Does the Soul have Mass?

[MegaManiac]

You can sit here and pose your definitions of matter and energy all you want. The title of this thread is "Does the Soul have Mass?" and you are claiming that bodily energy has mass, and that bodily energy is therefore what constitutes the soul. All I offered was the question, "how can any detectable bodily energy be defined as soul energy?" I believe the soul is nothing more than a concept, and therefore doesn't have mass or energy, other than the energy required to think of it.

 

So far, your only explanation is:

 

 

 

So it is actually YOU who is labeling it as such. I have done nothing of the sort. To me energy is just that, energy. It is always conserved, and it is always taking different form. If you want to suggest that our internal energy is what constitutes our souls, hey, bully for you.

 

If not, than you have yet to define a soul and therefore cannot posit whether or not it has mass.

 

Well you see, this is what's great about being an individual, you can believe whatever you want. What will continue to remain in question is whether what you believe is reasonable.

 

Well then from this line of thinking, everything you can imagine therefore exists, whether it's detectable or not.

 

How about fire breathing dragons, fairies, ghosts, spirits, god, heaven, hell, anal probing aliens, magic spells, or INow's favorite, purple unicorns? Do all of these things exist, but "we just haven't figured out how to detect, or measure" them? :doh:

 

You'd do better to come at this from the opposite direction. It doesn't actually exist until it can be predictably demonstrated to exist. This is what science is all about.

 

 

See now this is good stuff for me!!! But for arguments sake, let's take the term soul out of it completely. And let me approach this from a more simple angle, even if it is only for my benefit.

 

1. All the energy in your body right at the moment of death. Where does that energy get transferred?

 

2. Do we accept that that energy has mass?

 

3. If we accept energy has mass, then that energy continues on. Is my basis for thought completely off here.

 

4. Why do I care? (I don't know, I just do. Lot like love)

 

by the way I appreciate you taking your valuable time to acknowledge my abstract notions. It takes a village to raise and idiot. ;) I'm kinda in my wax on wax off stage :hihi: :lol: But my abstract and against the grain thinking have served me well. So fogive me as I sharpen the saw.

 

Pretty soon I'll CRANE KICKING your azz all over hyperbia :wave: :naughty:

 

:wave:

______MNM______ :doh:

[freeztar]

1. All the energy in your body right at the moment of death. Where does that energy get transferred?

 

The usual suspects:

atmosphere, bacteria, fungi, worms, dust mites, etc...

2. Do we accept that that energy has mass?

It's more appropriate to say that the mass (your decaying body) has energy.

3. If we accept energy has mass, then that energy continues on. Is my basis for thought completely off here.

You're not completely off, but just misunderstanding it a bit. :wave:

E=Mc^2

Energy=Mass times the speed of light (in vacuum) squared

 

Energy does not equal mass. You could say that mass equals energy divided by c^2, though. Make sense?

Pretty soon I'll CRANE KICKING your azz all over hyperbia :naughty:

Be careful!

Don't use all your energy kickin that mazz.

[REASON]

See now this is good stuff for me!!! But for arguments sake, let's take the term soul out of it completely. And let me approach this from a more simple angle, even if it is only for my benefit.

 

1. All the energy in your body right at the moment of death. Where does that energy get transferred?

 

Over time, all forms of internal energy in a body are transferred back into the collective universe. Some more rapidly such as the initial release of heat energy, some more slowly, such as during the decaying process.

 

2. Do we accept that that energy has mass?

 

No. Energy is work, typically measured in joules.

 

3. If we accept energy has mass, then that energy continues on. Is my basis for thought completely off here.

 

I don't accept that energy has mass, but it does continue on because it is always conserved. It only changes form.

 

4. Why do I care? (I don't know, I just do. Lot like love)

 

I imagine because you seem to have an insatiable curiosity, which combined with an open and patient mind, is great for science. I speculate that patience is a bit of a challenge for you though. :doh:

 

:lol: by the way I appreciate you taking your valuable time to acknowledge my abstract notions. It takes a village to raise and idiot. I'm kinda in my wax on wax off stage :wave: :hihi: But my abstract and against the grain thinking have served me well. So fogive me as I sharpen the saw.

 

Pretty soon I'll CRANE KICKING your azz all over hyperbia :wave:

 

I appreciate these comments. Being humble suits you. :doh:

 

I gotta admit, I like your enthusiasm. Keep soakin' it up MM. Your thirst for knowledge will prove to be rewarding. :naughty:

[jedaisoul]

Thanks for the URL. Wiki is actually the first place where I had originally gotten my info and read up on MacDougall's experiments & basic theory. Wiki is generally one of my first stops when I'm looking for answers.

 

I just can't help but to think there has got to be something to this theory.

 

Just incase my point(s) got lost among my palabar, I'm looking to hear what has not already been written on sites like wiki and thought I'd at least get the benefit-of-the-doubt that I already know the basics. And I'll always try to know the basics before looking to our members for answers.

This thread started out as an apparently naiive, but legitimate, question. From the above it is clear that MM is already aware of the "strange claims" made on the subject, to which he is giving credence.

 

Furthermore...

Freeztar, lets say you're the guy that works out the physics behind an action. I'm they guy that can walk up and apply the physics without ever having to work out the formulas.

 

A bank shot in basketball is a great way to illustrate my point. You would work out the entire shot in physical math or whatever. I walk up and look at the shot, be the shot and make the shot (in 1 shot). All the while everyone else is mapping out the shot on paper and checking their calcs, I am already celebrating with the cheerleading squad in the shower room :hyper:.

...is just un-scientific clap trap. We all wish science was that easy, it isn't.

 

**** This thread belongs in Strange Claims ****

[CraigD]

I'd like to hear some member opinions on this subject (the soul having mass).

 

I'm not the science or physics geek the everyone else seems to be. But that's why I'm here.

Strive not to disappoint, here’s some physics geekery, followed by some religion studies geekery: ;)

 

Heat is a form of kinetic energy, so a cold body has less total energy than the same warm one. From this, we can calculate the difference in energy when a 75 kg (typical) human body cools from 37 C (the usual human body temperature) to 20 C (typical room temperature). Assuming a human being is thermally equivalent to a bad of water (not a bad approximation, IMHO),

 

[math]E = \frac{(37 - 20) \,\mbox{C}}1 \cdot \frac{75 \,\mbox{kg water}}1 \cdot \frac{4184 \,\mbox{J}}{1 \,\mbox{C} \cdot 1 \,\mbox{kg water}} = 5334600 \,\mbox{J}[/math]

 

From [math]E=m c^2[/math], [math]\frac{5334600 \,\mbox{J}}{c^2} \,\dot= \, 6 \times 10^{-11} \,\mbox{kg}[/math]

 

That’s not much mass, unless you count it in something really small, like nitrogen atoms, in which case it’s the mass of about 2,000,000,000,000,000 nitrogen atoms. This is a physical real prediction, however – if you sealed a human body up really well so it could couldn’t leak anything, and cooled it down from normal to room temperature, an very, very sensitive scale would in principle detect this change in mass.

 

As lots of folk have previously noted, though, without an objective physical definition of the soul, we can’t really get at the “what’s the mass of a soul” question. It’s a pretty safe bet, I think, that nobody thinks it’s a body’s heat.

 

If you go back to some of the earliest religious writings about souls, you’ll find they equate soul with the air a person inhales and exhales (pneuma), so you could make a case that the human soul masses the same as 2 lungs full of air. Not to many modern religionists hold with the old belief that breath is the same thing as soul, though, so I doubt many people would agree with you.

Not sure if this is the right forum to post this in …

This original post of thread seems neither scientific theory (it doesn’t make any predictions) nor theology (it’s not noticeably religious), so I’ve moved it to the watercooler, a good forum for threads intended to just feel out people’s ideas on a vaguely defined subject.

[CraigD]

I walk up and look at the shot, be the shot and make the shot (in 1 shot). All the while everyone else is mapping out the shot on paper and checking their calcs, I am already celebrating with the cheerleading squad in the shower room

On the other hand, while you’re off celebrating with the cheerleaders, I’m the guy meeting the really cool, brainy girls who find math/science skills hot. All a matter of taste, I suppose.

 

Formal math/science skills don’t interfere with strength, speed, or coordination. Though I never was much at basketball (something about that coordinated jumping and shooting never quite came together for me, though I was a savage rebounder), my best 440 yd time was 47.3 s – not good enough to make an major country’s Olympic team anytime in my lifetime, but pretty winning on a regional highschool level. :hyper: Age (I’m 48 this year) has de-elasticised my muscles and tendons so that even sub 60 quarters are for me but a fond memory, :) though by several accounts, I’ve improved at the fun sport of whacking similarly armed folk with rattan and other sorts of sticks. :)

 

Also, unless you’ve some experience at it, it’s hard to appreciate how zen-y math actually is. Though there’s a lot of literature searching to it, intuition is very important. Athletes may have moves, but nothing IMHO to compare to the math moves of someone like Kurt Gödel. In addition to turning the math and philosophy world every which way but loose, was, by credible accounts, a total love machine. Unfortunately, he was also, in the end, literally too insane to survive. :(

 

All that needs be said to sum up my mood in this post can be found in the lines of Bladerunner:

Sebastian: Ah, I knew it. 'Cause I do genetic design work for the Tyrell Corporation. There's some of me in you. Show me something.

Roy: Like what?

Sebastian: Like anything.

Roy: We're not computers Sebastian, we're physical.

and

Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very very brightly, Roy. Look at you. You're the prodigal son. You're quite a prize!

[Thunderbird]

The only two ways I know is to die or do some out of body experiments.

 

Here is something on the subject, for what its worth.

 

 

Dr. Duncan MacDougall was an early 20th century doctor in Haverhill, Massachusetts who sought to measure the mass purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death.

 

In 1907, MacDougall weighed six patients while they were in the process of dying (no detail is given to how this occurred or at what intervals the patients were weighed). He took his results (a varying amount of perceived mass loss in most of the six cases) to support his hypothesis that the soul had mass, and when the soul departed the body, so did this mass. Logically one must assume that MacDougall knew the patients were dying, and therefore waited for them to die of natural causes. MacDougall also measured fifteen dogs in similar circumstances and reported the results as "uniformly negative," with no perceived change in mass. He took these results as confirmation that the soul had weight, and that dogs did not have souls. MacDougall's complaints about not being able to find dogs dying of the natural causes that would have been ideal have led at least one author to conjecture that he was in fact poisoning dogs to conduct these experiments.[1] In March 1907, accounts of MacDougall's experiments were published in the New York Times and the medical journal American Medicine.

 

Although generally regarded either as meaningless or considered to have had little if any scientific merit[1], MacDougall's finding that the human soul weighed 21 grams has become a meme in the public consciousness. It lent itself to the title of the film 21 Grams. In the end, however, his practices were considered fallible due to shaky methods and small sample size. Scientists disregard his research into this field due to allegations of bias (MacDougall was a fanatical Christian). Any reference to MacDougall in philosophical debates regarding the soul (see also Mind-Body Theories) are mostly for novelty or to ridicule his supposed "scientific experiment."

 

 

Duncan MacDougall (doctor) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[freeztar]

Duncan MacDougall (doctor) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I gave that same link in the second post of this thread to which MM replied:

 

Thanks for the URL. Wiki is actually the first place where I had originally gotten my info and read up on MacDougall's experiments & basic theory. Wiki is generally one of my first stops when I'm looking for answers.

 

I just can't help but to think there has got to be something to this theory.

 

Just incase my point(s) got lost among my palabar, I'm looking to hear what has not already been written on sites like wiki and thought I'd at least get the benefit-of-the-doubt that I already know the basics. And I'll always try to know the basics before looking to our members for answers.

[Pyrotex]

Calculating the equivalent mass of body heat may yield a number, but then you have to deal with the fact that dead dogs, dead trees, earthworms on a hot sidewalk, a baked potato, an ember, a rock sitting in the sun all day -- all these things will cool off and lose heat energy.

 

So, do they all have souls? If the mass equiv of heat energy means something for a human corpse, then what does it mean for a baked potato cooling to room temperature on the dining room table? It either means the baked potato is losing its soul, or it means that heat energy has nothing to do with souls.

 

This is an easy topic to abuse and tangentialize. [go off on a tangent] Because the word "energy" is so easily misunderstood. "What happens to all that life energy when someone dies? Isn't it conserved?" Uhhhh... what is "life energy"? And how do you measure it? If it physically exists at all, then it must be measurable and I assure you that our level of technology can indeed measure it. Arguements based on Universal Ignorance are as "real" as purple unicorns.

 

Getting non-scientific folks to realize that their usage of "energy" often makes no sense in any scientific way is pretty hard at times. Especially when they equate "energy" to "aura", "essence" and other "phlogistons" of the human imagination. Real energy is by its very nature definable, detectable and measurable.

 

Makes me wish sometime that physicists would coin a new word, realenergy, to distinguish it from all the new-age, holistic, woo-woo, romantic, notional street-versions of the word, energy.

 

Given the Internet and various professional search engines that have every magazine and scholarly article on tap, it is not that hard to verify that nobody, nowhere, nohow has ever detected a soul, let alone measured one.

 

Appealing to some vague wishful "lack of technology" is just appealing to Universal Ignorance. "We just don't know enough!" Sorry, but that dog just doesn't hunt. That flag just doesn't flap in the wind.

[paigetheoracle]

I remember some doctor in the Victorian Era measured dying patients and found a few ounces weight loss at the point of death. Now to me that doesn't indicate that the soul has mass but that it could in theory make an impression on the existence of the body, which is not the same thing (Like any force can effect a material body).

 

I also remember seance 'evidence' of a hand formed out of hot wax and the table rapping of the Fox sisters. You can take all this with a pinch of salt but again what it could show, if genuine, is that the soul can effect the material world as form of pressure, which would tie in with this (By the way before you hammer my logic on this, you might like to read my post of the same day, on 'Cats Purring' in this same forum of Alternative theories, second paragraph).

[CraigD]

I remember some doctor in the Victorian Era measured dying patients and found a few ounces weight loss at the point of death.

I suspect you’re thinking of the same 1907 experiment by Duncan MacDougall that’s been referenced several times in this thread. Though technically 1907 is a few years late to be properly in the Victorian era (1837-1901), it’s close enough for me.

 

By monitoring 6 dieing men (4 successfully) on a specially constructed bed-supporting balance scale, MacDougal concluded that the human soul had a mass of about 3/8 to 3/4 oz. He stated that more experiments were needed to support his hypothesis, but neither he nor anyone else ever did such an experiment. Nonetheless, over the years, as the story was retold in various publications, the idea that the human soul massed precisely 21 grams (a bit less than 3/4 oz) became a firmly rooted folk myth, so these days, the phrase “21 grams” is recognized by many people as code-phrase reference to the soul.

 

Since MacDougal, a devout (some say fanatical) Christian was interested in demonstrating not only that humans have souls with measurable, physical qualities such as mass, but that only humans have souls, he repeated his test with 12 dogs, concluding that their mass was unchanged shortly after death.

[Brinnie]

Everything has a mass, except for the Church of Scientology.

[InfiniteNow]

Everything has a mass, except for the Church of Scientology.

 

Well, I'll just say that your wrong, and my only reference will be the word photon.

 

 

As well-respected member here likes to say, scientology is a mental disorder.

[paigetheoracle]

Everything has a mass, except for the Church of Scientology.

 

How dare you attack the Church of Scientology? Don't you know it's my turn and I've got more knowledge of it, having once been in it (right in it): Amo, Amore, Amass as much money as possible while claiming to save the world and empty your pockets at the same time (Now that's a magic trick of some merit but not much). Are the science of self-deception!

 

Does the soul have mass? Lets weight around and find out

[nutronjon]

Not sure if this is the right forum to post this in, but I'd like to hear some member opinions on this subject (the soul having mass).

 

I'm not the science or physics geek the everyone else seems to be. But that's why I'm here. To learn, not so much to teach :applause:.

 

MM

 

To bad this thread was moved. I just answered a question about reincarnation with an explanation of neutrinos. We are not sure what God is, nor are we absolutely sure what matter is. Treating the two as separate things, may prevent us from knowing truth. It also, unfortunately, leaves us with only a mythical God to discuss, and prevents us from considering a God as Spinoza imagined a God. Everything is God stuff. God is the energy of all matter, and He does not walk through gardens with humans, expressing his disappointment because they ate the fruit of the wrong plant.

 

It is well known that there exist extremely high energetic particles in the Universe with energies up to 10^20 eV. How they are produced and how they propagate in the Universe have been a puzzle for a long time. Recent experiments suggest that these particles come from outside the Galaxy. More detailed understanding of their origin will require detecting many more particles. It may also be necessary to observe the production process through other windows. Nucleons and nuclei lose their energies in less than 100 Mpc through interactions with the cosmic microwave background. Furthermore, intergalactic magnetic fields can bend their trajectories, masking their sites of origin. Gamma rays are even more limited in pathlength due to electron pair production when they collide with radio photons.

 

In this regard, neutrinos have uniquely advantageous characteristics: they can penetrate cosmological distances in the Universe and their trajectories are not deflected because they have no electric charge. They carry information about extremely high energy (EHE) production processes, even in the early Universe. It is therefore important to understand the possible processes for producing EHE neutrinos and to consider the possibilities for detecting the predicted flux resulting from several different models.

 

UHE Neutrinos from CR

[nutronjon]

This thread started out as an apparently naiive, but legitimate, question. From the above it is clear that MM is already aware of the "strange claims" made on the subject, to which he is giving credence.

 

Furthermore...

 

...is just un-scientific clap trap. We all wish science was that easy, it isn't.

 

**** This thread belongs in Strange Claims ****

 

Joseph Campbell said myth is the result of spontaneously being aware of a truth. Strangely, myths around the world share a lot in common, almost as though God spoke to everyone, only given their different environments, each understood a little differently. In some cases an eel has to take the part of the snake, because there are no snakes on this island, so no one could have an image of a snake, but they know what an eel looks like. Minor differences in the story, but the same spontaneous knowning.

 

Oddly, when it comes to inventions, it is not uncommon for different people in different regions of the world to invent the same thing at the same time. This is like people around the world sharing almost identical mythology.

 

Then there is "The Hundredth Monkey". This is a curious phenonomia. Scientist wanting to study a group of forest monkeys lured them out by throwing bananas on the beach. One day a young female began washing the sand off her food, and slowly other monkeys began imitating her. When the alpha male took up washing his food, all the monkeys took up the practice. This isn't so strange, buttttt....

 

On a different island, where monkeys had no contact with the food washing monkeys, the monkeys began washing food. This is the effect of mass consciousness. Once critical mass is reached, what started as an individuals thought, becomes everyone's thought.

 

Much of what we know comes from intuitive thought. Now it is important that we test our intuitive thoughts scientifically, but hey, someone can make that great shot intuitively, while everyone else is working on the math.

 

However, keep in mind. If Einstien were to come to you and explain relativity, you wouldn't understand him any better than you can understand a professor's explanation of relativity. If we want to understand the theory of relativity, we have to prepare ourselves for the understand, so shall we all study math so we have a chance of understanding the concepts?

 

And so when God walked through gardens explaining life to people, they could understand only what they were ready to understand. That does not make holy books the last word about God.

[InfiniteNow]

Duncan MacDougall is one of the shadiest sounding doctors we've ever come across, and seems like the kind of guy who liked to play games like "Drink This Bubbling Liquid" and "Smell my Ether Soaked Rag," both of which we learned were unfun after playing a couple rounds with the man who sold bikes around the corner.

 

In the early 20th century, MacDougall theorized that the soul had weight. His experiments even came up with a number, 21 grams, which is where the title of that movie came from. What experiments you ask? The experiments where MacDougall took six patients "in the process of dying" and weighed them.

 

Being a profound scientific mind, there's not much written about who these people were or why and how they were dying. It's just enough to know that in their last moments, probably while they were hoping for a miracle, or maybe CPR, they were getting rolled onto a scale like deli-sliced meat at the market.

 

MacDougall also took the time to replicate his experiments with dogs. Fifteen dogs, in fact, which were apparently uncooperative when it came to dying of natural causes, so he had to help them along towards doggy heaven.

 

Although, according to his experiment, while humans lost anywhere from no weight because they died too quick for him to adjust his scale to several ounces at death, dogs lost nothing and therefore have no souls, which by our calculations means Guthrie's two-headed dog had twice as much no soul as a regular dog and was therefore evil to the core.

 

 

This, and more delightful treats, at the following:

 

The 10 Craziest Scientific Experiments Ever Conducted | Cracked.com