The biggest illusion
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Human beings are the creators of meaning.
The universe, aside from us, doesn't have meaning. It's a physical process. Stuff moves around bumping into each other, expanding, collapsing.
We are the ones that assign value to things. We are the ones that decided life is good, death is bad, flowers are pretty. We even give meaning to things that aren't even there--we feel bad when we don't have a spouse, when we're missing our friends, when we don't have a new car. Most of the rest of the universe exists only in positive terms--stuff just is. We're the only ones that worry about what ISN'T.
We make value judgements. It's what we do, and it's where all meaning comes from. We just decide for ourselves what is good, and what is bad.
I don't need some big guy in the sky handing out stone tablets to tell me what matters. I was socialized by my parents and my society into a whole system of values created by all the people who went before me, and I take that system, and add my own little bits to it here and there, updating it, extending it, changing it. It's like a big work of art, and we made it.
It's entirely a human creation and right here I will bootstrap the whole thing: I like it. It has value!
The universe, aside from us, doesn't have meaning. It's a physical process. Stuff moves around bumping into each other, expanding, collapsing.
We are the ones that assign value to things. We are the ones that decided life is good, death is bad, flowers are pretty. We even give meaning to things that aren't even there--we feel bad when we don't have a spouse, when we're missing our friends, when we don't have a new car. Most of the rest of the universe exists only in positive terms--stuff just is. We're the only ones that worry about what ISN'T.
We make value judgements. It's what we do, and it's where all meaning comes from. We just decide for ourselves what is good, and what is bad.
I don't need some big guy in the sky handing out stone tablets to tell me what matters. I was socialized by my parents and my society into a whole system of values created by all the people who went before me, and I take that system, and add my own little bits to it here and there, updating it, extending it, changing it. It's like a big work of art, and we made it.
It's entirely a human creation and right here I will bootstrap the whole thing: I like it. It has value!
I have a couple of couple of acquaintances who have seen the light on the other side who might beg to differ.
Seeing the light and coming back to live is just for the religious. Two the three I know are anything but, yet they tell a similar story except for the colours. Both say they fought to come back as they were finished living yet.
I don't really believe in hearsay. The flash of light could be anything. Arguments like this are always constructed to mislead the audience, they are always vague and never to the point. In this case they never told you what the flash of light was.
Hearsay isn't always wrong, just not generally admissible in court, .
No misleading necessary and they certainly weren't vague. I just told you the Coles Notes version. If they didn't tell the story the world would be the same and I would still respect them, find them funny, and put my life in their hands or take a bullet them; feeling i had before they told of the experience. They gain little by telling me of the experience. That's usually why someone tells a lie.
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind
Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, all your money won't another minute buy
Dust in the wind, All we are is dust in the wind
Red, you actually died a few years back. They put your brain on ice and everything since the accident is actually just a death bed dream.
You probably don't remember the accident, it happened so fast. Let's just say you should have listened when mom told you to look both ways before crossing the street.
Rob Ford says he wasn't drunk, and Ford Nation believed it. He is still the mayor.
You probably don't remember the accident, it happened so fast. Let's just say you should have listened when mom told you to look both ways before crossing the street.
Rob Ford says he wasn't drunk, and Ford Nation believed it. He is still the mayor.
Hearsay isn't always wrong, I agree. But they're not credible either. That's why they're not admissible in court. No credible conclusions can be drawn from just hearsay. So one can't proof there's a next life by claiming they saw a flash of light when they're fighting for life. They could tell the same story in its gory details but it remains a hearsay.
Agree with the rest of post.
I am not religious but I do wonder why our intelligence is vastly superior to any other animal on the planet, why the perfect environment for us to live in evolved and to sustain it as well. Everything natural in the world has some kind of purpose in the circle of life. Just seems too perfect and complicated to be so random
Bigger relative brains, more complex pathways, and a few more really powerful special chemicals and protein like DUF1220 in the brain. Aside from that, not much.
Agree with Oyesuare!
The house we live in, the computer we browse on, the cell phone we text on, the car we drive in, the 747 we fly on, etc.
Its unimaginable that any of these were not designed by a more intelligent life form.
The complex human eye, the filtration system we call kidneys, the sun and moon just the right distance away to keep us from not burning up or freezing solid, gravity , peacock feathers, oxygen to sustain us, caterpillars turning into butterflies....
How does one look at everything that exists and logically say that it just happened without a blueprint from a greater intelligence?
The house we live in, the computer we browse on, the cell phone we text on, the car we drive in, the 747 we fly on, etc.
Its unimaginable that any of these were not designed by a more intelligent life form.
The complex human eye, the filtration system we call kidneys, the sun and moon just the right distance away to keep us from not burning up or freezing solid, gravity , peacock feathers, oxygen to sustain us, caterpillars turning into butterflies....
How does one look at everything that exists and logically say that it just happened without a blueprint from a greater intelligence?
Billions of damn dirty apes on billions of typewriters for billions of years and you are bound to get something.
This can also be explained by evolutionary biology. No greater intelligence is needed. The argument goes along the lines of, if you look at the eyeballs of different speices and compare them, you could see there is a gradual change in the complexity of eyeball structures across different species. This is an argument used by Richard Dawkins. He's pretty good and I'd recommend reading his books and videos and start questioning things that are not discussed.
The "greater intelligence" also has a sense of humour. Created males who want sex every 32 seconds and females who want sex every 30 years. Created males who cum in 10 seconds and females who cum (if at all) in 16 hours.
Exactly the same. Why would reality have any more influence after I grokked it than before?
Don't ask how long ago that was.
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