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"Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older that the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you."
If evolution is correct (and all evidence tells us that it is), the number of individual beings which could be standing here in your place vastly outnumber all of the grains of sand, on all of the beaches, in all of the world. You are the inheritor of a genetic legacy which stretches back 3.8 billion years through the eons, and which has circled the center of our galaxy about 20 times. You're the endpoint of billions of generations of births, competitions, wars, and deaths; the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that can possibly result in you. Your forbears have survived arguably the single greatest ecological catastrophe ever to hit the planet; when the earliest plants started poisoning the atmosphere with oxygen. Yet, your ancestors learned to use this poisonous gas to produce energy in a way that had never been attempted before; an evolutionary triumph which paved the way for the first multicellular life. Your genetic line has survived floods, freezes, and meteor impacts from the skies themselves, preserving this single genetic line through the eons to lead ultimately to you. This is a legacy you share with every living thing on earth, from the largest creature ever to have lived; the blue whale; to the lowliest prion. You share this legacy with the blades of grass between your toes and the trees that give you shade. You are a thread in a huge, amazing, incredibly diverse tapestry of living things; some of whom have clawed their way out of the seas to survive on land, some of whom remained in the ocean, and a few of whom stood on land for a few million years, ultimately said "well, screw-it" and marched back into the sea. Once we add cosmology into the mix, not only does this legacy stretch to everything living, but to the non-living as well. You share your origins with the stars and planets. The asteroids which hang in space, all the way down to the loneliest hydrogen atom in deep space. All the parts that make you stretch back through the eons and have borne witness to the very birth of the universe. They have seen the birth and death of stars, supernovae, black holes and pulsars. They've seen planets torn to pieces and solar systems form. They've seen galaxies coalesce and skies darken.
The universe is much more grand, more amazing, more beautiful, more elegant and more subtle than has ever been written in any holy book, and you are here, against nigh-incalculable odds, to see it all.
Just consider that for a moment.
I think that is the most beautiful thing I've ever read..
The scientific method is still a man-made concept. If you cannot acknowledge that "science" is equally as real as "non-science," you are not thinking in depth enough about what I am trying to say.
Reality is based on perspective. It is incredibly complicated and yet so simple!
I don't think things that exist in our physical, tangible world are any less or more "real" than the things that exist outside of the physical/tangible realm. You can use science to prove something in the physical world, but what if all of these rules turned out to be incorrect and the physical reality that you are accustomed to ends up being completely backwards from what you originally thought? There is NO way you can prove that this cannot happen.
You don't need to eat mushrooms to understand this, but you do need to REALLY think about it.
I do not care what textbooks say because for all I know this physical reality is in fact not real in the way that we perceive it to be.
Everything is nothing and nothing is everything and we cannot prove or disprove the 'existence' of anything or nothing because there is no way we can possibly understand anything beyond our perception that we view with only 5 human senses + human intuition and mind power. It is too abstract and "science" to me is and never will be reliable because of how I define my reality.
The scientific method is still a man-made concept. If you cannot acknowledge that "science" is equally as real as "non-science," you are not thinking in depth enough about what I am trying to say.
Reality is based on perspective. It is incredibly complicated and yet so simple!
I don't think things that exist in our physical, tangible world are any less or more "real" than the things that exist outside of the physical/tangible realm. You can use science to prove something in the physical world, but what if all of these rules turned out to be incorrect and the physical reality that you are accustomed to ends up being completely backwards from what you originally thought? There is NO way you can prove that this cannot happen.
You don't need to eat mushrooms to understand this, but you do need to REALLY think about it.
I do not care what textbooks say because for all I know this physical reality is in fact not real in the way that we perceive it to be.
Everything is nothing and nothing is everything and we cannot prove or disprove the 'existence' of anything or nothing because there is no way we can possibly understand anything beyond our perception that we view with only 5 human senses + human intuition and mind power. It is too abstract and "science" to me is and never will be reliable because of how I define my reality.
Hope you're staying warm up there! I love it, and learned a whole lot about nature out in the AK bush country, as a bear and large mammal biologist.
So. If you want or need to deny or reject all rational and logical approaches to getting answers to life's little imponderables, so be it. That'll be your personal choice.
That does mean, however, that you have only two remaining alternatives to support "reality" (which you said may not actually exist, so I'm a bit confused here...)
1) you can just let others do all your thinking for you, and happily accept everything they tell you is true (but history tells us this is not too wise...)
2) you can adopt whatever makes you feel all warm inside, and leave it at that. This leads to believing in leprechauns, evil dog spirits, the God of Abraham, and other unprovables.
Or, as a final alternative;
3) you can read up on, and ponder, and perhaps improve on, the Scientific Method of asking simple, logical questions of Mother Nature, one at a time, and then ask for a thoughtful peer-review by other educated and thoughtful professionals, and then still keep your mind open to any and all new ideas.
Over time, this last one has proven to be quite reliable, wouldn't you agree? I sorta like it, especially since it has produced literally reams and masses of good, reliable, documented facts. Facts that also really fit the observed world around us! Wow!
Now, if this open, inquisitive & proven method happens to give you heartburn as regards your personal spirituality, then you have to deal with that by reverting back to #1 or 2 above, and in addition, you can question all the folks who choose #3.
Simple, huh? In any case, "reality" remains intact. Some just understand it better than others.
I studied anthropology back in college, I absolutely loved it. I do not reject evolution, I believe it as fact. Not once did I say that I myself rejected it personally, I was just trying to explain why/how it is OKAY for some people to not believe in it. Everyone has a right to believe whatever they want, and that's alright with me. Every human lives in a separate reality.
In my perspective, evolution clearly happened (though who I am to say I fully comprehend reality, anyway? I don't think anyone does beyond the physical realm). I think I came from a hominid and that hominid came from a different hominid and if you go back far enough I believe we are related to the great apes, and if you go back even farther we are related to the old world monkeys. I also believe many other species who currently exist (or are extinct) also evolved. I think it's a beautiful process. But once again I am not saying that I KNOW it is true, because I have no ability to view the Earth from birth to present, I have no way to prove anything because who knows what time might be capable of?
Anywho, I don't see what the big deal is with me believing in evolution AND believing in what I refer to as God. Now, my definition of God is probably too abstract for any of you city-data-ers so I wont even go there again...it's too confusing, even for me.
I do think everyone has a purpose, I do NOT believe that life is meaningless, and I do NOT assume that anyone agrees or disagrees with me unless they state their opinion. I do not make judgments so hastily as some people on here seem to do. I do not like judging others and wish the best to everyone.
I am simply trying to say that it is OKAY for people to disregard science, it is OKAY for people to have different opinions and perspectives on reality.
Oh and in response to your list of "options" - Most people would fall under #3, I'd hope. I will remain open-minded and yet try my best to think critically about the world around me. I refuse to believe everything I hear, and in my experience I cannot always trust science or textbooks. The laws of physics may change someday, we cannot predict the future...at least I can't!
I am only 23 years old, just a healthy young lady - no heartburn here!
Oh and where I live in Alaska it's -40 today. Too cold! So glad I don't live in a dry cabin anymore, good grief, I sure as hell don't miss the "bathroom"...hahaha
Evolutionary theory is not threatening to me, I am trying to figure out why I posted on here in the first place. I think I was trying to defend everyone - including people who are threatened by it.
Most Christians and "religious" people who I know, either believe in evolution OR they simply don't care.
The scientific method is still a man-made concept. If you cannot acknowledge that "science" is equally as real as "non-science," you are not thinking in depth enough about what I am trying to say.
Reality is based on perspective. It is incredibly complicated and yet so simple!
I don't think things that exist in our physical, tangible world are any less or more "real" than the things that exist outside of the physical/tangible realm. You can use science to prove something in the physical world, but what if all of these rules turned out to be incorrect and the physical reality that you are accustomed to ends up being completely backwards from what you originally thought? There is NO way you can prove that this cannot happen.
You don't need to eat mushrooms to understand this, but you do need to REALLY think about it.
I do not care what textbooks say because for all I know this physical reality is in fact not real in the way that we perceive it to be.
Everything is nothing and nothing is everything and we cannot prove or disprove the 'existence' of anything or nothing because there is no way we can possibly understand anything beyond our perception that we view with only 5 human senses + human intuition and mind power. It is too abstract and "science" to me is and never will be reliable because of how I define my reality.
The Scientific Method (SM) removes the problem of perspective quite nicely.
One man's opinion (findings) may be scewed by his perspective (the pseudoscience of Intelligent Design is a perfect example). However, the end of the SM, Peer Review after the investigator has published his findings, seeks to remove that single person's perspective/opinion/bias/etc.
And does quite nicely, IMHO.
When someone's findings passes the peer review process to the point that even their staunchest critics must relent and agree that the science is solid, we have a simple fact.
Now, science doesn't seek to disprove deity in and of itself. However, when one applies science to certain myths and miracles, the basis for said deity, at the very least the attempt to grant Jehovah some authority as a demiurge of us all who can commit mass murder on a global scale to give an example, can be easily disproven.
The Flood Myth, including the Ark, just doesn't pass muster in anyone's reality.
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Ahh to be up on the Noatak again....
