Well Cupcake, I am pleased you can count to 42 [1.2.3.5.23.42 etc]
Societal cause effect? Maybe - you don’t answer the question though: pick a chicken, any chicken and tell me where the egg came from.
See, that’s the thing, the question is essentially unanswerable ecause as soon as you ask if human life is valuable intrinsically you have to justify that belief with ‘non-intrinsic’ stastements.
Arcane - I am glad you like breasts.
Dan: I am more a sociologist than a socio-biologist, Dawkins is interesting though, I’ve read bits of the Blind Watchmaker etc to have a vague idea what you’re talking about.
I prefer applying chaos theory and notions of small-scale order to the idea of life. Essentially, we can’t answer a lot of questions until we have all the evidence, which in the long term could mean that everything is indeed entirely deterministic. Or not.
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I’ve never seen more shitty psuedo-philosophers in my life. I think I’ll be a cynical, and bitter asshole by just shaking my head at this nonsense, without contributing to this holocaust of a thread.
DAN C: Since you were talking about your schizm with absolutes you might want to read Siddartha or any of the books of Bhuddism. The philosophy’s main teaching is to eschew any and all absolutes–for in nature there are no absolutes. (Although moderation was the Bhudda’s preaching he died of overeating.)
As per the meaning of life, the chaos theory does ring true to the topic. As it is that life is nothing but one illogical moment after another coupled with an even more illogical reaction. But in looking back upon all of these orderless instancecs in one’s life they see a “path” some paradigm that they feel led them from point A to point X even though there truly is none–hence psychoanalysis has not stood the test of tiem.
All of existence begs but one question: “Is there chaos in order, or order in chaos?”
SERGIUS: Thanks. I will further refine my Buddhism knowledge with your references. As for Buddhas moderation, he could have had fun with Aristotles saying: Everything in moderation, except moderation. Was not Eudaimonism from him too?
Your chaos dilemma could be partially answered by mathematicians.
You need some level of chaos (read: a big enough sample) before logical patterns (repetition, distribution, rules) start to emerge. Populations are a fantastic example. Sort of like one of my molecular chemistry professor said in the past: Chaos organizes itself alone quite well (while speaking of cristalline networks).
I liked Stephen Wolfram’s book A New Kind of Science, it kind of fits in this same mold. Wolfram is interesting, his writing on how you can see everything if you look at it less as an absolute formula, and more like a computer script written, it makes you think, It was required reading for my modern physics class, but it’s an easy read (for a physics book anyway)
I liked Stephen Wolfram’s book A New Kind of Science, it kind of fits in this same mold. Wolfram is interesting, his writing on how you can see everything if you look at it less as an absolute formula, and more like a computer script written, it makes you think, It was required reading for my modern physics class, but it’s an easy read (for a physics book anyway)
Don’t want to twist the logic too much, but if you put it to its extreme consequences, one’s life (and meaning) is achieved pretty much by serial immortality (passing one’s genes through children) and/or going down in history through some damn big achievement worth remembering. Should one choose not to have children, he better have one good life story to be told by close relatives (familial values that make reference very much to their ancestors also helps alot).
Dawkins mentionned that your children are only one half of you and your grand-children are only a fourth of your makeup…How quickly one fades…
So…is the T attitude (and ethics) an antidote to passing on this planet anonymously (via one’s extraordinary, or just plain different, way of doing things)? Maybe…
TOO ALL: To everyone who responded to my post, instead of hi-jacking this one I’ll just start a new one and in it will be the reasons that I think theism is more plausible that atheism.
