From: underdog@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dwight Joe)
Subject: Re: Current Results of the Poll about Life
Organization: Miners for a Heart of Gold, a SNAFU Inc. subsidiary
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 22:31:31 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.180609.4755@eskimo.celestial.com> 
alpinist@eskimo.celestial.com (David Butler) writes:
>In article <1992Sep9.233925.29001@leland.Stanford.EDU>
>underdog@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dwight Joe) writes:
>>For the curious, I'll show that certain forms of afterlife are absolutely
>>impossible.  Consider the second law of thermodynamics:  P >= 0,
>>where P is entropy.  From memory, P is a "kind" of measure of the chaotic
>>energy that can no longer be harnessed into useful work.  Eons and eons from
>>now, there will no longer be any more energy that can be harnessed to do
>>useful work, but the total energy in the universe will still be conserved.
>>What does this mean for life after death?
>>It means that infinite re-incarnation back to this same universe is
>>impossible.  At some point, eons from now, everything will be dead.

I should clarify my notion of "P".

Someone sent e-mail explaining that entropy pertains to the states
of energy?  I'm not sure, but I recall that his explanation was similar
to something that I had studied in modern physics.

However, the recollection of "P" that I used above is taken from an
engineering thermodynamics text.  In any given system, (in this
case, taking the system to be the totality of the universe) the net entropy
is non-negative.  Also, my qualitative explanation above is fairly
close to the qualitative explanation in the original text (if I
recollect correctly).  The actual mechanism of entropy may be much
more complicated, but what do you expect from a simplied book on
thermodynamics?

Well, regardless of the reference, it is still true that P >= 0.  It's a
one-way street, and you can't go back the other way, no matter how hard
you wish.

>...
>   What was the state of the universe before the big bang?  How did the
>material for the big bang show up in the first place?  The universe exists
>inside of infinity.  Infinity is an awful big number.  (Beyond the real
>comprehension of our limited stupid human brains)  There could be lots of
>other universes.  Maybe new universes are being formed all the time.  Maybe
>when this universe ends a new one will form on its heels.  If there was a
>cold dead universe outside the perimeter of our current universe there is
>no way that our current scientific instruments could detect it.

Ahem.

I don't believe in Santa Claus.

>   And still, even if we are limited to this one doomed to die universe
>we could be reincarnated millions of times before it is done.  A million is
>in fact a bigger number than most people can comprehend in real terms.

True.

But how would you feel if you were living your 1,000,000th life?

There's a considerable difference between infinity and finiteness.
Sooner or latter, finiteness is expended, and you will be confronted
with an infinite time span of non-existence.

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