Do you think there is a plan for humanity?

[Vic]

Originally posted by: BudAshes
We need air to breathe, food to eat and a decent size population to continue to reproduce. Resources are only resources if humanity can take advantage of them. Im looking long term here, the world has very likely ended before, so it would be pure folly to say it wont happen again.

Heh. How can you possibly say that "the world has very likely ended before," when it is quite obviously still here? That is hardly long-term thinking.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
Resources are most definitely limited. There is certainly a maximum sustainable limit to the Earth. Only so many plants can grow, only so much oxygen can be contained, only so much oil is ready for use, etc. The more human settlement, the less animal and plant habitat. These things are fairly simple and obvious.

Now, if we choose to switch to fully renewable sources, and choose to limit our expansion as a species so that we quit reducing those things which sustain us - then we could survive for a very long time here.

You seem to do this often: call me wrong with one breath and then right with the next.

Define "fully renewable." All things are essentially the same in nature, and exist in unending cycles of transformation from one state to the next. What we see as waste or "non-renewable" is simply a lack of conservation and/or efficiency on our part, not a representation of finite resources.

Well, like I said, it isn't enough to use only wind and solar energy, etc. We also have to limit ourselves. We can't continue to populate like locusts or no amount of care and conservation will be effective.

 

[DainBramaged]

Originally posted by: BudAshes

Originally posted by: DainBramaged

Originally posted by: BudAshes

The free will defense is so easily countered. If you raise a pit bull and it mauls some kid arent you responsible? This counts even more so in gods case since he would know everything humanity would do before he created it, being omniscient and all.

The pit bull is a horrible example since pit bulls are stupid and trained to act a certain way. God created his people to have the ability to make the right choices but it's already been fvcked up so now the best we can do is to take advantage of the free gift that God has provided to those who realize their need.

As long as we have the ability to make the right decisions, God is abolved of any responsibility. Anyway, I'd much rather not have to be a robot.

The irony is by accepting christianity you are using some wackos writings from thousands of years ago to program your mind. By accepting christianity and the bible you are becoming like the automaton you despise. The trick has always been never let the programmed realize they are programmed. Because then they just arent nearly as productive.

The whole point of Christianity can basically be summarized by "Love the Lord your God with all your heart," and "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." This doesn't seem like much of an automaton response to me, if anything, it sounds like something that would make the world a much better place.

Please don't lump me with those "wolves in sheeps clothing" who use Christianity as a justification or guise for their anti-Christian behavior.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
Resources are most definitely limited. There is certainly a maximum sustainable limit to the Earth. Only so many plants can grow, only so much oxygen can be contained, only so much oil is ready for use, etc. The more human settlement, the less animal and plant habitat. These things are fairly simple and obvious.

Now, if we choose to switch to fully renewable sources, and choose to limit our expansion as a species so that we quit reducing those things which sustain us - then we could survive for a very long time here.

You seem to do this often: call me wrong with one breath and then right with the next.

Define "fully renewable." All things are essentially the same in nature, and exist in unending cycles of transformation from one state to the next. What we see as waste or "non-renewable" is simply a lack of conservation and/or efficiency on our part, not a representation of finite resources.

Well, like I said, it isn't enough to use only wind and solar energy, etc. We also have to limit ourselves. We can't continue to populate like locusts or no amount of care and conservation will be effective.

Yet just a cursory look at history shows that efficiency (and hence production) has increased as population has increased. Or are you going to deny that the global standard of living has increased despite record population? I'm not saying that the population could increase to 100 billion without cost, for example, but it is quite obvious that the earth and humanity is a self-organizing system more than capable (hell, that is only capable) of living within its own means (resources and efficiency).

What I'm showing you here is that modern doomsday stories are no less "wacko" than ancient ones. Fear is how humans control each other. When you fear things you don't understand just because someone told you to fear these things, you have submitted yourself to be controlled by another. The ancients thought it just as obvious that God(s) were going to punish us for our sins (excesses) as you seem to think it is obvious that the nature will likewise punish us. I know it's hard to accept, but it really is the same thinking with just a new paint job.

 

[PrinceofWands]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
Resources are most definitely limited. There is certainly a maximum sustainable limit to the Earth. Only so many plants can grow, only so much oxygen can be contained, only so much oil is ready for use, etc. The more human settlement, the less animal and plant habitat. These things are fairly simple and obvious.

Now, if we choose to switch to fully renewable sources, and choose to limit our expansion as a species so that we quit reducing those things which sustain us - then we could survive for a very long time here.

You seem to do this often: call me wrong with one breath and then right with the next.

Define "fully renewable." All things are essentially the same in nature, and exist in unending cycles of transformation from one state to the next. What we see as waste or "non-renewable" is simply a lack of conservation and/or efficiency on our part, not a representation of finite resources.

Well, like I said, it isn't enough to use only wind and solar energy, etc. We also have to limit ourselves. We can't continue to populate like locusts or no amount of care and conservation will be effective.

Yet just a cursory look at history shows that efficiency (and hence production) has increased as population has increased. Or are you going to deny that the global standard of living has increased despite record population? I'm not saying that the population could increase to 100 billion without cost, for example, but it is quite obvious that the earth and humanity is a self-organizing system more than capable (hell, that is only capable) of living within its own means (resources and efficiency).

What I'm showing you here is that modern doomsday stories are no less "wacko" than ancient ones. Fear is how humans control each other. When you fear things you don't understand just because someone told you to fear these things, you have submitted yourself to be controlled by another. The ancients thought it just as obvious that God(s) were going to punish us for our sins (excesses) as you seem to think it is obvious that the nature will likewise punish us. I know it's hard to accept, but it really is the same thinking with just a new paint job.

I didn't say 6Billion wasn't sustainable, I just meant that our current slope is unsusatinable. After half a dozen classes on ecosystems, sustainability, etc I've simply been presented with too much evidence to discount it. When people want to disagree with these theories I most often hear things like:

"We've done fine so far."
"We'll adapt."
"It's just the way things are."
etc

While those are fine opinions, they lack any scientific rationality.

By now you should realize that I don't form opinions from media or other simplistic sources. I take classes, read a few dozen books on a subject, study the arguments, and arrive at a conclusion. It may not always be the right one, or one you agree with, but it's almost never ill-formed.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
I didn't say 6Billion wasn't sustainable, I just meant that our current slope is unsusatinable. After half a dozen classes on ecosystems, sustainability, etc I've simply been presented with too much evidence to discount it. When people want to disagree with these theories I most often hear things like:

"We've done fine so far."
"We'll adapt."
"It's just the way things are."
etc

While those are fine opinions, they lack any scientific rationality.

By now you should realize that I don't form opinions from media or other simplistic sources. I take classes, read a few dozen books on a subject, study the arguments, and arrive at a conclusion. It may not always be the right one, or one you agree with, but it's almost never ill-formed.

So what you're saying is that we haven't done fine so far? That we haven't adapted? That it's scientifically irrational to observe that we obviously have done fine and that we obviously have adapted?
I can rest my case on this alone. All doomsday'ers are wacko, whether religious or scientific. We're still here (and better off and more populous than ever even).

And seriously, I honestly don't care what you've studied or even whether or not you slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night, if your conclusions are out-of-sync with observable reality, then the only possible alternative is that they must be ill-formed.

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer... "

 

[Poulsonator]

Apparently our purpose here is to completely destroy the Earth, our true Mother and Father.

Oh, and like others have said above, you can't have free will and an omnipresent / omnipotent god. If your god already knows exactly what you're going to do, when you're going to do it, how you're going to do it, etc....well that's just not a choice then, is it? Nope, that's pre-determined and most definitely not free will.

 

[yukichigai]

Frankly, I am of the opinion that it's not a plan so much as a <b>challenge[/b]. Allow me to explain.

One of the things that drives me bonkers is how so many religious nutjobs are of the opinion that rational science and religious belief cannot co-exist. These people, hitherto and after referred to as "religitards", seem to discount any possibility that maybe, just maybe God would decide to do most things by the rules of the freakin' universe he created, not just some random miraculous method that can't be explained. Take evolution, for example. If God is all knowing and all seeing, what's to say that he couldn't have maybe figured out exactly what amoebic goo needed to interact with what other amoebic goo to eventually create our race? Of course religitards like to point out that Genesis says the earth was created in 7 days. Okay, fine, what kind of days? Roman days? Egyptian days? Were they based off the rising and setting of the sun? Hell, if the earth wasn't created until the first day, how did anybody clock it in as a day? Couldn't that just have been a symbolic way of expressing what God interprets a "day" as?

Bah, anyway, here's the thing: if you look into any of the hard sciences you'll find a lot of really, really interesting things. Things that, if you inspect them with a certain amount of childlike naievity, seem absolutely amazingly coincidental. Take, for example, the properties of water. It is one of the only substances which expands just before it freezes, which is why when winter comes we don't all die. More to the point, there's a very specific temperature it does this at: precisely a 4% of the way between the freezing point and the boiling point. Exactly 4%. 4 Degrees Celsius. (at sea level) If the freezing or boiling points of water change for some reason, so does the expansion point. Now look at the mathematics for Energy: the energy of a moving object is ½mass*velocity^2. What if you want the energy of an electric system? ½voltage*amperage^2. This formula repeats for every physical system which generates a form of energy. That's too much of a coincidence to be coincidental, methinks.

All these "coincidences" leads me to believe that there's some hidden message or secret in the universe, something that eventually we as a race will be able to discover simply by probing the various properties of the world around us. The challenge is finding it as fast as we can. Personally, I think we're an experiment of sorts, something that God watches with deep interest as we progress through the various stages of evolution, technology and intelligence. This is not to say that God doesn't love us; any parents know that one of the more enjoyable things to experience as a parent is watching your child figure something out for themselves, be it how to do a math problem or get the VCR to stop flashing 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12. You still love your kid, but you want to let them develop on their own, because learning something on your own, for yourself is infinitely more satisfying than having someone spoonfeed it to you, both for student and teacher.

So, yeah, not a plan, just a goal.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Poulsonator
Apparently our purpose here is to completely destroy the Earth, our true Mother and Father.

Oh, and like others have said above, you can't have free will and an omnipresent / omnipotent god. If your god already knows exactly what you're going to do, when you're going to do it, how you're going to do it, etc....well that's just not a choice then, is it? Nope, that's pre-determined and most definitely not free will.

Sorry, but fatalism is generally considered to be a logical fallacy. You cannot reject bivalence in classical logic. In this case, for example, an omnipotent god can use his omnipotence to grant free will to humans despite his omniscience.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: PrinceofWands
I didn't say 6Billion wasn't sustainable, I just meant that our current slope is unsusatinable. After half a dozen classes on ecosystems, sustainability, etc I've simply been presented with too much evidence to discount it. When people want to disagree with these theories I most often hear things like:

"We've done fine so far."
"We'll adapt."
"It's just the way things are."
etc

While those are fine opinions, they lack any scientific rationality.

By now you should realize that I don't form opinions from media or other simplistic sources. I take classes, read a few dozen books on a subject, study the arguments, and arrive at a conclusion. It may not always be the right one, or one you agree with, but it's almost never ill-formed.

So what you're saying is that we haven't done fine so far? That we haven't adapted? That it's scientifically irrational to observe that we obviously have done fine and that we obviously have adapted?
I can rest my case on this alone. All doomsday'ers are wacko, whether religious or scientific. We're still here (and better off and more populous than ever even).

And seriously, I honestly don't care what you've studied or even whether or not you slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night, if your conclusions are out-of-sync with observable reality, then the only possible alternative is that they must be ill-formed.

"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer... "

I don't quite understand what you're trying to get at. He didn't say we haven't done fine so far, he's just quoting what other people have said in the face of population growth becoming unsustainable, at least that's what I got out of the post.

And you better not rest your case on this alone if you want to sound knowledgeable, because the Earth obviously isn't going to last forever and you can surely bet that in about 5 generations time we'll be facing some serious "doomsday-like" implications if we're not starting to colonize other planets to speedup their greenhouse effect.

Yeah you can fit a couple hundred billion of people on this planet, but population growth is happening at an exponental rate that doesn't show signs of slowing down. So do you just want to wait until the time comes to do something about it, or plan ahead of time and try to prepare for it?

Yeah, we're wackos for theorizing what will eventually happen, please choose your words and insinuations more wisely. I still think you're one of the brightest members on here, but maybe you should consider this topic a little more realistically.

 

[Jeff7]

Humans are the only ones capable of outlining a plan for ourselves. Your life is what you make of it. There is no why.
As far as the Universe is concerned, humanity could vanish and it wouldn't care. The Milky Way Galaxy could cease to exist and the Universe wouldn't blink.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
I don't quite understand what you're trying to get at. He didn't say we haven't done fine so far, he's just quoting what other people have said in the face of population growth becoming unsustainable, at least that's what I got out of the post.

And you better not rest your case on this alone if you want to sound knowledgeable, because the Earth obviously isn't going to last forever and you can surely bet that in about 5 generations time we'll be facing some serious "doomsday-like" implications if we're not starting to colonize other planets to speedup their greenhouse effect.

Yeah you can fit a couple hundred billion of people on this planet, but population growth is happening at an exponental rate that doesn't show signs of slowing down. So do you just want to wait until the time comes to do something about it, or plan ahead of time and try to prepare for it?

Yeah, we're wackos for theorizing what will eventually happen, please choose your words and insinuations more wisely. I still think you're one of the brightest members on here, but maybe you should consider this topic a little more realistically.

Hey, sorry to tip over your sacred cow. Humans have been threatening other humans with some doomsday scenario or another since the dawn of humanity. "Do as I say or we will all die." It's all about speading fear for the purposes of control. If you can't recognize the obvious similarities between the doomsday scenarios of ancient (or traditional) religions and those of modern pseudoscience (I'm not discounting global warming, but very scientists agree that it will be the doomsday you describe, much less entirely of human causes), then I can't help you. In order to see that as a doomsday, you would have to assume that the earth's climate has never fluctuated before, and we all know that it has.
I used the word "wacko" because the OP did BTW.
And see one of my earlier posts about why we won't be colonizing new planets anytime soon.
And nowhere did I say the earth will last forever. I said it will last as long as the sun shines at a constant rate.

I can recognize the need for the doomsday mentality in human evolution, the way it gives us a kind of deadline urgency, but that doesn't mean that I have to respect what is otherwise baseless anxiety. Worse yet is the manner in which it is exploited against the masses as a means of control by the elite (or those who would make themselves a part of the elite).

Thanks for the compliment BTW, but I think you might want to consider that I am looking at this topic realistically, and perhaps a bit deeper on the philosophical spectrum than you are used to.

 

[MichaelD]

Here's one for all you religious people, regardless of preference. (Wow...sounds deep!)

God is just waiting for mankind to start the regenerative cycle over again. Know those dinasour fossils and cave writings and all that stuff? What if that was the FOURTH time those have been found? Or the nineteenth? Or the 234th? :Q

There is no plan for humanity. We just happened to be the organism that evolved the most on this planet, during this period. 5 million years is an eyeblink in the universe!

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Here's one for all you religious people, regardless of preference. (Wow...sounds deep!)

God is just waiting for mankind to start the regenerative cycle over again. Know those dinasour fossils and cave writings and all that stuff? What if that was the FOURTH time those have been found? Or the nineteenth? Or the 234th? :Q

There is no plan for humanity. We just happened to be the organism that evolved the most on this planet, during this period. 5 million years is an eyeblink in the universe!

Uh... dinosaur fossils have been known to humanity for thousands of years. It's why almost every major culture on earth has dragon legends. Ancient peoples found the fossils.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
I don't quite understand what you're trying to get at. He didn't say we haven't done fine so far, he's just quoting what other people have said in the face of population growth becoming unsustainable, at least that's what I got out of the post.

And you better not rest your case on this alone if you want to sound knowledgeable, because the Earth obviously isn't going to last forever and you can surely bet that in about 5 generations time we'll be facing some serious "doomsday-like" implications if we're not starting to colonize other planets to speedup their greenhouse effect.

Yeah you can fit a couple hundred billion of people on this planet, but population growth is happening at an exponental rate that doesn't show signs of slowing down. So do you just want to wait until the time comes to do something about it, or plan ahead of time and try to prepare for it?

Yeah, we're wackos for theorizing what will eventually happen, please choose your words and insinuations more wisely. I still think you're one of the brightest members on here, but maybe you should consider this topic a little more realistically.

Hey, sorry to tip over your sacred cow. Humans have been threatening other humans with some doomsday scenario or another since the dawn of humanity. "Do as I say or we will all die." It's all about speading fear for the purposes of control. If you can't recognize the obvious similarities between the doomsday scenarios of ancient (or traditional) religions and those of modern pseudoscience (I'm not discounting global warming, but very scientists agree that it will the doomsday you describe), then I can't help you.
I used the word "wacko" because the OP did BTW.
And see one of my earlier posts about why we won't be colonizing new planets anytime soon.
And nowhere did I say the earth will last forever. I said it will last as long as the sun shines.

I can recognize the need for the doomsday mentality in human evolution, the way it gives us a kind of deadline urgency, but that doesn't mean that I have to respect what is otherwise baseless anxiety. Worse yet is the manner in which it is exploited against the masses as a means of control by the elite (or those who would make themselves a part of the elite).

Lol, it's not my sacred cow, and if it was it would be hamburger meat by dinnertime.

Hey I agree with you bigtime that there is an elite bunch that has their own little dastardly plan for population control along with the fear machine to make us believe we're on a collison course with extinction much sooner then reality would suggest. I never had much luck trying to explain to people that there a few families amoung us who have the money, knowledge, and power to keep the public misinformed and fearful, so if that's what you're trying to get at then I'm onboard with your theory.

Oh yeah, and you should know that through expansion the sun will shine for millions of years even after the Earth is gone, it will grow to be a fairly large red giant star and eventually ballon into our orbit, incinerating whatever is left. This is assuming we don't blow our own planet up before it gets to that point.

All I'm trying to say is there are several possible doomsday senarios that could happen in nature that we just can't stop or predict. O-zone depletion, global-killer meteors, global warming, plague-like viruses.. who's to say there won't be another Ice Age/nuclear winter occurance that ultimately squashes mankind on this Earth for the next several million years? Frankly, I'm more scared of what the elite plan to do to get us under that 2 billion person umbrella they claim we need to have for life to continue on Earth for thousands of years.

 

[Kalmah]

Originally posted by: BudAshes
Or are we just a big nasty virus feeding off this planet till we suck it dry?

I think if we did have a purpose the only thing it could possibly be would for us to spread life across the universe. Eventually our planet will blow up and if we are the only life in the universe(its quite possible theres other life in out there and this point is invalid) it would be our job as the dominant species to spread it out into the universe. Human Beings are so screwed up and incomplete that I cant see us ever creating some kind of utopia or finding some kind of ultimate truth to the universe. But because we always need something more and are quite good at creating technology we would be a very good tool for spreading life out among the stars. Of course we'd have to live long enough to create the technology, but as far as I can tell theres really no other purpose we could have.

I guess im just looking for some justification for our existence. Not that there has to be one, its just nice to think we might have a purpose.

Expansion, like you said, seems to be the most reasonable answer. I was watching 'Naked Science' last night and found out that the moon is getting further away from earth by 1.5" per year. The further away, the less tilt the earth has, eventually no tilt resulting in no seasons. (equator scorching hot, far north and south is cold) The moon slows the roation of earth also. (its gravity creates 'drag' like friction.. so the rotation will eventually speed up causing days and nights to go by really fast)

If the life of our sun was layed out on a clock.. we are at 10:30am of the sun's life cycle.(6am being the birth of the sun, 6pm being the death). At 11:45 the earth will be unlivable. (according to this scale humans have only been on earth for less than a second)

I don't know why I'm saying this, I just find it very interesting.

They said that as the sun is burning out its gravitational pull might weaken.(theirfore earth might shift out into a wider orbit allowing it to stay in tact until the sun becomes a white dwarf)(this is not proven, just a possibility of it happening) But if that does happen, chances of life still existing on earth is very unlikely. (we would have to be living deep underground) But the heat would eventually go away as the sun's gravity weakens. (and as the sun burns out)

As earth gets closer to the scorching heat of the sun, mars will heat up and we may be able to make a jump to it. (would need terraforming still) And then jump from planet to planet as it gets hotter and hotter. (I don't remember which planet, but one of them is suppose to become all water once the sun heats it up.. living on that planet for thousands of years could possibly cause humans to evolve into something more fitting for that kind of environment)

 

[Caveman]

Originally posted by: BudAshes

Originally posted by: Caveman
BudAshes, your logic is flawed.

You would be correct IF humans weren't supplied with all the tools they need to overcome themselves, and transcend their carnality.

We all will have access to the tools at one point in our lives or another. We can use them or throw them away.

The choice is ours.

You're right my analogy is slightly off, i forgot to mention that you stand there and watch while it mauls the kids.

Doesnt matter which way your trained it, or what tricks you taught it. Its still your own responsibility.

Free will doesnt work with christianity, period. You cant have it both ways. God cant be all powerful while at the same time not be responsible for everything we do.

You can free yourself from preconceived ideas or choose to be a slave to your human nature. Because God is all powerful, he CAN give us free moral agency...

God's ways are beautiful in their simplicity, and can illuminate the darkest of paths. He gives us everything we need to succeed AND remains commited and responsible to us. Most have not learned to accept that fact; it's a hard thing for a human mind to accept. But nonetheless, it's true.

 

[Jeff7]

Dammit all! My new plan for me is to get back to my rightful place in MichaelD's Quote of the Day/Week!


Combining bacon fat with other food. Inveterate doesn't know anything about that! He's half the bacon fat expert that I am! People on the street talk about bacon fat, and when they have a question about it, they know who to go to, and I'll give you a hint, it isn't Inveterate.


Ok, you may all return to your (possibly) meaningless lives.

 

[everman]

Humanity will build a giant ship which will take settlers to another galaxy to settle. Minutes before it launches, a giant space hamster named "Boo" will devour the entire planet.
Hallowed are the Ori er Boo

 

[BudAshes]

Hmm who is budashes2? Do I have an evil twin?

 

[Brigandier]

Hmm who is budashes2? Do I have an evil twin?

You waited seven years so there would be no records, I call Beautiful Mind level schizo.

 

[Franz316]

To me it's very simple actually.

We'll find a way to live together sustainably and peacefully, or we won't. If we won't, then the future is not bright.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Who cares about what happens a million years later when the world population is gonna hit 9 billion by 2050. It doesn't take a genius to see the nasty implications when demand for resources is not going to be lower and the land is not getting any larger.

 

[W.C. Nimoy]

When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer...

I don't believe the following concept for that very reason, as I don't want to suffer. It's just a hypothetical, a "what if", in case someone claims to have sneaked a glimpse of the giant spring we are building. Not building outside ourselves with construction materials independent of our bodies, but where something within us, as well as something more than our bodies are the legos that comprise the spring.

I also don't believe this spring is anchored behind us, while unfurling outward to an inevitable destination; or that no matter what we do, there's nothing that can be done to stop it from unraveling faster than our individual lives seem to be moving, traveling to a destination beyond our scope, & as a whole generally existing outside our sphere of perception (which is the exact type of convenient qualifier those who believe in such crap always cite).

A giant spring.

 

[Sonikku]

Of course there's a plan for humanity. In the end, it's always humanity that unites all the bickering and squabbling aliens of the galaxy under one banner be it to battle the Dominion/Reapers or some other damn thing. Near as I can tell, without humanity, the galaxy would be fucked.