WHY DO YOU THINK WE ARE HERE? WHY DO WE EXIST?

[attofishpi]

In short, pure happenstance. It must be demoralizing for humans not to be more important than any other random event.

...good point.

[attofishpi]

Atto, you have to make piece with entry. As the Hindus noticed with the construction of the deity, Shiva, that destruction is needed for regeneration.

Why are we here? Let's follow the breadcrumbs leading to us:

- Star ignition and planet formation
- Evolution of rocks and organic chemicals to states where abiogenesis was possible
- Biology was at first entirely about survival and reproduction
- Then they had to worry about threats - competition and predators
- Then they had to form alliances and bonds, hopefully resulting in
- Them having to find a way to get laid.
- Then they had to worry about the eggs, then the kids, then the whole family and community.

So life is becoming more aware and intelligent. That's the trend and Gould was wrong in claiming that evolution was a bush, not a ladder. Rather, there is bushiness lying between some clear rungs of the ladder - life, mulitcellularity, chordates, mammals humans, post-humans.

There is no reason to believe there are not further rungs for life to climb after us. My gut feeling (pun half intended) is that biology is only a phase that will be transcended by entities whose aims and goals would be far too subtle for us to know about - or care about, even if we understood - in much the same way as dogs don't much care about human aims and goals.

People seem to think it far fetched that something more aware and intelligent than humans could exist, but I think the likelihood of humans being as good as it gets in the universe looks far lower. The question would be why everything would stop with humans. They would need to explain why the impending death of large proportions of the world's population in the next century or so would prevent significant progress in the future.

Hi Greta, good points. From my POV, even thought i've called the 3rd-party intelligence a nasty term in my previous comment, I do understand to a limited extent, why it put me through what it did, and I learned a lot about its attributes with relation to us and our reality.
As Christ said (apparently) Love God with all your heart. That's very difficult to do, and shouldn't love be spontaneous, natural..but, I feel this entity probably suffered more than any other in its formation of its own intelligence from chaos, and the formation of our reality and so can relate to why and what it tested me with, and I do feel love for 'it'.
On the Christ thing, a consideration of mine (and of course others) is that Christ was the man/body form of this 'God' entity. This 'Christ' went his entire short life, knowing what he was going to do, be crucified to death - that would have been a massive cross to bare for so many years.

[Ferdi]

Why here?
I do not know why, but I do know that we humans are just another one of the countless varieties of creatures on Planet Earth. We consider ourselves to have the better intelligence but, in most of the other respects, we are like the other creatures, which is: we search and kill for food, forage for vegies, find water to drink and driven by the natural urge we look for a mate, breed and help the off-spring on their way to repeat the process.

We have been using our extra intelligence so successfully that we have increased our survival rate. In some regions our population densities are increasing at an exponential rate. Globally it has produced the consequential increase of waste-production, global-warming and climate-change. Diseases and disasters may slow down overcrowding and so may space exploration, time will tell.

Our extra intelligence has also enabled us to be greedy, collecting more than is actually needed. Note worthy is that we, human creatures, have a superior free-will readily able to bridle greed. Curtailing greed should have been taught as we grow up but unfortunately mankind has done the opposite i.e. developed an admiration for those who display excessive talent, be it sports-stars, film-, pop-, entertainment-stars, politicians or collectors of assets. And, as a recently self-discharged very old Catholic, let me stress that the Church set a bad example of collecting wealth.

We need to instill in each younger generation that being “better than someone else” deserves recognition but no reward. We are NOT all born equal; losers can be more deserving. Admiration should never be given to people who popped-up by pushing others down. Admiration should be strictly reserved for deserving cases. When a sport-player gets paid, it ceases to be sport; it becomes entertainment, a profit-driven business.

Why we have a “free will” is beyond my intelligence but from the fact that we are enabled to choose between good and bad we can intelligently and definitely draw the conclusion: doing good is better for our society; good for all.

[Dubious]

To ask questions which have no answer.

[Belinda]

To ask questions which have no answer.

Yes, how absurd to ask existence itself why it exists.

[Ferdi]

Re Belinda’s of Mar 30
Contrary to absurd, it is sensible for an existing intelligent creature to question why things are so, including the reason for its own existence.

[Belinda]

Re Belinda’s of Mar 30
Contrary to absurd, it is sensible for an existing intelligent creature to question why things are so, including the reason for its own existence.

I did say "existence itself", not what you wrote, above.

[Ferdi]

Re Belinda ‘s of Mar 30, 2019 12:52 pm : I did say "existence itself", not what you wrote, above.

I’ll amend mine to: Contrary to absurd, it is sensible for an intelligent creature to question existence.

[gaffo]

Atto, you have to make piece with entry. As the Hindus noticed with the construction of the deity, Shiva, that destruction is needed for regeneration.

Why are we here? Let's follow the breadcrumbs leading to us:

- Star ignition and planet formation
- Evolution of rocks and organic chemicals to states where abiogenesis was possible
- Biology was at first entirely about survival and reproduction
- Then they had to worry about threats - competition and predators
- Then they had to form alliances and bonds, hopefully resulting in
- Them having to find a way to get laid.
- Then they had to worry about the eggs, then the kids, then the whole family and community.

So life is becoming more aware and intelligent. That's the trend and Gould was wrong in claiming that evolution was a bush, not a ladder. Rather, there is bushiness lying between some clear rungs of the ladder - life, mulitcellularity, chordates, mammals humans, post-humans.

There is no reason to believe there are not further rungs for life to climb after us. My gut feeling (pun half intended) is that biology is only a phase that will be transcended by entities whose aims and goals would be far too subtle for us to know about - or care about, even if we understood - in much the same way as dogs don't much care about human aims and goals.

People seem to think it far fetched that something more aware and intelligent than humans could exist, but I think the likelihood of humans being as good as it gets in the universe looks far lower. The question would be why everything would stop with humans. They would need to explain why the impending death of large proportions of the world's population in the next century or so would prevent significant progress in the future.

Hi Greta, good points. From my POV, even thought i've called the 3rd-party intelligence a nasty term in my previous comment, I do understand to a limited extent, why it put me through what it did, and I learned a lot about its attributes with relation to us and our reality.
As Christ said (apparently) Love God with all your heart. That's very difficult to do, and shouldn't love be spontaneous, natural..but, I feel this entity probably suffered more than any other in its formation of its own intelligence from chaos, and the formation of our reality and so can relate to why and what it tested me with, and I do feel love for 'it'.
On the Christ thing, a consideration of mine (and of course others) is that Christ was the man/body form of this 'God' entity. This 'Christ' went his entire short life, knowing what he was going to do, be crucified to death - that would have been a massive cross to bare for so many years.

your view is the usual modern Johnian/Pualist view of Christ (Christ God's Son).

there are 4 Gopsels - and in then 3 Christs (their veiw of Christ is not one - but 3 different views concerning his nature).

Mark - (my view also - i view Christ as another Good man - kiled by othersin authority (romans/jewish elite) - Ghandi like.

you seem to affirm the john view - not the best man, most moral and therefore adopted by YHWH as his son (mark) - but instead "born" - never born per john, for john preable is clear, god's son existed since forever...............so never born..so you negate Gospel of Mark, and insead affirm Gosp of John (they differ too much to make an honest conformity (though conformed for the last 1900 yrs in mainline christianity - i call out the undoable, but not a christian, so carry on.......).


per Gosp John Christ is God, period.

in mark - and matt/luke...........which per the nature of Christ is in between.

----so you affirm John?

then you ignore Mark and the other 2 synoptics as unworthy?

[gaffo]

Re Belinda’s of Mar 30
Contrary to absurd, it is sensible for an existing intelligent creature to question why things are so, including the reason for its own existence.

why so?

[gaffo]

To ask questions which have no answer.

the "answer" may be there, but the questioner/question is unworthy.

or maybe both, there is not anwwer, i know the questioner is unworthy, not sure about the nature of the answer-er.

but being an ant, will not bother in in finding Truth - assuming it exists - if it does (and it may not) - my nature is too limited to bother striving to find it.

so i stopped striving 37 yrs ago after becoming Descarte - reaching his conclusion at 16, 4 yrs younger than him at the time of his first work....................

not trumpting my horn. unlike him he will life forever in the collective, me - a nobody - just sayin, never heard of the guy, then in collage course about him and other philosphers, noted he concluded the same as i did 4 yrs prior (soplisist/Meditations).

[Dubious]

To ask questions which have no answer.

the "answer" may be there, but the questioner/question is unworthy.

or maybe both, there is not anwwer, i know the questioner is unworthy, not sure about the nature of the answer-er.

but being an ant, will not bother in in finding Truth - assuming it exists - if it does (and it may not) - my nature is too limited to bother striving to find it.

so i stopped striving 37 yrs ago after becoming Descarte - reaching his conclusion at 16, 4 yrs younger than him at the time of his first work....................

not trumpting my horn. unlike him he will life forever in the collective, me - a nobody - just sayin, never heard of the guy, then in collage course about him and other philosphers, noted he concluded the same as i did 4 yrs prior (soplisist/Meditations).

Has nothing to do with worthy or unworthy! The question is simply absurd, or to give it some credence, semi-absurd. A moment's contemplation yields ONE conclusion...it can never be answered and so should preempt any further striving for resolutions which at best can only remain subjective.

The point is to keep going until our regime has expired for whatever reason...a tenure which may be extended by a compromise with reality which usually means retreating from doing something stupid.

[gaffo]

To ask questions which have no answer.

the "answer" may be there, but the questioner/question is unworthy.

or maybe both, there is not anwwer, i know the questioner is unworthy, not sure about the nature of the answer-er.

but being an ant, will not bother in in finding Truth - assuming it exists - if it does (and it may not) - my nature is too limited to bother striving to find it.

so i stopped striving 37 yrs ago after becoming Descarte - reaching his conclusion at 16, 4 yrs younger than him at the time of his first work....................

not trumpting my horn. unlike him he will life forever in the collective, me - a nobody - just sayin, never heard of the guy, then in collage course about him and other philosphers, noted he concluded the same as i did 4 yrs prior (soplisist/Meditations).

The question is simply absurd,

yes, i view it as so - but understanding my nature as one to ask the question as a younger man, i understand why to ask the question.

A moment's contemplation yields ONE conclusion...

per logic and my limited nature/mind/understanding..all limited by my nature....Solipism is the only answer to what i can know right now.

The point is to keep going until our regime has expired for whatever reason...a tenure which may be extended by a compromise with reality which usually means retreating from doing something stupid.

??? I'm a Solipisict, so you are me talking to myself............


what are you (me) saying to me above? don't follow.

[Belinda]

Re Belinda ‘s of Mar 30, 2019 12:52 pm : I did say "existence itself", not what you wrote, above.

I’ll amend mine to: Contrary to absurd, it is sensible for an intelligent creature to question existence.

There might be a problem finding out existence's phone number.

[Logik]

In short, pure happenstance. It must be demoralizing for humans not to be more important than any other random event.

Given the odds it's actually quite exhilarating!

If the idea of winning the lottery excites you, then winning the Universe's existential lottery is incalculably better!