I have come to your planet to study human society and offer the wisdom of the Galactic Sodality so that mankind may advance to the next level of mental awareness.
Location: Procyon III
Occupation: Humanologist
Age: 255
Member Since: August 19, 2005
Answers: 46
Last Update: September 12, 2014
Visitors: 9263
Main Categories:
Random Weirdos
Spirituality
View All
|
| |
15 / F
With the first black president in office and all this stuff going on, my family started talking about this date.
My family has a very strong spiritual background as Christians, but mine isn't as strong. I have accepted the Lord as my savior, been baptised, yadda yadda, but still. I have doubts about religion. What if it all really DID just start out from dust and particles and stuff?
I'm almost sixteen and I'm worried that IF anything significant should happen on that date, I won't be ready. When the signs show, I'm scared that everyone will be raptured up to heaven and I'll be left behind :[
I lie, I lust, I *ahem* pleasure myself. And I feel TERRIBLE for it. I don't read any of the books on young girls and God that I get for Christmas. They all seem kinda boring. But I don't have the time to read the bible cover to cover, even though God doesn't care. He wants us to MAKE time for him!
I just don't know where to start. HELP! (link)
|
Although I would not quite say that the space-time continuum "started out from dust and particles and stuff," the scientists of the Galactic Sodality have determined that the nature of space-time requires no external cause for it to exist.
December 21, 2012 is just a day, as reckoned in one human calendar. Your globe will spin through 360 degrees during that period, as it has spun countless times before.
Honestly, it's a little insulting to the rest of the intelligent species in the universe when certain humans suggest that some particular rotation of their one planet will have enormous consequences for the rest of us. If I were to tell you that your sun will go out like a snuffed candle when my home planet of Procyon III rotates 100 more times, you'd rightly think I was mistaken.
Still, you desire to be 'ready' for this phantom day. True wisdom is to live each and every day as if it were your last; do nothing that would cause you to regret your actions or inactions. And if you should fail on some day (as we all do; no sophont is perfect), then set your eyes on tomorrow and try again.
Do not try to be 'good enough' on some random day in 2012. Try to be a little better, a little wiser, a little smarter each day.
|
|
help! I'm prejudiced about christians! I know this is stupid. What should I do? (link)
|
Your question doesn't offer a great deal of information, but I offer the following throughts.
Humans come in quite a variety of types. Tall and short, fat and thin, mean and nice, stupid and smart, ignorant and educated.
Since there are, at this moment, an astonishing 6,710,008,924 humans on earth, there are millions of every type of human imaginable. No doubt, there are millions of stupid, ignorant, mean, Christians. But there are also millions of smart, educated, nice Christians.
To be prejudiced against a certain type of people is to assume that they are all alike. This is not the case.
Try to remember that every human alive is confined to some patches of land on the surface of a planet that's a few thousand miles across, floating in an endless immensity. Humanity has existed a million years out of the billions of years of the universe's existence. No matter how despicable some particular Christian is, it really doesn't mean anything in the greater scheme of things. It's not worth getting upset about.
|
|
I just finished watching the Exorcist. Is this stuff real? Has this ever happened? I know back in Jesus' time it happened because he performed an exorcisms, as it says in the bible. But does or has this happened lately or around the 60s-70s? I have read many things and there are some stories of exorcisms being performed, but the weird thing is when I watched this movie I don't see how all those things can actually happen to someone innocent whom ingaged in the Ouija board a few times, how does it happen? Im so lost and scared as well. (link)
|
Although exorcisms have taken place, there are no such things as demons. Therefore, there is no such thing as demonic possession.
It is curious that humans enjoy works of fiction intended solely to frighten them, but one should keep clear in one's mind that they really are fictional.
Have no fear.
|
Why do atheists have a problem with Christian's trying to spread their religon? They seem to always get so defensive and mean. It really bugs me because they can't have an open mind to what someone else says without flipping out. Like Christian religon says "help those who don't believe in God" or something, and the atheists just FLIP out. I've been open minded to many atheists I know and listen to what they say about it calmly without saying their opinions are dumb, but then when I mention my relgion, they say it's so stupid and get mad at me for talking about it.
Anyway, to sum it all up, you basically just need to read the first sentence. (link)
|
In all existing civilizations of the Galactic Sodality, aboriginal ancient mythologies slowly died out over a long period of autochthonous life-cycles. Although materialism will ultimately triumph over superstition in humankind, the timespan for this to occur is much longer than any individual human's life. This is psychologically demoralizing to the human atheist and may lead to despair, cynicism and spite.
If you should run across an atheist who treats you rudely, you should say, "Please treat my deeply held superstition with respect. Your philosophical outlook will ultimately triumph on Earth, but this era of human history will be looked on by future sociologists and historians with great interest principally because of the survival and interaction of successful religious memes such as those which I am attempting to spread to your mind."
|
The following questions are not really being asked so that I can be advised about my own beliefs, but rather to (hopefully) stimulate discussion.
Anyway, my first question is this:
Many people believe that God must exist because the universe itself exists. In essence, they believe that the universe was caused by something, and that cause was God. The argument assumes three things. 1. It assumes existence is necessarily caused. 2. It assumes that existence was caused by a conscious, intelligent being.
Now, it seems to me that the idea that the cause is conscious and intelligent, and even a being, is open to question. Maybe the cause is some transcendant FORCE? The first assumption, as well, is questionable. No one is sure if we have every really observed existence being caused. We have seen things change forms, but not pop into existence. Not only that, but theories in quantum physics hold that subatomic particles often appear out of nowhere, with no cause. Many events in the subatomic realm are said to be uncaused. This seems to openly refute the first assumption.
Do you agree or disagree with this? Discuss.
The second argument I'd like to make is in regards to the other big argument for God, that being the argument of design. It basically states that because life is so complex, it couldn't have arisen from chance and it had to be designed.
My objections to this are as follows:
1. If complex life must have been designed by some intelligent force, then the designer (being intelligent) must also have been designed. The designers would have to go back into an infinite regression. This is hardly a plausible idea, because it needlessly multiplies entities without any reason for supposing their existence.
2. The theory of evolution shows how life can evolve from simpler organisms without any intentional design. This is not caused by 'random chance', but by the forces of natural selection, genetic drift, and sexual selection, among others. None of these selection mechanisms are "random". The mutations are random, but the species that survive are not chosen at random.
Is there an adequate way to defend the design theory against these arguments? How would you do so?
Another common argument (this is the last one) is that, given the Big Bang theory, the chances of this specific life-supporting universe originating have such small odds of happening that it seems absurd to say it happened by pure chance.
My objections:
1. Simply because the probability is very low for this given universe doesn't mean that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the universe to form this way by chance.
2. If we were to emphasize the chances of a universe being created that had, say, a lot of big, gaseous planets like jupiter and very few like Earth, this would also be very improbable. The point is that emphasizing life seems arbitrary. Any other possible outcome would be just as improbable.
3. Your own existence is very improbable as well. Think about it. You were composed of a specific sperm out of millions and a specific egg out of thousands. Your parents, grand-parents, and all your other ancestors for however old humans have been around were also subject to this very low probability of being born. If we factor in the chance of each of your relatives meeting and the chances of them having sex at a particular time, the chances become even lower for your own existence. Given all these variables (and there are many more), the chances of your existence are VERY improbable. Does this mean that you weren't created through sexual reproduction (a process of "random" selection among sperm and eggs) but that some being--maybe a stork?--guided you into existence?
Obviously, the fine-tuning argument fails for the reasons the stork argument fails. Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?
Feel free to pick and choose objects of discussion. Hopefully there will be some interesting responses to give me something to think about! (link)
|
Your question gives me hope that the average human intelligence may soon be adequate for your species to be admitted into the Galactic Sodality. I hail you as a fellow sophont.
I urge you to study chaotic inflationary models of cosmogenesis. It is through this branch of cosmology that humans should be able to discover the true answer to the mystery of why the universe exists.
|
|