Doesn't answer... ''and then just stop there without asking where this designer/creator came from?'' You are contented with your belief to stop thinking there.
Or, according to you ... thank my elbow. Remember ''why does a god thank itself''.
Is Life a Dialogue or a Monologue?
- Thread starter Bowser
- Start date
And if the answer is ever was, would that satisfy your mind?
Why would I be kind to anyone if everything is God?
Put it this way, when I know it ''is ever was'', I would stop thinking about it, until then...
In days of yore young man, living in a pack, group or tribe was best for survival. Today the ''tribe'' is planet size.
But, I don't recommend walking up to a lion and smiling.
I guess you can continue thinking about it.
Agreed, the lion would probably eat you, but he can't see past his belly. You and I can. As for a world tribe, I don't see that, since we don't share the same ideas. Individuality comes from the mind. Not many are willing to sacrifice their identity for the greater good. Agreed?
In Nature, I don't think it's a matter of sacrificing your life for the greater good, more like a better chance for the individual in a tribe to survive fighting off a lion.
I see it as... As a ''world tribe'' we are recognising the benefits of trade and cooperation on things. Granted, that's not easy. It all helps the individual.
Of course, I'm leaving things out like religion and politics which just seem to complicate matters in acting as channels for some corrupt and greedy people.
Now and again you come up with something like this which I don't understand ''Individuality comes from the mind.'' When you speak of raising your oatmeal, to which god is this to? Is there a bigger god than you? Remember according to you, your believed God is everyone and everything. Are you acknowledging a chief or something beyond your god's creation?
It's recognition of what I would call the Great One. I don't see myself or you as being apart from it though.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
And what do you see as the common denominator?
Consciousness. Stripped of the discriminating mind, it's all the same.
We are , consciousness conversing with another consciousness .
Until WE understand and respect our ancient peoples , living and in the past , we will never really understand that the dialogue is what is important ..
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Why not a transcendent pseudo-intelligent mathematical Potential which deterministically produced intelligent consciousness through progressive logical organic evolution and probabilistic natural selection in the chronology of living things?
The point is that organic life is still made up from inorganic sub-atomic particles as is
everything else in the universe. The Wholeness needs not be sentient in order to probabilistically produce local sentience......
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Imperfection, to me, is an egoistic, arrogant observation that falsely suggests that we humans can do a better job of it than nature ( God). (Subscribed...great thread)
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I agree on that point, but I don't think humans have a great influence on universal behavior...
We do at a planetary level.....
That would depend on your point of view. There have been times in history when nature would gladly have made us extinct - and there have been times in myth when God would gladly have made us extinct. From strictly human point of view, we are doing a better job (so far).
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
True, but no better than thousands of other species which have managed to survive a few hundred million years.
If survival is the criteria, IMO the insect has us all beat.
can you provide a link or even suggest a verifiable historical event? (not really serious lol)
It seems to me that the only events that threaten our racial surviver-ship are self created(?)
Over population, war, climate change...etc
Gosh, even the use of antibiotics that saved millions led to over population, thus leading to more disease due to high density living...not to mention antibiotic resistant super bugs...
The Australian Aboriginal managed to survive as a racial identity for over 50,000 years, living in numerous scattered small and large family units in a symbiotic and harmonious relationship with nature. ( disease happened of course but due to family tribe isolation was typically contained)
Opinion:
Essentially it is the ego ( vanity ) driven dis-connect that we have with nature (God) that feeds our delusions of grandeur as we pursue power over nature instead of symbiosis.
That quest for power leaves us with man made climate change, that unless nature can fix it will most likely leave the human race with less than fifty years to achieve a more harmonious, symbiotic relationship with nature or become extinct in trying to.
"We sort to conquer the "Garden of Eden" with our knowledge and have failed to keep in mind at all times that it is the "Garden" that sustains us."
(Oblique reference to emerging Global food security threats due to recent events)
I was thinking of much farther back than that - like when there were only a handful of us running around Africa.
I think you were closer to the truth when you said: "Gosh, even the use of antibiotics that saved millions led to over population, thus leading to more disease due to high density living...not to mention antibiotic resistant super bugs..." Survival itself is a vicious circle.
If only you could guarantee Earth won't be hit by a big rock.
Yes, bacteria with no intelligence are doing fine. One up for Nature. But then, nature just happens, no plan.
Things go extinct. What's so special about man? Intelligence arising from Nature doesn't mean man was going to be around forever. It has been said intelligence may be an evolutionary dead-end. No plan.
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Planet-wide occupation of widely disparate niches at all trophic levels, for starters.
The crocs survived the dinosaur killer - and we eat crocs. https://www.preceden.com/timelines/68990-evolution-of-the-alligator
While I agree in the general context of your post at a deeper level I disagree.
Every living thing has not only the inherent agenda (plan) to survive but to ultimately strive for sustainability as well.
Survival in the short term with sustainability for the longer term.
You would think that having the gift of articulated intelligence man-kind would be well suited to successfully finding a sustainable solution to his existence. The problem for us is that we seem to have forgotten the need to put sustainability into our plans.
So nature is going to bite us in the back side until we do...
...and you may claim that that is no plan .. but merely cause and effect yet it is causes and effect with an ultimate objective - sustainability ( a long term agenda). Thus it could be argued to be indeed "a plan".
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
I don't think that is a logical conclusion. What if we use the example of species that did not survive? Was there a grand plan at work for them? How about the Neanderthals?
As you correctly indicated "but merely cause and effect yet it is causes and effect " (i.e. constant change) from which an Implicate Order emerges. Some things die, some things live. No plan.
It's as simple as that, IMO...
If we were dealing with humans only I might tend to agree.
But we are not and no creature except humans will consciously choose to live in inhospitable environments and be forced to "strive" to survive. For all animals except humans and their pets survival in any kind of environment is hard enough. When it gets too hot, there is mass migration to cooler areas, when it gets too cool there is mass migration to warmer climates. And soon we may see a human migration away from coastal plains due to rising sea-levels. That is also part of striving to survive.
Only humans and a few insects can manipulate their environment to make inhospitable areas
survivable. Ants and Termites have practised agriculture for a hundred millions of years, long before humans appeared on the scene. In fact, some of the labor force of a termite hive never gets to see daylight. They are confined to underground gardens for their entire lifespan. Of course they do have plenty to eat...
Thus while it may seem there is a grand plan, there is no such things, but long term probabilistic events. If you play the lottery long enough you're bound to win something. That does not count as a prior existing greater plan. It's just luck spread out over trillions of natural tries over a span of millions or even billions of years.
All this may seem like a plan but in reality it is just a hierarchy of natural mathematical physical functions which behave in a pseudo-intelligent consistent manner.
ions.