Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jamey who wrote (18289)	5/18/2003 10:04:06 AM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81821

James > That is a pretty morbid outlook, imo Not at all. There is a celebration and a joy in life quite apart from any imaginary connotation which one may apply to it. Life demands that we live and confers on us the ability to do so. Is that not enough? > After all, out of the whole animal kingdom we are the only ones with awareness of ourselves and have the ability to imagine a creator who made the universe. That's the point I am making. The "creator" is a figment of our imagination which is our special attribute. A construct of our overdeveloped brains. The fact that we can imagine a creator doesn't bring one any closer to it, any more than imagining a "big bang" makes that theory any more likely as the origin of the universe. Birds can fly but we (on our own) do not have that attribute. Likewise, whales can cross the oceans but we cannot (unaided) do that either. But the existence of these special attributes doesn't mean that God created these creatures "in his own image", any more than we were. > Is your answer that we were born in a swamp, developed from microbes to our present knowledge and then to blindly live a life that goes no where and has no meaning, rhyme or rythem? Yes and no. There is considerable circumstantial "evidence" that there is a connection between all of life eg similar DNA, even in plants. There is also fossil "evidence", for what that's worth, that there are palaeontological skeletal similarities and patterns between all vertebrates. But there is a lot of evidence which is missing, particularly the reason why development or evolution (to use a contentious word) continued in the way it has. For example, how did lizards know to make bones with large air spaces, to lighten them, in order that they could become birds. For my money, perhaps because I don't understand the forces involved, I can't believe that "natural selection" could have done it in a random way, by trial and error, any more than I could believe that a dozen monkeys could have "created" the works of Shakespeare if they typed forever. However, and again this proves my point which is that we simply don't know. A theory or a myth doesn't mean that we know, even if everyone believes it, and however comforting it is to do so. But my point is not what one believes, because one can believe anything one wishes --- it's what are the implications of "believing" particularly when "believing" means locking into a whole bunch of man-made dogma which has been presented as the "word of God". > Even the molecules that make up all of existence seem to have more direction than that! I don't know what you mean here. I was unaware that molecules, particularly simple ones, have any "determination".