How do you explain the 21 grams that is lost every time a person dies?  Where does it go?  What's in that 21 grams?  Why 21 grams?  It's quantified, and is the same for virtually every person who inevitably meets death.  21 grams is the weight we lose when we die, the weight, some argue, carried by those who survive.  Others argue still that it's the actual weight of one's soul.

Anyone care to elaborate on this law of nature?  Seems like an interesting topic that goes unexplained by both the creationists and the evolutionists.  I find the 21 grams concept fascinating.  Metaphorically speaking, you can't put religion in a petri dish.....or can you?

At first I was thinking it was the average weight of moisture in the lungs, expelled upon the last breath as your body shuts itself down and your mind fades away....but I'm certainly open to other explanations, if there are any.

Is there a religious explanation for this?  If so, do tell.  Agnostic minds want to know!  Happy Thursday night everyone!

Soul?  

film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1150916,00.html

s there lightness after death?

According to a new film, we lose 21 grams at the moment of death. Ian Sample looks for the truth

Thursday February 19, 2004
The Guardian

21 Grams
Should I buy this film on spec for £12.99? Is it any cop or just some arty depressing guff? EH?

Who would have thought it? At the exact moment of death, you, me, and everyone else, will lose precisely 21g in weight. Just like that. Gone. I know because it says so on the poster for Alejandro González Iñárritu's new movie called, as it happens, 21 Grams and starring Benicio del Torro, Sean Penn and Naomi Watts.

The movie's promotional blurb moves quickly to quash those tempted to guestimate how much body fluid and gas one might expel in a parting gesture to cause a 21g drop in weight by inquiring: "Is it a person's soul that constitutes those twenty one grams?" (Quick answer: no.)

Article continues
"I've been dealing with death for 45 years and I can say with some confidence there's nothing in it," says Robert Stern, a pathologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

So where does the 21g assertion come from? Who are the "they" who say we lose this amount as soon as our hearts squeeze their final beats and the electrical storms in our brains flicker and fade?

The origin of the 21g figure can be traced to Duncan MacDougall, a doctor working in Haverhill, Massachusetts in the early 1900s. MacDougall had a keen fascination with death and spent part of his career on an almost obsessive hunt for evidence of the soul. He thought that if humans had a soul, it must exist in the body as some kind of material. And that material must weigh something.

MacDougall set out to test his theory with what was an excruciatingly bad experiment. In 1907, the year Einstein applied the laws of gravity to his special theory of relativity, MacDougall published his findings in American Medicine.

MacDougall's paper reveals as much about the author as it does about the quality of work that could get into medical journals at the time. MacDougall describes how he set about converting a hospital bed into a rudimentary balance so he could measure a patient's weight change as they died. The bed balance was sensitive, so to prevent his soon-to-be-dead patients from messing up his data, MacDougall hunted around for people who were dying of tuberculosis. As he noted: "It seemed to me best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion, the death occurring with little or no muscular movement, because in such a case, the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted." In other words, there was to be no flailing around that could upset the scales.

In all, MacDougall managed to recruit a mere six dying people for his study, four of whom had tuberculosis. In turn, each was tucked up in his modified bed and their weight monitored until some minutes after their death. Any bowel movements or urination at death were fine, at least so far as the experiment was concerned, as it all stayed on the bed.

With a nod to best scientific practice, MacDougall then repeated the study with 15 dogs, which according to his religious beliefs, were not blessed with souls. It's not clear how MacDougall managed to get his dogs to die without rocking the bed, but some scientists suspect a nasty cocktail of drugs was used.

At the end of his foray into science, MacDougall declared that humans lost up to three-fourths of an ounce upon death, a figure that doesn't have quite the same ring as 21g, the metric equivalent. The dogs, he said, lost nothing. What else might it be if not the weight of the soul departing, he asked.

Before going public with his findings, MacDougall wanted to make sure that his patients' last breaths were not skewing his data, so he clambered on to the bed, (presumably once the last patient was removed and the sheets had been changed) and spent a few minutes exhaling. He then got a colleague to do the same thing. Neither managed to shift the balance enough to account for the weight loss MacDougall reported.

Despite the poor accuracy of his scales, the huge variability in his data, and the all-too-few people studied, MacDougall's experiment was also frustrated by the tricky skill of pinpointing the exact time of death. He was repeatedly challenged as to why the weight change on death appeared to take longer in some patients than others. To rebut the doubters, MacDougall wrote: "The soul's weight is removed from the body virtually at the instant of the last breath, though in persons of sluggish temperament, it may remain in the body for a full minute." He declared later in the paper: "Here we have experimental demonstration that a substance capable of being weighed does leave the body at death."

MacDougall's work was written up in the New York Times, which also covered his hope, some years later, to take a photo of the soul using x-rays. Despite being recorded in the paper that gives us all the news that's fit to print, his work is viewed with palpable embarrassment now. "It's simply not taken seriously," says Stern.

Gruesomely, Stern points out that dead bodies lose a lot of weight over time. Minute, intercellular structures called lysosomes release enzymes that break the body down into gases and liquid. "That's why, when you have mass graves, you can get explosions because of all the gas build-up," he says. "Just think if our bodies didn't break down. Everyone who had ever lived on the face on the Earth would still be here." Now, that would make a good movie.

You poop your britches.

http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp

As with most things of this nature what you have is not a provable at all. This comes from experiments conducted under dubious curcumstances by a dubious person over 100 years ago with a total test population of a handful with results that varied.

In other words, using these testing methods and letting them stew for 100 years I could claim that it proves anything I want, when it proves nothing.

Quoted: http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp As with most things of this nature what you have is not a provable at all. This comes from experiments conducted under dubious curcumstances by a dubious person over 100 years ago with a total test population of a handful with results that varied. In other words, using these testing methods and letting them stew for 100 years I could claim that it proves anything I want, when it proves nothing.

So....to put this in perspective, it's sorta like the derivations from...oh say a book that's been rewritten thousands of times over?

Quoted: Quoted: http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp As with most things of this nature what you have is not a provable at all. This comes from experiments conducted under dubious curcumstances by a dubious person over 100 years ago with a total test population of a handful with results that varied. In other words, using these testing methods and letting them stew for 100 years I could claim that it proves anything I want, when it proves nothing. So....to put this in perspective, it's sorta like the derivations from...oh say a book that's been rewritten thousands of times over?

If you want to take a swipe at religious text, just remember, the Torah Scrolls found into Todays Synogogues are virtualy identical to the Torah texts they keep digging up that are thousands of years old. So as it stands for the Jewish texts and how the Jews have kept them, at this point all the evidence suggests they have been exceedingly well preserved. That is Science, not religion. While others have taken the texts and changed them in translations, that is their business.

BTW, you dont want to believe in G-d, dont believe in G-d. It is an unprovable and the most grevious lies ever told have been told in an attempt to "Prove" his existance.  But the texts as the Jewish people have kept them have not changed. So we have something we can prove and something we cant. You took the swipe at the one we can.

The lesson of this is, The wise man has no preconcieved notions. Be a wise man and approach everything with an open mind.

Quoted: The lesson of this is, The wise man has no preconcieved notions. Be a wise man and approach everything with an open mind.

Then you fail my open minded friend.  You preconcieved that I was talking about the Bible!  I was generalizing up there.  I am agnostic, afterall.

Quoted: You poop your britches.

I was going to say pee your pants.

Quoted: Quoted: The lesson of this is, The wise man has no preconcieved notions. Be a wise man and approach everything with an open mind. Then you fail my open minded friend.  You preconcieved that I was talking about the Bible!  I was generalizing up there.

My wisdom is often subject to failure. However, and you may indeed say you were but you were not talking about a Clancy novel.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: The lesson of this is, The wise man has no preconcieved notions. Be a wise man and approach everything with an open mind. Then you fail my open minded friend.  You preconcieved that I was talking about the Bible!  I was generalizing up there. My wisdom is often subject to failure. However, and you may indeed say you were but you were not talking about a Clancy novel.

Maybe by page 40, we will be.

gas

Quoted: gas

that was my 2nd hypothesis, 1st being air in the lungs leaving the body....if the 21 grams theory holds any scientific merit.

My question, as I find this fascinating (I truly think one day we will prove God's existence with science, and at that point he is going to be more than slightly pissed), is the 21 grams the same for all weights, sizes, and ages of Humans? there is alsways different lung capacities, bowel capacities etc. in Humans depending on many many different variabless. But if All lose 21 grams at death (that can be quantified) then I truly find this interesting. Why has there been no modern retesting of this? we have better technology, understanding, and a greater amount of deaths by a larger multitude fo diseases including many htta did not exist in 1907

Hebrews 11:1 - Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Quoted: My question, as I find this fascinating (I truly think one day we will prove God's existence with science, and at that point he is going to be more than slightly pissed), is the 21 grams the same for all weights, sizes, and ages of Humans? there is alsways different lung capacities, bowel capacities etc. in Humans depending on many many different variabless. But if All lose 21 grams at death (that can be quantified) then I truly find this interesting. Why has there been no modern retesting of this? we have better technology, understanding, and a greater amount of deaths by a larger multitude fo diseases including many htta did not exist in 1907

because scientists look at the methodology and results and realize there is nothing to see.

He didn't do a controlled experiment, he had too few participants, and the results he got varied widely.   Out of 6 subjects he got only 4 good results and none of them were the same amount of weight.

Edited

It was a trap with no intention to learn anything.

Should have seen that comming.

I was gonna say a combination of breath, urine and fecal matter exhausted at expiration but it seems that this whole thing was a set up.

Quoted: Edited It was a trap with no intention to learn anything. Should have seen that comming. I was gonna say a combination of breath, urine and fecal matter exhausted at expiration but it seems that this whole thing was a set up.

busted

Quoted: My question, as I find this fascinating (I truly think one day we will prove God's existence with science, and at that point he is going to be more than slightly pissed),

This is the exact reason why religion is so hokey to me.

If your God, (I'm assuming the "Christian" god) is so great, loving, looking over the creature "man" that he made in his own image, (even though we are all so different in beliefs and apparantly existed for a long time without believing in him, but in other things) yet is vengeful, spiteful, hateful, and cruel (read the bible) at the same time, and has ignored man's problems, plagues, disease, and allowed great people to die horrific deaths... or as some say he called them up to be with him, but made them suffer first...(that really makes sense [roll]) WHY would he be "pissed" at them finally "proving" to each and all that he exists?  Could it be then that he would be held responsible for allowing the evils that have persisted in the 2000 years that he has supposed been watching us as?  Much less the millions of years since the earth was created?
And don't pull the "Devil" angle either.... I believe in that less than the rest of it. According to dogma, or other "myths", the devil (and everything else) was supposedly created by the "God", and how could that creation be more powerful or equal to the "all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing" God?  Would he have simply not created the devil if he knew what was going to happen?
If the devil is on equal footing with "God", then he is a god as well, one of many perhaps?  Who created them? the God's GOD?

No Expert

Quoted: Quoted: My question, as I find this fascinating (I truly think one day we will prove God's existence with science, and at that point he is going to be more than slightly pissed), This is the exact reason why religion is so hokey to me. If your God, (I'm assuming the "Christian" god) is so great, loving, looking over the creature "man" that he made in his own image, (even though we are all so different in beliefs and apparantly existed for a long time without believing in him, but in other things) yet is vengeful, spiteful, hateful, and cruel (read the bible) at the same time, and has ignored man's problems, plagues, disease, and allowed great people to die horrific deaths... or as some say he called them up to be with him, but made them suffer first...(that really makes sense [roll]) WHY would he be "pissed" at them finally "proving" to each and all that he exists?  Could it be then that he would be held responsible for allowing the evils that have persisted in the 2000 years that he has supposed been watching us as?  Much less the millions of years since the earth was created? And don't pull the "Devil" angle either.... I believe in that less than the rest of it. According to dogma, or other "myths", the devil (and everything else) was supposedly created by the "God", and how could that creation be more powerful or equal to the "all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing" God?  Would he have simply not created the devil if he knew what was going to happen? If the devil is on equal footing with "God", then he is a god as well, one of many perhaps?  Who created them? the God's GOD? No Expert

You are certainly no expert in the Bible or what it says.

If you bothered to study the Bible, a lot of those silly questions would have been answered already.

Quoted: So....to put this in perspective, it's sorta like the derivations from...oh say a book that's been rewritten thousands of times over?

Troll, troll, troll your boat.....Gently down the stream.....

Stroke!  Stroke!  Stroke!

That was again, a generalization.  Interesting though, how you inferred I was talking about the Bible.  Is that because you doubt it's validity?

We're not talking about the Torah Scrolls here ya know.

Quoted: That was again, a generalization.  Interesting though, how you inferred I was talking about the Bible.  Is that because you doubt it's validity?

Come now.

What a silly thing to say.

What methodology was used to compute that?

Quoted: What methodology was used to compute that?

1 shot of Tequila

3 Roofies

Weight Scale

Dice

2nd shot of Tequila

I almost thought this section was devoted to a place where folks can learn from each other, not prop up arguments in order to tear each other down.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. Should have saw it comming.

WB out. Enjoy the new GD folks.

No way to prove this with any reliable scientific method.

Urban legend.

See my sigline.

No_Expert asks questions that anyone steeped in Judeo-Christian Beliefs should be able to answer.

We are the trolls, IF we fail to answer him.

Eric The(GettingReadyForChurch)Hun

Quoted: This is the exact reason why religion is so hokey to me. If your God, (I'm assuming the "Christian" god) is so great, loving, looking over the creature "man" that he made in his own image, (even though we are all so different in beliefs and apparantly existed for a long time without believing in him, but in other things)

The Bible explains that men rejected God not long after God created humanity. The Bible actually says that God tried to preserve knowledge of Him by wiping out the wicked ones in a great flood, leaving only righteous Noah and his family. You, of course, would probably believe this to be one of those "vengeful, spiteful, hateful, and cruel" things that God did.

But what is more cruel? Destroying the wicked members of the human race, or waiting until the entire human race is corrupt and once and for all destroying all of humanity?

yet is vengeful, spiteful, hateful, and cruel (read the bible) at the same time,

Here you make the mistake of judging God's actions according to your ideas. The Bible portrays God as none of those things. The Bible says clearly that hell was created for Satan and his rebels who tried to conquer heaven in a war of rebellion. Man only ends up there because men become SERVANTS of Satan by joining in his rebellion against God through their disobedience.

If God was truly vengeful, spiteful, hateful, and cruel, He would have never sent Christ into the world as a sacrifice to redeem men. The chief expression of God's charachter and intent to all of humanity is expressed on Calvary when Christ prayed for the forgiveness of sinners, for they knew not what they had done.

To see God as vengeful, spiteful, hateful, and cruel is to judge God according to your preferences and not according to Who He Is, what His rights are as creator, and to what you want out of Him. The  creation cannot judge the Creator.

and has ignored man's problems, plagues, disease,

Again, if you will examine the Bible with an open mind, you will see that many of those things happened to men because of man's own wickedness and stupidity.

and allowed great people to die horrific deaths...

One of the gifts God gave to men is free will. Our will is only free because God does not intervene to restrain us from evil in every instance. The horrific deaths those great people died were usually at the hands of their fellow man....

or as some say he called them up to be with him, but made them suffer first...(that really makes sense [roll]) WHY would he be "pissed" at them finally "proving" to each and all that he exists?

To assume that God has to "prove" anything is to have a completely incorrect view of the whole thing. God needs to "prove" nothing to anyone. He has been exceedingly kind to humanity and has even offered His Own Son to provide a means of reconciliation with us.

What more can He possibly do?

The offering of Christ is God's last ditch effort to save man. He has reached the end of His rope. There is nothing else God can do to express His charachter and will for men. He gave us His Son. He gave us His Word. He gave us The Holy Spirit.

What else do you want?

Could it be then that he would be held responsible for allowing the evils that have persisted in the 2000 years that he has supposed been watching us as?

Who would hold God responsible for anything? Who is going to call The Creator of all existence before a court? What judge will rule on the actions and decisions of The Creator? Who will punish Him? Who will teach Him right and wrong?

The very question demonstrates that you don't grasp just Who God Is.

Much less the millions of years since the earth was created? And don't pull the "Devil" angle either.... I believe in that less than the rest of it. According to dogma, or other "myths", the devil (and everything else) was supposedly created by the "God", and how could that creation be more powerful or equal to the "all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing" God?

Again, I have to ask where you are getting your ideas from. Christianity does NOT teach Satan to be "equal" to God in ANY way whatsoever. Satan is an angel who used his measure of free will to become concieted and decide that he would ascend to the throne of God, and who convinced 1/3rd of the angelic host to use their measure of free will do join him in the revolt.

The Bible portrays this effort as a dismal failure that God easily overcame, and says that Satan now lives out his days with the doom of judgement over his head, and an eternity trapped in hell as his future.

Your concept of who Satan is, is NOT found in Christianity.

Would he have simply not created the devil if he knew what was going to happen?

Why God gave beings free will while knowing that many of them would use their measure of freedom to rebel is a great question that we don't have an answer to. We can guess that God knew that there would also be those who would use their measure of freedom to choose Him, and that was what He sought all along.

If the devil is on equal footing with "God", then he is a god as well, one of many perhaps?  Who created them? the God's GOD? No Expert

Again, no Christian doctrine teaches Satan to be God's equal. Satan is a defeated foe who is enraged that he cannot prevail against the Creator Himself, and thus seeks any avenue he can to try and attack God indirectly. Satan is the universe's ultimate terrorist. When God created man Satan took it as an opportunity to try and damage God and damage the only creation to bear God's image.

Satan is a powerful angel who is too impotent to defeat The Creator, but who is more powerful than humanity, and thus he vents his rage on earth because he is unable to challenge God.

"Again, no Christian doctrine teaches Satan to be God's equal. Satan is a defeated foe who is enraged that he cannot prevail against the Creator Himself, and thus seeks any avenue he can to try and attack God indirectly. Satan is the universe's ultimate terrorist. When God created man Satan took it as an opportunity to try and damage God and damage the only creation to bear God's image.

Satan is a powerful angel who is too impotent to defeat The Creator, but who is more powerful than humanity, and thus he vents his rage on earth because he is unable to challenge God. "

________________

Not to hi-jack the origininal thread, but I must respond to this as JW has presented a common misunderstanding of "Satan."

The Hebrew word from which "Satan" originates is shattan; the litteral translation is enemy, and it's reference was never to be of some force or being on any scale that could be imagined as above by "...Satan is a defeated foe who is enraged that he cannot prevail against the Creator Himself,"

This Jewsish term, which is oft referred to in Christianity, is purely the "enemy" we find within ourselves, and which we often confront in terms of...do I wish to be good today, or should my evil inclination [my Enemy] rule my actions?

Shattan is a reference to our evil inclination--we choose to do good or evil; free choice!

Shattan doesn't hide under our beds or in our closets or is even a "...defeated foe...".

Our evil inclination, Shattan, is defeated only when we triumph over our evil inclination and do good.


Ed

all air is evacuated

Quoted: all air is evacuated

that's my take on it....the 'soul' ... if there is such a thing, has no physical mass.

Quoted: "Again, no Christian doctrine teaches Satan to be God's equal. Satan is a defeated foe who is enraged that he cannot prevail against the Creator Himself, and thus seeks any avenue he can to try and attack God indirectly. Satan is the universe's ultimate terrorist. When God created man Satan took it as an opportunity to try and damage God and damage the only creation to bear God's image. Satan is a powerful angel who is too impotent to defeat The Creator, but who is more powerful than humanity, and thus he vents his rage on earth because he is unable to challenge God. " ________________ Not to hi-jack the origininal thread, but I must respond to this as JW has presented a common misunderstanding of "Satan." The Hebrew word from which "Satan" originates is shattan; the litteral translation is enemy, and it's reference was never to be of some force or being on any scale that could be imagined as above by "...Satan is a defeated foe who is enraged that he cannot prevail against the Creator Himself," This Jewsish term, which is oft referred to in Christianity, is purely the "enemy" we find within ourselves, and which we often confront in terms of...do I wish to be good today, or should my evil inclination [my Enemy] rule my actions? Shattan is a reference to our evil inclination--we choose to do good or evil; free choice! Shattan doesn't hide under our beds or in our closets or is even a "...defeated foe...". Our evil inclination, Shattan, is defeated only when we triumph over our evil inclination and do good. Ed

Christian doctrine does not subscribe to that view whastoever.

Christian doctrine and the New Testament are quite clear that Lucifer/Satan is a very real being, not a metaphorical representation of some indwelling evil.

Satan is no more metaphorically treated than Christ or The Holy Spirit.