Life, the universe and everything.
Jan. 11th, 2003 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gemfyreFUCKING LJ!!! I just wrote out a third of this, and the client crashed, for no reason!! *jaw drops*
This is the response I composed yesterday to the thread I started. It was just an innocent post. Due to constant LJ fuckups (which don't seem over yet), I haven't been able to post till now.
Wayne!! Get back in yer box, you shit stirrer. :p (For 'Fetti and Peppy - Wayne is morninglord - I had a dream about him removing my MOC Bubbles from the card and me subsequently trying to kill him. In real life we actually are freinds - honest!)
I think we all hold a different perception of what or who God is. Most people immediately get their backs up because the think of religion. Religion - in my definition - is just a brainwashing power structure. What I have I like to refer to as a faith.
When I think of "God", I think of the standard Christian God to an extent. The egotistical "One" who insists his followers believe in none but him. But I also see him up there working with (and being chastised by for being such an egomaniac!), other beings such as Mother Nature, Father Time, Zeus, Thor, Ra, Lords of Law and Chaos. Just a bunch of gods sitting up there laughing at us.
The God I most respect for sure is Nature (hence my love of life sciences). In a blink she could just be like "Alright!! ENOUGH!" and smite every human on the planet in weird and wonderful ways (natural disasters, disease, our own stupidity). She does it everyday on a smaller scale. This belief gives me comfort because I know that even if we annilhate our world something else will come out of it like it did 4 billion years ago here and quite like is has happened elsewhere. The only constant is change and everything, although floating in a sea of chaos, is remarkably ordered.
And this leads me to another of my beliefs. Multiverse theory. Sure, I have only read about it in fiction books but all fiction has a grounding in fact. Multiverse theory allows NOTHING to be impossible.
I think I'm safe in assuming that I'm the most life science oriented person in the thread. I have had it drilled into me. Evolution is NOT a means to and end, it is a means in itself. A mechanism by which a nucleic acid manages to successfully replicate itself.
And guys - like many people you are confusing hypothesis, theory and fact.
A hypothesis is an idea. "I think this does this (maybe because of this)." Then that idea is tested to see if it's right or wrong. This hardly ever makes a hypothesis cold hard fact. And experiment can only tell you that what you think is reasonably accurate among these conditions. If it can be constantly replicated and give similar results it becomes theory. Evolution is, and always will be a theory unless we are able to live for millions of years and monitor one individual gene through those years. Accretion theory has been around for about half a century (maybe a bit longer). Yet I was amazed to find it was only proven as fact in 1994, when the Shoemaker Levy-9 comet hit Jupiter and astronomers all over the world watched in awe. And that is fact, when it can be seen before our eyes that something is true. Honestly, I don't think I believe in fact. I've been known to argue the fact that the clear sky on a sunny day is blue.
Go read James P. Hogan's "Making Light" (I'm always directing people to that story, I think it's great.) I've also left a few replies in the original thread.
Scientists can become just as narrow minded as religious types. I believe that everything is real and true and not real and a lie all at the same time. That doesn't really make sense I guess but it works for me in the multiverse. Everything exists. You just have to choose what you want to believe before you see it.
Somewhere along the line, when we became upright, learned to use more complex tools and developed a more sophisticated mode of communication, we also began to think about more things than food, shelter and finding a mate. We questioned and created.
I admire animals and plants for the simplicity of their lives. They just think "I'm hungry, I better find some food to eat." They don't think "Oh, but I wouldn't want to take food from the others." or "I might hurt the feelings of the rabbit that I eat." or "Should I get some for the others?" (silly examples I know, but you get the gist). Animals are essentially selfish - humans have made being selfish an undesirable trait even tho to our DNA it's a GREAT trait to have. Animals and plants just do what they must without the complication of feelings and emotions. *sits and waits for Lisa to bite.* In animal behaviour one of the key points is not to anthropomorphise. Never assume an animals motives and behaviour has the same basis as a human's.
But hey, who am I to know?? Maybe like in the Larson cartoon cows and chickens really do discuss quantum physics behind our backs. Those purple gnomes possibly do deliver our mail on the days where we don't see the postie. Maybe they dress up AS the postie. Some may call that conspiracy. I just see it as being opened minded. I'll still chance a belief in Santa Claus. Sure he may not visit me anymore (indicated by the dearth of toys in recent years, *sigh*.) But he possibly delivers to millions of others. This is physically impossible you say? Well maybe but you forget that Santa IS magical and magic defies physics. And I also believe in magic. We have no proof one way or the other so I choose to believe. And why can't things be real just in a mind? Characters from my stories are sure real, they did stuff, I wrote it down. maybe they weren't on this plane but surely they are somewhere. Everything must come from something (matter can neither be created nor destroyed). Perhaps in our minds we see those other planes and every fiction IS true, just not in our existence.
This is how I think and what I believe about the world. It works for me. I could write more but you've been more than tolerant already. Thank you for listening. :)
This is the response I composed yesterday to the thread I started. It was just an innocent post. Due to constant LJ fuckups (which don't seem over yet), I haven't been able to post till now.
Wayne!! Get back in yer box, you shit stirrer. :p (For 'Fetti and Peppy - Wayne is morninglord - I had a dream about him removing my MOC Bubbles from the card and me subsequently trying to kill him. In real life we actually are freinds - honest!)
I think we all hold a different perception of what or who God is. Most people immediately get their backs up because the think of religion. Religion - in my definition - is just a brainwashing power structure. What I have I like to refer to as a faith.
When I think of "God", I think of the standard Christian God to an extent. The egotistical "One" who insists his followers believe in none but him. But I also see him up there working with (and being chastised by for being such an egomaniac!), other beings such as Mother Nature, Father Time, Zeus, Thor, Ra, Lords of Law and Chaos. Just a bunch of gods sitting up there laughing at us.
The God I most respect for sure is Nature (hence my love of life sciences). In a blink she could just be like "Alright!! ENOUGH!" and smite every human on the planet in weird and wonderful ways (natural disasters, disease, our own stupidity). She does it everyday on a smaller scale. This belief gives me comfort because I know that even if we annilhate our world something else will come out of it like it did 4 billion years ago here and quite like is has happened elsewhere. The only constant is change and everything, although floating in a sea of chaos, is remarkably ordered.
And this leads me to another of my beliefs. Multiverse theory. Sure, I have only read about it in fiction books but all fiction has a grounding in fact. Multiverse theory allows NOTHING to be impossible.
I think I'm safe in assuming that I'm the most life science oriented person in the thread. I have had it drilled into me. Evolution is NOT a means to and end, it is a means in itself. A mechanism by which a nucleic acid manages to successfully replicate itself.
And guys - like many people you are confusing hypothesis, theory and fact.
A hypothesis is an idea. "I think this does this (maybe because of this)." Then that idea is tested to see if it's right or wrong. This hardly ever makes a hypothesis cold hard fact. And experiment can only tell you that what you think is reasonably accurate among these conditions. If it can be constantly replicated and give similar results it becomes theory. Evolution is, and always will be a theory unless we are able to live for millions of years and monitor one individual gene through those years. Accretion theory has been around for about half a century (maybe a bit longer). Yet I was amazed to find it was only proven as fact in 1994, when the Shoemaker Levy-9 comet hit Jupiter and astronomers all over the world watched in awe. And that is fact, when it can be seen before our eyes that something is true. Honestly, I don't think I believe in fact. I've been known to argue the fact that the clear sky on a sunny day is blue.
Go read James P. Hogan's "Making Light" (I'm always directing people to that story, I think it's great.) I've also left a few replies in the original thread.
Scientists can become just as narrow minded as religious types. I believe that everything is real and true and not real and a lie all at the same time. That doesn't really make sense I guess but it works for me in the multiverse. Everything exists. You just have to choose what you want to believe before you see it.
Somewhere along the line, when we became upright, learned to use more complex tools and developed a more sophisticated mode of communication, we also began to think about more things than food, shelter and finding a mate. We questioned and created.
I admire animals and plants for the simplicity of their lives. They just think "I'm hungry, I better find some food to eat." They don't think "Oh, but I wouldn't want to take food from the others." or "I might hurt the feelings of the rabbit that I eat." or "Should I get some for the others?" (silly examples I know, but you get the gist). Animals are essentially selfish - humans have made being selfish an undesirable trait even tho to our DNA it's a GREAT trait to have. Animals and plants just do what they must without the complication of feelings and emotions. *sits and waits for Lisa to bite.* In animal behaviour one of the key points is not to anthropomorphise. Never assume an animals motives and behaviour has the same basis as a human's.
But hey, who am I to know?? Maybe like in the Larson cartoon cows and chickens really do discuss quantum physics behind our backs. Those purple gnomes possibly do deliver our mail on the days where we don't see the postie. Maybe they dress up AS the postie. Some may call that conspiracy. I just see it as being opened minded. I'll still chance a belief in Santa Claus. Sure he may not visit me anymore (indicated by the dearth of toys in recent years, *sigh*.) But he possibly delivers to millions of others. This is physically impossible you say? Well maybe but you forget that Santa IS magical and magic defies physics. And I also believe in magic. We have no proof one way or the other so I choose to believe. And why can't things be real just in a mind? Characters from my stories are sure real, they did stuff, I wrote it down. maybe they weren't on this plane but surely they are somewhere. Everything must come from something (matter can neither be created nor destroyed). Perhaps in our minds we see those other planes and every fiction IS true, just not in our existence.
This is how I think and what I believe about the world. It works for me. I could write more but you've been more than tolerant already. Thank you for listening. :)
