You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral

I'm an INTJ, so I think this is "touching," and I just posted it to my facebook page...though I see a blending of faith/science.

https://www.facebook.com/scienceisawesome/posts/370920466262304

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.

-Aaron Freeman.

I am also INTJ. 

I liked this.

NC

 Oh Yeah - I want a physicist to take my funeral!!!!

What is INTJ?

I'm E something. It sounds very nice.

That was so much nice than any preacher could do..who'd of thought it.

INTJ is one of the personality types in the Myers-Briggs categorisations, people who identify themselves as such are known to be deluded.

Sorry, I made up the last phrase, in fact I may be INTJ myself, especially if it stands for INToJokes !

I certainly want something similar if my family bother to hold a funeral, I have suggested they save the money, just dispose of me in the most environmentally favourable way, which in my case probably involves high explosives, and then spend the money with a huge piss-up wake down the Pub !

Money well spent.

What the hell is INTJ???

I'd opt for the physicist over a JW elder, any day of the century... 

You have to take the personality test!

I don't have the link though.  I took it on 3 separate occasions, and always came out INTJ.

Oohhhh....

That....

Whenever I take tests like those, I come out categorized as a "Martian" or "Saturnian" - something way off the normal settings.... 

I thought that Richard Feynman had a rather nice memorial service.

I also thought it was too bad that Murray Gell-Mann did not attend.

I'm sometimes an INTP and sometimes an ENTP, but I never ever have a J at the end!

I think as I get older I'm more E than I (more extrovert than introvert, for those not familiar with the letters) but it depends....I'm clearly borderline. I think the N is Intuitive (yes I am) and the T is a Thinker (yup!. J is judgemental (never ever) and P is perceptive (I'll own to that).

But the letters don't necessarily mean what it sounds as if they mean, so it doesn't mean that all J's go round judging other people (though an awful lot of JW's do just that!)

Justitia, I kind of like the physicist thing, though I'd rather like to have something else there to balance it too.

EDIT: There are several sites offering this test on the web. Here is one of them.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

Meh. The mass/energy isn't what it is about. That is exchanged/replaced many times over a lifespan. The point is the organization of the energy and matter, not the conservation of it. Matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but information can. Neither the energy or the matter matters, but the information contained therein. Entropy is a bitch, so what would Mr. Physics have to say at that funeral?

So is being human the matter/energy itself...or the information contained in an organization of it?

What if we could preserve the information and keep it "alive" in some fashion instead of losing it?

Heat death is still billions of years away.

INTP here. So there.