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Originally Posted by Cantankerous

now that youve made that post i don't know how real anything is or where anything fits in. where do you draw the line between spirit and matter? there are people who say theyve seen a ghost, which is classified as spirit but if you can see it, it takes up space, so is therefore matter?
if nothing can be created or destroyed, are new humans made up of dead ones? that would bring up the subject of reincarnation

jesus i need to sit down somewhere and consider this.

i don't draw such a line, i don't agree with the basic asumption that would require that line.

i think consciousness arises from the body. but the body of course i see as something more complex than your average josE. when i say for example that the earth is my body i don't mean it in a hippie sene, i mean it in the way that it is in fact my extended body, that i am not evolved separate from it and i come from it. in that sense my consciousness comes from a larger body-- and eons of evolution. i disagree wholly with christians notions of the "individual" souls, etc.

also when you say nothing is created nor destroyed, that applies to energy, not matter (think nuclear reactions, where matter is effectively destroyed into energy)-- however, there is a 3rd wheel in the cosmos which is information, order, intelligence-- the way matter & energy are arranged and i consider that a form of matter as well. gets a bit trickier... you can't apply 1st law of thermodynamics in such broad fashion. conservation of energy refers to energy that is all. fictions such as "spirits" are not subject to them except in the sense that these "ideas" consume energy in the brains that churn them.