how did the universe come to be? (NO RELIGION POSTS)

FRuiTY PeBBLe · May 26, 2003

we are here, alive on planet earth. there really is an explantion for how it all happened, but we just don't know and may not even be capable of fully understanding it.

to start, i would like to use this example:

in kaku's book, "hyperspace", he starts off the book from a fish's perspective. imagine being a fish who exists under water for its whole life. now imagine being a fish who is plucked out of the water. suddenly a whole new world is exposed to it. we could be more complex "fish" living in our little universe which is everything to us. maybe there is an outside to our world that we aren't aware of, much like above water for a fish.

i would like this thread to be where you post how the universe exists, BUT WITHOUT RELIGIOUS CRAP! DO NOT POST RELIGIOUS EXPLANATIONS HERE! if you want to discuss religion, start your own thread! religious stuff just gets us off track debating a defunct absurd, fake, concept.

please state your beliefs if they are non-religious.

overall, my belief is that we are just not capable of understanding it all. for every living thing, there is only so much it can comprehend. i can't explain the moon to an ant. it just can't grasp it. at the human stage, we can understand a lot, but probably not everything. i believe there may be many higher levels above us and i have no idea what they're like.

LongShot · May 26, 2003

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

FRuiTY PeBBLe · May 26, 2003

everyone should download this:

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.html

i have it on my computer and it works perfect. you can set it to run as the screen saver. you can have it blank the screen. it works perfect.

help find aliens when you're not using your computer! i don't know about you, but i'd like to discover aliens in my lifetime!

LongSnot · May 27, 2003

So, this is where I'm supposed to talk about religion and its explanation of how the world was created?

candletrader · May 27, 2003

My Dearest Brother Fruity,

Nice thread... you rock, Brother Fruity... and I love ya as a True Brother...

With the warmth of feeling that can only be found amongst the fraternity,
Candle

LongShot · May 27, 2003

they (the dumbass christians and the like) luv to claim god made the universe...

but they never have an answer to WHO MADE GOD?

The concept of "GOD" represents the ULTIMATE in "ORDER", "DESIGN", and "INTELIIGENCE".

So...

if these conditions require purposeful intervention..

as they luuvvvv to claim....

then...

WHO is ITS CREATOR???!!!

:-/

Babak · May 27, 2003

Doesn't Douglas Adams explain all this in his "trilogy in five parts"?

LiverNoMore · May 28, 2003

You might be able to explain the moon to an ant, if you could figure out how to communicate with ants.

Part of the complexity there for you to be awed by is the inexhaustible varieties of intelligence among the many forms of life. Look at the fish, and all the things they do within their own reality. And all the things accomplished by ants in their brief existences. And all the things that birds do. Watch the squirrels as they climb around the trees, and circumvent birdfeeders to eat sunflower seeds, and dig for acorns that they buried, and build nests out of leaves and twigs sturdy enough to raise their babies in. And then tell me that they don't have thinking functioning brains like we do, and they're just pre-programmed automatons acting out of unconscious instinct.

FRuiTY PeBBLe · May 28, 2003

Quote from LiverNoMore:

You might be able to explain the moon to an ant, if you could figure out how to communicate with ants.

rofl..i don't think so, dude!

Part of the complexity there for you to be awed by is the inexhaustible varieties of intelligence among the many forms of life. Look at the fish, and all the things they do within their own reality. And all the things accomplished by ants in their brief existences. And all the things that birds do. Watch the squirrels as they climb around the trees, and circumvent birdfeeders to eat sunflower seeds, and dig for acorns that they buried, and build nests out of leaves and twigs sturdy enough to raise their babies in. And then tell me that they don't have thinking functioning brains like we do, and they're just pre-programmed automatons acting out of unconscious instinct.

ok, good points, here! yes, many animals are remarkable. my dog impresses me all the time. but clearly, each type of animal has its limits. i don't think the issue is about communication. even if i could communicate with an ant, it still wouldn't be able to relate to advanced human thought. it simply does not have the brainpower. if i could communicate to an ant, i would guess the most i could communicate with it is, "food is that way."

so, yes, lesser evolved beings do have thinking function brains, but they are just less evolved/less powerful. as for pre-programmed instinct, all beings probably have some. it depends on the brain. i would say the less evolved something is, the less thinking it can do, therefore, rely more on instinct--although not completely.

an interesting issue is how much a human is just a bunch of instructions. we think we're big thinkers, and we are, but to a higher being, we may have just a small number of instructions compared to them. i will say right now, although i am a human, and i can think, i still am based upon a bunch of instructions (that seem complicated to us).

LiverNoMore · May 28, 2003

It is human prejudice to believe that human beings are the highest form (yet) of earthly evolution. Communication is definitely key to breaking through this biased perspective. If we could talk to the animals, just imagine it, we could find out many answers about how advanced we actually are. So many animals do so many things that are so far beyond our capacities, but the human response is usually "oh well, who would want to do [whatever the amazing thing animals do that we can't even attempt] that, we'll just build a machine to do it for us. Friends is on tv now, gotta go, bye!"

Just because animals can't communicate to us (and remember, we can't communicate to them, either!) doesn't mean they don't have consciousnesses possibly equal or greater than our own. If you meet a Chinese person who knows no English, can you understand what they are going on about? Assuming you know no Chinese, the answer is No. But is it reasonable to conclude that they don't have brains as fully developed as your own just based on your inability to communicate with each other through language? But when it comes to animals, the human bias is to say that just because we can't talk with them, they must be intellectually inferior. The animals, of course, are always expected to be the ones required to communicate to us in our language. Just as the Chinese are always expected they should somehow naturally be required to learn English to create communication with us, expecting us to learn Chinese is seen as an unreasonable requirement. Just so, humans dismiss the notion that we should be the ones required to learn the animals' languages to create communication as unreasonable.

Dolphins may have forms of intelligence at a "higher level" than our own. Or on a different level. There may perhaps hardly be any concrete Higher and Lower, just Different.