Then I encourage you to read the thread.
(bolding mine)
Not much snark intended, but perhaps you should. The science angle is actually relevant, as posters who suggested reincarnation was possible suggested an energy argument (energy in the physical conservation laws sense).
And this is precisely the reason I chose this signature:
I agree. But entertaining the possibility that past lives exist and the probability that they do are very different things. When some people claim there is a high probability of past lives some of us want to know what evidence exists for these claims.
When you follow “I respect your right to…” with “but the ideas themselves don’t seem that impressive”, it is hard to believe that you are showing any respect at all.
And I was not out to impress you.
But that is not the point. The point here is that I responded to the topic. I tried to give as much information as I could in the response. I explained my lack of expertise, but tried hard to answer all of the questions, even when they felt more like an interrogation.
I may or may or may not be exactly right in my explanations - but then I stated right up front that I am not a scientist, and could probably not do justice to the scientific explanations. And if you are not a scientist, then you are probably no more qualified then I am to speculate on this concept - including how impressive it is.
Could you perhaps provide a link to someone or something that has the expertise to get those ideas across?
When energy is transformed, is that a “shuffling of the deck,” so to speak? If the energy does not carry anything from one configuration to another (which I don’t see it doing), then it just goes from one state of pure energy to another. What does it mean to say “past?” Does pure energy even reside within time?
What do you mean by “pure” energy?
Which members do I need to be make sure I interest with my opinions? I think it will be difficult for me to recognize when an opinion will be “very interesting” to specific posters. Opinions, by their very nature, aren’t necessarily backed by proof.
I am not a mechanic, but if you are stranded at the side of the road and I offer to help fix your car because I happen to see that your disributor cap got loose, will you insist that I leave you there to wait for a “real mechanic” to come along?
And did you insist on your friends’ credetials before accepting their argument of some sort of transference of past lives?
But to further said conversation evidence(not the same thing as “proof”) is essential, otherwise you’ve just got people throwing words at each other and nothing is learned.
You don’t have to interest anybody. But if you state any opinion in any conversation, at some point someone is probably going to ask why you have that opinion. That’s all this is.
I’m sure someone with a better science education could respond to your post in more depth, but the best I can do is to say I think you’re using the idea of energy in a metaphorical way- not a scientific way that relates to the laws of thermodynamics. Our bodies change food into energy through a chemical process. There’s nothing mystical or enduring about that. Matter is energy anyway, and there are specific physical processes that take place when food is converted to stored energy in your body and then used. Specific physical and chemical processes break our bodies down when we die. There’s nothing specific or individualized about energy. You might take in energy by eating a burger, but you’re not taking in anything specific to the cow it was made from and nothing about the cow continues to exist in any meaningful sense. Sound is changes in air pressure. A telephone converts those into electronic signals, transmits them, and turns them into sound again. Again, there are specific, describable processes at work there and there isn’t some kind of you-ness that is being projected and transformed. It’s just vibrating molecules in the air.
I fully support the rights of people to believe whatever they want. I think Scientologists have the right to their beliefs. That doesn’t mean their beliefs aren’t goofy.
Mission accomplished. 
It felt like an interrogation because the people here want to know exactly what you are asserting. And any logical inconsistencies with it are of importance to this thread.
I am not a scientist. But even a layperson can point out logical inconsistencies. If someone says a cat is an insect, a layperson can point out that cats have spines, so they are probably not insects.
Well, the way I understand it, it doesn’t really “carry” something (that was probably one of my many mistaken words here)…it transforms from one form to another and that process can “move” data.
The example I gave of the phone conversation is one of those transformations that moves information or data: When you speak into your telephone, sound energy from your voice is changed into electrical energy. The electrical energy is then converted back into sound energy on another phone, allowing someone to hear you.
And if information can be moved through the transformation of energy, then I think it becomes a matter of how far and through what medium.
There are other questions too, and I have my own opinion on how that might be accomplished, but I would never post them here after being advised I should not bother posting opinions that are not interesting or cannot be proven.
But like I said before they believe in past lives - and that was the posted question. It’s just that they believe the methodology is through energy transformation, and there are varying opinions as to how that would happen even among my friends. and myself if it were so, for that matter.
No one here has asked you for proof-we have asked for evidence and cites from those who put forth these ideas you have about energy and reincarnation.
The phone doesn’t transmit information. It converts sound waves into electrical energy, transmits those, and turns them into sound waves again.
Nobody said this.
And here you are making statements that are not supported by the facts.
“Matter is energy anyway”
Matter is not energy. Matter is matter, and energy is energy. Energy is the ability to do work (apply a force through a distance).
And sound is not a change in air pressure. Sounds are vibrations that travel through the air. A change in the air pressure can modify the sound, but it is not the definition of sound.
I am not a scientist…but I am not ignorant. I do understand most of the basic principles.
What I don’t understand is why no one will call you on those errors, when they are quite quick to throw stones at me.
[quote=“Marley23, post:297, topic:648137”]
The phone doesn’t transmit information. It converts sound waves into electrical energy, transmits those, and turns them into sound waves again. QUOTE]
If you go back to my original phone example…that is exactly what I said.
Please look up e=mc^2.
What do you think a vibration is? It’s a change in air pressure. And yes, you’re right that not all changes in air pressure are sound. But a sound wave (hint there) is a type of change in the pressure of the air.
Yes, that’s what you said the first time. This second time you said the phone transmits information. It transmits electronic signals. I bring this up because you keep equating energy with information and saying this relates to our lives or beings or essence or existence somehow, and it doesn’t.
Yes, it most certainly is. Where are you getting your information from?
That is exactly what a longitudinal wave is.
Evidently not.