When do Humans Arise?

So that means things are getting better?

Yes, for soldiers, at least. They are no longer cannon fodder in the millions. Our society in intolerant of war casualties. When a single soldier is killed in action, this whole nation takes note. He is given full military honors coming off the plane in Dover, De. The President is there. Contrast this with World War II where it took 2 months for a mother to get word that her son was killed in action. No body returned to US. US had a cemetery in France.

To see the absurdity in our military now, consider that we now have 5900 US troops in terrible living conditions. They are away from family for Thanksgiving, have to eat MREs and have no hot water for showers. Where are these brave men and women and what are they doing to protect our freedoms?
Well they are in California, Arizonia, New Mexico and Texas supposedly protecting our southern border from an invasion of kids from Central America. i gave money today to support our troops in Arizona.:rofl:

I guess it all comes down to how we each define ā€œbetterā€.

No really. Some things are obviously better, like medical care and life expectancy. But you have some Chrisitans who need the world to be going down the toilet. Because if it is not going down the toilet why do you need a God for anything. You donā€™t need to be saved. From what? It is pretty good living. Sure we have problems but mostly we are all ultra rich compared to how people lived 2000 years ago.

The US is a 2 trillion dollar a year economy in a $20T world economy. We spend $600 billion a year for defense but have nearly zero loss of life. Thatā€™s really not war in the traditional sense when whole countries were decimated.

Still not seeing the trend where itā€™s getting better. I see evolution. Constant change. But not a trajectory Iā€™d call improvement.

Thatā€™s true for a rather small percentage of the population. Thereā€™s a lot of people not on their computers in climate controlled homes sipping lattes and having intellectual arguments. Weā€™re all hoarding the resources on the backs of a lot of others who donā€™t enjoy the same perks.

Thatā€™s helpful. Things are clearer now. Thank you. And itā€™s an interesting perspective.

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Thatā€™s true for billions of people. Poverty worldwide is down. Famine in the world is nearly gone. There are more people dying of being overfeed than undernourished. There are a billion people on Facebook communicating globally instantly with family and friends while sipping lattes.

Out of 7 billion. 14%.

That was the population of the world two hundred years ago.

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Well, we can agree to disagree. Itā€™s really a subjective take which way you read the statistics and whether or not you see that as getting ā€œbetterā€ or not.

But I do understand and agree with you about the whole Christian ā€œgoing to hell in a hand basketā€ narrative.

Salvation really isnā€™t about saving anyone in this life. This life is about the struggles and challenges. Thereā€™s value in those experiences, and I think thatā€™s an aspect thatā€™s often overlooked.

Being saved isnā€™t a safety net where life is concerned. If a Christian steps off a building theyā€™re still going to fall. Salvation isnā€™t like having a lucky horse shoe in your pocket. It has everything to do with what comes after.

This life and this universe are finite. If we figure out solutions to all of our problems and make the most of this life, eventually this universe is still going to collapse back in on itself. And all the greatest of our achievements will be just as meaningless as if we spent every day of our lives being the worst people we could be. In the whole of the universeā€™s existence, all we do and all we achieve wonā€™t matter.

So whether or not the world is getting ā€œbetterā€ or not is really irrelevant. Thatā€™s my view, anyway.

I donā€™t think you are up to date on the current understanding of the universe that you live in. The universe may be infinite in size as our observable part is expanding and the expansion is accelerating. The universe is flat so no it wonā€™t collapse on itself but will expand for all time. But as you said our lives are finite and fleeting. This question is how do we want to live our remain years. My preference is to live it happy, wealthy and wise in this time period and in the location with the people I care about.

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Right. I should say itā€™ll eventually go cold rather than collapse back in on itself, but the point remains. All humanity accomplishes, whether we cure cancer or completely annihilate ourselves, doesnā€™t matter in the grand scheme. Itā€™ll still all equate to a zero sum in the end.

If thatā€™s all there is.

Which is where I get hung up when thinking in the context of a god-less universe. If weā€™re products of an indifferent universe, why are we not also indifferent? That does not compute to me.

Because humans evolved to invent culture, technology, and the cognitive abilities to define what they want to do with their lives. Looking at the world, it is what I would it expect it to be - a god-less universe.

Sorry, I donā€™t mean to grill you. Iā€™m just always fascinated to hear a well reasoned explanation for some of the things that totally trip me up logically.

What you said there, ā€œwhat they want to do with their livesā€. That always seems odd to me. I mean, I get the survival aspect of evolution. But the aspirations. The desires to achieve something meaningful. Thatā€™s where it starts to get weird to me. Whereā€™s that come from?

I realize there are social elements to some of it. But at the conceptual level, I just canā€™t work out how/why these things came about. Itā€™s usually just explained much like you just said, in the vernacular of evolution. Once you put it in that context, everyone just nods and agrees and moves on. And Iā€™m left there shaking my head wondering what Iā€™m missing.

I think that as children we all have aspirations. I wanted to excel at sports, then excel academically came in. We all have aspirations what we want to do with our lives. Some achieve some of their aspirations, others do not. Some who achieve what they aspired to find out it lacks meaning and importance to them. Or that what they want to aspire to is actually dreadful and they donā€™t like it at all. For me the key is to define your purpose.
Once you have your purpose, then achieve it. Now of course, you are perfectly allowed to change your purpose every day. I like that. Today my purpose is to enjoy the day by doing (or not doing) this or that. If you want to be happy, figure out what makes you happy and then do it. It is quite simple way of life. And remember that the universe doesnā€™t care or give a damn so be good to yourself and the oneā€™s you care about.

I get that, and experience the same.

Some of the wisest people Iā€™ve encountered are atheists. And it just short fuses me to try to think in that context, and confounds me theyā€™re not short circuited by the same.

You said the key for you is to define your purpose. That jolts me in the same way it always jolts atheists when I say Iā€™m a Christian after wrapping up some long drawn out evolution statement. It seems a contradiction.

The universe that created us has existed for billions of years. We came along way late in the process. We had nothing to do with our being here. So how can we be the ones to define what our purpose is? ā€œPurposeā€ suggests itā€™s a reason why you exist. So it seems backwards to after the fact be the one to define what that purpose is.

We basically came together a piece at a time. The elements in this environment simply respond to this environment by behaving as they do. Somewhere along that causal chain the bits required fell into place in the right way and we got up and started deciding for ourselves why weā€™re here and what weā€™re meant to do.

I feel like Iā€™m rambling as I struggle to convey what Iā€™m trying to get at. I hope you can make some sense of that.

I appreciate you humoring me.

Being an atheist is really easy. Try being an ā€œatheist for a dayā€ Just do your regular thing that day but anytime a thought about God or Jesus comes into you head, just ignore it. Do that for 24 hours and see how you feel about yourself.

When I said set our own purpose, I meant each person does this individual by himself. Since the universe has no purpose that I can figure out, limit purpose to just yourself for this moment in time. What is your purpose in life for the next fifteen minutes. Mine is to chat with you while sipping on a tea and eating trolley bun that my wife got at the bakery today. It is a pretty good purpose in life for the next fifteen minutes. And quite comfortable and meaningful. A secondary purpose in life for the next fifteen minutes is to humor you like you ask me to because we seem to have human-to-human connected to each other over time and distance over this media.

There was a time I thought I was headed that way. Specifically about the God/Jesus stuff. There were a growing number of things that kept falling apart when analyzed. Similar to the problem I tried to describe above.

So I already know how my ā€œatheist for a dayā€ excursion would go. I analyze things to death. Itā€™s not the thoughts about God and Jesus Iā€™d have to ignore. Itā€™d be the analyzing. Like my question here. Thatā€™s why it doesnā€™t stick. Things exactly like that.

I get all the cause-effect stuff science explains. But itā€™s the stuff thatā€™s just glossed over. Like the will that drives life. Physical capability of a living organism isnā€™t enough. There also has to be a will that compels it. A want to survive, to eat. Those elements are just ā€œgivensā€ in the context of the evolution explanation. Lifeā€™s driven. Fact. Thatā€™s just what it does.

But that doesnā€™t mesh with the indifferent universe just falling into place idea where this all comes from. Whereā€™d that will come from? From what? Itā€™s not something we can see in an MRI. Itā€™s gone when we die. But nothingā€™s gone that was there before. The bodyā€™s just dead. That will is gone. That life. Whatever that is.

If itā€™s all mechanical then these mechanics just donā€™t fit.