Jake

Um, except that, apologies, this is not true. As example, here in America those of us of European heritage are still sitting on the stolen property ou...

Yes. She's an avid wildlife rehabber. I live in a wildlife hospital, but nobody seems able to rehab me. :smile:

It seems foolishness to me, at least at this point in history. Maybe some where far down the road it would make sense. My take is that the Mars missio...

I'm totally agreeable that someone has to make the call of where the boundaries are, and that the mods are assigned agents for that task. So, I'm not ...

The God debate could be useful if we faced the evidence it has produced, which is, the investigation in it's current form is going nowhere. That is ac...

You're not obligated to have a plan for human transformation of course. But the "more is better" philosophy your technological suggestions are built u...

What is your plan to remove such ideological irrationality from the equation? Ok, we need to accept "science as truth". But how? Unless you have some ...

Claiming no expertise here, but will bumble forward anyway... Facts seem a very small business. Electro-chemical patterns in the minds of a single spe...

Actually I have admitted this, though the admission may understandably become lost in the walls of typoholic text. I agree that I personally can't for...

Correct. I am not pissed off at anybody. Overly enthusiastic more often than necessary for sure, but not pissed off. Speaking only for myself, I don't...

Because poster Jake Blowhard on some tiny net forum has not immediately provided the solution of a governing mechanism, you take this as evidence that...

It's called "philosophy". You could look it up on Google if you wanted, pretty interesting stuff really. :smile:

Well, it's true that only the mods can stop me from banging this drum, agreed there. But is the drum a "drum of doom"? (catchy phrase, points for that...

Do we agree that nuclear weapons exist, and that so far, we've found no way to get rid of them? Could we maybe agree that you actually have no credibl...

As is true of most great sages :smile: I've way over complicated the above. Why do we typically not experience an intimate relationship with reality? ...

If we agreed that evolution is a totally random process with no goal or direction, what would this tell us about the possible existence of gods? Nothi...

Yes, this seems an interesting line of inquiry. PREFACE #1: One of the good things about holy books that don't seem to totally nail things down is tha...

FYI, I'm not a theist.

Where is Reverend Crank to ask if this conversation is giving us an ego hard on??? Gee, now that I've typed that sarcastic barb, I'm starting to feel ...

All I'm saying is that the reality of evolution, which we all agree on, says nothing at all about the possible existence of gods. Evolution neither pr...

You should be looking for theists to aim these arguments at.

Agreed. And this proves exactly nothing about gods.

We have thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat. Do you consider this a successful adaptation which increases our chances o...

Yes, those species no longer well suited to the current environment are removed, to be replaced by other better adapted species. And god, should there...

Ok, I'll rephrase. Science culture tells us that we should obtain as much knowledge as possible, and we buy this proposal because we and our politicia...

I'm sorry, but evolution proves no such thing. As example, if there is some highly intelligent agent operating over our heads, evolution would be a hi...

The problem here is that there is no limit to how much more we want. We're already the richest people ever to walk the face of the Earth, but the thou...

Me too, but evolution neither confirms nor denies the possible existence of gods.

Yes, humans are animals. But the proper comparison is to compare human ability to the scale of the question being investigated.

This is a common widespread belief.... ...which requires as much speculation as the God idea. How could you possibly know "there is no why"? Are you a...

Yes. Human beings are limited, like every other creature. It's logical to assume there are aspects of reality which are beyond our ability to grasp.

We are a single half insane species only recently living in caves on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies. This is very small scale, in co...

Don't take me seriously. That will save me a lot of typing.

Correct. You are playing with imaginary knowings, whom you seem to have become quite friendly with. Hey, welcome to the club. :smile:

Aha, you've given me an easy target! :smile: I would agree that reason is sufficient for many things, primarily easy things that we want to hear. Reas...

Oh dear, how sad. Hope you feel better soon!

Oh no you don't. I refuse to comply because according to the all knowing 22 year old prophet Jeremiah, gods are just made up nonsense. So forget it! N...

Aha! Proof!!! We have found God!! His name is Jeremiah!! All hail Jeremiah!!!!

An amoeba asks, "How could there possibly be something like this human being thing you are describing?? I don't see any!!!"

Agreed. Our ability to reason is relevant in that it impacts our ability to do a meaningful analysis of questions the scale of gods.

Well, yes, ok. So the opposite of one kind of malady can reasonably be said to be another flavor of malady. Fair enough. To clarify.... Is the questio...

The wrong path is changing the environment we inhabit faster than human beings can adapt to that environment. If you can reflect on this a bit, I thin...

Apologies, but comparing ourselves to animals is a very common logical error, in regards to God questions. As example, a 12 year old would be more cap...

That's something we can work on, but it probably won't be enough on it's own. A big dose of pain is likely going to be required too.

How do we correct the mistake... At the scale necessary... In the time frame necessary? I generally agree with you that IF human beings could be funda...

I vote this is an excellent question. Yes, "what is the healthy state of being?" What is the optimum psychological state which we are reaching for in ...

Please prove that something as small as human reason would be able to meaningfully analyze something of such enormous scale as gods, should such a thi...

Paragraphs are a nice feature.

Except that in a "more is better" knowledge economy characterized by accelerating social and technological change, whatever skills you develop are lik...

For starters, what we're doing now, philosophy. Using reason to examine and challenge the "more is better" group consensus to see if it can withstand ...