just couldn't express it clearly enough for the guy to understand my concern.
Of course, that was back before I realized that my conception of the self was just one more layer in my assumptions that I hadn't yet questioned.
Last edited by Ghost on Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
oliver_denom wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:46 pm
One of the best explanations of the soul I've heard came from a Jehovah's Witness. They said that there is no soul, but that God retains the memory of your mind and personality, like a live backup, and will simply recreate you after death. That takes care of the spirit problem, so now all you have to do is come to grips with the fact that a copy of you will have immortality, but you're heading into nothingness. Yay god.
Virtual reality afterlife. No thanks
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
― Thomas A. Edison
oliver_denom wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:46 pm
One of the best explanations of the soul I've heard came from a Jehovah's Witness. They said that there is no soul, but that God retains the memory of your mind and personality, like a live backup, and will simply recreate you after death. That takes care of the spirit problem, so now all you have to do is come to grips with the fact that a copy of you will have immortality, but you're heading into nothingness. Yay god.
Sounds like that JW was channeling the Netflix show 'Travelers'. Or maybe the Travelers plot came from the same SciFi genre as did the JW religion... For those who have not seen it, this explanation is precisely the mechanism of time travel in that show.
oliver_denom wrote: ↑Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:46 pm
One of the best explanations of the soul I've heard came from a Jehovah's Witness. They said that there is no soul, but that God retains the memory of your mind and personality, like a live backup, and will simply recreate you after death. That takes care of the spirit problem, so now all you have to do is come to grips with the fact that a copy of you will have immortality, but you're heading into nothingness. Yay god.
This is what happened every time when Captain Kirk and the Star Trek crew beamed themselves somewhere. According to the show, that is how the transporter worked. The transporter ripped the person’s body apart and then reassembled it at the place “they” were transported to.
When I was a TBM teenage watching Star Trek, I just kind of assumed that the transporter also transported the person’s soul too. It was only after I started questioning that I realized the terrifying implication of how transporters work. Think about it, who would want to use a transporter if it meant “you” had to be killed and an exact copy would replace ”you”!
Last edited by John G. on Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"If your children are taught untruths on evolution in the public schools or even in our Church schools, provide them with a copy of President Joseph Fielding Smith's excellent rebuttal in his book Man, His Origin and Destiny."
As a kid, I used to think about the idea of teleportation, and how it must be impossible because it wouldn't be able to disassemble the spirit along with the body. I imagined the spirit just kind of following along to the point where the new body was being assembled, but that didn't really seem likely.
And, of course, if the device can make one copy there's no reason it can't make two and that would really seem to throw a wrench in my theology. In fact, if the device were advanced enough that it didn't need to destroy the original body to scan it, you'd have two by default.
There's a recent video game that explores these themes in a clever (and utterly bleak) way.
And maybe the devil messed with Hadron Colider.....so there. And don't forget what happened at the Tower of Babel.
