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Post by cypris69 on Feb 9, 2005 19:53:59 GMT -5
isn't chaos order in the end? it's the simple chaos theory. everything in the universe moves toward it but when everything is actually as simple as it can be then it is all the same and thus is once again perfect order. but that is a complicated portion of science i don't want to even pretend to fully understand.
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Post by Satori on Feb 10, 2005 5:45:33 GMT -5
Pardon me for quoting just part of your explanation of the meaning of enlightenment, but to me this highlights an aspect of budhism that I find interesting. It would appear to be verging on the callous - cutting both ways as it were, in the hands of the 'wrong' sort of mind? It is often misinterpreted as a nihilist or fatalist stance, but it's simply the way things are. Quite liberating really. We all suffer at many different levels. The 'end of suffering' in the Buddhist sense doesn't really mean that we don't hurt when we bang our heads or we don't grieve when we lose a loved one, it means that we try not to attach to that suffering and try to see it for what it is. In fact, if we're suffering at some physical or mental level it's important to 'be' that suffering as much as possible (be with the moment); then it's a matter of letting go of that suffering as best as possible, without creating a long-term attachment to it. One example of how suffering can grab a hold of us to a detrimental level was given by the Buddha himself. He was walking with monks in the mountains in Northen India and it was very cold. Some of the monks were moaning and complaining and getting into a fair old state. One of the monks asked how the Buddha wasn't feeling the cold and he just replied "I am. Buddha hot. Buddha cold." The Buddha was suffering from the cold too, but he didn't add the baggage of letting it take over his entire existence for the duration. There was nothing they could do about it until they got to their hut, so why increase the overall suffering by attaching to it and adding the additional baggage of mental stress to the physical stress of being cold? That might not be the best example of what I'm trying to say, but it's the first that came to mind!
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Post by Electron on Feb 10, 2005 10:42:33 GMT -5
Well I'll certainly go along with Buddha on that one - so long as his thinking didn't make him stay out in the cold for any longer than he need have done I don't seem to have much of a problem with buddhism thus far - please don't ruin it by telling me that it attempts to offer explanations for things based on thought experiments alone, or one-to-one conversations with superior entities
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Post by Satori on Feb 10, 2005 12:02:42 GMT -5
Well I'll certainly go along with Buddha on that one - so long as his thinking didn't make him stay out in the cold for any longer than he need have done No, it doesn't. Buddhism sees no need to suffer needless discomfort because of any sort of 'faith'. It's just that if Buddhists do have to suffer discomfort, they should simply suffer it without making it worse through attachment. If there's an easy solution it's sometimes the best. There is an old joke that I've heard quoted at Buddhist retreats a few times to illustrate this. The one about the man who's in a flood and when the water comes up to the first floor window a boat turns up to rescue him, but he says: "No, no, god will save me". So he stays in until the water is up to the second floor window and another boat comes along, but he tells it to go away again saying: "I put my faith in god - he will save me". Finally he has to get out onto the roof as the water's so high. A helicopter turns up to save him, but he says: "No, I'm not going with you - god will save me". Unfortunately he drowns, but as he enters the afterlife he has a chance to talk to god. "Why didn't you save me?" he asks. God replies "I tried to - I sent you two boats and a helicopter". No, there's none of that. It doesn't attempt to explain much at all in the intellectual sense and there isn't anything related to super entities. Tibetan Buddhism incorporates gods, demi-gods, heavens, hells, ghosts, spirits, rebirth and all manner of such things in its version of Buddhism, but that didn't come from the Buddha, it was already in their culture when Buddhism arrived. Most non-Buddhists can't understand how the two can exist side-by-side, but they can and do and that's just fine. Having said all that about needless discomfort, the first few Seshins (Buddhist retreats) one attends can be quite uncomfortable. The introspection can be quite distressing at first.
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Post by joelhaldeman on Feb 10, 2005 19:32:12 GMT -5
okay you guys are all right, we humans are no different then animals. We arnt special. Remember that. When you have kids make sure you tell them that. Make sure you drive the truth into their heads that the family pet is just as important as you are and you should be willing to take a bullet for that cat. Never lie to them and tell them they are special.
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Post by cypris69 on Feb 10, 2005 20:35:25 GMT -5
There is an old joke that I've heard quoted at Buddhist retreats a few times to illustrate this. The one about the man who's in a flood and when the water comes up to the first floor window a boat turns up to rescue him, but he says: "No, no, god will save me". So he stays in until the water is up to the second floor window and another boat comes along, but he tells it to go away again saying: "I put my faith in god - he will save me". Finally he has to get out onto the roof as the water's so high. A helicopter turns up to save him, but he says: "No, I'm not going with you - god will save me". Unfortunately he drowns, but as he enters the afterlife he has a chance to talk to god. "Why didn't you save me?" he asks. God replies "I tried to - I sent you two boats and a helicopter". lol, i love that joke, thanx for reminding me of it, it has been a long time since i heard that one. okay you guys are all right, we humans are no different then animals. We arnt special. Remember that. When you have kids make sure you tell them that. Make sure you drive the truth into their heads that the family pet is just as important as you are and you should be willing to take a bullet for that cat. Never lie to them and tell them they are special. i donno about u but i love my pets and quite frankly my two dogs are family to me. i have spent a good portion of my life with them and trust them far more then really any humans and i can clearly see when they r sick, depressed, happy and so on just b/c i spend so much time with them. i would gladly take a bullet for them just as i am sure they would protect me with their lives. as for the children i father someday, i hope they can have that same relationship with their own pets and though there r many differences between pets and children i regaurd both very highly and i will make that clear to my children as will i make the fact that life in general is something to be respected, all life. and, even though we take life for many purposes such as food and clothing we should never do some of the things we do in this world b/c when it comes down to it they have 1 life just as we do.
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Post by Satori on Feb 11, 2005 3:58:56 GMT -5
okay you guys are all right, we humans are no different then animals. We arnt special. Remember that. When you have kids make sure you tell them that. Make sure you drive the truth into their heads that the family pet is just as important as you are and you should be willing to take a bullet for that cat. Never lie to them and tell them they are special. Joel, you seem to be mistaking two different concepts here. Of course we are just an animal, but animals have a tendency to look after their own and we're no different in that respect. Chances are that most people will feel closer to their kid than to their dog and will thus give it priority on the survival front (although you'll often find that a lot of people will feel closer to their dog than to other people's kids too). Feeling close to the immediate members of ones 'pack' is perfectly normal and says nothing about how we think of animals in the zoological, evolutionary or philosophical sense.
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Post by Electron on Feb 11, 2005 5:06:16 GMT -5
Joel - it's very interesting that you chose to use our children to underline your exasperation. Like all other parents, my child is the most precious thing in the universe to me, not any less so for the knowledge that at the 'purely genetic level' he emodies the continuation of my contribution to the river of life. Without him, there is no chance of any of my characteristics surviving my death (I bet you hate all this!)
But this is how this evolution thing works (getting neatly back on to the topic you started). You yourself know we pass some of our characteristics onto our offspring. I know that you can recognise, for instance, similar traits between yourself and your relatives - be it in appearance, attitude, mannerism, handwriting, speech etc.
Given that you can see the way genes carrying this information pass from parent to child for yourself, you need only now consider the effects of breaking or reinforcing this link.
If some parents didn't give a toss for their kids, the kids would probably not make it to become parents themselves - end of the line for those. You are only here because you descend from a long line of caring parents - give or take the odd borderline case.
This is the 'big-picture' sort of demonstration of evolution at work. Given the huge turnover of life, it gets into every miniute detail - such as mothers suffering post-natal depression: This unfortunate condition supresses the tendency of mothers to get up and run off having more fun after child-birth. The abandoned babies of those mothers lacking this effect didn't do too well... and so on.
If you can follow the logic of this mechanism (if you can't I'm sure we can assist in some further way) you would need to show me why it wouldn't offer a satisfactory explanation for the development of life of which we are just another part thereof.
It may not seem tasteful to you, but it is nonetheless a highly effective hypothesis which has both the power to explain all the living phenomena we see around us past and present, and is also a principle that can be succesfully applied in man-made efforts to devise adaptive systems.
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Post by cypris69 on Feb 11, 2005 8:05:41 GMT -5
taking that one step farther in evolution. as he started to say with post natal depresion; alot of genetic defects were at one time weeded out by this process(keep in mind now the system is different with adoption and people who feel like every life needs to be saved) but this was a form of balance, those children who posessed negative trates died relativly young if they were kept at all or became sterile. this is the same thing in packs in the wild. if a defect is born that cannot live on its own it is typically abandoned. humans r different and tend to care more for their children then morst species but this does not mean we r always willing to keep a child who has been marked w/ a defect. i will prolly get reemed for this oppinion but i share it with my current girl friend and we agree if she were to get pregnant and the child had a defect we would probably abort( this also has to do with not wanting to burden the sstem but thats another debate fourm). what it boils down to is that natural selection is supposed to do a genetic clean up of sorts with more drastic problems so that they do not persist from generation to generation(also many religions played a role in killing babies who were born with defects in past centuries and even the government passes laws preventing marrage to exact relative for this purpose)
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Post by cypris69 on Feb 27, 2005 20:42:23 GMT -5
i was doing a bit of work for my psyc class and i came across what scientist have determined as the source of intelligence in animals(including humans for those of u who do not put them in the same grouping). what i found interesting in this was that the functions that determine intelligence and thus all that other fun thought stuff is present in most animals as far as how the brain is organized. the only difference really in the number of wrinkles, so to speak, that we have in our brains serface. in contrast animals such as frogs and birds have a nearly smooth ceribral cotex. what i am getting at is that animals such as dogs, chimps, cats, humans, dolphins, and so on all have different levels of intelligence which allows them to developdifferent skills but also rangels and levels of expression for various emotions showing just how simular we really are to them. now one last thing i came across was the development of the brain seems to cover its evolutionary history as it develops inside of the womb. i don't really know much more about it then that but i can tell u where to look if u r interested but it does offer an interesting look into how the brain has developed in that in the fetus their are stages it is no different from that of many animals exspecially that of our good friends the chimps.
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Post by Satori on Feb 28, 2005 18:38:56 GMT -5
Intelligence is relevant. We obviously judge intelligence on human terms but, even within that framework, there are various 'types' of intelligence without one being necessarily more important than another.
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Post by cypris69 on Feb 28, 2005 20:22:56 GMT -5
that is very true but what i was trying to get at were how the physical aspects of the brain that develope what we deem as intelligence are present in a broad variety of animals. this was more in regards to some of the things joe has said in past sections of the debate.
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Post by Electron on Mar 2, 2005 12:38:47 GMT -5
FACT: radioactive decay of only uranium and thorium would produce all the atmosphere's helium in only 40,000 years. No known means exists by which large amounts of helium can escape from the atmosphere, even when considering heliums low atomic weight. The atmosphere appears to be young. Maybe the old earth just decided it needed a new atmosphere so it went to walmart and got a new one. FACT: Abnormall high oil, gas and water pressure exist within relatively permeable rock. Of these fluids had been trapped more then 10,000 to 100,000 years ago, leakage would have dropped these pressures far below what they are today. this oil gas and water must have been trapped suddenly and recently. FACT: Tose rock layers in the science text book have NEVER been found in that exact order, ANYWHERE on earth. FACT: Volcanoes eject almost a cubic mile of material into the atmosphere each year. At this rate about ten times the volume of the entire sedementary rock should be produced in about 4.6 billion years. Actually only about 25% of of the earthjs sediments are of volcanic origin. FACT: The continents are eroding at a rate that would level them in much less then 25 million years. FACT: Over the past 140 years direct measurments of earths magnetic field show steady and rapid decline in strength. Travel back in time 20,000 years ago earths structure could not have survived the heat produced. This shows earth can not be older then 20,000 years. FACT: Same is true about the temperature of the earths core. FACT: A large amount of heat is flowing out of the moon from just below the surface and yet the moons interior is relativly cool. Because it has not yet colled off the moon seems much younger then mot poeple have guessed there is only 8 of an entire creation science book i have proving the earth to be young. There is a list of about a hundred in this section and many other sections on the flood and stuff like that Joel started up this thread by producing an emphatic list of 'facts' in order to demonstrate that we live on a Young Earth Created by god. The arguments offered in support of this notion are widely known - indeed there seems to be a fair amount of "creation science" available on the internet these days. Obviously maintaining the idea of a 6000 year old earth in the face of a of culture which happily thinks in terms of dinosaurs roaming around hundreds of millions of years ago (I can't recall stepping into a public museum in any country where the exhibits were labelled differently) puts considerable pressure on such arguments. OK, so let's say all the museums are wrong. Why did they get it so spectacularly wrong? Paelentologists and geologists all were reading the same 'signals' suggesting vast antiquity - were they meant to be fooled? Has this been answered by YECs already? I can't help but quote yet another 'fact' here: (source: icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-032.htm ) I suppose it will be argued that god continues to interfere with GPS signals to make them look as if the continents are still drifting apart by roughly an inch a year.
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Jedikiller
New Member
Hunt them down, and destroy them
Posts: 38
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Post by Jedikiller on Mar 2, 2005 14:42:01 GMT -5
I'm not sure what has already been said, but I talked to my Science teacher and he said that water can erode away layers on fossils, making them seem MUCH older than they are.
Also, back to my Adam and Eve thing, Adam and Eve might have been in the Garden while all of the dinosaur stuff was going on for millions of years.
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Post by cypris69 on Mar 2, 2005 22:11:15 GMT -5
how would the fossils be any older if layers were taken away, the carbon dating is in rgaurds to the compounds that make up the fossils. if u examine the process of how fossils are formed this concept becomes very clear. that info isn't hard to come by. i donno what ur science teacher is talking about but either way they show that there are materials older then sed 6000 years old.
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