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[Armok]

I REEEEALY doubt you have a degree in astrophysics, because what you say is utter bushit, there are a great many things indicating the existance of dark matter.

[lastofthelight]

I said dark energy. Dark energy and dark matter are entirely different things, and result from drastically differing data, experiments, and time periods. Dark matter, as a concept, has been around for awhile, dark energy is pretty new. All dark matter is, is stars that are too dim for us to detect. Despite the fancy name, its actually pretty boring.

Anyways, this is starting to get off topic. More onto the original subject, and replying to what someone said earlier:

Yes, I do see similarities between corrupt uses of science and religion. Both can benefit the human experience, both can be used in unfortunate ways. I don't mean in the stupid "mad scientist" anti-intellectual sterotypes our culture is so fond with, but more the sort of...loss of wonder and excess of personal ambition and desire for fame, or at least status, that seems to be so prevalent in the hard science fields these days.

[Armok]

*facepalms* 

Well, guess I suck then, I am still uncertain to accept something like that from just a forum post thou... ((link cue))

[Jude]

Anyway, I think that consciousness simply ends when you die.  After all, your brain is gone, your brain stops working.  It may be difficult to imagine, but it happens every night when you go to sleep.

Uh, your brain doesn't stop working. Unconsciousness is not the same as your whole body and brain rotting away.

[Leafsnail]

My main point was that consciousness can stop, and death would merely be an infinite extension of that.

[Armok]

Actually, conciousness doesn't stop; only memory. Your brain is working constantly while you sleep, and also dreaming much more than you think, but it is wired so that memories are not recoded during that time. there is really no gap in conciousness (well, depending on how you define it), only in the recording of it.

[blah28722]

They're the same goddamn things.

For all intents and purposes, not remembering is the same as it not happening.

[Psyco Jelly]

We can train ourselves to remember our dreams, which we usually don't. A very vivid dream can be easily forgotten, especially if you don't think about it when you wake up.

[Rilder]

They're the same goddamn things.

For all intents and purposes, not remembering is the same as it not happening.

I don't remember being born does this mean it never happened?

I don't remember what I ate 5 years ago does that mean I didn't eat anything?

Edit: I don't remember falling asleep does that mean I never fell asleep?

[penguinofhonor]

The Big Crunch. Eventually all matter in the universe will recompact, according to one theory.

A theory that's been discredited for about half a century, unfortunately.

(There is well below the amount of matter necessary for gravity to take hold according to the "Big Crunch" calculations, and that's before factoring in "dark energy", which is actually causing the universe's expansion to, apparently, increase.)

I believe that the same people showed that there is well below the amount of matter necessary for galaxies to stay together, but somehow they do. That's what dark matter is about. So it's a fight between dark matter and dark energy.

[Cthulhu]

Sounds like a battle between metal bands.

[RAM]

As I understand it dark matter and dark energy are things people made up because their equations didn't work. Dark matter would add enough gravitational force to oppose the centrifugal force of a galaxy and dark energy would explain why things seem to increase velocity when they have no business doing so. It seems to me that arbitrarily adding a value to one of your variables in order to make your equation work is very bad science and that currently it is still only a hypothesis. It is, of course, more complicated than that, and it is certainly possible that there are large quantities of matter and energy that we have not been able to detect. Maybe dark stuff is the afterlife, it would explain where the spiritual elements of an entity could exists without having ever been detected...

[Psyco Jelly]

I thought that dark energy was synonymous with vacuum energy, which actually has some testing behind it. Of course, vacuum energy may not quite account for all dark energy, but at least it has tangible evidence.

[Vester]

Resurrecting this so the Atheists! thread doesn't get derailed even more.

Does anyone else have a concept of the Afterlife? Or even a non-concept.

[Jackrabbit]

Terry Pratchet's one is the one I'd really like.