God gets to spend his billion dollars.
Offline In this topic I include some arguments from 'The God Theory' by Dr.Bernad Haisch and of couse I add a little.
Let us begin.
Some theists view God as physical entinty. That when they die, they go and meet him and perhaps invite him to a few rounds of golf. This of course preludes the argument 'If everything need creation, then who created God?'. I however hold a more scienctific view. Matter is nothing more than a filtered illusion. It is defined only by it's inertia (resistance to acceleration) giving by F=ma. The formula itself gives no rise in thought as to what causes this inertia. It wasn't derived, it is a prostulate. A physicist deriving this would be equivalent to a mathematician deriving 1+1=2, it is just assumed true and is used to advance our knowledge. I will discuss what may cause this resistance later, so keep this in mind.
We now turn to properties of matter. Take for example carbon 14 with a half life of 5730 years. That is if I have two grams of C-14 in 5730 years, I will have one gram, the rest the more stable C-12. But what if I have a single atom of C-14? I know it's half life, but how does IT know it? Why is it so stubborn to wait 5730 years, then degrade to C-12? Who is it's time keeper? This may be caused by zero-point energy. The energy that is basically everywhere. It is responsible for vacuum flucturations, and perhaps inertia. This could well be responsible to the resistance behind F=ma. Mass is just an illusion, defined by this zero point energy field resisting the force applied to it. Mass is in the field of inertia and hence encounters resistance, much like a rock flying through the air. We can't see the air, but we know it is pushing back at the rock. String theory adds to this that what we percieve as matter is mearly a melody played by the strings. Keep this in mind also.
Our brains. We use them to percieve reality. Joy, sorrow, happiness all attributed to how our brains interupt certain events. But how far can the brain go? Why do people struggle with math and physics, when others can memorize an entire book by simply reading it once! One person recited pi to over 22,000 digits in a new world record (I believe it took him 5 hours). People can mutlitply multiple digit numbers in their heads while carrying on a conversation! An infinite sea of consciousness could be around us and our brains are mainly the filter. Some filter less, some more. In this sea of infinitness it is mearly 'addition by subtraction', much like the way a light from a projector is filtered by a slide.
Now imagine a being with infinite potiental. Not the being you envision as 'God' (The one in heaven playing golf with his followers), but merely a consciousness. One may argue that you need matter and being to have consciousness. Which is our purpose. Matter is merely a filter of potential from the zero point energy field. As Dr. Haisch puts it: 'By limiting the infintely possible, you create the finitely real' God Theory page 29. As for infinte sea of consciousness: God. What good is infinte potiental and infinite consciousness if you dont use it?
'Imagine having a billion dollars in you bank account. Would this give you pleasure or satisfaction if you could never spend a penny of it?........He(God) gets to act out and live out his ideas, his fantasies. He gets to spend his billion dollars.'
The God Theory pages 15-16
[edit:fixed minor spelling error, re-worded first sentence]
It has been shown via particle accerlators that the proton itself can be broken down to two down quarks and one up quark (or is it two up, one down? Fuck it, it doesn't matter), the point is what we percive as a proton. (or what was percieved during the famous gold foil experiment) is merely an illusion. We percieve the proton only as a proton because we could not generate high enough energies to smash the proton into the quarks sub-parts. i.e at low energies, a proton can be considered a proton.
Speaking of energy, that is merely what matter is. E=mc^2 clearly states that matter and energy are interchangable. As a matter of fact (get it? LOL!) physicist don't use kilograms when dealing with the particle accelerators rather , they use electron volts (ev) One ev=1.6x10^-17J. (if you would like to me to explain where they got this number, please ask). An electron has a rest energy of 0.511 Mev.
The classical laws of physics collapse at high speeds/energies. While K.E=1/2mv^2 works for speeds well below sub-light speeds, for speeds faster, you require the Gamma factor SQRT(1-V^2/c^2). This is used for mass difference, time diliation etc... This further shows that mass is an illusion, especially the change in mass formula.
The point is that matter is not what is would seem. Now what does this have to do with God? Well, the filtered matter is merely different ways for the experience of the universe. In other universes matter may be dramitically different (A universe of anti-matter for example or muons, or leptons, dark matter etc...) My point was that there are many universes, each one with different types of matter/energy and laws of physics. Now, our universe had a transistion period (The Big Bang/Initial expansion). That is our universe went from one state (some say false vacuum) to another (what you are in now). All different universes. All different ways for God to experience the universe through matter and energy.
[added matter points I will try to incorporate it into a full essay.]
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*gets lawnchair*
*grabs popcorn to share with Cpt_Pineapple*
I can't follow the math or physics so I'll just sit back and learn on this one.
One question though - Why couldn't this "consciousness" be your own?
It technically is. Our brain is filtering through the infinte consciousness. Which is way people have different experiences emotions etc...
Think of it as a projector. Your brain is the slide. It filters out. 'creation from subtraction'. Your experience is different than others. Same reason why some people enjoy operas, for example, and others don't. It is your own unique experience (slide) and others have their own slide.
Does that clear it up?
Yes! Thank you! I am still anxious to see what the others have to say about the math and physics portion, though. Good post, by the way.
Nice post man. Actually, this sounds very similar to something that I added to my thread, which I was just touching up. It's the last bit you will be interested in most:
The concept of sentience presupposes the concept of information. This is reasonable enough. Sentience is merely a higher form of information processing, or computation. Think of God, a maximally intelligent entity, as maximally sentient. For this a tremendous amount of computational power would be required. The information gradient which feeds computation is based on thermal inequality, or the transfer of energy packets between molecules. These energy packets contain data, which then becomes information when a conscious entity assigns meaning to it. In quantum computing this is called "It from bit" which says the universe exists when it has the capacity to observe itself. This does not mean that there are conscious entities reflecting on the universe, but rather that the universe now contains data, which is stored, ultimately in the fundamental particles of it's composition. In humans this information is shuttled between firing neurons by calcium, magnesium and potassium ions, which create an electrochemical voltage gradient inequality, holding the information. In a computer it is created by electrical pulses representing one of two choices at the atomic level traveling between silicon imprinted circuits, in a quantum computer it is stored as six states known as superpositions.
We can therefore conclude that data is expressed through inequalities in energy, and to that end, a near-infinite level of information resounds throughout the universe. An atom is essentially an organized packet of energy, a photon is the same, except that it is a massless wave. The fantastic variety of ways for energy inequalities to be expressed is born out in the existence of different atoms and different molecular structures into which they might array themselves, in addition, of course, to the different wavelengths for electromagnetic radiation in the photon packet to be expressed. For instance, the information in DNA is stored as four bases transcribed via codon grouping into amino acids, thus dictating the order of proteins.
Anyone studying matter has a small problem to overcome, namely what is it that gives it it's, well, physicalness (I apologize, there is no better word for it). It's substance. The Greeks thought that you could reduce something by an infinite number of steps. Quantum physics says no. When we shatter the atom below the level of the quark (and all those other particles that stream out when we smash them together like W-bosons etc) we find that we cannot reduce it anymore. I shall go into this into detail in a moment. Well, presumably, when people mean the unique property of matter giving it its substance, they mean its mass. Mass is the mysterious force which gives inertia to an object in motion. The answer is the Higg's boson particle, which physicists now confirm, will almost certainly be discovered when the LHC magnet is turned on underneath Geneva at the CERN institute. If you feel the need to go into why the Higg's Boson causes matter to resist a force applied to it in motion (otherwise known as mass) you can ask me, otherwise I shall skip electroweak gauge theory (the science behind it) and move on.
There is definitely a lot of human perceptive prejudice with the atom. We imagine it as a little ball, a solid sphere of substance inside which are more little balls called protons and neutrons, with smaller little balls called electrons zooming around it. In reality, this is not what an atom is like. That is absurd. Presumably I don't need to point that out. Nonetheless, (I promise all of this will have a point, bear with me) an atom does behave as though it had a fixed radius due to the strong repulsions caused by interacting electron clouds and the very tiny dipole that results. This is called the van der Waals radius. An atom therefore, behaves as if it had a specific boundary, whereby anything within the boundary (the protons, neutrons and electrons) belong to it. And for all intents and purposes, it does. Nonetheless, an atom is not a little ball. It is not physical the way we understand it.
An atom is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. Inside each of the large particles are several groups of quarks. The particles can be grouped into three generations. The first of which contains the electron, if you are interested. Inside the generations are all six colors of quarks as well as several strange particles like tau and neutrinos. All these particles are called fermions, and they make up all the familiar matter that makes the trees, the mountains, the dog, you, me etc. None of these particles has a mass the way we understand the term. It does not have a physical quality giving it "substance". Rather all are created by different spins on electromagnetic interactions with the other type of particles, bosons (which make up photons, gluons Higg's Bosons and all the other particles or waves responsible for interaction with the fermions to create matter). At this level, matter then, has no physical substance, rather it is comprised of organized packets of energy, the arrangement of which gives the illusion of fixed entities we call atoms.
If you, like me, are a String theorist, you believe that the fundamental, the end of reductionism, comes at the string, a vibrating eleven dimensional membranous string whose size relative to the atom compares to an atoms size with a galaxy (This should not surprise you. After all, the nucleus of an atom compared with the whole atom is roughly comparable with a sand grain placed in the middle of a football field). The different vibration of the string causes the different fundamental particles to switch spin charge. If I pluck a string thusly, I get particle such-and-such. The universe, then, is a symphony of strings, the organization of which into energy packets, and the exchanges and grouping of these packets creates data and thusly, information.
Regardless of which Grand Unifying Theory you subscribe to, you accept this fact. Data is created by inequalities in energy, and the exchange of these inequalities by grouping organized packets of this energy together. The packets of energy are organized in such a way that they are defined entities, which, of course, is the "physicalness" which we were trying to understand earlier.
There can be no doubt in your mind now. Whichever way this information is expressed, there is no doubt that it is fed by matter, physical substance which makes up the universe. The universe then, can be viewed as a stream of data fed by changes in energy, conscious entities in this universe can perceive small chinks of this data as information.
Perhaps this is the best equivocation of God. Not some ethereal spirit, but rather a physical substance. Due to the nature of the energy gradient, there is theoretically, infinite conscious experience in the universe, with the flow of ideas never ceasing, except when it comes the day that the universe reaches maximal entropy, but fear not, for new universes, according to hyperinflation, are constantly being born for all eternity. This infinite conciousness has another, more familiar name.
God.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Well, Im going to watch a movie than maybe go to bed.
Don't worry deluded I'll get to your post later.
How long ago did you add that deluded? I seethe topic get bumped from time to time, but I only read the responses since I already read the essay.
about four hours ago.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Amazing how people can read the same stuff and then try to reconcile it with what they 'know' using a word that never even entered the equations.
Sorry to editorialize, but I'd rather just wait for the physical data. I'll go back to my layman corner now. When the mass measured equals 100% though, I want to hear some backpedalling.
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Damn. Another thing to read multiple times.
I guess I'm having trouble with "Matter is nothing more than a filtered illusion". What is the illusion? Are you saying that our conception of matter is the illusion or that matter itself is illusory?
Your use of half life is confusing for me. Half life is probablistic. A clump of C14 will decay at a rate such that after 5730 years half will become C12. But applying this to a single atom has no predictive power at all. In theory, that particular atom could decay in a million years or it could decay in the first nanosecond of observation.
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Is it possible for some type of gradient to exist "between" the universes in a multiverse that could carry information? Would this then allow information and sentience outside our universe? I'm not sure "between" means anything in a multiverse, but I can't think of better word.
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What do you mean 'When the mass measured equals 100%'?
[edit:spelling]
On average it takes an atom of C14 5730 years to decay into C12
The Schrodengier equation states that it is merely waves of probabilty that collapse when observed. It could, theoretically, appear anywhere. This is the concept behind Heisienburg uncertainty principle and quantum tunneling.
Does that clear it up or did I miss your question?
Bump.
From your original post
But what if I have a single atom of C-14? I know it's half life, but how does IT know it? Why is it so stubborn to wait 5730 years, then degrade to C-12? Who is it's time keeper?
Talking about the halflife of a single atom doesn't make sense to me. The reason a chunk of carbon 14 makes a geiger counter go wiggy is that there are enough atoms decaying *right now* for the sensor to register radio activity. Picking any one atom and watching it could result in a decay event anywhere along the continuum of now until the end of time, with the most probablility of decay increasing up intil 5730 years then decreasing again, asymtopically approaching zero. There is no time keeper. It just decays somewhere along the way.
I'm not sure if this is relevant to the outcome of your essay. But I'm pretty sure you are over simplfying the concept of half life. Maybe somebody else can chime in with some insight,
edit: fixed some spelling
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I always have trouble with "matter is illusory" or "reality exists because we are here to perceive it". If I am asleep and somebody shoots me in the head, I'm dead even if I didn't perceive the bullet leaving the gun, travelling through space time, impacting my skull and reducing my brain to mush. Seems like reality doesn't need me to perceive it.
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It is more a thought experiment than anything. Well think about it this way. Say I have one gram of C14. The half life indicates that in 5730 years I have 1/2 a gram and then 1/4 gram etc.......Now what happens when I get one atom left? It will decay in 5730 years.The times are average of course.
Now do you see where this is coming from?
No one likes quantum physics or billions of dollars?
Another bump.
Nahh. I like both of those things. However, I don't like using terms like 'god particle', 'god theory', or even 'god hypothesis' because it doesn't fit.
When the particles and energies from experiments all are measured and accounted for, then I want your 'god hypothesis' discounted. There is no room left. No more gaps.
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Quick question. What do you mean 'all accounted for?'
I wouldn't mind a discussion, but first I have to know what you're talking about.
edit: and when did I use 'God particle?' Aren't you the one who wanted a God hypotheis? Did you understand what the essay is saying? I'm just asking since you asked about a God particle that had nothing to do with my essay.
Bump
You didn't use 'god particle'. It is what some physicists have called Higgs boson(s). Haisch is one of them.
I'm not the only one fed up with that terminology either. The essay is okay if you're trying to get more interest in the work.
You're right. I did ask for a god hypothesis because the lack of such an hypothesis is precisely why I do not like to see the word used to describe physical matter and energy. Actual things, y'know.
When all of the matter and energy is accounted for in the collisions then there is no place left for terms like 'light of creation' or 'god particle' unless a definitive hypothesis is presented.
To me, it is unethical to slip belief in with fact under the guise of semantical ascription. I'm not accusing you of doing that, but I am curious as to why it is being done.
Please understand. I might be one of the only atheists in the world that was truly scared when intelligent design was thrust into the mainstream. I was going through a very misanthropic phase in my attitude. I really thought that popular opinion was going to regress humanity back into the dark ages. One of my base reasons for joining the RRS was to try to keep that from happening. For instance, I've already tried to free myself up from work to go to the creationist museum in Kentucky on a fact finding mission.
I don't want to see the same bastardization of particle physics happen. These bosons and muons are real things, tangible and measurable. By that very fact alone it negates the whole concept of a 'god' or even some type of pantheistic gap god with divine dna stuck inside of a zero spin particle.
Sorry to invade. I know how hard it is to get positive feedback on essay work.
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Cpt. Pineapple, are you a pantheist?
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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....You do realize that it's only a metaphor or simile or whatever? They don't literally think that it's God.
Read the book. He does not contradict any physics laws that I know of. He could be wrong about the zero point field and inertia, but isn't that what science is about? Forming a theory than learning on it?
Why not? Haisch proposes that science explains God, God explains science.
Haisch doesn't use 'creationism' in the sense that the Earth is 6,000 years old. He agrees with the Big Bang and evolution.
How does that condratict God? Let alone the one proposed here? God is not the particle.
Tell me about it. >_>
I actually had to look up what that means.
I guess I fit the description, 'God is all' sounds about right. Are there any specific requirements to be a pantheist?
When you first put this book into the 'new planet' thread for consideration, I put it on my list. In June, I will have a week and I plan to devote part of that time to references made here in the forums.
Hypothesis comes before theory and you and I already agreed that we have not found a valid one yet.
Have a great day.
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I actually had to look up what that means.
I guess I fit the description, 'God is all' sounds about right. Are there any specific requirements to be a pantheist?
I suppose an endorsement of metaphysical naturalism would be the only requisite. Any other system of metaphysics, and you would be called a deist or a theist. But, you may notice, that I am also a pantheist, which is what I pointed out at the end of the section I posted here. And if you are...I see no reason that you should keep the theist badge. I can remove it....er...this is embaressing. I actually don't know how to remove it. I've never had to do it before. It might a High Level Mod Function, I'll ask around.
If you are a pantheist, you belong to a club of the world's coolest people, many of whom, unfortunately, are dead, like Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, Spinoza etc
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Something to mull over Cap'n Crunch, I mean pineapple.
I think both of us have reasonably established through physics the notion of infinite conciousness in the universe. Now, given that, it follows logically that the statement "there is no conciousness after death" is a non sequiter. Thoughts?
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
So a pantheist thinks that God is the infinite consicence and not some bearded guy in the sky? Then I fit the description.
Anyway, I do think that there is no consciousness after death is non sequiter. Life doesn't bring conciousness, conciousness brings life.
[edit: fixed the statement. I meant 'no consciousness after death is non sequiter]
Bump. Nobody has other comments?
[edit: fixed the statement. I meant 'no consciousness after death is non sequiter]
Ah! I was very confused when I first read it. It appeared that you were contradicting yourself twice. That's better.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Amazing how one little word can change the meaning eh?
I was expecting more responses than this >_>
I was expecting more responses than this >_>
Welcome to my world.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
C'mon what else do you want? Money? Women?........Men?
Not sure you want a response to but I thought I'd respond to this:
It doesn't. The odds that it will degrade at that second are vanishingly small, and it's not even the average time that such atoms would take to degrade.
The graph described by wavefreak is incorrect:
Actually the probability of it failing at any second is a flat line: it never goes up, or down.
Having a half life of X just means that at any point in time, there's a 50% (hence "half") chance you will have decayed within the next X.
If you had a half-life of one second, then on average each atom would last 1/2+2/4+3/8+4/16+... seconds. More than a second, but not many more.
Buh? Yup. There's a 50% chance it will decay in one second, but the other 50% is split into 25% for the next second, 12.5% for the second after, and so on. That is, 50% chance of decaying every second.
So say you have an atom with a half-life of 5730 years.
If you wait 4730 years and it hasn't decayed: does that mean it's got a 50% chance of expiring in the next 1000 years? Nope, it has no record of the past, and it's still got a 50% chance of decaying in the next 5730 years.
If you wait 5730 years, then... it's either decayed, or it's still got a 50% chance of decaying in the next 5730 years. No memory.
It's like having a swing with a frayed rope (assume it doesn't get more frayed through use). The fraying means that when I swing on it I have a 50% chance of it snapping and me falling, every time I swing. And each swing takes a second, so 50% per second.
To simulate this, flip a coin for every second, decide I fall on my tail if you get tails, and make a note of how many seconds I last. Repeat the experiment several times, making notes of each second.
I could, in theory, stay swinging forever, if you kept flipping heads. But odds are I'll fall off within the first few seconds.
What this means is that given a sample of the right size, where you know the decay rate, you can tell *exactly* how many atoms there are, by measuring the decay rate.
Now, there are 150Bn seconds in 5730 years. So, if my odds of decaying are 1 in 2 over 150Bn seconds, then over just one second they are (I think, I suck at probability) 1 in 300Bn.
So if your Geiger counter counts 10 particles a second, odds are you've got about 3,000Bn atoms of that stuff in your sample.
I don't know if I've explained that very well. But anyway, the probability graph is flat, and the atom has no timer, no knowledge of its own age, no knowledge of the past.
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That's mathematical talk! Are you a mathematician?
This reminds me of the Quantum Zeno Paradox.
Say I have flourine 17 which has a half life of one minute. If I continously observe it will it ever decay?
Math talk? Dang it! I tried so hard to talk in english
For your version, it's basically identical to the swing example I gave: flip a coin every minute. Will it ever come up heads? Sure it will... eventually, but it might happen immediately or in a million years. But me, I'm betting it'll decay in the next ten seconds
The odds of it lasting more than 5 seconds are 1/2*1/2*1/2*1/2*1/2, which is pretty small. The odds against it lasting ten seconds are 1024 to 1!
T="theists who's posts are fun-to-read, truth-seeking and insightful". Your own T will be different, but Tdewi includes { Avecrien, Cory T, crocaduck, JHenson, jread, wavefreak }
It's half-LIFE though. That is the time it takes for half the atoms to decay.
If I read your post correctly, it will completely destroy carbon-dating.
Say I have a box of quaters. Tails is the stable state, and heads is the decay state. All are tails. Now I shake the box. Your 'half-life' of one second. I then look and remove the heads and leave the tails. I keep repeating, unitil say 10 seconds. I then ask you how many times I shook the box. How can you possibly determine that based on how many tails there are in the box vs how many heads are outside the box?
Capitalising the word "life" puzzles me: what point are you trying to emphasise?
The way that radiometric dating works is by comparing ratios of elements: when something decays, it doesn't disappear, it decays into something else. In the case of C14 dating, you count how much C14 there is, and you count how much of its decay product there is. C14 decays to C12.
So, in fact, the experiment is more like: when you shake the box, you look through the coins and cut up all the whole "heads" coins, then drop the fragments back into the box.
You can tell at the end how long you've been running that experiment by weighing the whole coins, and the fragments. If the weight of the fragments is three times that of the whole coins, then you've probably run the experiment twice. If it's 1000, then ten times. The more coins you start with the more accurate your estimate will be: if you start with one coin, you have no accuracy, but if you start with a billion, then your accuracy will be pretty impressive.
[Edit: I'm wrong. C14 decays to Nitrogen. However, C12 and C14 are assumed to be present in a living organism at a certain ratio. Once it dies and stops metabolising, the c14 decays faster than the C12. So, C14 dating is unusual in this respect: you are not comparing the ratios of the parent and "daughter" elements, but two elements present in the atmosphere.
So a better experiment would be to put some fixed ratio marbles and coins in the box, then remove the "heads" coins each round: you could then, after running the box-shaking process for N rounds, calculate how far the number of coins was from the original ratio.
/edit]
Of course, that raises some questions.
Like, in real life the sample will have C12 in already, so you're not starting from zero: how do they know how much?
And how do they work out the half-lives of stuff?
And what exactly are you measuring the date OF? Is it the time since the thing was alive? Since it was buried? Since it was burned? Since the sun last shone on it? The time that it has spent exposed to the elements? Since it was last at a certain "counter-reset" temperature? There are dating methods that measure all of these things and more.
And how do they calibrate these things?
The answers to all these questions and more can be found at the Wikipedia page on radiometric dating, and pages linked from there. Or any decent Google search.
Wikipedia is down at the moment, for me at least, but http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/carbon-14/ addresses some misconceptions.
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The life of the C14 particle. Once it decays it is no longer C14. Once again, the half-life of something is the time it takes for one half the inital amount to decay.
First order differential equation. I didn't have to look at wikipedia for that. There is a section in my Differential equations book about half-life. It's rather simple first order differencial equation
The time it stops taking in C14. i.e when it died. If I was measuring the half life of uranium 238, it would be from when the uranium was formed.
*awaits more comments*
bump.
You should watch this video, it is exactly what you and I have been talking about. It is called Surviving the Singularity, and is supposedly about Kurzweil and the AI singularity, but in reality, it is entirely about consciousness and evolution. It is the inspiration from which I drew for my work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDqaMFHGEZ8
Ignore the politics in the last few minutes
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Good video. Different evolution species is merely different experiences of the consciousness.
Corret me if I am wrong, but I think the answer is yes because your 'equipment' is geared to the act of measuring the system as it changes.
This conversation reminds me of Conway's audioactive number elements ~ if you can say it you can see it ;P ~ and some of his other amazing proofs like free will theorem.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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It's possible I'm missing something within the premise, since most of those concepts are foreign to me. What I don't understand is how "god" is inferred by the observation of natural forces, or let's just say forces at work, simply because we don't know why they exist. Am I missing something? And if said "god" belongs to pantheism, and isn't necessarily a discreet being, but a representation of nature itself working in consistent ways, are we still describing a being, or redefining words?
We know HOW the forces work, but not WHY. Science cannot tell us why the universe exists only how it existed.
What do you mean re-defining words? God isn't some bearded man in the sky.