Existence: What is the point?

Do you believe in Love??





Music is like love.. love cannot be touched

sex is friction to acheive orgasm

 

You have to look at whole package to understand existence

I do not have the capability

 

What reason is there to expect that, rather than further devolution?

By what objective metric would the successful institution of the Third Reich have been inconsistent with that pattern?

Please, you didn't understand a word of it.

Hardly necessary when anyone can read your posts, which consistently testify to your affinity for lies, of which Heaven is presumably devoid.

 

I don't see evidence of the third reich being successful.

If I'm not mistaken, it's been pretty thoroughly excised, hasn't it?

 

Evolutionary history is generally portrayed as having mostly a long term track record of improvement, sometimes ending in extinction that may be gradual or abrupt. I do not know what circumstances have favored the occurrences of devolution. I'll offer a plausible explanation: When an former asset becomes a liability due to an unfavorable environmental change, evolutionary disposal of said liability facilitates continued survival.

It was not inconsistent until Hitler screwed up and bit off more than he could chew by overextending his reach too soon and provoking retaliation. He was also unwise in ignoring the advice of his generals. Once he gave the Allies an excuse to retaliate, he was doomed; the international bankers were incensed because of his country's monetary independence. However, the Third Reich was not governed by the forces of evolution.

Since you seem to feel free to shoot from the hip even when there is an unlikely opportunity to cast doubt on a persons knowledge or comprehension, feel free to point out anything in it that you think I might have found difficult to understand.

 

Thread drift, and catty polemy is a constant, in any thread, but i would like to keep things rational and civil, in a philosophical discussion like this. We are dealing with abstract things, like purpose, morality, eternity, soul, etc.. There should be no reason for heated differences over subjective opinions.

We seem to be here. We think, therefore we are. But what does this existence mean, if anything?

Origins
Meaning
Morality
Destiny

These are The Big Ones: How, Why, What, & When.
They are questions of matter, purpose, law, & time.
HOW did i (and everybody else) get here?
WHY are we here? Is there a purpose to our existence?
WHAT do we do? Are there rules for our existence?
WHEN we die, what happens? Is there a soul?

What basis is there, for ANY opinion, about these things?

 

There certainly is a strong theory (as established by gigantic and continuing scientific evidence gathering) on how we got here - science being focused as it is on "how" questions.

Purpose? We are all working to promote the welfare of ourselves and others.

There are some clear rules for making a functional society.

When we die, our bodies are disposed of in some way that should be respectful.

 

Well of course it is, for no better purpose than to cast a perception shell of legitimacy around the idea of anthropic macroevolution.

Prosperity favors human devolution very well indeed; and perhaps the question of why a putative benefit of eons of "progressive evolution" can lead to devolution in the space of a generation deserves some attention.

Given that any dominant species poses a prima facie threat to every other species, are we to believe evolution ever favors any particular species? And if not, why would we particularly expect any such compensation in a dominant species?

So you agree that "progressive evolution" is not biased in the least towards "win win scenarios". Right?

Then neither was the Renaissance, nor were any other "progressive" eras in human history. Right?

Pilgrim, the y-man shooting a .357 snubby from the hip is better than most people shooting a sniper rifle from a bench rest.

 

Natural biological evolution does not take place in the timespan of a generation. It takes large numbers of generations for tiny increments to take place and for a very few to survive.

Humans gained the ability to digest milk as adults, reduced brain size by about the volumee of a tennis ball, and blue eyes in about 20,000 years.

There are many winning strategies that life forms have found. Were birds "favored"? Were worms "favored"? Are shellfish "favored"? Are fleas "favored"?

And, let's not forget that the the living systems we see tend to be highly interdependent. You can not possibly present "threat" as being the dominant factor.

Once again you're ignoring the huge degree of interdependence see throughout both animal and plant life.

You'll have to explain what it is you think your last sentence means.

 

Actually my local liquor store is full of spirits!

 

We dumped liquor stores. They were run by the evil (government).

Now, any store can sell it. So, now it's featured on the shelve of hardware stores, etc.

Ugh.

 

TO who do they matter? I guess the great majority of humanity get on with their lives without worrying about these things. 3 score years and 10. All the answers to your questions will mean nothing when you've gone. Life is for living. If a massive asteroid, solar flare or some other disaster wiped out humanity where then will all your answers get you. Will there be a purpose to man's destruction. We are creatures of nature, and if we destroy nature we will destroy ourselves. Creatures have come, and been wiped out by some catastrophe. Was there a purpose for that?
You're right, these are abstract matters and as such are subject to personal opinion. Only one matter can be settled. We are here.

 

I'm TT anyway so it doesn't affect me. As long as they don't grant licenses to Baby shops to sell Babycham

 

Well, it seems we do 'worry about it', and concoct all manner of scenarios and plausible explanations for our existence.

We do have to get on with our lives, but it does not erase the 'quiet desperation', of the angst, in moments of calm reflection.

But as for purpose? That is a delusion, in a godless universe, and it might be even in a God made one.

 

So Thoreau is an authority? Another matter of opinion.

 

..don't worry about it...

 

USA BIGG AZZ FANS

 

The march to extinction has gone on for billions of years and involves a multitude of species, and to think that all the work involved in the processing and studying of fossil specimens has been done mainly to prop up said aim.....On a different note, how is the macro to be disputed? The missing link isn't missing as much as it used to be. Alternatively, an occult source claims that mankind was never in the animal kingdom because of an origin via "ideation," IAW a metaphysical product of Involution.

Does it ever occur in such a short span of time? Among my 3 dogs from the same otherwise normal litter of 8, one was born deaf, got sick and died before fully mature, but I don't consider that to be an example of devolution.

Nonhuman dominance can settle into a niche without trashing too much of the diversity. Random genetic mutations drive evolution and can be either harmful, inconsequential, or helpful.

No, e.g. symbiosis (termite gut bacteria enable digestion of wood, sustaining host and symbiont; legume root nodule bacteria fix nitrogen. In humans, the preferred alimentary "bugs" do things like help the immune system).

Evolution does not account for a lot of the changes in human history.

Indeed, metaphorically you're full of it.

 

I'm not. I'm approaching my 80th year and some time ago I looked back on my life. There have been ups and downs. There has been joy and sorrow. But, you know what, I've enjoyed my life. I've been able to help others - and be helped myself, When others have gone through the same grief as I have experienced, I have been able to empathise with them. I've shared others joys and they have shared mine. We've shared problems together, made each other's lives easier. In the end that's what life is all about.

I have a great family of 4 children, 5 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.

ALL WITHOUT THE NEED TO WORRY ABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE, OF EXISTENCE ETC. ,

A poem I wrote some time ago.

Only if you seek to find
Happiness and peace of mind
Can you ever be content
With what the world may throw at you.

Love may come, love may go.
Moods swing high, moods swing low.
Contentment always helps you cope
With what the world may throw at you

In times when life seems all in vain
And everything you seem to gain
Seems sadly lost. Then be content
With what the world may throw at you.

Love's never lost, have no fear
Reach out and touch, it's very near.
And in that knowledge be content
With what the world may throw at you.

For one day you will look and find
That peace of heart and peace of mind
Will take you home. No more content
With what the world would throw at you.

Life is what the individual makes it. Struggling to define some purpose/divine purpose for existence is a waste of a life IMO. What will it benefit the individual or the world in the end.
When you reach the end of life and haven't yet understood what you seek, what will have been the point of it all. I don't know your daily life so I don't comment on what you may do in context of society.

 

Gathering such minutiae is one thing; its use in portraying anthropic macroevolution as factual, quite another.

So despite a century in which the transition from single celled organism to multicellular, cell-differentiated organism has never been observed in a lab, you'd have us believe there's evidence of a transitional form between a soulless primate and a human being?

If you've ever seen pictures of a teenager before and during hard drug addiction, you have your answer.

None of this addresses either question.

So you really don't get that symbiosis can be a lose-lose deal? Really??

So how exactly is one supposed to divine which it accounts for and which it doesn't account for?

 

I think dealing with what life throws at you in a sense, is both our individual and collective purposes.

Cheers.

 

We have to 'do' certain things, to survive in this world. If this is a godless universe, then survival is the only 'point' of existence. IOW, there is no 'higher purpose', or eternal consequense to our lives. We live. We die. That's it. No 'purpose!' No significance. No absolute morality. No meaning to any of the Big Questions. They are human imaginations, motivated by fear, manipulators, or something. But the 'sense' of meaning or purpose (or soul, or morality), is a delusion.. a contrived imagination to keep from facing the hard reality of our meaningless existence.

The ONLY way you can premise any meaning, morality, destiny, or significance is in a God made universe. For unless these things were established by some Higher Power, for whatever reasons, they cannot exist. This feeling of eternal significance, morality, calling, or any abstract supernatural, metaphysical sense, is either placed by God, or is a delusion.

 

Why? I don't have a feeling of eternal significance,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, I live as nature intended. The other solution is that God is a delusion. The feeling of 'eternal significance' is simply a desire not to accept reality. That man is the product of natural evolvement.

 

Life is what it is. Time is now. "How?", "why?", "what for?" are questions we can ask because words can be put together that way. We may think that makes those questions serious. It might lead us to think they could be answered. Rarely do we ask if these are the correct questions to pose. Since we have been asking ourselves these questions for so long without arriving at satisfying answers, we might want to reflect upon their appropriateness.