Why do people find themselves so smart?

I can't picture coming up with the color blue.

Or the sound of Middle C. Or an A minor chord (which fits well with a blues scale). Or the taste of chocolate. Or the feeling of pleasure.

I can't picture understanding how to make the color blue fall in perfectly with a musical riff off an A minor while eating chocolate and getting head.

I can't picture being able to coordinate all the different things in reality to match up perfectly so that a sentence spoken on the radio when I hop in the car in the morning is the answer to the question I was just thinking without everyone realising you are there. I can't imagine being able to coordinate reality to make beauty, love, sleep, light, sound, taste, smell, touch and words come together in a matching rhythm out of the apparent infinite number of sensations that already exist, but I am part of it, and I understand it is happening.

 

Hikaru, you're on such a defense stance from the begining with me ever "targeting" anyong that I have to wonder about your motvations. I never singled anyone out, or even came close. Your arguements all rest on some degree of epistological arguement, vs. an absolute; you thus simply reinforce my point. I don't even need to argue, you do that yourself.

 

You didn't single anyone out, you're right.

But you generalized and insulted a mass of people, among which I'm included.

And, like a typical person ...

I take offense to insults.

Also, you haven't explained anything about how my arguments are "epistological vs. absolute," and you haven't even countered my recent ones. Are you giving up? Or, are you going to retract your original offensive statement, so that we don't have to argue over something so pointless?

 

The creation of humanity is still not explained; so why not have some sort of faith in the mean time?

Or, we could realize that human progress can account for a portion of knowledge, and faith could make up the other portion... Human progress is minimal on the scale that scientists have given us.

The Mayans believed in numerous gods, but knew that the earth was round, did not have war between one another (until it was introduced to them), sacrificed humans and had EXTREMELY good population control because of it, no crusades, inquisitions, racism, sexism, and they sought to gain a purer logic. This is a civilization that lived over 3,500 years ago, and they are much more "civilized" than our technical empire.

If science and technology are so great, why do we have problems with war, human sacrifice, racism, sexism, blatant contradictions of logic and the promotion of blind faith in NUMBERS? Don't get me wrong, I do believe that math is the humanity's greatest invention, but it has led to the same place that religion has. NOTHING is better because of it; faith in it is making us more and more dependent on it's survival. We are the architects of our own demise.

We are screwing up the planet, day by day. There are Mayans that were found only 10 years ago that are 98 years old and have not had a single disease. All they have lived on is beans, corn, squash, and livestock; people in America rarely live to be 70 without some kind of medical condition.

Science isn't the ultimate answer; sure, it fills in several holes, but it sure doesn't answer the interesting questions. What happens after death? No scientist knows; all they tell you is that you rot in the ground. What the fuck is the POINT of existing then? You live and do all this stuff for humanity, and then you just drop down and stop existing? Sure, you're helping later generations; but what is the point of living then? We're destroying our planet in the process... science got us into this destruction, and it hasn't found a way out yet; how can you blindly believe in it? That is COMPLETELY illogical.


Lastly, I'd like to ask you this: what IS life? Is it what you see? What you hear? What you smell, feel or taste? How do you know it's real? All of your senses are just electrical impulses sent to your brain, which interpretes the information given to it. Wouldn't it be logical to state that what you experience and what you perceive could be two entirely different things? Science can't prove or disprove that statement; where will you turn to answer it? The choice is up to you...

 

I'm sorry, I actually have a life outside the hip forums, I can't respond immediately. I never generalized or insulted anyone, you took it that way because you were defensive from the get go. As for epistomological vs. absolute, I mean that you're arguements are themselves foundationless. You need to do some philosophy/epistomolgy readings. At any rate, you've continually insulted me personally for no reason.

And once again: the point of this thread was to hopefully get people to closely and critically think about what they believe, be that religion or science. You seem to just have some bug with me, arguing with you is ridiculous because you just refuse to take a look at the larger picture. "Look how far we've come" you say; maybe you should really think about that.

 

A human must be 50% ignorant, and 50% arrogant. This is our natural balance

 

Yeah maybe I was defensive.

That's why you don't say things that are insulting, otherwise, you end up pissing people off. (like me)

Now, this is the second time that you've claimed my arguments are "foundationless" or flawed in some way without proving it. I understand you have a life outside the forums, so take your time in explaining your arguments, but don't just make a small post with nothing but claims; just take your time.

And hey, you insulted me first. Whether or not I choose to be offended is my choice, but it wouldn't be a choice without an insult to go with it. If you didn't intend to insult everyone, why did you, and why don't you just retract the statement?

It's not exactly the best idea to insult people thinking that hopefully they'll think closely and critically about what they believe. That's my "bug" with you, needless insults.

And yeah. Look we've doubled the human lifespan since we came into existance, and will probably do it again within the millennium. Considering it took billions of years for us to evolve (from an evolutionary standpoint), and over our pathetically small existance and how far what we've accomplished is growing exponentially, I think we're doing pretty well for ourselves. We won't ever know everything, that's for sure; that's impossible, but I don't think that's the ultimate goal, either.

Anyway, listen, I'm going to chill out. No more insults, and I'll apologize for the ones I gave. But you need to realize what words you are using; they're insulting to some people.

 

what? ...we haven't yet got the answers, so fill in the gaps with God "in the mean time"? in all honesty, that's one of those pathetic reasonings like Pascal's wager, which i have no use for.

i don't quite understand.... you're saying that the knowledge that humans have accumulated thus far hasn't been completely due to our own progress? what exactly have we learnt which we haven't learnt on our own? both science and art, logic and imagination, are all parts of our own fleshy systems; we have gained nothing that we haven't gained for ourselves, and where we are ignorant, it's because there we have yet to progress.

dude.... WTF. please don't tell me you're implying that you're in favour of human sacrifice as a means of population control. this is absurd.
i'd be interested in knowing where you found your facts about the mayan way of life. they didn't war with each other til 'war was introduced to them'? haha! the mayan civilization began its decline at least 400 years before the spanish even arrived! by that time, they were getting to be a sorry lot, and scholars speculate that a mixure of warfare and famine were the reason. that the population had grown too large to be able to feed everyone, and revolts began springing up. no racism or sexism? a source for this?
and lastly... more civilized than our modern society? the mayans believed that the gods were pleased by human blood, so noblemen would mutilate themselves for the gods' pleasure... later (presumably during a drought period) they decided that wasn't working, so they would choose victims and cut out their beating hearts as sacrifices. you would welcome this as an alternative to our present society? please.

many would counter that by saying that humans "invented" maths just about as much as we "invented" the laws of gravity.
anyway, nothing is better as a result of mathematical studies? give me a break, dude..... or better yet, the next time you get sick and get taken in for a cat scan, refuse it and go bleed yourself with a leech or something in your bathroom. you seem to prefer mediaeval practice anyway, and as a bonus, you'd be pleasing those mayan gods.
we may well end up being the "architects of our own demise", but that's the point - we're the architects of everything in our society, all the good and all the bad. it would seem even more pathetic if the only way to drag ourselves out of our own mistakes would be faith in some arbitrary invisible sky-god. we need to have faith in our own ability to effect change, not in the Fates.

our society is also no longer holed up and protected from the rest of the world. there exists now a global society, and while it opens our eyes, it also places enormous pressure on us - we are vulnerable to more diseases, our morals are thought and re-thought, our way of life is constantly affected by this ever-increasing change and bombardment with differences. i don't think it would have been reasonable to have expected humankind to have covered as much ground without any accompanying troubles. our civilizations go up and down, and back up again, continuing... we are constantly changing. out of curiousity, what sort of 'faith' have you got in humankind?

that's funny, because i don't see an existential death as being the end of a pointless life. in any case, the fact that we don't know what happens after death is possibly the most exciting part of life! we are so ignorant of who we are and where we're going, there's a billion and more possibilities as to our "point". just because we don't know, doesn't mean we have to plug up the void with a God-plug. you seem to be misunderstanding the minds of most scientists, thinking that science and spirituality are two different ballparks. i think it's completely possible, and natural, for humans to be both logical and spiritual. we're not all science, and we're not all art. we're both! that's what makes life so beautiful. we keep going because we're curious for answers; we screw up and we try our damnedest to get back up on our feet. we're only lost when we stop thinking that we can do anything.

it would totally be logical to say that our perceptions of reality are incorrect. what do we do about it? what can we do about it? you say the choice is up to you, ... what choice? the choice of faith in "god" to anesthetize your fear of life? if you're afraid that all of your reality is a falsity and that you as an individual are possibly all alone, then be afraid and face it on your own.
the fact that you claim that we as humans cannot "know" anything for certain, and at the same time encourage people to have faith in God to overcome the problem of "I Don't Know" is curious reasoning. God seems only to pop up when fear of one's own existence starts creeping in...

anyway, out of curiousity, what does your faith consist of?

peace,
sophia

 

Who said anything about God? I'm polytheistic for starters...

I'm pretty sure you can find many things that people have learned through immitation; and the scale I was talking about is based on the known length of our existance.

Excuse me? Where did I say that? I said it was a rather smart method of population control... I never said it was justified.

Indeed, the decline began before the Spanish arrived, but the Tulums (I believe that is the name of the civilization...) are the people who introduced war unto the Mayans. The hiarchy had kept cities in order until the lower classes became defiant; which is where revolt began. Cities that were unable to produce enough crops to sustain themselves would often times move; which is why there were many cities that were just abandoned.

 

This post more likely needs a psycho-analyst. It's all about a self-righteous self-opinionated sel-aggrandized presumptuous gratuitously fatuous vacuous prattle.
It says nothing more than "ME ME ME ME ME" and then presumes to give the answers that ME ME ME ME should approve of, and is worthy of the contempt it has already drawn and further supported here.

Oh, and "When did people become their own gods?"...... "I tell ye ~ ye are Gods"....ring a bell?
The only bell that wouldn't ring is a lead bell! Dull, huh?

 

Here are some parts about the original post that I find to be pretty insulting:

So, suddenly, because I don't believe in God, you have labelled me as a *failure* at understanding my own mind completely (which I understand more about my mind than many people do, but I admit I don't know everything, who does?), and then you're telling me that I'm arrogant ...

You're also putting words in people's mouths. Now, I'm "sarcastic" and "self-proclaimed?" That's bullshit, I didn't call myself a heathen, your kin call me that.

And, guess what, the very smartest men in the world ARE CURRENTLY figuring out how the basic forces in the universe work. We have went from TOTAL ignorance to knowing about atoms, quarks, and now there is work into even lower fields, including higher dimensional mathematics and all kinds of physics that measure quantum eigenstates and such.

Just because we aren't FINISHED unravelling how the basic forces work doesn't mean that we never will, or that we have failed to do so.

Again, I love how you "conclud[e] without a doubt there is a God," based on nothing but personal experience, which can only validate this idea to you and only to you, and you come here and start calling everyone arrogant failures, sarcastic self-proclaimed heathens, and such. In all of my posts here, I don't think I've even been sarcastic once.

Sure, so we shouldn't believe things blindly, but when you do, that's okay, right? When you conclude that there without a doubt is a God, based on something that cannot be verified in the least, that's not blind faith?! Hypocrite.

And actualities of life ... NO SHIT you think we should realize the actualities, what do you think science is in search of?? The actual truth! And we have come VERY far, and you are not showing the respect to our ancestors that they deserve. Religion has given us nothing! All of the gods we have invented thus far have given us nothing except hope, and that hope has always been our excuse to run around killing people and lowering our own quality of life.

Religion has not given us vaccines and medicines. Religion has not doubled the lifespan of our race. Religion has not given us any inventions or comforts with which to live by. All of these are inventions BY man FOR man; religion is just a delusion that people comfort themselves with, because we have a fear of what we don't know.

You can see how the *names* you generalized onto me were insulting now, can't you?

 

If you think that scientists are anywhere close to figuring out the basic principles of the universe maybe you should go do some research on it. Again, you blindly believe.

I never said my post was aimed at ALL atheists, I said it was aimed at the aithests who assume man is so brilliant. Is that your assumption? Then yes, I was speaking to you.

Go through the threads and see how many times one of the people attakcing religion has called themself a heathen, I simply said what they did, I never implied they were a heathen.

You're truly very stupid. I've said over and over and over again in this thread, as in the original, that my experiences apply only to me, NOONE should believe in anything blindly. My point is that through actual analysis of what is known vs. what is not it should be apparent that there is a higher power at work.

You just keep saying the same damn stuff, because you read everything from a totally defensive stance.

 

Good point Zion except I'm 70% ignorant and 70% arrogant.

Which shows my ignorance of math and my arrogance at having to out do everyone by making ridiculous claims.

I don't know if i proved your point or just made a fool of myself but as long as I got attention, it's all good.

 

THIS sums it up--your whole post.

Why don't we "have faith" in the mean time?

Don't worry, people do. The point being that faith is based on ignorance.

It is simply "I can't explain it, you can't explain it, so it must be inexplicable, let's have faith it is what we want it to be."

Whereas I go along more with the philosophy of: "I can't explain it...yet. You can't explain it...yet. But, out of all these that have been explained so far, zero gave credence to the supernatural previously used to explain it (i.e. volcano gods, god did it, etc.), thus I will, logically, remain agnostic until we do reach a suitable explanation!"

The Argumentum Ad Ignorantium is a logical fallacy. Lack of proof is not proof and that which HAS YET TO BE EXPLAINED...does not mean that it is inexplicable.

 

pardon me while i take the time to exist, but i have one question. why do religious people deny science? no, creation has not been figured out, but at least science has theories...i mean, you cant make full grown animals of humans or anything in seven days... so while you guys have your head in god's sand, i'll walk upon the beach and ask why its there.

 

Outloud?

 

the point is tp question everything, even what you think you know.

 

that's a good place to start.

I went from that to questioning my questions, to questioning my need for questions.

After that the left side of my brain exploded.
Now I'm OK.

Although some people might question that.

 

hmm, good question

 

I think it's one of those things we're not supposed to know.