The Earth stands on the brink of its sixth mass extinction and the fault is ours

[Tradesonred]

Thats part of why i view religion with apprehension and fear, its often putting in us the notion that humanity can never fail because were at the center of things. The universe will keep put-put-ing it on long after the human race is gone.

With eco-collapse on the horizon, i dont get pleasant thoughts thinking about what kind of ploy some venture apocalypticalists will come up with. You see what happens when you dont listen to god? YOU SEE? NOW GET TO WORK.

[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Tradesonred [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What happens when you die? The same thing that was before you were born. Non-existence. Consciousness is the electrical storm permanently firing up in our brains.

Yes, except there's nothing permanent about it. We're temporary, which is all the more reason to make every minute and every breath count.

As Sam Harris rather ominously reiterates, there simply isn't any recovery after the death of the brain. When people suffer from brain damage oftentimes entire sections are rendered nonfunctional - they can no longer remember faces, or names, or they lose the ability to speak altogether. The idea that after brain death somehow our consciousness is going rise off of itself and ascend into a magical realm of existence after we die, and we'll be able to recognize our dead grandparents and relatives, can't be reconciled with what we know so far about consciousness.

It's just wishful thinking sold to us by the lie of religion.

[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Glenzig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So you have faith in science.

In the same sense that I have faith in my ability to observe and make note of something, yes.

For instance, if Jesus descends from the heavens tomorrow and raptures every believer into an eternity of servitude and worship, I would then have to make a mental note to myself: "Ah, so that whole Christianity thing was true. Hmm."

And the scientific community as a whole would be making the exact same mental note. This is because science simply just observes what happens, and makes note of it. It's not powered by some weird undercurrent of agendas and supernatural claims. So yes, I have faith in our ability as a species to observe and draw inferences and conduct experiments and prove or disprove hypotheses, and so forth.

[stormlord]

Are you people stupid? Look, I'm going to give you a secret. If you tell anyone, they'll think you're crazy. Even if you identify me, they'll think I'm crazy and it won't do any good. Additionally, I have no evidence to support what I'm saying, so even if I wasn't crazy, I can't convince anybody who doesn't want to believe. I dreamed this, so...

So here it's.... You know those UFOs they tell you about? BS, right? Nope. They're aliens, but they didn't travel here using traditional means. They warp space/time and travel between the stars and galaxies routinely. I can't really say more than that because I'm not in the loop. Earth is part lab, part reserve. They're actively changing our genome and even altering our reality on occasion. If they want us extinct, we'll be extinct, but they don't. They want us to rule our destiny--which is why their relationship with us so distant. They're giving us what we need genetically to boost our survival.

If we somehow cause armageddon, will they save us? Meh. Remember, they want us to rule our destiny. They're only giving us some genetic ammunition. They're not giving us guarantees. So my guess is, they'd let us kill ourselves.

There you have it. YOu can guess the rest, or maybe not.

Some of my guess are below....

As far as when we will make contact or officially recognize life from elsewhere, I can't be too sure. It'll probably be soon. My guess is we'll discover either ancient extant ET life here and/or in our solar system and/or we'll find living ET bacterial populations and/or at least ET viral samples. The details are blurry, but the whole universe will open up, as we realize life on Earth does not exist alone, never has, and did not evolve on its own either.

They watch us, or they watch our planet. They keep a record of all species on our planet. So no matter what happens, evne if s*** htis the fan, if they have a desire they can recreate it. They probably can record anything they want. Just imagine for a moment what technolony an alien civilization has if it was a million or more years older than us? Or maybe older? How far does the rabbit hole go? Anyway, they can record reality and put it on a tape and replay it just like we replay movies.

But keep in mind recording reality and replaying it back doesn't mean they're gods and do do anything. Recording something doesn't mean you udnerstand everyting about it. All you're getting is what reality feeds your recorder.

[paulgiamatti]

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[stormlord]

I'm going to confesss what I wrote in my post above is BS. I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking I was serious. There're people out there who actually would believe me and I don't want that.

BUt are there aliens out there? Maybe. I don't know. It'd be awesome to have a dream and the answers to be revealed, wouldn't it? Only trouble is the answers would be buried inside you and you couldn't prove them in todays world.

As to the OP, I was reading about the sixth massive extinction in 2003. Old news. If you can solve war and murder and all of our other problems you might be able to solve this too. Frankly, I don't see any silver bullet. Species have already perished due to us and will continue to at a increased rate. Whether or not we destroy ourselves is open to debate, but there's no controversy surrounding the major negative impacts we're having on this planet. Still, I remain optimistic and believe, despite the negative consequences which will ensue, we'll still become a space faring species and someday travel to the other stars. Even if I never see that day and die today or tomorrow or soon or whatever, I have faith humanity is far stronger than I.

EDIT: if I could still edit my previous post I'd delete it.

[Humerox]

Originally Posted by stormlord [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm going to confesss what I wrote in my post above is BS. I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking I was serious. There're people out there who actually would believe me and I don't want that.

BUt are there aliens out there? Maybe. I don't know. It'd be awesome to have a dream and the answers to be revealed, wouldn't it? Only trouble is the answers would be buried inside you and you couldn't prove them in todays world.

As to the OP, I was reading about the sixth massive extinction in 2003. Old news.

EDIT: if I could still edit my previous post I'd delete it.

actually it makes for a p cool basis for a book

[paulgiamatti]

Originally Posted by Humerox [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

actually it makes for a p cool basis for a book

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[Luminari]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

btw, why don't you claim the million dollar prize for psychic/supernatural phenomena? Surely being able to guess birthdays with 90% accuracy would be considered worthy. Or are the kind of superhero who would never use your powers for personal financial gain?

I doubt it would be considered a psychic or supernatural phenomena. I can't guess birthdays with 90% accuracy, just the signs. Which would be equated to being too vague to qualify I'd imagine. I've only guessed the exact birthday of someone once and within a few days a couple of times. However I've guessed signs with very high accuracy, especially Sagittarius since that's what I am and know the most about them. I've only really done this a couple dozen times.

Maybe if I studied astrology a lot more and dedicated my life to it I could probably get to the point where I could prove it's supernatural and win the challenge. However, there's not enough time left to do that and I don't really care about money. Anyways, I recommend looking into it a bit and reading your psychological astrology profile and I think you'll be surprised at how accurate it is. That's how I initially got interested in it in the first place when after seeing how accurate Sagittarius' profile was for me.

[Luminari]

Originally Posted by Humerox [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

while this has been a fun exercise it's really a bit mundane for me at this point.

Origin of Life

science isn't there yet. but it's a lot better than mumbo-jumbo about some mystical being...because if everyone accepted that as fact there'd be no new development simply because no one would question the "why".

argue on, bros

Yep real solid science you go by. Another "may have" article. It's as if you're incapable of understanding how science actually works since you think "could be" "maybe" "possibly" are signs of strong science.

Spoilers alert: Science will NEVER be there because it's already been proven to be false/impossible based on ACTUAL scientific facts. We've got cell theory which states ALL cells come from pre-existing cells and we've also got the laws of thermodynamics which state that matter/energy break down over time, not become increasingly complex.

Also, science was invented by religious creationists and the greatest scientists of all time were ALL creationists. Sir Isaac Newton is considered the greatest scientist of all time. Guess what? He's also one of the most devout Christian creationists of all time but that never stopped him from developing science further. You see, to the truly enlightened mind, science is actually the study of God since by better understanding the universe that God created the better we can understand God.