Why are we here?

@Herald,

Quote:

- The resources of the planet are highly constraint ... and exhausting

Tell me about it, yesterday I mowed several tens of acres of alfalfa and go it into windrows and if it doesn't rain, Ill bale tomorrow. Im exhausted from all the hooking and unhooking implements from my tractor.

Why the hell would you want to throw a spent battery into a waterhole. Youre an idiot for considering it as an option for disposal.

Environmental stewardship is LEARNED. Its consequences are realized after many centuries of not understanding the consequences of every action. This is different than defining a "Purpose" or a "meaning"

Youre a bit scattered in your thinking and you seem a bit uneducated. SO your purpose is to serve as a perfect example when we admonish our kids to "STAY IN SCHOOL".
Otherwise youll all sound like this guy and his worldview

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@farmerman,

I DO have a purpose, my wife just told me over coffee. She wants to pick tomatoes except all these big yellow striped garden spiders have built their annual summer nests all around tomato bushes. SO, my purpose is to removet the spiders so she can pick tomatoes.
Its good that we all have a mission.IRONY BUTTON DEPRESSED

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Quote:
- The resources of the planet are highly constraint ... and exhausting.

Tell me about it ...

The resources that we are using are highly limited. The quantity of potable water is finite ... and decreasing with every year. The farm land is finite ... and got more and more polluted with every year. The concentration to which CO2 can be pumped into the air is finite ... and the options to pump more CO2 into the air without health hazard are reduced with every year.

Quote:

Why the hell would you want to throw a spent battery into a waterhole.

I am not the case of this hypothetical example. I don't even have a SUV. But if you are curious to know you may have a walk in your neighbourhood and watch absurt things (tyres, batteries, hazard waste, etc.) thrown on incredible places. ... Anyway.

1 Reply

@Herald,

Quote:

The quantity of potable water is finite ... and decreasing with every year

Well, that's not really true. The amount of water is about the same since the Jurassic, and potability can be assured by technology. The real problem is the DISTRIBUTION of water. we have a planet within which are areas of desert in which millions still live and these areas are getting overpopulated. There would be enough water if it could be delivered from areas where it reides in abundance. However the big bugaboo is politics

If you live in ana area where no one gives a **** about their dumping, GET INVOLVED , Weve just intitated a recycling ordinance for our township and its working. People aren't dumping tires in the woods or they are taking aluminum to a dealer who PAYS the people for the aluminum metal. SAME thing with batteries.

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

Neither the 'string theory' nor the question 'why are we here?' are 'highly metaphorical'

But the dubbing of string theory as "the sound of the universe" is highly metaphorical --- and a crappy metaphor at that.

Herald wrote:

- How did it happen as causation for us to appear on this planet?

Our geological and biological history just turned out that way. No purpose-pursuing agent is necessary to explain how it did.

Herald wrote:

- What is the purpose of our residence on this planet ... and existence in the physical world?

There is no such purpose, as far as I can tell.

Herald wrote:

- Why are we on the Earth (the paradise) and observe from a distance Venus (the hell) ... and not vice versa (to be in hell, and watching the paradise from a distnace & try to excape)?

Because Venus is a hostile environment for the evolution of life, whereas Earth is comparatively friendly.

Herald wrote:

- How did it happen that we come accross a dead-end-street (in terms of bio-existence & energy constraints)?

I have no idea what this question means.

You also may make plausible interpretations of the question, if you think again ... for example.

[quote="Herald"} If you realy think that the question is invalid - prove it!
[/quote]
I can't. Statements have to be intelligible before proofs or disproofs can operate on them. And the phrase "the meaning of life" is not intelligible.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

Our geological and biological history just turned out that way. No purpose-pursuing agent is necessary to explain why it did.

This is not entirely convincing. What is the math probability for this to happen? Can you repeat the 'trial' in the lab?
'just turned out' has too general meaning and hence could hardly have any semantics for a logical or non-logical discussion ... at all.

Quote:

There is no such purpose, as far as I can tell.

Yes, that is exactly I asked you for: prove that the question is invalid. Prove that there is no purpose in life, prove that life has no meaning, prove that it is all the same to be dead or alive ... that death and life are one and the same thing. Prove it.

1 Reply

@Herald,

Herald wrote:

Quote:
Our geological and biological history just turned out that way. No purpose-pursuing agent is necessary to explain why it did.

This is not entirely convincing. What is the math probability for this to happen?

It's not a mathematical matter, it's an empirical matter. And as an empirical matter, we don't know because our statistical sample is too small to tell.

Herald wrote:

Can you repeat the 'trial' in the lab?

In principle, yes --- if you give the lab 4.5 billion years to run the experiment.

Herald wrote:

Prove that there is no purpose in life, prove that life has no meaning, prove that it is all the same to be dead or alive ... that death and life are one and the same thing. Prove it.

To repeat: Proof cannot operate on unintelligible statements. The problem with the statement "The purpose of life is ____" (fill in the blank), isn't that it's false. The problem is that it doesn't even rise to the level of being false, because it's unintelligible. But I can't prove that any more than you can proove that the sentence "the smell of a triangle is sweet" is unintelligible --- which it is.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

It's not a mathematical matter, it's an empirical matter.

Even if we assume, with great IF that it is empirical matter, can you prove that the mathematics has no tools to verify and validate this highly empirical issue ... and any empirical issue in the general case. This is just a sentence thrown into the air, both without evidences and without reasonable ground (logical inferences in support to its feasibility).

Quote:

In principle, yes --- if you give the lab 4.5 billion years to run the experiment.

You don't always need 4.5 BN years to test s.th. of that range, for you may simulate the time span and run the simulation of 4.5 BN years in several nanoseconds on a suprecomputer. The truth of the mater is that you even don't have the vaguest idea of how to simulate the (fake) claims of the evolution theory.
Claim No.1 of the Evolution states that: if you can break a window with a stone, all the windows can be made by throwing stones at them.

Quote:

Proof cannot operate on unintelligible statements

This statement is already too much Jesuitish. I gave you several plausible interpretations of the question and you are trying to convince me that you are unable to understand even the interpretations.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

But you have a selfish interest in "edukayshun" fm.

"We" is a religious term it seems to me. As is "consensus".

I am here in one sense because Tom Finney missed a penalty and in another sense I am here because I exist and am not somewhere else. I will shortly be somewhere else--on my sun lounger in the garden. Then what is "there" now will be the "here" for me.

Time in opposition to Space and represented by the only two genuine estates, the nobility and the priesthood. Hence the fecundity of nobility with its blood lines and nepotism, and the celibacy of the priesthood.

Both estates being despised and challenged by the new estates of money and materialist intellectualism. System up against plantlike breed and spirituality and rejecting their practical usefulness except to portray, in images on labels, industrially produced food as "country fayre". Aunt Bessie making a few million apple pies. I saw an egg box labelled LAID WITH LOVE. Mr Kipling has rosy cheeks, a nice smile and a spotless apron as he waves off another truck load of cakes from the loading bay.

These children of the megalopolis, money and intellect, protest against the ancient symbols of soil-bound life, nobility and clergy. And they play chess despite the symbolism of the game defining themselves as pawns defending the King, Queen, Knight, Bishop and Castle (or Rook--a word coming from the Persian for chariot). As a residue of what's left after the aristocracy of birth and cloister are dismissed.

Thus the aristocracies of money and intellect (science) are created. The stealth of the one matched by the crash-bang blundering and lurching of the other. Money avoids attention and intellect revels in it providing a most interesting spectacle for the eye.

The American Civil War, which is commonly dated as 1861-5 for simplicity's sake, represented the annihilation of a planter aristocracy, with its potential for producing a monarchy, by the money aristocracy on its first real flight out of the nest.

Nobility and clergy, as far as they still faintly echo, appear as obsolete nonsense, with their claim to privilege based on historical status, to the aristocracies of money and intellect. And both these aristocracies practice rabid nepotism and the latter is keen, as this thread shows, for metaphysical explanations they are in a schizophrenic position. It is because they have blood themselves.

Thus it is not only"here" that is in question but "we". "Are" is another difficult problem. And "why" is a problem Darwin never discussed. Why are we here begs the question of why were aborigines there. Or the "we" comes down to the participants of this thread.

In which case I am here because I am only allowed to smoke in this room, despite me having paid for all the other rooms and their ******* ridiculous contents, and contributing to this thread is something to do while I enjoy a couple of cigarettes.

Then I will be there in another time and place. Reading or dozing.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

.IRONY BUTTON DEPRESSED

Never admit to irony.

Are you actually going to destroy homes which some little spiders have built at great expense to bring up their babies. Just to save a few dollars on tomatoes in the shops. Isn't a baby spider as entitled to life as a baby whale?

Why do you behave like Attila the Hun to spiders and Mother Theresa to whales? Are you a bigophile and tinyphobic.

I skinned the back of my hand yesterday freeing a butterfly that had got trapped between a window pane in an outhouse and a steel mesh some silly sod had nailed in place on the inside of it for some reason or other.

"Remove" was cute. Where are you relocating these gentle little creatures.

Put a few in a matchbox, you might still have one somewhere, and let them loose under the table at a school board meeting.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

our statistical sample is too small to tell.

Since the reliance upon methods to analyze"Big Data", I can speculate with some reasonable degree of accuracy regarding this very point. Science and Big Data analyses has shown that IT IS WHAT IT IS.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

In addition I can further state , for all you Uniformitarians out there that "IT IS WHAT IT WAS"

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@spendius,

I must loudly affirm that I would never harm a perfectly good garden spider. I , by my own selected means of their removal, had comfortably placed the spiders in entirely new airy niches in which I personally had observed many insect prey being borne upon the peri-jardenic winds.(However, in no case did any money change hands in property acquisition as you seem to infer)
I am always observant of how spiders seem to pick penultimate desirable locations for their webs. Is it because they, as earlier instars were also borne by the winds as little lumpps and, reaching a wind null point they are gently dropped onto prospective real estate? or did they make conscious selections of these plant areas by months of trekking over garden spots ? Ill soon know as my own little investigations proceed into the fall. Watch my blogspace for all things edaphic.

Thank for your concern of our little arachnian friends

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@spendius,

Quote:

Never admit to irony.

Im having problems with this guy. He seems to miss a nine iron swipe to the head

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

Even if we assume, with great IF that it is empirical matter, can you prove that the mathematics has no tools to verify and validate this highly empirical issue ... and any empirical issue in the general case.

Mathematics alone can't prove anything about the real world, because none of its axioms make any statement about the real world.

Herald wrote:

You don't always need 4.5 BN years to test s.th. of that range,

You may not always need it, but in this case, maybe you do.

Herald wrote:

for you may simulate the time span and run the simulation of 4.5 BN years in several nanoseconds on a suprecomputer.

A simulation is a form of theory, only as good as the computational model that it runs. It cannot substitute for reproducing something in the lab.

Herald wrote:

The truth of the mater is that you even don't have the vaguest idea of how to simulate the (fake) claims of the evolution theory.

That's not true. John Maynard Smith's book Evolutionary Genetics, which I've read and understood, offers very precise models for simulating them. Once you have self-replicating molecules upon which natural selection can act, it's not unlikely at all that it produces increasingly complex organisms with increasingly complex nervous systems that eventually spawn consciousness. (To be fair, Smith does not address the evolution of consciousness explicitly.)

The hardest question, rather, is how evolution gets started in the first place. On this question, we have various leads and partial answers such as the Miller-Urey experiment and the discovery that RNA can fulfil the functions of both an enzyme and a replicator. I wouldn't be surprised if we had a full answer within my lifetime. But for the moment, we don't --- and neither do you.

Herald wrote:

Claim No.1 of the Evolution states that: if you can break a window with a stone, all the windows can be made by throwing stones at them.

For that, you would need windows that self-replicate with some variation. You would also need a window-breaker that only breaks some windows but not others, in a somewhat systematic fashion. Real-world windows, of course, lack these proporties. Please show me a source where an evolutionary biologist has made the ridiculous claim that you can have evolution in a species whose members neither replicate nor mutate.

Herald wrote:

I gave you several plausible interpretations of the question and you are trying to convince me that you are unable to understand even the interpretations.

That's not true. I have replied to each of your interpretations. If you don't like the replies, that's not my problem.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

That's not true. John Maynard Smith's book Evolutionary Genetics, which I've read and understood, offers very precise models for simulating them. Once you have self-replicating molecules upon which natural selection can act, it's not unlikely at all that it produces increasingly complex organisms with increasingly complex nervous systems that eventually spawn consciousness. (To be fair, Smith does not address the evolution of consciousness explicitly.)

That's a neat sidestep Thomas produced there. Aside from the evolution of consciousness the problem is simple. Little understanding is required.

With the evolution of consciousness on Ignore, as I think I must be as well, materialist, anti-religious ideas are inescapable and can thus be legitimately and respectably held by those who strategically employ the device.

How evolution got started will never be answered. Theories will be plausible in relation to whether they are wished to be by the various estates I mentioned previously in the struggle between them for power. Or even for individuals.

Evolution is a what, where and when data pile and not a why, how and whence explanation. For the human race to fully accept evolution theory it will need to cease to wonder about the why, how and whence. Which is to say to cease to be human. To eschew metaphysics.

Of all the theories on the why, how and whence, and there are many in history, evolution would have to say that the winner in the struggle between them is the most correct one. The one that imposes its will most.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

John Maynard Smith's book Evolutionary Genetics, which I've read and understood

This is wonderful news.
So and so you have read and understood a book, why don't you tell us how did the following process happen:
The Earth - 530 mya - CO2 in the air - 7000 ppm
The Earth - 300 mya - CO2 in the air - 200 ppm
We are talking about time span of 230 million years, during which the big bang and your book on evolution maintained continuously (pay attention, this is 230 MN years) such disbalance on the Earth between flora and fauna that the CO2 was reduced from 7000 ppm to 200 ppm, where 1 ppm = 2.13 billion tons.
You have 6800 x 2.13 BN of CO2 decomposed and removed from the earth's atmosphere. How much energy is needed to do this BTW?
By using the information from your book ... and this calculation can you explain to us how exactly the big bang manipulated the evolution in such a way that it was able to achive these results (having in mind also that such process has not been observed so far anywhere else in the whole universe).
Just don't tell us generalties of the kind: adaptation, mutation and genetic grift that were subjected to natural selection and caused ... the miracle.
Explain this process chemical reaction-by-chemical reaction in the body metabolism of the species, equation-by-equation, and the most important how was this unnatural disbalance comprising reverse energy processing in the earth's atmosphere maintained ... for a period of 230 MN years?

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@Herald,

Thomas never explains Herald. He describes his own excellence non-stop.

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spendius will explain to all of us why we are here for the price of one little glass of ale.

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

Where's "here"? Who is "we"? When is "are".

If it is us on this thread I have explained. Why are you not somewhere else?

In general I think we are here to stay as long as we can. Individually in a biological and psychological capacity and collectively in a cultural capacity.
That opposition is the source of much confusion.

In general, a psychologist would say, the more vociferously the collective capacity is asserted the weaker it must be if it needs such strenuous declarations to bolster its last vestiges of credibility. A ruling Money aristocracy could produce nothing else. Money having become grace and the way to salvation.

So any idea that a Money aristocracy has anything to do with Jesus is pure pie-in-the-sky using puff pastry and served up on plastic plates.

One cannot have a philosophical discussion when avoiding philosophical principles and the latest thing in philosophy is what does meaning mean.

Whatever answer is provided it has to apply to all humans or be charged with racism.

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