On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 1:37:58 AM UTC-6, Martin Brown wrote:

On 23/10/2018 22:43, Gary Harnagel wrote:

On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 12:24:17 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:16:04 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

That's an interesting question but isn't applicable to the discussion
of whether or not a spirit has physical mass. Your unsupported
assumption that it doesn't has no supporting evidence whatever.
OTOH, MacDougall's experimental evidence supports the contrary.

The snag is that he is about as credible a scientific witness as the
drunken Hillbillys that claim to have been abducted by aliens.

What evidence do you have to support such an outrageous assertion? This
sounds to me like wishful thinking and character assassination.

Were they reliably replicated several times by others?

That's the ONLY problem with his data, but there's an excellent reason for
that which I have explained to this group previously. If you have a
faulty memory I'll be happy to regurgitate it for you.

ROFL. You will believe what you want to believe in the face of any and
all evidence to the contrary.

There is no evidence to the contrary. YOU will believe what you want to
believe just like all atheists.

Chris Peterson wrote:

True. And as we've noted, Oriel, Harnagel and other such people
thrive here because others talk to them. Some see it as a
pedagogical challenge to try to explain the it mistakes to them..

Anyway, if the soul has weight, the computer software as well as
great stories should have weight too.

Repeating irrelevant assumptions does not change their falsity.

Someone claimed the soul weighs 21 grams. But if so, the soul
should, when leaving the body, fall down to Earth rather than rise
to heaven.

The "21 grams" argument is fallacious, as anyone who actually LOOKED
at and ANALYZED MacDougall's evidence would know. MacDougall reported
FOUR measurements of 3/4, 1/2, 1/2 and 3/8 ounce. The sensitivity of
his equipment was 1/16 to 1/8 ounce, which refutes the fallacious
assertion that it wasn't good enough.

FYI: 3/4 of an ounce is quite close to 21 grams. So why is 21 grams
fallacious but 3/4 of an ounce ok?

Good grief! The 21 gram bandied about IS 3/4 ounce. The fallaciousness
is that (1) the 3/4 ounce was converted to 21 grams by dishonest people
to make it look more scientific (two significant figures instead of one)
and (2) they picked the biggest value from the set instead of the average
value. Don't tell me that you couldn't figure that out for yourself.

Fine. Lets accept for the moment that 20g of mass spontaneously vanishes
on death - that is a roughly 400kT TNT explosive equivalent yeild.
Einstein's famous equation : E = mc^2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence#Binding_energy_and _the_"mass_defect"

MacDougall can't be blamed for not knowing this in 1907.

NOBODY has said it "disappeared." That's a fallacy to claim it was converted
to energy.

And how do you exclude the possibility of systematic errors in the
measurements?

Such possibilities have been discussed in the literature.

Almost certainly the measurement errors are due to the relatively poor
reproducibility of weighing equipment he used.

MacDougall reported the sensitivity of his equipment as 1/16 to 1/8 ounce.
What evidence do you have to the contrary except for wishful thinking?

Another point against your baseless assertion is that he turned to dogs
after he was banned from hospitals. He measured no weight change upon
death. That's a bit disconcerting, don't you think?

That and selective reporting of only the cases which supported his
hypothesis.

You obviously haven't read his paper.

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant." — Harlan Ellison

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, didn:t you know
that?

Of COURSE I know that. I use it all the time in discussions on the
relativity board. I would ask you: why you believe it is okay to reject
experimental data that has a 99.9% confidence level? If you REALLY
want to refute MacDougall's results then YOU do your own analysis of his
data.

The guy is a historic delusional crank with no credibility whatsoever.

Your intent on character assassination rather than honest scientific inquiry
is noted.

A much more rational explanation is that with the body's main cooling
system shut down when the heart stops pumping there is a rapid rise in
skin temperature and sweating mass loss after death. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_gra...ment#Criticism

This article has several glaring errors in it. Clarke's criticism hangs on
what the word "sudden" means. In fact, it's not as "sudden" as the change
noted by MacDougall. The article also asserts that "only one of the six
patients measured supported the hypothesis." This is an outright lie.
Obviously, the writer of that piece had extreme bias.

Otherwise your God of the gaps is has a 400kT detonation per soul to
deal with.

Worthless assertion.

Reports of observation of spirits claim them to have the size and
shape of a human body, so that says they won't fall to the ground.
As to being noticed, do YOU notice a volume of air?

Depends whether or not the air has the same temperature as the
surroundings. Dome seeing is a well known problem in astronomy.
Schleiren photography will allow you to image a phase screen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieren_photography

Scientists are not limited by your superstitious medieval mindset.

Regards,
Martin Brown

I was the one that brought up Schlieren photography as a possible way to
detect a spirit that has mass. It may be a great noninvasive way for
future research. OTOH, it might not be practical today what with medical
resuscitation efforts where several sweating doctors and nurses are
trying to keep the patient from dying :-)

YOU, OTOH, seem to have a propensity for ad hominem smearing of those you
disagree with.