Quote from: Lesley_Roberta on January 30, 2013, 09:15:54 AM
I can tell you a dozen reasons for how we might have gotten here, but I can't tell you WHY we are here.

I've asked this question before and always get a whole bunch of religious scriptures as an answer. Then I get frustrated that they don't understand the question. No matter how I phrase the question, the answer is always to serve so and so. That doesn't really answer the question though.

I've also gotten a few Biology professors pissed off at me because they all seem to open with "what is life". Being purely scientific, my view of life is that it's just a lie. I don't really believe in the idea of a soul anymore, so I really just see us as a series of chemical reactions that change based on outside stimuli. I guess following that line of thought, there could theoretically be some being that understands the whole equation and can follow it to completion, i.e. see the future, but who knows. We also don't really learn without being taught some basic rules for how to interpret things, so in my opinion, our own intelligence is just as artificial as any machine we create. I guess my kind of view on this subject is a bit hopeless, but it has allowed me to see the reason for religion where before I just thought it was bologna. It provides hope.

Quote from: Lesley_Roberta on January 30, 2013, 09:39:32 AM
I have agonized over suicide more than a few times. I am not sure there was ever a problem worrying if I would. Surely if I was prone to doing so, I sure as hell would have done so a long time ago. I've been given such a bounty of reasons already.

Been there. It's the one time when analyzing too much isn't problematic. We think about it, then we analyze all the possible paths it could take like who gets hurt, what if our plan is flawed and we don't succeed, etc. Next thing we know, the risk isn't worth the benefit.

Some common material to ponder.

Carl Sagan speaking on 'there's a dragon in my garage' is great stuff.

His book that was made into the film Contact is very good too. The book as is usually the case, is a lot better than the film but, in a rare case, the film is still fairly close to the book. They both accomplished the same end goal.

The notion we are all just part of a computer program, is a biiiiiiit too out in the metaphysical realm to cope with.

But, we do not actually have the aid of physics to explain the 'big bang' as our physics simply can't cope with the conditions. Nor can our physics take you into a black hole. We can see they are there, and we can see what they are doing, but, nope, forget going into one.

Gravity is a favourite of mine as well. We know what to expect if we drop an apple out of our hand. It falls on the ground. And we call it gravity and all is well. We don't really know a lot about it, even though we have summed it up as the reason the apple fell.

Electricity is also a fascinating force. We know how to use it, but, it still have trouble really saying what it is.

Is my mind nothing more than a form of electricity? Seems hard to just accept that and move on.
I am not sure I have a soul or not, but, I am plenty sure it was not given to me by some dude in a dusty old book.
I have learned of persons demonstrating simply impossible connections to past lives. There are not many worth mention, but, as I always say, 1 credible example would be one example too many. It is not relevant if the rest our bogus nonsense.

So we are left to wonder, does anything exist past death? Why should it happen to a very uninteresting tool using bipedal mammal?

The problem I tend to have with humanocentric notions is really just the supreme arrogance involved.

How much of my reality is really only possible because I thought it up?
How much of my reality disappears when I die?
If a tree falls in a forest, and I say it is still standing, can I actually make it so just by force of will?

And we come back to the original focus of our host environment. I am not just a sperm factory and delivery system.
We hear of other creatures on our planet that experience homosexuality, but that is really still narrow thinking.
There are creatures that don't require male and female to reproduce either.
And while it is still a young science, and we have all manner of taboos about it, the thing is, we also know we can make people through cloning.

Our technology is also rapidly heading towards a day it might even crack the mystery of putting a mind into a machine.
AI might really just be a very crude form of what we might be capable of achieving organically.
I wonder, what would the point at that point be of even mentioning 'gender'.

I personally think there is a lot more to life, than our limited span on this planet has been able to witness of experience. And by span, I mean as a species. 50k years is really small in the grand scheme of things.