Without making this a religious debate, can you prove your statement or are you just giving a knee-jerk response to something you find offends your personaly philosophy?

Do you feel evolution has stopped progressing for humans? If no, where you do think it's going to lead? Are we going to turn into bulbous fleshy headed aliens that kidnap people of other worlds?

If you can answer that, then answer this: what was there before the big bang?

In the vacuum of space, all EM radiation, including light, travels at c.

no, that isn't a knee-jerk reaction. i'm not usually prone to such emotional reactions, generally speaking.

i said evolution is not teleological because it's not proceeding toward a specific end, at least according to most current theories of evolution as elaborated by mainstream scientists in appropriate fields.

humans beings are not the summa of terran evolution, nor will be our progeny. evolution proceeds species toward adaptive peaks, but there's no a priori reason to order those peaks hierarchically. i mean, if you moralize the process you can believe whatever the heck you want. however that would be an anthropomorphic imposition on nature-as-it-is, which is okay IMHO as long as you state it as a personal moral view and not a scientific fact.

as for what we may evolve into, it beats the hell out of me (ditto for the big bang). i'm not trying to say that we're not different than other animals because our species developed complex language and culture. we are, and it may in fact be a radical difference. some of the more contemporary theories of human evolution have hold that human beings modified the rules, so to speak, by evolving those traits - from purely genetic evolution bu natural selection to genetic-cultural coevolution (which is the term i learned -- wikipedia redirected me to an article titled dual inheritance theory).

i could probably pontificate at great length on the topic of possible future evolution of human beings, but i'll hold off. if you're curious, aCynic2, i wouldn't mind. i just don't want to type something nobody's gonna read.

cheers

Spirtiualist noncenss. I think that these physicists work so hard and are so clever that their mind must react by inventing BS. Hence the birth of quantum physics.

Lets get down to the bare facts.

1.Energy cannot live

2.It cannot be a conousness

3.Life is governed by biological mechanicisms without them you are dead even the simplest virus has mechansims.

4. Time is not something you can maniupulate as it does not truely exist only though are perception does it exist. It is foolishness to see it as metal which can be manipulated.

5. Sci-fi is a replacement for mythology when they speak of accession they mean it as a search of meaning and peace. Not as something that can be acheived through machines or escaping time or any other means.

I think most of your lots problem is to accept the theoritical concepts as true without accepting that most are not. Pythagarous once stated that at death we come back as live stock, in particular chickens. Do you want to argue about that as begin thesiable?

I vote no - even though becoming energy beings is nice for sci-fi, I don't think it's practical. You'd need significant mass to hold all of the energy together and prevent it from escaping.

i am thinking along these lines.... time is the enabling force of matter and velocity, there is no velocity without time or you could call it absolute velocity, to be in all places all at once. Anything with absolute velocity would therefore have zero mass, since mass requires time to exist.

I am not sure where i am going with this?? um any input appreciated?

All your other points are good, but now you're getting into a fierce scientific debate. No one really knows what time is, so you can't make a definitive statement about something we just don't know for sure. The FACT is that time, or at least what we perceive as time DOES change based on relative velocities. That has been pretty much proven. We can't actually manipulate it independently of velocity, but who knows what we'll discover in the future.

...just like atoms cannot live? Sure, no wavelength of light can be considered life, but some sort of complex network might. This begs the question "what is life?"



What is consciousness? Spiritual views aside, consciousness is just a by-product of a complex neural network. Again, if such a network is possible with matter, why not energy?



Life as we know it is composed of carbon based molecular structures. This does not mean other forms of life aren't possible.


Forgive me, I was unable to comprehend the rest of the things you said. Perhaps a little more attention to grammar next time?




Evolution, in the broadest sense, means that things change over time, which is undeniably true. Indeed, that is essentially what time is: change. So my answer is no, we haven't stopped evolving. Now, biological evolution, on the other hand, has certainly deviated from it's "natural" course, if it hasn't halted altogether for us. Modern medicinal techniques have allowed us to ease the symptoms of diseases that would otherwise kill humans, but instead they live and are allowed to reproduce, passing on any potentially crippling genetic weaknesses. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing; we are still evolving through our technology and intelligence. This just isn't "natural".

Finally, the question "will we ever ascend?", as in becoming beings of energy or something? I doubt it. For one thing, if a life form could be composed entirely of energy, it would probably take up vast amounts of distance to create anything that could be called a "stable network". I can see no technologically possible way for humans, or any aliens, to change a system of cells into such a vast "organism" with any precision, let alone a natural process. However, I wouldn't put the idea of a being of light totally to rest, there could be such beings existing in the galaxy right now. But if they did exist, it is much more likely that they formed naturally, perhaps coalescing from cosmic radiation or something, than that they ever were once matter and managed to "ascend".

In any case, what would be so great about being composed of a bunch of photons? Personally, I think were better off as we are now, in a compact (not to mention much more stable) form.

ok here is a question for all of you.

if god was alone when he made everything.


then who was he talking to when he said lets make man in our image.

physicist, biologist, philosopher, and liteary critic, wow! your expertise is staggering.



AND you're a psychotherapist, too? wow, is there anything you can't do?

so, to respond to you.

1. the question of whether energy can life is stupid. energy is mass we are living, and we are energy. we're not completely energy, but we're still partly energy. change our spacetime/velocity, and the amount of energy or mass we're made of changes. mass is energy, and since mass lives, energy lives.

2. until you can define consciouness, you're not on valid ground to claim what can and what cannot be conscious.

3. life is governed by chemical reactions. if you're going to split hairs, prepare for yours to be split.

4. but we have manipulated time. we send one twin wearing a syncronous watch into orbit and keep the other on earth. when twin 1 returns, his watch is faster. are the different locations of the hinds on their watches just through our perceptions?

5. science fiction can be a lot more like the newspaper than the bible. it typically reflects the world of the writer with but one change. sure, some examples of SF serve more to reinforce existing morals, like Star Trek and Star Wars, but some are explorations of tension in our time, like Blade Runner and Brave New World
(if you consider that SF). the fact that you could make such a blanket statement about an entire genre leads me to believe you don't read much of it.

and finally, i really doubt you have the slightest idea what my problems are, or anyone else's here. thanksforcalling haveawonderfulday.

this is true and before life that is what we were was energy.


or thought you choose

Generalisation is the key to understanding all things. If you brake it down into its components you will find that all things are essitally the same. I read a lot of science fiction, though it is more of the Brave new world type instead of the cheesy american babylon 5 style lets make random stuff up and hide it in fancy language.

Which is what i assume you are into. And no it is not like a newspaper. H.G.Wells the founder of sci-fi defined it as a new mythology. Which is what i was refering to. Brake down any of these tales and you see their likeness to the other. Its like a giant literary evolution. They all must be built upon formulars and when leaving the safety zone of what the audience already knows the authour is forced to take the new stuff and combine something that the audeince will know or it will fall flat on its face. Shoot at any sci fi and you'll see this. Because at the prime core of mans need to tell tales dates back to his needs and they are always the same. The need for shelter, Company, safety, food ect.

Secondly, mass and energy in combination live. As can clearly be seen but energy alone cannot. Life as a strict defintion:
1. It[the organsims] must be reproduce
2. It must respire
3. It must have senory perception
4. It must move
5. It must grow
ect. Ligth although fill some of those like movement it cannot forfill the others and as such is unliving. How can you build a living thing from dead things.

Your probably right about concusiness, as it is to difficult to argue

The problem with the whatches is probably due to maginetic forces or other pressures not time effecting the watch differnly not actually on time moving differnlty. Otherwise just going to set my alarm clock in the evening would manupluate time.

And evloving into beings of pure energy is total nonsense. Now evolution happens because of genetic material which codes for amino acids forming proteins. All of these are mass so how can a code of nucleotides be transformed- even over billions of years- into some light based code. Yes the code sequence can change but the code itself cannot be easily changed by traditional means. Let alone into something that is just propostures.



No we did not exist we where not though or energy we just were not.

And dystopic i wasn't referring to you when i posted, so chill. I was refering to the general sence i got when reading the posts. Turning that your from the singular to the general. I think its beacues you are americans a very excitable bunch of gun totting red necks.

Chill be european like myself we have cheese and culture.

Actually generalisation is a fools gold way of thinking, It is the tool of the lazy mind.

It's only useful purpose is to make communication more simple but allas more vunerable to error as well.

sorry i have personal knowledge that this is wrong.

I hereby pronounce you the winner of this thread.

you can pronounce anything you want to but that doesn't make me a lier. because i have had this knowledge from the day of my birth.

i told you i broke the first rule

He might have read it in the Book of Origin!

Hallowed are the Ori.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread. Please stay on topic.



In an intelligent discussion, you must have a reason for your viewpoint. "Knowing" it from your birth it irrelevant and only proves that you believe something for no reason whatsoever, making me question anything else you have to say. No, it doesn't make you a liar, but it does make me question your sanity, or at least, your rationality.

you can question anything you want to.

but i remember my first thought. which was on the day of my birth.

scientifically, inductive deconstruction and consilient synthesis are the keys to understanding things.



okay, that's a very specific definition that you didn't make obvious in your original quote. while i don't disagree with your observations about storytelling, i'd simply point out that those very same wellsprings of imagination and curiosity are the source of scientifically informed speculative theory - some of which has turned out to be pretty true.



it's not because i thought you were referring to me specifically, it's because i thought you were being rude and presumptuous, but i did overreact. on my own behalf, i apologize for bearing my teeth the way i did.

If 100% of our brain was utlized and firing, you would have the worst grand mal seizure in history. You would be dead in a few agonizing minutes. We have neurons whose sole purpose is to quiet down and "inhibit" other neuorns from firing too much. Seizures are what result when these inhibitory neurons break down.

Please change your statement to "it is POSSIBLE we did not exist we where not through or energy we just were not."

No one can claim 100% proof or disproof of the afterlife or God. Christians cannot PROVE God exists. I cannot PROVE God exists. Aethesists cannot PROVE God does not exist. We believe certain things. Please do not represent as absolute facts. Same goes for me and all Christians.

gd

i think both stats can be considered correct. at any given moment, less than 12% of your brain is active. however, that doesn't mean you don't need the other 88%, or that it's just wasting away there. over the course of several minutes or hours, all of your brain will get use most likely. the brain isn't wired to use those neurons for other stuff when they're not in use, except over long periods of time and due to lack of proper stimulation (for example, the visual cortex reconfigures itself among blind people who read braille).

a better way to increase our smarts isn't by increasing our neural activity. our cells would "overheat" (reach neurotoxicity) in the same way an overtaxed CPU would.

the better way to increase our smarts is to get the various neurons in our brain better connected. it's connections between neurons that define out minds, not the neurons themselves. as one neurologist put it, "i link, therefore i am."

I think it is rather strange to offer an insult to an entire country of vastly different individuals and then tell them to calm down.   

I have lived in the southern US my entire life and neither "tote guns" nor have a "red neck". I use sunscreen.   


On topic:

Hmmmmm, ascension to beings of energy ? I would say highly unlikely.
Ascension to a being capable of manipulating energy via mental control seems much more likely to me. Something on the order of Magneto or Dark Phoenix.

The only other thing I would add would be that I think we as a species put to many limitations on what "life" is because of our own point of reference. We may find out that "there are more things in heaven and earth" that are not explained by our philosophy or science.