(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Thought I would start a thread on the universe, a pretty big topic if you stop and think about it.

For example, think of the size. First look at your phone, ipod and anything small, then compare it to the size of your house, what about the the size of your city or the world. It makes it seem tiny, we can see how big our galaxy and our neighbours, we can see just how big that is. Now think our this group of galaxy's and think of it being the size of your phone compared to the world. Then think of that being your phone, it blows your mind, there has to be some other lifeforms out there, or planets almost identical to earth, the thoughts are endless. Tell me what you think

[EDIT] An interesting video I found
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_0UNes9jFg[/ame]

For sure Modest mouse is one of my favorites.




Forgive me for erasing the rest of the quote, but I didn't want to waste a bunch of space since people can just look above if they want to see it

I'm curious, have you read a book called Ishmael? It kind of proposes similar viewpoints to yours.

And I agree, we place so much value on our existence and believe all of us to be valuable and unique, but the fact of the matter is, we are just another organism living on the planet. The way I see it, the reason we are destroying the Earth is because of our endless lifestyle obsession with material goods, nurtured by the false notion that man is the pinnacle of creation and that the Earth belongs to man.



It's not so much that our purpose in the life cycle is to destroy, it's that society pushes us towards this. Currently that is what we are doing, however I believe a major cause of this is overpopulation, the Earth simply can't support this many people. Naturally, an area can only support a certain population of an organism before it topples over and goes back down to a stable population, this is because higher populations are more suceptible to natural population controllers such as disease or natural disaster, and the food supply can only supply a certain level of population, otherwise it will be decreased until the predator begins to die out due to the lack of food, and the food supply can begin to increase in numbers again. But as humans, with intelligence, we have taken over and controlled our food supply and many other population controllers. This means that our response to starvation is to increase food supply, which in turn increases the population, and more people are now starving. It's a vicious cycle that cannot end.

"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decomposing organic matter as everyone else."
-Tyler Durden

This quote kind of makes it seem like I'm saying humans are trash, that's not what I'm saying. We're not gods or goddesses, but we aren't crap or trash either. We just are.

But this is all totally off-topic...so.

I have not read that. Although the name kind of rings a bell.



But that is what our purpose has become. We are in control of what we do and we still choose to cause destruction and death. Sure there are those who protect the environment, but the amount of people who don't protect the environment far outweighs those who do. Regardless of why our purpose is to destroy, that is our current standing in nature's cycle.



I'm not entire sure this quote applies. I find the quote somewhat humorous, but it's saying humans are all the same, when in reality humans vary greatly, however my point is that the many varieties of humans are completely irrelevant in the scope of the universe.



Not entirely

It's by a man named Daniel Quinn, and it's a great book I suggest you read it.



Agreed. Though not really the part on "we are in control of what we do", free will is an illusion.




That's not how I really interpreted it, I thought it more of not relating humans to humans but rather humans to other organisms. It's saying that humans are not as unique or special as we like to think we are in the natural world. It basically says that there is no clear distinction between man and animal like some people like to believe.

You may think that we are nothing to the universe. Theres more to humanity then you think. For one we can think, feel, and communcate to grow a society and advance our lives. Humans were meant to be like animals but we have souls. With a soul we become what we are today and thats the reason why we are here because we can comprend and bulit. We also have to realize that supernatural acitivity is real. There has to be an explaination for that. There is most likely a higher power that we are not known of. The universe was made so big so we can never explore it. The higher power knew that humans would expand and grow quickly like numbers and knowledge. We know alot or we think we do. Everything is so perfect that we are on earth , and make sure we stay on earth. With all these laws, distance, and gagets required to go to other planets or another farthest is impossible. Mars which is a mission we have, and is close to earth, close to material, but we still cant be on mars longer than 8hours as there is no magentic field as the core have become solid already so well be exposed to too much radiation.

Whatever happens the human race will only die when it is meant to die. We don't have the power to extinct the human race. Space has no chose either as if something wasnt protecting us or someone wasnt protecting us then we would have died already from all the objects in space. We need to stop focusing on space and focus on our own planet. With little knowledge of space we know, we accually know less about our earths oceans

We have souls? Really? Exactly where is the soul located? Is it in your head? In your heart? There is absolutely no evidence to support souls that can't be shot down. Why is it that humans have souls but animals supposedly don't? If you kick a dog, it feels pain. It reacts. It responds with anger. If scold a dog, will it not back away with it's tail between it's legs? That's fear, or guilt. When you see your dog for the first time in a while, does it not seem happy? Why is it that humans supposedly have souls while animals supposedly do not? Also, what is "bulit," supposed to mean?



There is no proof of supernatural activity that can't be debunked. Find some solid evidence, and maybe we can talk.

Why is it likely that there is a higher power? It goes against all we know in science. There is absolutely no evidence to support a higher power, so what makes it "likely" that there is one?



So you claim that the universe is infinite for the sole reason that this "higher power" doesn't want us to fully explore it? That's rather arrogant. By this logic, there can't be any other intelligent life out there.



Humans will find a way. This is certain. Humans are greedy and selfish as a whole, and will not give up on a method to get us more land or materials. You must also realize that technology has improved exponentially over the past 100 years. I'd say we'll probably have stations set up on Mars in about 30 years.



Humans do have the power to make themselves extinct. War, pollution, overpopulation, and even scientific accidents could all lead to extinction.

Okay, imagine this, you have a gymnasium filled with 4,000 marbles that are suspended in the air. What do you think the chances of hitting a specific marble would be if you were to throw another marble into the suspended ones? 1 in 4,000. (this is ignoring their physical locations) Now take that to a scale of infinity. Your odds of hitting a specific marble out of an infinite amount is 1 out of infinity. Therefore the chances of hitting a specific marble is as close to zero as possible without actually being zero. Those aren't high odds. Thus it's not a miracle that we've survived this far, it just shows that we aren't unlucky.

Sure, we need to focus on our planet, but our planet won't last us forever. Humans are going to look into space to find a new planet to suck the resources from. It's inevitable.

Your view of humanity is restricted by your religious opinions. Look at things objectively, a blue speck in a sea of much larger specks has no effect on the rest of the specks. It's arrogant to think that a higher power created the universe with us in mind and it's plain dumb to think we have any bearing on anything in the scope of the universe.

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I have the option to slap myself in the face. There is no benefit for me. In fact, it causes me pain, I do not like pain. I believe slapping myself in the face would be exerting free will. There is no reason for my brain to want to slap me in the face, so I would be exerting free will.




I didn't think of it that way, but I see how it makes sense when you look at it from that perspective.

You slapped yourself in the face to demonstrate your free will to me. Based on your personality and past experiences, this is the way you respond to my comment about free will. Your action was caused not by your will but by my comment triggering your thought process, and your thought process worked in this way because of a culmination of genetics and past experience. In a sense, the moment my comment was posted it was already determined that you would slap yourself in the face.

Nothing you do is original, you are a combination or everyone you have ever met, everything you have experienced, and the environment around you as you develop. Free will is simply a trick of the mind.

That's really something to think about...

But my point still stands, humans do have the choice to help preserve the environment, and regardless of whether or not free will exists, people can still make decisions. If you make a bad decision, you can't blame it on your brain and get away with it. The lack of free will is irrelevant.

First off the soul weighs 21 grams. They weighed a human before and after he died on many humans and on all of them it 21grams. The same was done on monkeys and other animals but no change happened

The supernatural exists more than you think. Im mexican and I have so many storys of my current family. They are so epic you will piss your pants and they are recent. They can't be explained as we know it.

The universe is so big, about 13.7 lights years big. We will never explore it because it wasnt meant to be. We are meant to think we are alone. When it comes to general life then we are not alone. When it comes to intelligent life then theres such a small chance, Its hard to say so that one is undecided. Also even some scienctists say theres some kind of higher power that we call god but it is nothing what we thought god would be.

As for mars, we will somehow get stations and other equipment on mars besides rovers. But just like the moon not much will happen. There not enough money. Even the US NASA has no money.

Humanity can never destroy the world. All of our nuclear bombs cant kill humanity. Overpopulation will definatly not help the human race but will not destroy it. No matter what you think you cant destroy our earth. Even with global warming, it wont happen to the point of extinction.

Your not looking at the bigger picture.

First of all, I'd like to apologise in advance if I insult you in my post. but this is a debate forum, so I'm not going to water down my response. This is just my opinion on this subject.



Yes, we can, good observation. What you failed to observe, however, is that even the most stereotypically insignificant creatures, ants, can do all those mentioned things. Ants can think, albeit not as widely as us, they also feel, communicate with eachother a lot better than humans do, they get along with eachother in perfect harmony, each knowing exactly what they have to do and when they have to do it. As for growing a society, they also do that on a very small scale. They'll all band together into relatively small colonies (a couple of million ants in each) and stay together throughout most of their short lives, getting food and other essentials for their "society." They even have a heirarchical scale, just like humans. They have king and queen ants, who get preferential treatment, etc.

Human beings ARE just animals, there's no real way that you can deny it. We just do everything on a larger scale.



I respect your opinion, but can you tell me at what point of evolution we developed souls? I, as a firm believer of evolution, realise that we evolved from monkeys. As monkeys, in your definition, are soulless animals, we must have, at some point, evolved our souls at some point. What would the purpose of that be? When would it have happened?

I believe that souls are just a creation of the ignorant and desperate to find some kind of explanation to show why humans are so much more than animals and are so unique compared to the rest of life. It's just bullshit, we're just animals, the same as all the others.



Then what was the point of creating the infinite Universal realm? What would be the point of restricting our knowledge of life and the place we live in? Why would we be put on Earth if there was a limit to what we could achieve? Surely the 'higher power' would realise that once we learned all we could, as there are limits to what we could learn, life would just be pointless?

Humans need to break the barricades of infinite cognizance, and they will, as there's no limit to what we can learn.



These physical laws are not enforced by a 'higher power' to stop Earth exploring the Universe. These laws are UNIVERSAL, they apply in every square milimeter of the Universe, it's just the fact that the Earth has a unique atmosphere / ozone that manipulates these laws' "strength." (For want of a better word.)



Dude, come on, this is ridiculous. The human race easily has the power to commit omnicide, and we're very close to achieving it at the moment. Our nuclear weapons could easily do it, so can our carbon dioxide emmissions. It would heat the Earth's temperature to something unsurvivable for human life. Even though it would take a while.

As for your opinion of a 'higher power', or God / deity, I don't agree in the sense you do. If our planet and life on Earth was created by a deity, this only came about because intelligent life somewhere in the Universe evolved beyond the point of relying on it's primary source of life support, a Sun. It then evolved to the point of being able to create planets and manipulate life, but that would go against your theory of restricted human access to the Universe, as this deity would, obviously, want us to also transcend to that evolutionary pinnacle.

However, I don't believe that theory, either.