I have a Faith and Associate myself with a religion

just posted in the other thread, having read this now maybe I should have put it in here

Originally Posted by ClunkintheUK

Also as you alluded to earlier Spank, Gravity in the Newtonian concept has been disproven along with most of Newtonian mechanics. There are several competing theories as to what "gravity" is, or rather the mechanics of the gravitational effect, which are being tested.

my personal preference is that it's nothing more than acceleration through spacetime.

Originally Posted by Spank86

my personal preference is that it's nothing more than acceleration through spacetime.

True, since gravity is indistinguishable from any other form of acceleration. That definition however makes little sense of why light rays are bent by massive objects. It's also why I said what causes the gravitational effect.

Originally Posted by ClunkintheUK

True, since gravity is indistinguishable from any other form of acceleration. That definition however makes little sense of why light rays are bent by massive objects. It's also why I said what causes the gravitational effect.

because they're not bent directly by massive objects.

they're bent by the result of massive objects, they are bent round that curvature of spacetime that massive objects cause

or at least that's the only time it's visible.

If we are truly accelerating towards the planet (or it's accelerating up to meet us) then that only makes sense against a moving (or still depending on reference frames again, moving in relation to other parts of space) background which is what light is travelling through.

That's actually part of what I like about the theory that it does deal with that so neatly and why all objects no matter how small attract each other, because they all deform space a little.

I thought it was they always travel in a "straight line" within space time, but spacetime gets curved by massive objects, though I could be splitting hairs due to poor articulation on my part and a few years of rustyness, and frankly Tensor Calculus always eluded me.

Originally Posted by ClunkintheUK

I thought it was they always travel in a "straight line" within space time, but spacetime gets curved by massive objects, though I could be splitting hairs due to poor articulation on my part and a few years of rustyness, and frankly Tensor Calculus always eluded me.

that's what I mean (it may have been poorly articulated on my part).

Massive objects don't bend them, objects with mass (slight difference) bend spacetime and light travels straight from it's point of view but curved from ours as we can't see the bend in space.

We always used massive to mean "has mass" which it did originally. Just checked the online dictionaries, and yes, it seems that use has now fallen out of use.

Sorry, we really have derailed the original thread. Physics is one of those things I tend to get caught up in. Though I tend to prefer working in Newtonian frames of reference.

Back to the original thread. Can I ask the question that made me an agnostic again, so probably aimed more at the non-religious here.

Where did Sentience come from?

just to make sure I am articulate here. I understand the theory of evolution and think it is correct. Even though we do not currently know where life came from exactly, I can see that is something that science can and probably will find out. But being self aware is not really something evolutionary selected for necessarily.

I have several trains of thought on this but would be curious to see what thought the mighty org has before I articulate any of them.

depends how you define sentience really.

Obviously we think we have free will and aren't simply a mass of processes producing result but we don't have an objective way to test that.

Pretty much everything about us that we class as sentience or intelligence is a massive benefit to group survival so it's no wonder it would be selected for evolutionarily. All our morality, our critical thinking etc has made us dominant over every other form of life (as a group not individuals). In many ways many animals come close to us and many others not so close but its very difficult to draw a line and say this animal operates purely on a stimulus-response level and this one demonstrates sentience.

Originally Posted by ClunkintheUK

Where did Sentience come from?

Do you include a sixth sense in your meaning of Sentience?