In my last existence post I mentioned that the teachers who showed me that my chair did not exist still lied to me! Even the molecules, atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons do not exist!
What??? It is even more amazing that this was known long before I was born in 1949! For example, The foundations of quantum physics were laid back in the 20's. Heisenberg stated his famous Uncertainty Principle in 1927. One simple example of this is trying to find the location of an electron. The energy you use to observe the electron, moves the electron so that it is no longer there! You can measure velocity or position, but not both at the same time. Another example that I use all the time is tuning my guitar using beat frequencies. I start by tuning one string to some source, then use that string to tune a second string. I press the string to a fret so that the two strings play the same pitch. Then I listen. If I hear a beat in the sound, I tune the second string until the beat slows down. In order to tune the string perfectly, I would need to wait forever to prove that there was no beat! So, I just get it slow enough that I make it faster if I try to get it closer.
All sorts of strange things happen in the realm of quantum physics. Another example is the double slit experiment. Back in 1803 Thomas Young explained the phenomenon where light passes through two slits and forms an interference pattern on a screen behind the slits. What should particles do? If you shoot bullets at a slit in a steel wall, you see a line of bullet holes in the screen behind the wall. OK, so make two slits, and what would you see? Yep, 2 lines of holes, each neatly behind the 2 slits. Easy! We use electron guns to make (now old style) TV displays (cathode ray tubes). So, lets shoot electron "bullets" at 2 slits... we should see two neat lines of "electron hits" behind the slits - right? However, we do not! Instead, we see electron hits in an interference pattern just like the light made! What? The electrons behaved like waves, not like particles. Some described the electrons as merely "probability" distributions, and others talked about the paths they took. For example, in 1948 Feynman published his "Path Integral" explanation. Basically he said that the particle traveled all possible paths to it's destination! Weird! More double slit into.
Of course, one of the most amazing and famous things that was stated around this time was Einsteins formula, E = MC**2 (1917). Basically, it says that matter and energy are interchangeable! If you think of that in light of our discussions of particles and waves, you must deal with the fact that those particles we perceive are just a manifestation of the energy that composes them. If you want to visualize the universe as starting in a big bang, then think about it as God imagining a 4-dimensional (at least) space, then thumping it with a big old finger to instantly create "all the stuff that ever was and ever will be"... stuff = matter = waves = energy. The wave-particles are all held together by electro/magnetic/atomic force to cause us to perceive them as solid objects... Can you feel the vibs yet?
So, we can not figure out where an electron is, and we see that it behaves as a wave as well as a particle and is just a manifestation of big bang energy. So basically, we can visualize the electron as "popping in and out" of existence in the vicinity of the nucleus of an atom in one of the discrete bands determined by its quantum state sort of like it would appear randomly in an interference band behind two slits. The other building blocks of the atoms, the neutrons and protons are made from bosons that behave in similar ways to the electrons, so you see... even the subatomic particles do not exist! So, the atoms do not exist... so I do not exist! Simple - eh?
Now for a final example, lets get to the condensate... back in 1924-25 Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein imagined a very odd behavior of matter. They said that if matter could be cooled to near absolute zero, the atoms would become totally indistinguishable! Basically, thy would become a glob, not individual anymore. As it turned out, we did not get to observe this behavior until 1995, right here in good ol'e Colorado at CU. They used the wave troughs of laser light to grab the atoms, and thus, cool them, and an electro-magnetic field to lock them into the center of the beam so that they could not bounce into other atoms and heat up again. When they accomplished their goal, they saw the phenomenon. The atoms got "fuzzier" and "fuzzier" until they just merged together into one condensed blob! Double weird!! Atoms are not the nice little solar systems we were told about, are they? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose-Einstein_condensate More details http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/2242
Well, you may not think these arguments have been simple as I promised, but I think I can summarize them simply... I do not exist because...
- My perception of myself is based on a remote sensing scam. My brain interprets sensations that come in from remote sensors via electrical impulses and does not actually experience any of the things that it perceives. That does not prove that I do not exist, but it opens the possibility that I might not exist.
- Any Microscope shows that my body is not any thing like I think it is! It is a battle field of microscopic beings, worms, mites, foreign cells, and many other things and even the part that I think of as "me" is constantly refreshed, even including my bones within 3 years! After I die, liquids and gases are released as the soft stuff rots until only a tiny collection of minerals is left behind.
-- The Cosmos is a soup of particles called stars with vast intervening empty space... ah... except the 2 Hydrogen nuclei per cm**3... Then, zoom down to the super-microscopic world of atoms and we find the same thing... tiny specs of "matter" with comparatively vast volumes of emptiness between them... basically, the chair you are sitting on is nothing but empty space with some specs held together by electrical force. Go ahead... jump up and down on it...
-- Finally, that solar system picture of the atoms was false too! Not only are the atomic components made from other, smaller entities, but those entities do not behave like particles at all! They flip in and out of existence and can not even be located! How can they make something that does exist?
Like me for example, I do not exist. At least not in the way that I perceive myself to exist... not in the sense that I am sitting here on my non-existent chair, typing with a non-existent keyboard a non-existent message... oh bother...
The only thing that finally relieved my tension, felt from childhood, of realizing that I did not exist was finally figuring out that I did exist! I exist in exactly the way that the creator created me to exist, and how He designed me to perceive my existence. I think I said it simply in an earlier post... I am a figment of His imagination, not mine. Sorry Rene... He thinks, therefore I am.
- Ac 17:28 - for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, `For we also are His children.' (NAS - CrossWalk online Bible)
