Ha I'll have to agree with you on that now Big Dog. Life does seem a little unforgiving but that's mother nature for ya. Enjoy it while it last and work your best to help humanity down the road, and enjoy your 80 years of existence. Kind of depressing but I'm about to eat some pizza so it'll be less depressing.
Posts by Daunt
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23My words My feelings - you're welcome to add yours
by LouBelle infor some reason i just want to put this out there.....because i can.. .
i don't know what kind of a ""christian"" (i don't label myself as one) i am, as i feel that if for certain reasons one doesn't believe in a god, because there is a lack of evidence - he isn't gonna condemn anyone.
because you believe in ra/ vishnu or whatever other god doesn't mean you are under condemnation.
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My words My feelings - you're welcome to add yours
by LouBelle infor some reason i just want to put this out there.....because i can.. .
i don't know what kind of a ""christian"" (i don't label myself as one) i am, as i feel that if for certain reasons one doesn't believe in a god, because there is a lack of evidence - he isn't gonna condemn anyone.
because you believe in ra/ vishnu or whatever other god doesn't mean you are under condemnation.
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Daunt
"But a part of me is saddened by the thought of a scant 70 or 80 years of existence if I'm lucky and then eternal nothingness, that there is nothing more, nothing greater to aspire to or hope for. Or that if some are correct that life was such an amazing coincidence that in the whole universe this might be the only place it happened, it just shrinks the tapestry for me. "
One of the most unique, interesting and great things about the human mind is that we, this low bit of nothing in the universe, can think beyond nature, we can utilize nature to our needs in awesome ways. We can mold our mind to an almost infinite number of possibilities then criticize and annalyze those things.
It can seem sad that we only have 80 years to live but me personally I can say that my 17 years on this planet at the moment has been anything but boring and pointless. I got away from a crazy psycho cult, I totally shattered that believe that was beaten in me from the time I was born and thought about it critically and discarded it as not worth my time. I'm an artist that can somewhat draw and I have 70 freakin years to work on it. Just thinking about it gets me excited and this is why I'm living.
Sorry if this seems insensitive but I kind of chuckle when people say that there should be more to life or that this life needs more meaning in it. For the most part those individuals haven't experienced a small unnoticeable fraction of what there is to experience out there. You have the ability to love, learn, and help the individuals around you. This is worth living, and we haven't even sctrached the surface of what's possible to learn and love. In all seriousness I haven't heard of a heaven that sounds even closely appetizing. They're all so isolated without any chance of evolving and learning and questioning and critique. It's litterally hell. This life is heaven and hell and everything in between. Wouldn't want an outside foreign world to dominate my life. I'd rather work hard to support the super organism, humanity.
Sorry if I went crazy I was gettin a little giddy typing it. -
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My words My feelings - you're welcome to add yours
by LouBelle infor some reason i just want to put this out there.....because i can.. .
i don't know what kind of a ""christian"" (i don't label myself as one) i am, as i feel that if for certain reasons one doesn't believe in a god, because there is a lack of evidence - he isn't gonna condemn anyone.
because you believe in ra/ vishnu or whatever other god doesn't mean you are under condemnation.
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Daunt
Sorry Loubelle, but the Oxygen and God analogy just doesn't hold up. Sight is not the only thing that judges natural occuring phenomena. We can not see gravity yet we can observe it's habits. We can not see oxygen yet we can test it's existence. However, God is unfalsifiable and can not be tested. This puts God in the lump of other mythology such as Santa Claus and Unicorns or anything else I make up on the fly.
We came about our morals and our understanding through an interesting concept called memes. Memes are an excellent thing to study because it focuses human ideas and cultural differences much like scientific genes but Memes have it's own ability to replicate itself. Memes are ideas, thoughts, anything that can be thought of in the human mind. Buddhism, atheism, and christianity are Memes that spread when the right conditions are put forth. From the beginning of our simple but big brains, we had to find a way to seperate ourselves from other humans that weren't in our tribe. If we didn't seperate each other we would overrun our food supplies and strain on our ability to produce. Anyways, we didn't have the intricate smelling abilities of Dogs or other senses to tell each other apart so we used our big brains to come up with clothing, ornaments, and ideas to set us a part. All these things are memes and they were used mostly to set us apart.
Much like Tetra has said, morality and such did not originate with humans. Many scientist believe that Memes started from the first proto-chimpanzes that were around at the time, but our memes were more complicated than the instinct ridden primates. To help our chances of extending our gene line throughout humanity we had to think of more complicated ways to seperate ourselves from our non-genetic human neighbors because their memes were growing in complexity also. So we began instituting religions, simple philosophies, more distinct and exotic clothing to seperate ourselves. We also changed our group systems from a individualistic selection type to a more a group selection type. Our memes spread faster and more distinct than genes since it had the ability to capture the fears, the love, and all of the emotion that we hold close to us. These memes (alongside our genetic instincts and nature’s influences itself) created control over other groups, dependence, more complicated forms of war, more complicated ideas, more complicated technologies, more complicated ways to love and an almost endless host of other things. All of this over time created our moral codes, shaped our way of thinking, and kept ourselves alive.
Now in today's word our groups are so large and intricate that a billion people can be in a group and to insure their survival of their ideas they still have war, and try to spread their memes throughout other groups.
Religion played a huge part in the early formation of these memes. It provided a glue, something that brought the groups together as a whole. We have a natural instinct to feel loved and to be a part of something and if we don’t we pretty much die. Thousands of studies have been produced to support this. Anyways, religion was very useful and successful in providing this glue that kept people together and from not dieing off from loneliness (we are social animals eh). However, religion also did it’s job too good. It kept groups together but also formed a Us vs. Them mentality to keep the group together. Yet as we know this has created innumerable bouts and wars between groups and individuals.
I believe that it is about time for us to get over religion as a glue to society because a countless number of instances has supported the notion that individuals can survive on larger groups to help the super-organism. We can be a group if we devise a meme that doesn’t need an enemy that is essentially ourselves. We can do this but it can only start if we get rid of these viral memes that has expired it’s purpose. We can change the world but we have to work at it.
Humanity itself is like a single human being. There’s the liver, legs, brain plenty of “societies” That keep the whole brain working. In these societies we have billions of cells. Each sell is almost just like each human. Many help us but many can also do very bad things to us. If we work together as a whole we can greatly benefit the superorganism aka you and me. -
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Creationist Answer Please
by skyman inyesterday there was a post that made me think.
i have a question for you.
i think creationist are ruled by emotion and not by provable facts.
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Daunt
I have to admit I am pretty hard on folks (Mostly Hibs) with these discussions. Talk to me about this 5 years ago and I would be huddled in a corner crying from all the facts I was getting eh. So ya I agree with you on that Big Dog. But it's hard not to accept a challenge now eh.
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The Lucipher's Principle.
by Daunt ini have just begun reading this book by howard k. bloom and i have to say that just the first few pages are giving me a totally new way to look at things.
it's mostly a book about the evolution of human morals and politics and religion but it goes a lot deeper.
it concretely explains how we came to be who we are, personality wise, within society all using aspects of evolution to rationally explain itself.
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Daunt
Thanks for the recommendation. I'd suggest it to anybody and everybody, gave my understanding on things a good jump start, starting to rethink most of my position on things. Very nice subject.
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Creationist Answer Please
by skyman inyesterday there was a post that made me think.
i have a question for you.
i think creationist are ruled by emotion and not by provable facts.
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Daunt
The few creationist I see posing as successful scientists yes Big Dog. Most creationist seem to base it on faith, but to make the claim seem a little more scientific many of em are like what I have explained before. The few I've seen anyways. Generally almost all base it on faith though.
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Creationist Answer Please
by skyman inyesterday there was a post that made me think.
i have a question for you.
i think creationist are ruled by emotion and not by provable facts.
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Daunt
That's far from an answer Hibs. But it is currently impossible for you to think otherwise. Like what has been said before, creationist have an agenda and they use information to form that agenda. That is deceitful to claim that this process is in any way shape or form scientific. It is just not beneficial for the advancement of mankind to even consider this valid (The scientific community don't even care).
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WTS exploiting the system!
by gringojj inmy wife suffers from severe anxiety disorders, panic attacks an such.
as i have been reading posts here i definetly see a correlation between dubdom and anxiety disorders.
because of the life that the wts encourages jws to lead, it leaves other peoples tax money and high insurance costs etc.
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Daunt
It's really a vicious cycle. All the time from the podium I hear how our financial troubles won't get any better in this terrible system of things. How in this world there will always be heartache from evil wicked people (Frankly I just don't see em). This sets up a persecution complex for the dubs. They expect anything and everything to go wrong with worldly people, many times in their financial situations. This attitude contributes to their inability to find a better job and whatnot.
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you will agree
by carla in"you will agree that...." why do jw's start so many sentences that way?!
annoying!
is it in some manual or something?
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Daunt
I get it constantly. "You will apreciate the meetings when you are older". I hate it. Rather explaining how they are right empirically with facts they use sly insults to try to attack the areas of ignorance you have. If age meant anything in being right then there wouldn't be so many wrong grown ups about.
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President Confuses Science and Belief, Puts Schoolchildren at Risk
by hawkaw inpresident confuses science and belief, puts schoolchildren at risk
washington - "president bush, in advocating that the concept of 'intelligent design' be taught alongside the theory of evolution, puts america's schoolchildren at risk," says fred spilhaus, executive director of the american geophysical union.
"americans will need basic understanding of science in order to participate effectively in the 21st century world.
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Daunt
I wish debate and critique weren't so forbidden in politics. I'd have quite a good few words with Bush about this. (Get's snatched by the Secret Service.)