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Perhaps not. That would explain why your posts seems so wacky. Maybe I'll try and read it again later.
"Seems so wacky".
I really have to put you on being a Rutgers grad, business major, who happened to luck into atheism due to having not been raised in a particularly religious family.
Sorry, but I've never had any respect for you, and continue not to.
Sorry, but I've never had any respect for you, and continue not to.
You don't find this comment strange in any way? We have never had a conversation. I don't even recall exchanging posts with you before this thread. And you have "never had any respect for me"? Do you put that much thought in to every random poster you encounter on an internet forum?
You seem to be unduly preoccupied (at least rhetorically) with "natural disasters". I'm talking about the sum totality of existence, of which "natural disasters" are a small (for now, as we're at, what 385 ppm) , unavoidable (also for now, for the opposite reason...can be alleviated, theoretically) fragment. Your ??!!!?!?!?! sequences suggest nothing if not, eh, emotion as opposed to pure, abstract, ultimately fictitious reason.
I'm sorry but I just not as bright as many here and have a very difficult time wading through barely coherent etherial ramblings so I have a tendency to try to ground the conversation in something more concrete, or let's say something tangible.
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Although I do not agree with everything the man says, I'd recommend reading James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia Hypothesis, and everything that went into the making of that. Like the best religious creeds, his ecological understanding is best understood metaphorically (since he professes an understanding of the earth as a single living unit...which it is not...but for practical purposes, perhaps it is best understood that way)...yet it can be transformative.
The idea is that we and all other life forms interact, everything is an equation, at the end of the day. My IQ may be very high but it isn't high enough to yet elaborate. My brother, who is 18 and who I've often described as a "more extreme version of me", intends to study atmospheric science and will probably be the world's foremost expert on this **** in a few years.
Could the wiser folks on this thread translate any of the above for this lesser soul(Me)?
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We ourselves are mother and father nature...we affect things just as much as any other organism or as any other preexisting process. Well, not as much--more, in many cases. Extinction rates are skyrocketing thanks to us. I am no environmentalist...I guess at some level I am a humanist...I just try to stay attuned to the facts. We're basically a self-aware product of evolution, perhaps unprecedented universally (but probably not, given the math involved here), that has simply "accelerated things" upon the home planet from which we have not yet escaped....
Wow, these conversations were so much more fun when I was young and high. But now I am old and straight and just don't have that much time left on earth for jejune navel gazing. So along with etherial conversations of existential philosophy, I have stopped trying to make sense out of those things that... make no sense, which means, getting back to the topic, I don't believe in god because it is a silly waste of my time.
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I'd take even 1:1 odds on the extinction of our species within the next millennium.
I'm sixty and I don't care. Humans will do what humans will do. If we foolishly continue to shiite where we sleep, so be it. The universe will go on and our presences will either go on or it won't and no one or no entity will care one way or another.
Could the wiser folks on this thread translate any of the above for this lesser soul(Me)?
Eh, not a matter of wisdom but of having been exposed to the Gaia Hypothesis. For purposes of Matt's post I think he was just saying that while the Gaia Hypothesis, which broadly states that the totality of the biosphere constitutes a living mega-entity which can be conceptualized as us living on a sentient planet (for some debatable definition of "sentient") is not literally true, it is arguably true in a practical / functional sense. If we regarded our planet more as "mother earth" and took care of that "mother" then it would be a healthy way to go about living, even if based on an emotional, subjective abstraction that isn't literally true. We'd be acting as if were were all interconnected and interdependent with other organisms and the earth itself, and we would accordingly treat animals, plants and the planet with greater respect and care. How real that connection actually is, and by what criteria, and how (dis)provable it is, isn't so important as the general idea. It's a little like how liberal Christians view Holy Writ ... they avoid getting bogged down in the specifics and go with the metaphors and concepts.
I can't see Matt's OP that you quoted right now but IIRC (correct me if I'm wrong, Matt) he was basically making the point that theists and atheists alike have subjective frameworks that are effective and that they should both admit to being less than rational in all respects of life -- because no one absolutely is entirely rational. I guess I can live with that; we are humans, not Vulcans. That doesn't really address the idea that atheism has a relatively more objective basis than does theism in my view ... I think some atheists overplay that card and even those of us who don't, by not giving automatic deference and respect to every random theological thought coming out of some theist's mouth, may appear to be overplaying it and/or appear arrogant but it would be a mistake to attribute motives to us like that.
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