Matter & Energy

Faith & Science Conversation
, , , ,
1

Bear with me, I’m not a scientist. Just a curious person who reads a lot…

I’ve read that human beings are a combination of matter and energy.
I’ve also read that there is a set amount of energy in the universe. The number doesn’t go up or down beause energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed into a different type of energy (again, ‘what I’ve read’).

So when we die, is it possible that we become energy without matter, like radio waves? Where does our energy go? Where did it come from when were born?

When God created us in His own image, was He referring to our energy rather than matter?

1 Like
2

Not according to Christianity.

It gets ‘absorbed’ by the ‘system’. Several thousands calories, depending on size, all up for grabs.

From biological mother

1 Like
3

One belief of being made in the image of God is that an image of a god is an idol. A idol is a representation of a god on this earth. So it’s thought that we are representations of God on this earth and that we are to bear his image, which is to do his will. So by loving god, loving our neighbors and being stewards of the earth sr are being the image of god. It’s not about what we are made of or how we look but how we live.

When we eat an apple, we consume its energy in the form of calories. Those calories then go to hormone production, to building muscles, and to things like producing tears or maintaining our body temperature. It’s even things like when we snuggle up to our pet and feel their warmth, that’s energy being transferred by heat. So when we die, depending on how our corpses are handled depends on where our energy goes. If we were dumped in a grave and allowed to decompose naturally into the soil our energy would be lots of heat as we composted and would become calories for worms and even fungi and so on. If we are cremated, our energy is mostly consumed by the fire like a log.

As already mentioned, we essentially are absorbed back into nature. Let’s say worms eat on us. We become calories in that worm making up its body. That worm is then eaten by a bird. We and that work are then absorbed into the bird. That bird dies and falls from an apple tree. The mushrooms breaks us down and trades the nitrogen for carbon with the apple tree. The tree uses us “ worm me and bird “ to feed itself and some of our amino acids become an apple. That Apple is picked by a farmer and feed to a goat. The goat makes cheese and it’s eaten by a person. That person gets pregnant and has a kid. The energy just keeps on moving around. Could even go as far as one day an asteroid hits earth and breaks it up. Life ceases. Our amino acids become the building blocks for chemical processes that results in abiogenesis occurring billion years from now starting life all over.

Now how does that natural scenario play out as far as a renewed heaven and earth with a resurrection and so on? No idea.

2 Likes
4

Hamlet
Act IV
Scene III

King. Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?

Hamlet. At supper.

King. At supper! Where?

Hamlet. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of [politic] worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that’s the end.

King. Alas, alas!

Hamlet. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

King. What dost thou mean by this?

Hamlet. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.
from Hamlet. William Shakespeare

5 Likes
5

Hi again Carol. I think the answers to all such questions have two aspects, one regarding the matter and energy which make up our bodies and, if we have one, a soul about which nothing emperical is known. Still many have beliefs about what happens to our souls. I don’t personally believe they are gifted us wholly at birth. Rather I think we make them as we live by how we live. What happens to them when our material bodies die nobody knows of course. After all there isn’t even much agreement about what they even are if they exist at all. I find it very easy to attach meaning to the word though I look to no authority to tell me what happens to them when we die. It doesn’t bother me not to know.

6

You mean like rats and clouds, and rocks?

It is like saying the Bible is a combination of paper and ink.

But the essence of human beings and the Bible are not the physical materials of which they are composed. That would be seriously missing the point of what it means to be a human being or the Bible.

It cannot go up or down in a quantity greater than Plank’s constant divided by the interval of time over which it is measured. In other words this is correct when we measure energy over long periods of time but not when we look at extremely short periods of time. These fluctuations don’t change the energy over the long term but they can affect the direction of the events which follow.

The physical matter and energy of which we are physically composed is part of the natural world and its cycles of material and energy. As the Bible says…

till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

But I don’t think that is what we really are any more than the Bible is really ink and paper.

I don’t think so. God is spirit… not energy. Energy is a measurable quantity governed by the laws of nature.

Being created in the image of God is about a parent-child relationship between man and God. In us God’s infinite actuality is reflected by our infinite potentiality so that there will be no end to what God can give to us and no end to what we can receive from Him.

7

Hmmm. A lot of interesting points to consider. Thanks all. And Merry Chistmas. :star2:

2 Likes
8

Which makes it rationally, reasonably, possible eh? Like fairies.

9

Unlike the fairies, a soul neatly fits a useful niche. It is felt to be at the core of who we are. Cast it away and you may feel you’ve become the wrong person, alienated from yourself.

Like many words it means different things in different contexts. In Christiandom it is who/what you’ll be in any post Mortem extra innings. I am not concerned with this usage.

1 Like
10

All matter is decaying to decaying energy. All energy is decaying; attenuating, its wavelengths stretching out, flatlining. No hope there. Just insanely, meaninglessly long time before every quantum becomes isolated. Without solace. The ancients projected God as the ultimate moral being to explain the evolution of morality. Read on Macduff. Especially poetry.

11

I love that.

12

I think that is the meaning of eternal life.

Life is not just existence – not without that which would make such an existence worthwhile. This is not about grasping for immortality like a vampire (undead). Actual life consists of growth and learning. And that is where I see the need for a relationship with God – not because God is so full of Himself that everything has to about Him, but because there is no end to what an infinite God has to offer.

1 Like
13

image

5 Likes
14

@Carol_M

  • Only my subjective opinion; so please don’t take anything I write as facts ok., this gives me freedom to write: also I’m adding vocabulary too that I learned.

  • Words finding words, and if I use a word then that word is triggers to others - I learned that’s what happens

  • so take these words and interpret to words that you want

  • our spirit soul: lives forever and don’t die, it’s only our physical body that dies

  • Our spirit soul lives forever and our spirit has needs which those needs are blocked while on earth

  • yet we still can feed from Devine spirit yet it’s more difficult while on earth but it’s possible, I know @Dale will get tired of me writing about this however I do thank @Dale for brining this to my attention that I never explain what Devine teaches me

  • I’m articulating what Devine mainly teaches me is how to feed from light in the midst of all my situations, thoughts, emotions, and to understand more about allow and block - yes extremely about allow and what happens as I block and how to allow in the midst of blocking which I don’t have a word for this., so I’ll call it allowing makes block less, and allow more

  • yet after we leave our physical body we go closer to light (I learn these words from a Jew - vessel shekhinah, Shechinah, Ruach ha-kodesh) to Devine: Holy Spirt is the Christian word.

  • Basically we go closer to spiritual food that our spirit feeds from and this spiritual food light is fire, white fire. I don’t know if it’s possible to go away from white fire, due to the pull. This I wonder then how much free will do we really have actually, I don’t think we do; example in our physical body try to not breath, one will breath. It’s that way for our spirit after our spirit leaves our physical body, there’s a pull towards

  • and this white fire burns and what I meant by water is I meant that it takes care of the thirst so spring of water flow too but it’s fire water, light fire water., it’s borrowed words because actually it’s not like any light, fire, water, because it doesn’t look like fire, but it burns but it’s like water., and however white, how come I saw the color white though within people flowing outward, radiate white: that’s on earth though in my physical body. The reason why I borrowed the word fire is cause of the burn but that burn is water cause it takes care of the thirst, but also it burns away, so it cycles the thoughts and I think that’s the healing., unconditional love., the area I closely related with @Klax accept for Klax used the word love and I think love has condition, this type of unconditional love isn’t with conditions it’s more of deep understanding and healing

  • but actually it’s fire we go closer to and it’s extremely difficult to resist so burn we drink - actually one drinks it still burns but it’s fire, but it takes care of the spiritual thirst., so realistically what is free will do we really have free will actually? In my other writing i wish now I expand more about the pinch, but that’s when resisting, you see in my other writing I was saying burn 'till drink and actually it’s pinch if resist and burn still while drinking it takes care of the spiritual thirst., there’s really no blockage like how one has on earth, instead of block there’s that pull us to and allow.

  • it’s opposite then what it’s like on earth

  • Now my questions are as we go closer to fire white light (I’m guessing we go out of this earth shell kind of like how our eye ball is, that layer of the eye ball we go through that and so in a way the earth is like a cell and we go through the shell layer cell and from there - I don’t know

  • However what I do know is drinking fire white light

  • This is the area I was going to write to @NickolaosPappas and I never did., well I began but never finish the writing

  • It doesn’t go like that about sin.

  • what was that called irrevocable sin or unforgivable sin: that you @NickolaosPappas were writing about., a punish, the thing is fire goes through and burns away through healing., one can get a pinch when resisting but the closer when one goes to light it cycles through,

  • but that fire white light is healing and also burns away and

  • you see i don’t understand why earth is how it is for that blockage and that’s the area I don’t understand, why

  • Ok if this doesn’t make any sense how about then just have this as a made up story then

  • but oh the other thing is burn fire light - that’s what I feed on now from earth., but do I understand it all no

  • I just called burn fire light an it

  • do I understand ‘it’ all

  • so just think I called the Devine an it

  • Devine is that fills us up

  • Christians would use the word Holy Spirit

  • Jews would use the word shechinah Ruach ha-kodesh

  • Oh you ask are we of God’s image

  • I think that means image as identity

  • able to allow light flow from with in us outward., so that light that is God can flow from with in us outward, and we’re able to have a relationship

  • so I think image is more identity

  • example lets say I can sing, that’s a fragile image saying I can sing, because what happens when I lose my singing abilities: that imagine is no longer as I can’t sing

  • However image of God is not fragile because it’s relying on God not on our abilities (I’m not referring to people with disabilities and how people with abilities can do things, I’m not referring to that) that was another trigger, I found out when I used the word abilities., I was basically trying to articulate it’s of God’s abilities identity, not of our abilities. It has nothing to do with physical disabilities, I wasn’t referring to that., I was referring to - I notice people keep relying on their abilities. and our abilities is fragile anyways, I’m articulating about God isn’t fragile for our Identity image which is God., I’m talking about God, is our true identity, that’s unconditional loves us and that is not fragile., it is this that was my home and still is my home. I can say I’m a child of God, in any of my situations, that’s not fragile. It’s a relationship that’s not fragile because God doesn’t depend on me, instead God waits 'till I allow, yet when not in this physical body there’s a pull towards God., so what is earth then if God waits, compare to when out of physical body God pulls us towards., see I don’t understand everything but the point I’m articulating is God is our identity image a relationship

  • I’m referring on God’s abilities as the spiritual head, I’m using Christian vocabulary

  • We’re not spiritual head, we’re of the spiritual body of God’s spiritual head, so our image is God’s spiritual head and abilities, and not relying on any of our abilities, as spiritual head is true time, we’re of spiritual body and always middle

  • so image is already of true time already of spiritual head of our spiritual body

  • so I could say words that others uses so I could say I’m a child of God in any situation

  • I’m a child of God who can sing, I’m a child of God who can’t sing

  • see how that goes, because the identity of God isn’t fragile

  • kabbalah means receive

  • This is only my subjective opinion if you don’t agree with any of it, just pretend I made up a story and to help with a made up story I’ll add a made up story photo here where spock is giving a priest blessing, Birkat Kohanim Priesty Blessing, of the Devine due to Shechinah, shekhinah vessel light

Birkat Kohanim Priesty Blessing
Birkat Kohanim Priesty Blessing1879×1249 134 KB

1 Like
15

Since Leonard Nimoy was Jewish and it was apparently he that devised the “Vulcan salute”, it is distinctly possible there is a connection to the blessing. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
16

Bless you mate. Love is implicitly unconditional.

1 Like
17

i agree with that.

18

Can it be cast away? I’m not sure what you mean by that. Can you give me an example?

19

In a sense what we mean by a soul has to do with how we understand what and who we are in relation to the most over arching truth we have found. This will at the same time commit us to an understanding of what we find to be sacred. The beauty of settled religion is much of this will be articulated and one can try it on to see how well it fits. But for me this is too vital and too intimate a decision not to attempt first hand. Also I’m not sure I could commit to anything I arrived at in that way.

Sorry this taking so long hammer out. But I guess the closest I can get is to say a soul is the means is our inward capacity to perceive and evaluate implicit meanings. That any implicit meanings ever present themselves to us is a miraculous thing but once they do and your soul locks onto the one(s) most pertinent in that moment you have only one authentic choice.

20

To the physicists out there . . .

From my understanding, energy is a property of matter and/or a property of a system, not a separate entity. Is this correct?