- Aug 23, 2003
- 25,375
- 142
- 116
It doesn't seem strange when you consider it took billions of years for life to adapt to our surroundings, with billions of successes and failures along the way. Nothing in our world as it exists today simply "came to be" in a perfect manner. The right variations survived, while the wrong ones turned to ashes and dust. The amount of life that has existed and expired during the life cycle of our planet is beyond comprehension.
When presented with such mind-boggling scenarios, some people accept that there is a lot we don't understand while seeking the proof to explain it (scientists), while some try to explain it all to put their minds at ease (creationists).
If everything required for life wasn't here then there would be no life here. With the incomprehensible number of planets in the universe, chances are a few are able to support life. In fact, we don't have to take chances because the proof of such a planet is beneath our very feet. Here it is and here we are. Why must we make up some grand reason as to why conditions were right on this one?
Not only is it not strange, but the explanation is easy. Photosynthetic plants and animals were churning out oxygen long before humanity hit the scene. They didn't do it FOR us. They did it because the chemical reactions they used to create energy created oxygen as a useless byproduct. It was only a matter of time before life evolved that could, in some way, utilize the oxygen that was filling the atmosphere. They don't even need us to continue surviving, but we definitely need them.
What people don't seem to get is that humanity is not on the outside of nature looking in. We are a product of this environment, of course it seems well suited to us. The key thing here is that the environment didn't make itself to suit us, we adapted ourselves to take maximum advantage of it over a long period of time. That's why everything just seems "right" for us. If we didn't "fit" perfectly like a cog in a machine then we would have never made it this far. A better reason for suspecting outside influence would be if there was life that was completely unsuited to it's environment, and yet was here anyway.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
Ever heard of the anthropic principle? If the world didn't have the conditions present that could give rise to life, we'd never have come into existence, and thus never able to say, "This world sucks for life, so how'd we come to be here? Must have been a miracle."
Instead, we find a world, as you say, that is conducive to certain varieties of life. I'm sure that on other planets, which we would find uninhabitable, the inhabitants there would say too, "Golly, this planet is just perfect for life."
Perfection is relative, and its definition is unique to each individual.
A baby's birth is viewed as an amazing event to us for the same reason an orgasm feels really good: those creatures with a strong motivation to reproduce, and then care for their offspring were more likely to survive the trials of nature. Animals instinctively protect their offspring to the extent they need to to ensure the survival of the species. We have more complex brains, and thus experience more complex feelings than animals, but it seems to me that these emotions are simple extrapolations of more basic behaviors seen in animals. Animals engage in what our scientists refer to as "bonding" behaviors. Extrapolate that for greater intelligence, and we have the human idea of "love."
Animals care for their young out of instinct. Extrapolate that, and you have the feeling of attachment that humans feel for a baby.
A relevant quote from Robert Heinlein comes to mind:
"A mother's opinion about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness etc. ad nauseum keep her from drowning them at birth"
Without those instincutally-derived feelings of adoration, I think that a mother would be pretty damned pissed off at the little critter that just caused her so much pain. But if that'd have been the case, early human mothers would have indeed drowned their infants at birth, and there'd be no humans around to speak of this practice.
OREOSpeedwagon
Diamond Member
- May 30, 2001
- 8,485
- 1
- 81
I haven't heard of the anthropic principle but it does sound interesting. I guess I just can't fathom the idea that everything is here and working together in nature by pure chance. The human body is so complex that how could it really come from nothing? How is it that humans are capable of so much more than any other organism? Sure a gorilla can learn 1000 words, but can you teach it basic architecture and within 100 years could they be building skyscrapers? I don't really think so.
Humans have done what they have over thousands of years. Our accomplishments, and by that I mean technology, is said to be expanding exponentially and not linearly. Which is why initially we had simplistic things like the wheel and fire and now we have sky scrapers and nano-technology with new inventions created constantly.
If you think about just our current time count, 2007 years, we've done many things starting with the renaissance. After all, first you had to get those control-freak Christians in Europe to stop telling you how to live and even killing you.
We're here because we're awesome, awesome at staying alive over others. Neanderthals are now genetically proven to be an entirely different species. As they clashed with us, we simply outsmarted them with our more advanced brains.
We could not be here if oxygen had not been created, out of which ozone formed to protect us from lethal UV rays, this is the reason why life originated in the oceans where lethal UV rays cannot reach. In your own lifetime you've experienced or at least heard of new strands of flu viruses that are constantly changing. These new strands are simply more numerous because they are not as hindered by the environment as other strands(drugs don't work on that particular strand). It really isn't hard to see how we've evolved from a single organism, and if you give science a chance there is a plethora of literature laying it out.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
As is usually said then - God is supposedly incredibly more complex than us. How could such an entity come from nothing?
I've read that humans are a sort of freak of nature, that our minds are larger than they needed to be to ensure survival. But such things happen sometimes. Nature occasionally does screwy things. Sometimes they work out, and the species thrives as a result, sometimes not, and the species comes to an end.
We have the capacity to be sentient, and self-aware. We have written language too, which allows us to organize our way of thinking. Animals think in terms of feelings. They don't always have good ways of quantifying their knowledge. There are also no good ways of passing it on, or storing it. One animal teaches another, directly. Humans, through writing, can communicate to many others at the same time. Read a book, and you're absorbing information from someone you've likely never seen. At the same time, thousands of others can partake of this information as well.
The introduction of books allowed for an incredible acceleration in the rate at which we could learn. Before that, you may have had leaflets, or single sheets of parchment. You can't store much information on such things. Books allowed for a compact method of transmitting huge quantities of data.
Today we continue that tradition of compacting information. Now a small hard drive could store a vast amount of knowledge, such as an entire K-12 curriculum, as well as more than enough material necessary to teach it.
You view the human body as complex, because you see the "end result." You see the work of billions of years of biological evolution, all in one convenient package. Yeah, that will look complex. You also view it on a human timescale. We naturally associate periods of time with our own daily lives, or our own short lifespans. Nature operates in terms of eons, millions of years, billions upon billions of generations of life forms, each generation bringing with it minute genetic changes.
It is also not purely random chance that we came to be this way. There are guiding laws in nature that bring about what we perceive as "order." Gravity is a big one. It causes matter to come together in the first place. Then there are atomic and molecular interactions, which are simple results of the constituents of the respective particles. Hydrogen, when heated sufficiently, will bond with oxygen atoms. It just does this. There is no "why." As a result, you get water. Water happens to be a good, simple solvent, and is an efficient means of transporting matter around a surface, such as that of a planet.
Then you have energy raining down upon this conglomeration. Lots of it, courtesy of a massive spherical blob of hydrogen, whose intense gravity crushes the matter so tightly that it heats up to hundreds millions of degrees. Electrons are pried away, and it becomes plasma. When the heat and pressure are sufficiently intense, the nuclei begin to fuse, and in the process, lose a little bit of mass. e=mc^2. This releases incredible amounts of energy, which we receive as sunlight. Let's say that it was instead a different wavelength, perhaps gamma radiation. Anthropic principle kicks in - gamma radiation is too energetic, and would likely prevent life from arising. No life, no humans, no one to complain, "Dammit, this star puts out too much gamma radiation. My SPF 60,000 just isn't cutting it today!"
Courtesy of molecular actions, catalyzed by thermal energy, would give rise to proteins. Scientific American ran an article recently about single molecules or small groups of molecules which, if I remember it correctly, mimicked on a basic level certain life-like functions, such as consumption and excretion of other molecular components. That could have been "life" at its absolute simplest. Even at such a rudimentary level, "defects" may have led to increasing levels of complexity. Give it a billion years, with trillions of trillions of iterations taking place each of those years all across the planet's oceans, and I think you're bound to get something going, either a reaction, or perhaps life form, which is self-sustaining, and self-replicating. Once it starts, it's tough to stop. Basic bacterium give rise to increasingly complex life forms.
(Note, this does not go against any ideas of increasing entropy. That assumes a closed system. The sun gives us something like 316 watts per square meter of surface area, of which Earth has over 197,000,000 square miles, or 509,600,000 square kilometers, including the oceans. That hardly constitutes a closed system.)
So you have an immense laboratory, filled with an incredible number of tiny, breeding, adapting, mutating life forms, with a constant, powerful energy source. The beneficial adaptations continue to build up. Over 4 billion years later, you've got creatures with big masses of nerve cells, wandering around, wondering why the world is so darn perfect.
That right there is part of why we're so much smarter than anything else. That which was smart enough to pose a threat to us, but not smart enough to beat us in combat, was eliminated from existence.
Part of it is wrapping your head around the huge numbers involved. This takes many billions of watts of energy, billions of years, oceans with volumes of billions of cubic [/i]kilometers[/i], and trillions upon trillions of generations, involving even more trillions upon trillions of life forms. Looking at a mere result of that - humans - and saying, "gosh, we're really complex," is not taking all those huge numbers into account. It's not like life was blinked into existence yesterday. In a manner of speaking, we were in the works for billions of years.
OREOSpeedwagon
Diamond Member
- May 30, 2001
- 8,485
- 1
- 81
I commend you with your knowledge of this stuff, Jeff7. You know what you're talking about, unlike lots of the evolutionists I've talked to. I agree that the earth has been around for billions of years and had a ton of time to work its way up to this point, but I just can't accept that we came from billions of years of hydrogen, rain, radiation, etc and got to the point we are now. According to scientists the earth is 4-5 billion years old (iirc, the number escapes me atm), but humans have advanced so much in the last 5000-8000 years that I can't help but think that there was a greater being that created humans around that many years ago. The wheel was conceived around 5000BC or so, and here at 2007AD I'm typing out this message and communicating it with the click of a mouse to 100000+ users all over the world who are registered on this forum. We started advancing rapidly around 7000 years ago, which is approximately the last .00014% of the life of the planet. I guess I just don't understand how one species can be so dominant that in that short of time in respect to the life of the earth, when all sorts of life had been around during the first 99.99986% of the earth's life and no other organism has been able to think, communicate, learn, and apply like humans have in the last 7000 years. I just can't and probably never will be able to accept that we came from chemicals being mixed together over time.
Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
As Adn4n said, technology does not advance in linear fashion. Right now there is so much new information being created that no one can hope to learn it all.
Several advances made it possible. One revolved around water: learning how to transport it and provide constant sources of it helped make the first cities possible. Water transport also allowed for better agriculture, which was another key component of a stable city. Now people had constant supplies of food and water. They could finally settle in one place. This also meant that they could work together, and combine knowledge more easily.
Then came books, and then means of rapidly duplicating them. Now it's taken for granted, but these were incredible technological advances. It made the distribution of knowledge immensely more efficient. Once you learn a little, you want to learn more: with books, this was possible. It was also possible to read multiple books, and synthesize new information and conclusions from that combination. Previously, only a privileged few had access to written documents, and they were far less-densely packed with data than books. This meant that most people had to learn verbally, directly from others, just the way animals learn.
With this, it was also possible to communicate easily with distant lands. Merchants could carry books to far away places. New ideas could be planted there, and new research could begin. News of it could travel more easily as well. Books and people can both be containers of information, but a book can be stashed in a bag, it doesn't need to eat, and it can't get sick and die during a long journey.
All of this greatly aided the rate at which we could expand our technological prowess. Faster transportation became available as well, further improving the speed at which information traveled. In time we progressed to the telegraph, and eventually wireless communication. Now a scientist working in Japan can learn of an American's research in a matter of seconds, allowing for collaboration on projects like never before in history. Widespread talent is not as isolated anymore; such people can work together. It's an exponential rate of growth, and it's all one step building upon another. But with each successive step, the distance between each one becomes greater and greater. Look at the microprocessor. Just in the modern era, it has increased in speed by a few orders of magnitude. Processors were used to design their own replacements, just as the slide-rule designed the calculators which made it obsolete.
Perhaps no other being reached the level we reached, simply because there didn't exist an ecological niche for larger brains until recent geological history. Larger brains finally took off with primates. It so happened that a large enough brain formed that it was possible for someone to come to an incredible realization: I think, therefore I am. Self-awareness is a big first-step. Once a being realizes not only that she exists, but that she has the power to change her own mind, suddenly the possibilities can seem endless.
And concerning our intelligence, I look to things such as The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which took a picture of an area of sky about 1/10th as large as the full moon appears. In that picture are about 10,000 galaxies. So look at the full moon one night, imagine an area 1/10th of that width, and put 10,000 galaxies in it. Now project that around the entire sky. Don't forget to include what is obscured by Earth.
10,000 galaxies in each of those tiny sections of sky. Each galaxy with millions or hundreds of billions of stars, and it seems that lots of these have some kind of planetary system. That's an awful lot of chances for life to evolve into something intelligent. We happen to be one of them.
Give it another 7000 years. Whatever form "humans" take by that time, I'm sure they'll look back on us and wonder how we ever survived in such a primitive society.
Several advances made it possible. One revolved around water: learning how to transport it and provide constant sources of it helped make the first cities possible. Water transport also allowed for better agriculture, which was another key component of a stable city. Now people had constant supplies of food and water. They could finally settle in one place. This also meant that they could work together, and combine knowledge more easily.
Then came books, and then means of rapidly duplicating them. Now it's taken for granted, but these were incredible technological advances. It made the distribution of knowledge immensely more efficient. Once you learn a little, you want to learn more: with books, this was possible. It was also possible to read multiple books, and synthesize new information and conclusions from that combination. Previously, only a privileged few had access to written documents, and they were far less-densely packed with data than books. This meant that most people had to learn verbally, directly from others, just the way animals learn.
With this, it was also possible to communicate easily with distant lands. Merchants could carry books to far away places. New ideas could be planted there, and new research could begin. News of it could travel more easily as well. Books and people can both be containers of information, but a book can be stashed in a bag, it doesn't need to eat, and it can't get sick and die during a long journey.
All of this greatly aided the rate at which we could expand our technological prowess. Faster transportation became available as well, further improving the speed at which information traveled. In time we progressed to the telegraph, and eventually wireless communication. Now a scientist working in Japan can learn of an American's research in a matter of seconds, allowing for collaboration on projects like never before in history. Widespread talent is not as isolated anymore; such people can work together. It's an exponential rate of growth, and it's all one step building upon another. But with each successive step, the distance between each one becomes greater and greater. Look at the microprocessor. Just in the modern era, it has increased in speed by a few orders of magnitude. Processors were used to design their own replacements, just as the slide-rule designed the calculators which made it obsolete.
Perhaps no other being reached the level we reached, simply because there didn't exist an ecological niche for larger brains until recent geological history. Larger brains finally took off with primates. It so happened that a large enough brain formed that it was possible for someone to come to an incredible realization: I think, therefore I am. Self-awareness is a big first-step. Once a being realizes not only that she exists, but that she has the power to change her own mind, suddenly the possibilities can seem endless.
And concerning our intelligence, I look to things such as The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which took a picture of an area of sky about 1/10th as large as the full moon appears. In that picture are about 10,000 galaxies. So look at the full moon one night, imagine an area 1/10th of that width, and put 10,000 galaxies in it. Now project that around the entire sky. Don't forget to include what is obscured by Earth.
10,000 galaxies in each of those tiny sections of sky. Each galaxy with millions or hundreds of billions of stars, and it seems that lots of these have some kind of planetary system. That's an awful lot of chances for life to evolve into something intelligent. We happen to be one of them.
Give it another 7000 years. Whatever form "humans" take by that time, I'm sure they'll look back on us and wonder how we ever survived in such a primitive society.
Well that really depends on how you define privately owned. The vast majority of Federal Reserve members are public companies.
And really I see no conflict of interest with the Federal Reserve controlling the money supply. There IS a conflict of interest when the government has complete control over the money supply. That essentially gives them a blank check to pay off their loans. You can see how well that works in places like Zimbabwe which currently has hyperinflation.
The banks, however, have an interest to keep a stable rate of inflation. Unexpected inflation causes their loans to be worth less. Unexpected deflation causes the value of their outstanding loans to be worth more but it also causes a large jump in loan defaults. So yes it is in the Federal Reserves best interest to keep a relatively stable money supply.
And to Adn4n, I'd prefer not to waste my time watching this movie. I've heard similar arguments time and time again which are always horribly off the mark. I suggest you do yourself a favor and read up on how the Federal Reserve actually works. A History of the Federal Reserve by Allan Meltzer would be a good place to start.
By horribly off the mark you mean that the Fed did a great job before, during, and after the Great Depression? Because I disagree.
I don't see where I said that in either of my posts. The Fed did a horrible job right before the Great Depression (raising interest rates during slight deflation to pop a stock market bubble is a bad idea). They also did a horrible job during the Great Depression because they weren't centralized enough and each separate bank was doing their own thing. They decided not to inject liquidity into the economy when it was very much needed.
Trust me, I'm no fan of the early years of the Federal Reserve. Since they have started inflation targeting, however, they've done a damn good job.
Here's another video that may complement the OP's video. It's in three parts, so just look for the other two when you're done with this one.
http://video.google.com/videop...d=-4854686992345665111
http://video.google.com/videop...d=-4854686992345665111
QueBert
Lifer
- Jan 6, 2002
- 23,074
- 1,237
- 126
so basically you destroyed all their facts with facts of your own? I take it your facts are 100%? I watched this movie and the segment about the Pentagon, sorry but no "facts" you have could make me believe that a huge commercial airliner crashed into it. I would say a lot of your facts are no better then the facts you categorically destroyed.
n7
Elite Member
- Jan 4, 2004
- 21,281
- 4
- 81
Finally watched this.
Truely disturbing.
The first part on religion was pretty questionable IMO, but the second part on 9/11 & the Federal Reserve were very unsettling i will say.
Not saying i agree with everything brought up, but i makes too much sense...which is scarey.
The ironic thing it bashes religion in general, yet brings up the RFID chips at the end, & we all know the reference in Revelations.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
I'd say the movie is worth the watch.
I almost quit watching at the beginning, since the religious part is farfetched, but it gets very interesting, heck genuinely creepy as it moves along.
Truely disturbing.
The first part on religion was pretty questionable IMO, but the second part on 9/11 & the Federal Reserve were very unsettling i will say.
Not saying i agree with everything brought up, but i makes too much sense...which is scarey.
The ironic thing it bashes religion in general, yet brings up the RFID chips at the end, & we all know the reference in Revelations.
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
I'd say the movie is worth the watch.
I almost quit watching at the beginning, since the religious part is farfetched, but it gets very interesting, heck genuinely creepy as it moves along.
it's a given there's some form of corruption pulling the strings in EVERY government... humans have a natural desire for greed.
eits
Lifer
irony of this video: they define "terror" and "terrorism" and show the irony of the bush administration using the term to gain power and imply that THEY'RE the terrorists... the irony is really that the filmmakers are terrorists, by their own definition, because they're scaring me into feeling like, in the future, i've got no other choice than to either help evil perpetuate, thereby making me evil (by virtue of knowledge of what will happen based on the implications drawn in this film), or to go live in a cave and eschew "civil" society... either that or cause a pan-revolution around the globe to keep this from happening, which will never happen.
ViviTheMage
Lifer
Do you consider Bank of America, Wachovia, BB&T, South Trust, North Trust, 5/3, Capital One/Northfork, JPMorgan Chase, BONY, Liberty Bank, LaSalle, Chevy Chase, Citibank, and every other bank in this country a private bank?
Or are they public ones, with shareholders?
The Fed is owned by every member bank in the network, including all credit unions, S&L, public bank, private bank, and everything in between.
I just saw this finally. It was a very good presentation of the material. Although most of it and the concepts weren't new to me. I've known for quite sometime that organized religion is BS. I've also known that globalist elites do control everything....I thought everyone knew this until recently but apparently people still believe dems/republicans, the president and congress make decisions. The elites know the rules of war and they know the secret to winning - rigging the game.
I do hope this has opened peoples eyes though. I think more people are becoming conscious of these shenanigans. The machine won't operate without the people running it.
I do hope this has opened peoples eyes though. I think more people are becoming conscious of these shenanigans. The machine won't operate without the people running it.
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