There's more hostility in this thread than is called for. Arguments about the 'soul is not light' may well have come before, but that's no reason to be rude to a new forum member who may be investigating something similar.
And while one does wish schools would do a better job of teaching basic physics along with reading and basic math, we all know most schools don't do such a 'good job'.
...What's curious to me, is the way in which matter and energy interact. I am toying with the idea that matter is actually nothing more than a compressed, orderly, systematic expression of energy.
As you've hopefully figured out by now, matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. We know this because when we make matter disappear, energy appears and when new matter is formed, energy disappears.
... We have our memories, our ability to reason, our ability to learn, and our ability to cognize, ... The temptation to simply assign the self to the brain is very evident, but this causes other points of conflict in my current understandings.
It might cause
you conflict, but for people who are familiar with the evidence, there is simply no 'self' outside the brain and body. Consciousness is a fascinating thing, but not incomprehensible as a physical 'thing' produced by a physical brain.
.... IF (all caps if) it were found- could it be removed? Could it be transplanted? To what effect? I can only speculate.
This is kind of like a god of the gaps argument. As long as you don't understand the mechanism of consciousness, you hypothesize about the 'mechanism' with fantasy. The problem with that is, we have more than enough real data, real evidence to support the conclusion consciousness emanates from the physical brain and nowhere else. Your fantasy hypothesis is unsupportable while the hypothesis, 'self' is the physical self and nothing more' is a supportable hypothesis.
Now, I'll grant, in the absence of the human mind- physics [snipped a lot of rambling thoughts]
Sorry, there was nothing there to reply to given it was based the false underlying premises you have about the nature of mind, body, matter and energy.
... All the fuzzy math that occurs at the quantum level [snipped ramblings also based on a lack of understanding]
The problem with this kind of speculation is it starts from a a lack of knowledge so it ends up being meaningless, regardless of how meaningful it seems to you.
LTABN said:
life and self-awareness - seem nothing more then a different way of mixing the energy together.
This is an interesting concept, but we have evidence against 'self awareness' being something that exists within energy and matter as you are contemplating. There are indeed many exotic properties of energy and matter, but a sense of 'self' existing independently of the brain is just not likely one of them.
And one more quick point, you are using a definition of 'unobservable' that is inaccurate. Things before the Big Bang and outside the Universe are unobservable by definition. Things like dark matter and dark energy are indirectly observable, they are not unobservable. The spaces between quantum particles and quantum waves may also be indirectly observable or not observed yet, but they are not 'unobservable'.
Something fictional that a person makes up is unobservable, and also does not exist just because someone made it up. God myths and myths of self floating around in quantum space do not pop into existence by someone thinking it up. We know that because we have an understanding of fiction and human imagination.
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