> > Perhaps we can leave God out of it just for the moment and concentrate instead on humans as a kind of stepping stone to God. Just as the universe may have started from a singular event, so do we, and the question for me is which comes first ... matter or intelligence? BBella's suggestion and your confirmation that all matter is energy appears to dissolve frontiers between the physical and the spiritual, but I don't see how we can do without this distinction. 
> 
> We have to use the fact that energy and matter are two forms of the same thing. there is no way around it.
> -Or we could begin by explaining that in a way similar that ice is the solid form of water, matter is a "solid" (glosses over lots of details) form of energy. -> > 
> >When the physical sperm fertilizes the physical egg, a new physical being comes into existence. Clearly, if you and BBella are right, a new "spiritual" being comes into existence at the same time, and to understand this, I need something a little more precise than "energy within brain matter". Do you think the brain matter PRODUCES the energy, or is it a CONDUIT for the energy?
> 
> A newborn baby is not very conscious. He is not aware that he is aware. That develops later. Our consciousness is at a quantum level, and comes from energy produced by the brain, which is why we cannot 'grab hold' of it, to use a Texas term.
> 
> 
> >
> > If it's the former, our consciousness is entirely our own, right from the beginning, and it will die with the brain; if it's the latter, does the brain tune into some external consciousness from the moment of birth?
> 
> We just don't know. Consciousness appears as the brain develops. If I am right that the consciousness is a quantum entity behind Heisenberg's wall of uncertainty, but arising in the brain, then the 'Zeno effect' in this following article may keep our consciousness in existence after we pass on and our soul becomes timeless.
> -The uncertainty principle isn't a "wall." It's "real" statement is mathematically dense, but it says that you can't know both the position and the velocity of a quantum object to an arbitrary precision. How you can possibly rationalize a basis of consciousness from this mathematical law means that you *must* be making an overarching series of generalizations divorced from the actual meaning of the theorem. At the level of how chemical actions occur (our brain) we aren't dealing with quantum phenomenon in the sense I've described in quantum computing. They're alot more predictable. Heisenberg's only action here is in determining positions of electrons. -> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627596.200-quantum-wonders-the-hamlet-effect.html

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"

This thread has arisen out of BBella's question concerning what we would regard as the ideal ultimate truth. My own response, after a few refinements, is that the bodiless self would survive death, and maintain its personal identity in a world filled with the spiritual pleasures of life ... without any suffering and without a God ... and free to choose at any time to sacrifice its identity, perhaps by taking on a new form. I don't know to what extent others would regard this as an ideal, but I have suggested that we should consider what evidence there is, if any, for at least part of this dream scenario.-Clearly a key element is once again the nature of consciousness. I'll have to leave David and Matt to do battle over quantum theory, and I can do no more than comment on their possible conclusions. David has argued that "we can only see the surface of the 'wall of uncertainty'. If we could get to the other side we wouldn't be so confused." Matt says that the uncertainty principle isn't a wall, but I'm happy for the sake of discussion to accept the metaphor and to ask: what evidence is there that on the other side we have disembodied consciousness? -Matt has offered a very helpful comparison between ice as a solid form of water and matter as a solid form of energy. We know that when ice melts, it reverts to water. But when my brain matter is rotting in the ground, what evidence is there that it will turn into the same energy that forms my present consciousness and, by extension, my present identity? David argues that the 'Zeno effect' MAY keep our consciousness in existence after we pass on. The tentativeness of the auxiliary seems appropriate to me, particularly in the light of a quote I found in a Wikipedia article on the 'Zeno effect': "The case for quantum biology remains one of 'not proven'. [...] as yet no clear-cut example has been presented of non-trivial quantum effects at work in a key biological process." This suggests to me that quantum theory is a long way from resolving our confusion. -As science unravels the ever increasing complexities of life's mechanisms, its findings may well be interpreted as providing evidence for design, but I can't see it doing the same for the ideal of a disembodied human intelligence. However, as we've stressed over and over again on this forum, what constitutes evidence need not be confined to the realm of science. I would have thought that any positive evidence is far more likely to be found in the realm of personal experiences. I'm talking here of mysticism, the so-called "paranormal", the unfathomable intricacies of our emotions, thoughts and ideas, the equally unfathomable impact of the arts, and especially music. Like David and Matt, I remain sceptical about the different claims of the many religions, but that doesn't mean they aren't based on a common truth. In all of these human activities, there appears to be an intuitive link to some kind of spiritual dimension that can't be explained by matter or solidified energy or whatever other description you want to give to the physical cells of the brain. It may be (only "MAY") that intersubjective ... as opposed to purely subjective ... experiences provide a more reliable guide to the UT than the objective findings of science.