Akrasia wrote: » We rely on earthworms to compost plant matter, earthworms rely on plants for food, plants rely on water, humans irrigate the soil/divert water via dams/affect the climate.....
Doctor Jimbob wrote: » To survive and pass on it's genes to the next generation, the same as the 'purpose' of every organism on this planet.
cdoherty86 wrote: » Earthworms have a function/purpose on this planet which millions of other organisms depend on, including you. What organisms depend on human existence apart from cats and dogs in the western world. You might have an indoor plant but none of these things really depend on you for survival. Humans going extinct tomorrow would be inconsequential to the survival of every organism on earth. Humans have no connection with the natural world. It doesn't matter if we go extinct.
cdoherty86 wrote: » Earthworms don't depend on humans for survival so your belief we're interdependent isn't entirely accurate, is it?
Panrich wrote: » You probably would not be a fan of Dawkins but he explains it well in his book 'The selfish gene'. We are all just here to pass on our genetic material and then wither and die like the flowers and every other living thing. Our emotions and feelings are part of the software that helps us achieve those goals.
cdoherty86 wrote: » You have all made the argument we're interdependent. Yet, you know this is false. It doesn't matter if humans go extinct tomorrow. Nothing on this planet depends upon humanity surviving. Eventually, you will die. But you won't accept this...you can't accept death and you can't accept you're inconsequential to survival of earth.
cdoherty86 wrote: » Earthworms have a function/purpose on this planet which millions of other organisms depend on, including you.
cdoherty86 wrote: » Humans going extinct tomorrow would be inconsequential to the survival of every organism on earth.
Cianmcliam wrote: » I've heard there's a certain species of head lice that are unique to human hair, so it would be bad news for them if we all pop our clogs.
cdoherty86 wrote: » Planets that support life are light years away from us because of comments like this.
endacl wrote: » Done here. Best o' luck to the more patient.
Knasher wrote: » The purpose of humanity, like the purpose of all living things, is to survive. How we go about that is really up to us. No purpose beyond survival. Though there are other species that are dependant on elephants. There are trees that depend on them for procreation for example.
Doctor Jimbob wrote: » I don't think anyone even knows what point you're trying to make tbh.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt
Calibos wrote: » A bit o' Bertrand Russell is always appropriate in threads like this,
cdoherty86 wrote: » I just don't see how humans or elephants are critical to survival of our planet.
cdoherty86 wrote: » At least the Earthworm has a purpose, humans don't.
endacl wrote: » I offer for your consideration, the humble banana. Made to fit in the human hand, and each comes individually wrapped for convenience and freshness. That kinda thing?
paddy1990 wrote: » Why have strong opinions about anything?
paddy1990 wrote: » why not strive to overcome them? Why does the Darwinist not strive to overcome their biasing influence
cdoherty86 wrote: » If we are truly interdependent, what's the purpose of humanity?
paddy1990 wrote: » Good. You are striving for an illusion. I still don't think you quite understand the implications of the meaningless and arbitrary nature of how that illusion formed and became hard wired into you.
paddy1990 wrote: » I believe that Darwinists refuse or cannot live their lives according to pure Darwinism because life would simply be completely meaningless. So they have to buy into this delusion.
paddy1990 wrote: » I'm really trying to articulate the absolute meaningless of life in Darwinian terms.
cdoherty86 wrote: » What organisms depend on human existence apart from cats and dogs in the western world.
cdoherty86 wrote: » It doesn't matter if humans go extinct tomorrow yet you can't explain why an Earthworm composts.
cdoherty86 wrote: » The point is, you don't know what the purpose of humanity is
floggg wrote: » Cows would have a pretty tough time surviving. As would all manner of indoor dogs and other pets.
Doctor Jimbob wrote: » You keep ignoring requests to explain your alternative explanations, or even explain why exactly all of this is such a bad thing. Instead, you just keep making vague posts about 'implications' and 'delusions' and derogatory comments about 'Darwinists'. I've asked you plenty of times to clarify your points, but you just keep repeating the same thing.
paddy1990 wrote: » I have avoided engaging you because you haven't really understood what I've written.
cdoherty86 wrote: » Still waiting for a coherent explanation how humans are interdependent when it's obvious we aren't. It doesn't matter if humans go extinct tomorrow yet you can't explain why an Earthworm composts.
paddy1990 wrote: » and by the way, someone mentioned music. Well if every emotion is basically physical material then yes music is also physical material. According to the darwinian materialist view, no exceptions can be made for music. Even the so called proponents of evolution and Darwinism have a hard time understanding the points im making, such is their level of delusion.
cdoherty86 wrote: » The point is, you don't know what the purpose of humanity is, just like you don't know why an earthworm composts. So why don't you stop pretending you know or claiming "we don't have a purpose" you just do not know, leave it there.
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: » Did anyone claim they were? I am not trying to be facetious here but your sentence here seems to be a complete non sequitur to just about everything on the thread. So it is not clear where you are going with this or how it relates to the topic? Mick Flannery puts it well in one of his songs. We are just natures chesty cough, and when shes done shes gonna shake us off. I see where part of your error is stemming from. You are mistaking effect for purpose. They are not the same thing. LOL you will have to offer that one to the creationist not the Scientist See what they make of it and if they want to give it back. The banana man made this error and he has not lived it down since. Didnt someone throw a pineapple on stage in front of him once? Simply because our well being and our survival depend on it. Which itself, you will notice, is subjective. As no one cares about our well being and survival EXCEPT us. But so long as the subjective entities care about the well being OF those self same subjective entities then the question instantly morphs from "Why have strong opinions about anything" to "How can we NOT have strong opinions about anything?" Many people do. Through introspection and meditation and much more there are many people striving to attain well being BEFORE satisfying whatever neurotic thought or desire happen to come careening into consciousness. There is a subset of people attempting to discover if well being and happiness is attainable BEFORE the inputs that we normally associate with generating them. The delusion you appear to find here is opaque to me. We acknowledge the nature of consciousness and subjectivity as you describe them and simply reconcile it in the means I mentioned in my previous two posts on the matter. You appear not to be responding to those posts so much as restating the same view in each of your posts in new words, without actually adding or removing anything from it. It is not clear what you are asking here. How does the content of your sentence before the comma flow into the question after it exactly? The full force of your question is going past me I have to admit openly. There is an interdependence in much of the biosphere but not all of it. None of this implies "purpose" either so that aspect of your question is also a bit fuzzy. Genes reproduce themselves and have found steadily more complex ways of doing it over time. That is what they do. WE and all the rest of the biosphere that we observe is just HOW they are doing it. If you want to construe that as "purpose" then so be it, but I do not, nor see any reason to. You seem to want there to be a "purpose" and so are framing all your queries in the light of finding that purpose. Whereas the rest of us here appear to be suggesting you reframe your questions more sensibly by first divesting yourself of that notion, then framing the questions based on what remains. Give it a try. It can not hurt. Either that or you are contriving to over state those implications for an effect / agenda that no one has thus far managed to find. No one has ever suggested we might or should. Evolutionary science is just facts about the world. Nothing more. What we do with those facts is entirely different. Our knowledge of how to create the bomb does not tell us how or when or whether to use it. All the science here tells us is how we came to be here. What we do FROM here has nothing whatsoever to do with the science. And there is no reason to because while life is objectively meaningless in and of itself, that does not reduce the importance of it to the subjective entity living it. And that realization is not the "delusion" you are trying to paint it to be for reasons as yet unknown. You seem to want to tell us that us being ok with this fact, is somehow a delusion. I am not seeing how. Or why. Actually if you look at what % of the biosphere is now made up of cultivated livestock and vegetable produce, none of which would continue to survive without us, you will find just how much of the biosphere now relies on us to survive. In fact cats and dogs, relative to much of our agriculture flora and fauna and life stock, would survive relatively brilliantly were humanity to magically POOF out of existence tomorrow. I saw a graph once, which I hope to find for you but I hope someone else does it as I can not recall where to look, showing just how much of the biosphere is now human dependent and it was quite jaw dropping. Certainly MUCH more than you are painting for us here on this thread. And that is before you even consider your OWN bio mass. Have you seen graphs on just how much of your own mass is actually human? I would love you to guess, without or at least before checking, what % of your mass sitting at the PC reading right this is actually YOU and is actually human. How much of it is symbiotic life inside AND outside your body that wholly relies on you for survival.... and you in turn rely wholly on them? There is more interdependence again than you, sorry to keep using this phrase, keep painting for us in your posts. Yet we have answered that question directly numerous times. Did you simply skip my first reply to you because it was longer than your attention span? Or for some other reason? No the point is that "purpose" is a concept YOU have overlayed onto humans without establishing that we even _have_ one. There is no "purpose" to any life on this planet that I can discern. So what are YOU suggesting exactly? There is currently no reason I know of to think we have a purpose. So I simply do not go around under the premise that we have a purpose. What is wrong with that exactly?
floggg wrote: » There is no reason whatsoever for believing that we have a purpose - other than the subjective desire/need of some to believe we have one. So stop pretending you know or claiming "we do have a purpose."
