Philosophies on life

Animals do go extinct naturally at the hands of the enviroment and animals. How are humans anything less than that? The only way they are fundamentally apart from nature is if God created mankind as he is said to have in the Bible. I like to consider myself scientific and so I can't accept that explanation in its literal form.

Rare species that have never been hunted by humans are already in the precursor to extinction. When one species falls, another changes its behavior and takes over for it. That's what man does. The worlds ecosystem won't collapse with the loss of Lions, Tigers, and Bears. Even deer populations were to explode as a result, without any human internvention they'd eventually fall to more managable levels. ...but why shouldn't humans intervene? If any other predator had the means it would, and that would be considered a natural way for the ecosystem to correct itself. I take these days that "natural" is anything that does not involve humans. However I think that view is inherently flawed because there is no logical reason to exclude humans.

The human brain is natural. Technology comes from the human brain. Technology is natural. If man floods a forest by building a dam that land does not become a wasteland, it remains filled with just as much life as it was before. Perhaps even more. Interesting fact: the rainforest might as well be baren. There is little in the way of micro-organisms in the soil because rainwater constantly washes them out. However frigid places like the tundra are in comparison; teeming with life-- the soil is filled with micro-organisms.

Humans don't kill off species out of malice: they do it out of neccessity. They shoot foxes because they kill chickens. Killing chickens deprives humans of food, killing chickens kills humans. Human advancement and developement is directly related to how much food we have. The more we can produce the less time we must spend feeding our selves and the more time we have engaging our immaginations to solve problems and further our survival. (our immagination is a survival technique)

Most species of animals don't render one another extinct without a prior change to the enviroment because they don't have the means to do it as quickly. They can't plan and learn and adapt as quickly as humans can. They have to wait for evolution to take hold and in the time it takes a predator to evovle a trait which gives him an advantage over another; the other has developed something new on its own.

...but why did the human continue shooting that type of bird? There was some biological reason. In the grand scheme of things that bird was not terribly important to the ecosystem and I guarantee life has continued on without even noticing. When animals go extinct, for whatever reason, it shows they've lost the game of survival. Contrary wise, those that thrive are winning. (though by know means have they won, that includes humans)

Damage or change?

We can't stop percieved human crimes against nature because they are closely linked to process that we need to survive. These accidents in the end are beneficial. Why? They're beneficial because we learn with each one. You seem to be under the impression that I'm writing off oil spills and radiation leaks as something that is ok and we should allow to happen without impunity: I'm not. What I'm doing is describing why in the grand scheme of things, that industrial accident was a natural event that will help prevent future such occurances. As humans develope and learn they'll coincidentally become more "in harmony" with nature. --a volcaneo doesn't damage an ecosystem, it changes it. A toxic spill does the same via' different methods.

You might be surprised. In today's world anyone who stands up for a moral belief is an intolerant biggot. Is murder a good thing that should happen with impunity? No, but is it ultimately a natural aspect of humanity? Yes. Most other animals don't kill one another because each member isn't as expendable to the species as a whole as they are with humans.

Indeed, there may be no morality, I can't deny the possibility. However there are still things that are bad for the species: things which hinder its developement and survival. Murder is one of those things. From a purely logical standpoint, morality is only concerned with what effects the fate of the species. You are free to lie, cheat, and steal as you wish, however these things hinder the cohesiveness of human society and are therefore resisted on the whole. You can do it, but you'll likely get caught at some point. It's self defeating. It's the same reason crime lords and corporations don't stick one another in the back at every opportunity: betraying their word makes it more difficult in the future for any of them to work together. It's not a good plan in the long run.

...but what is sentience? If anything it's just a survival technique employed by an animal with poor physical abilities.

Is it wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not. However it is certainly not wise because that frog may posses any number of traits that humans can take advantage of to increase the liklihood of their own survival. Frogs are susceptable to changes in the enviroment and changes in the enviroment can be detrimental to humans, so I would reccomend keeping them around. If humanity as a whole agrees with me, then they will do just that. (and indeed most seem to)

 

I understand your logic, Langolier, but it seems flawed to me. Your not looking at the big picture and only seeing the forest for the trees. The fundamental difference between mankind and the rest of nature is that we've fallen out of sync with it. Through overpopulation and technology that has allowed us to expand beyond the limits nature provided for us, we've successfully thrown the environment out of whack.

Our factories pollute at an unprecedented rate, we destroy vast acres of rainforest to raise cattle, and destroy our environment with no regard for anything besides ourselves. The true cost is irrelevent to us, because mankind is inherently shortsighted, otherwise we wouldn't continue to make the same mistakes again and again.

The pollution belched into the atmosphere is intentional and continual, whereas a volcano is a limited event. The long term results of our actions is that we trap solar radiation inside our atmosphere, heating up the air, and causing massive hurricanes and tornado's the likes of which we've never seen before. Weathermen call it El Nino but the reality is we've set things in motion that probably cant be reversed. We combine that with massive defoliation of the rain forests, which provide a huge amount of the air we breath (necessary for survival, duh!), but who cares? Lets chop them all down so we can raise cattle and feed more people.

If we dont get a clue and reverse the damage we're doing, which we wont, its only a matter of time until we start to really melt the icecaps and start flooding the oceans with warmer fresh water. Once this process kicks off (we're already seeing it starting) we expect to see sea levels raise by 6 meters (roughly 20 feet). Somewhere in that equation, the fresh water causes the gulf stream to shut down (which keeps us all warm and toasty). This will trigger a sudden drop in temperatures turning all that fresh water back into frozen glaciers.

Current research suggests the last Ice Age started in as short a period as 50 years, and ended as fast (after something like 10000 years). The last one was set off by a series of massive volcanoes which erupted around the same time, causing greenhouse gases to get trapped in the atmosphere, sorta like we're artifically creating ourselves now.
All quite natural of course, just Mother Nature's way of re-establishing who's boss and cleansing herself of irresponsible monkeys.

You see, people do what they do because we're short-sighted, dont care about anyone but ourselves, and 98% of us just follow the 2% who dont have any idea what theyr'e doing. But hey, who cares? Its all natural, 100% goodness. Lets sink a few more oil tankers and cook the last of the rainforests down with napalm and have a drunken brawl over resources, wenches, and sheer spite just for the hell of it.

 

You don't believe or disbelieve something because you want to consider yourself a certain way, you believe or disbelieve something because you are a certain way.

Your premise is merely a veneer of an excuse to remove all accountability for their environment from humankind. There is a natural course of extinction. Girstly, however, an animal never hunted by man can still be destroyed by man if its territory is destroyed. Secondly, while animals may go extinct, the process is much slower than when humans do it. The surrounding environment has a chance to adapt. When humans do it, the process is considerably accelerated. The (relatively remember, 50 years is a short time in nature) sudden dissappearance of a predator causes a surge in the population of prey. But remember, that prey eats things, which then have a population drop. Then the formerly swelling populations begin to sag as creatures start starving. It's happened.

I already defined natural for you. Natural does not involve technology in a fundamental way. A human breathing is natural, a human breathing with a respirator is unnatural. That said, unnatural is not a bad thing. It is a state, and nothing else.

When a beaver dams a river, that is unnatural. But the beaver is also incapable of knowing if its actions will cause undue damage downstream. So, even if the beaver is inadvertantly harming other animals, it is merely ensuring its own survival. Survival is the key word. You don't need a teak dresser. You don't need a dresser at all. Cutting down a tree to make a dresser is merely securing your own comfort. If cutting down a tree to make a dresser would cause undue hardship on the ecosystem, its wrong.

Technology isn't natural. The definition of technology is the alteration of the natural state of something to achieve some ends. Your entire argument is filled with more ignorance disguised as competancy than Fox news. You take a random fact, that the rainforest doesn't support ground level bacterial life, and you apply it like it means anything in this argument.

An ecosystem is not thriving because of one type of life or another, it thrives due to the sum. If you flood a forest, you kill all the ground-dwelling animals, a catastophic amount of biodiversity. All flying or tree-dwelling creatures that feed mostly on surface creatures begin to starve or leave if they can. The trees will begin dying. In fact, most of the microorganisms will die too. Then they will begin to replenish themselves
new animals will come, new birds, and new plants will grow. The area will recover. But the process takes alot of time. The damage has been done. Naturally (if the process happens without the the application of technology) it takes quite some time for the forest to sink, and as such it happens at a rate that life can easily adapt too. The stress isn't that high, and life easily recovers. When technology is applied, it greatly advances the rate of this destruction, to the point where the ecosystem can't handle it.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with a farmer shooting a fox that's going after his chickens. However, when farmers begin scouring territory and killing every fox they find, eventually removing the creature from entire regions, I think it could be handled better. Why drive off an entire species when we might at well invent something new and protect the chickens in the first place.

The ability to do something is not justification to do it. By your flawed logic there is a biological reason for everything. I shot someone, but biology is to blame. I raped a woman, but it was really just my latent physical urge to reproduce. I hate to break your heart man, but us grown-ups take responsibility for those things we do.

You may have some ground in attacking my use of the word damage. You are correct that all things that occur do simply change the environment. However, you're greatly overestimating mankind's habit of learning from his mistakes. The fact is, we don't usually. The transformation of habitats is a gradual thing in nature, life in the affected area has a chance to adapt. But when a tanker burst open, that oil comes out mighty quick, and the surrounding creatures are killed before they have a chance to adapt.

We can't stop ALL human crimes against nature because SOME are closely linked to processes that we need to survive. MANY human crimes against nature can be stopped by simply changing some behviors. For instance, urban sprawl in the midwest of America:

Urban sprawl starts with a city surrounded by alot of wilderness. Let's call it Big. Big starts out small, then more people hear about it and Big grows big. We now have 10 million people living in Big. The wealthier ones want nicer homes and move to the suburbs, which are slowly developed. The even richer ones move farther out. But the rich folks outside of Big decide they're tired of driving for 20 minutes to get milk. So the land around them is developed with stores and stuff. Then smaller houses start going up. In the suburbs, some houses are torn down, and apartment complexes start appearing. Eventually, the suburbs of Big grow gigantic, and the rich folk just keep moving further and further away from Big, to keep from living near poor people. But every time they settle somewhere, they tell the poor people to come and set up a grocery store, and then move away again.

Obviously that's preventable behavior that's damaging the ecology of the surrounding area. All the trees that are felled for road and house constructions supported life, and now they're all destroyed. Big still only has 10 million people, but they all keep taking up more and more amounts of space.

Anyone who stands up for a moral belief is an intolerant bigot? You sir, have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. That kind of crap sounds like it came right off of cable news. By the way, how exactly do we judge expendability?

There is no specific reason that animals don't kill each other. Sharks kill each other if they clash over territory. Are sharks expendable then? Believe it or not, most animals don't have the intelligence to develop algorithms for determining how useful each member is to the survival of its species as a whole.

From a purely logical standpoint, morality is concerned with everything it has been concerned with. You need to rehash your definition of logic, because its flawed in the extreme. I could invent a thousand and one moral axioms. As long as none of them are contradictory, then morality is logical. Something that is logical is something that holds true to the accepted axioms of its existance, nothing more. If you want to argue the usefulness of morality, fine, but that's a separate discussion.

Your entire argument is stunning. You completely refuse any and all forms of accountibility for any action, and then try to pretend you're merely adhering to 'logic' or that you're being 'scientific.' No, you're being a fool.

EDIT: Nice analogy Maximus, seeing the forest for the trees is precisely what he's doing.

 

Regardless of whether or not a species goes extinct in 50 years or 50,000 years, the ecosystem none the less adapts. Prey animals grow into numbers too large for the plant life to support and a die-off happens. The die-off allows more plants to grow which in turn gradually increases the numbers of herbivores.

I am not excusing mankind from doing anything, I am however putting forth my own explanation for why he does what he does. I did not say that it was good to dump toxic chemicals, I did and do however believe that mother nature is only an ideal. The natural world doesn't care what happens one way or another because ultimately humans are part of it.

You've defined natural, but my point is that the accepted definition of natural is itself flawed.

A human crafting a dresser is ensuring his or her survival. Comfort helps breed abstract thought and abstract thought helps craft new technology which in turn brings about more comfort and more abstract thought. Every society on Earth that has developed into a large civilization has done so because their people were able to live in relative comfort compared to these millenia of generations before them. The less time and effort humans are forced to spend feeding themselves the more time they can devote to researching new ideas. I reccomend you check out Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

It does mean something; it helps to illustrate how blurry the divide (if it even exists) is between so-called un-natural and natural eco-systems.

Exactly, and therefore Panda Bears going extinct won't bring it crashing down. Nor will the loss of Foxes, Wolves, or Polar Bears.

It gets replaced by other forms of life. Algea and other plants, water-dwelling insects, amphibians, many species of birds and mammals. It may have happened faster, but life still adapted, didn't it?

I did not say we should do anything we want because we have the power. So far mankind hasn't exterminated anything simply for sport. He can't, because sport itself serves a purpose, just as art and philosophy though. The human animal is a complex creature. There is indeed a biological reason for rape, if there weren't then it wouldn't happen. Someone might try using that as an excuse not to be charged with it, (probably have already) but that does not imply it shouldnt' be punished. It should be punished because rape and other acts that are deemed crimes damage the cohesiveness of the society, of the flock, of the herd, of the pack.

I hate to break your heart man, but us grown-ups make the effort to remain polite when in an intelligent debate and don't resort to personal attacks.

 

You seem to be misinformed. Right off the bat, I recall reading in elementary school about a bird called the Passenger Pigeon. We wiped it off the face of the Earth, not for food or survival, but just for the hell of it. Almost did the same to the American Buffalo, not just for sport but profit to.

http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/passpigeon.htm

Try checking your facts before clicking the submit button.

 

thats gay

 

Grow up or piss off you stupid mongolian golliwog titrat.

 

ur a fag

 

Your own link states that passenger pigeons were hunted for export to the east. They were also hunted for food and feed. So, therefore "not for the hell" of it. The same with the near-annhilation of the buffalo. At the time of the great buffalo hunts no one really believed the buffalo would ever run out. Buffalo too were used for food and materials, even if the white man wasn't as efficient as the native american.

You might do well to follow you own advice.

 

Humans DO NOT Adapt to suit their environment. The change the environment to suit them! If that wasn't the case we wouldn't have cities. Life does indeed change to suite it surounding conditions. The only thing that is an ever a constant factor in life is that it wants to survive. Why?

Anyway, Aborigines when they first arrived in Australia it was a very different place. The animals were larger and probably more tasty. The large animals were able to eat all the dead undergrowth released by the trees. When the Aborigines arrived they began to hunt these animals, not to extinction though, if there one thing and aborigine knows its when enough is enough, Because of this the animals evolved into todays modern creatures found in australia or at least their number were just dwindled I'm not sure which one. However the lands dramatic change played a major part in this. This change came about because the undergrowth the large animals fed on began to build up. Then eventually the large amount of dry undegrowth became to hot and spontaneously combusted. Bushfires! The smoke causedby these upset the carbon balance and dramatically altered the weather climate and made australia into a dryer place. (truth is its still pretty wet but not rain forest wet) The gum trees of today now require a bush fire to reproduce as their tough bark protects trees seed pods that are stimulated into opening and life is spung anew. Aboriginal culture changed to use control fires to hunt the new animals. Then the white man arrived and cut down the forests and put up paddocks that are altering the environment yet again. Todays great barrier reef shrinking, being killed off by algae and seaweed colonies growing due the nutrient levels of the sea increasing from all of the cow shit being washed into the sea by rainfall from the paddocks and the tree blockades that were up and stopping this are cut down!
Man affects the environment in more ways than one. We can't kill the damn thing without killing ourselves but we are changing it dramatically.

You know some religious guy actually tried to convince me that evolution was total nonsense, because in the galapagous island the giant turtles haven't change for millenia? Uh Just to let anyone out there who doesn't understand evolution, it is NOT a process in which simple life forms become more complex until we become supreme beings! It is where an organism has the pre-existing characteristics to survive in their environment, if the environment changes so do the required characteristics and so there for so does the organisms predecessors! The reason why the galapagous island inhabitants aren't any different is because the enviroment isn't any different or if it is, it hasn't changed so dramatically as to affect the turtles physical characteristics in any major way.

Also Radiation CANNOT speed this process, indeed you change a persons DNA but their offsprings chromosome will be out of whack and (if they can breed at all) they will be infertile. Plus leukemia and linthoma are quite deadly can also be passed on to offspring.

All mighty creator bah supestitious ramblings of a primitive past. Even if there is I don't care I'm gonna stick to my guns and defy god! If he condems me to hell so be it. I'll scratch and crawl my way out and piss on his ashes! Just because an superior being created me why does that automatically give him reason to be worshipped? Bar that paradise'd get boring anyway. Best just to live with Satan the only reason hes there is because he defied god as well. If Satan is evil why is it his duty to punish sinners? Surly he'd embrace sinners in his own army or something like that. Then again the bible is a one sided story. I haven't actually read the satanists bible but from what I've been told its rather interesting. I'm right and gods wrong thats all there is to it.

 

Where do people get this idea that Satan is in charge of Hell?

 

From the same place, from which they got that the God is in charge of Heaven. Anyway, that would be more correct if Satan would have been in Heaven and God would have been in Hell, so that both of them would have enough "meat for beating".

 

Is Satan mentioned in the King James Bible? I can't recall. I know that there is no mention of Hell at all in any of the original text of the Bible (the Catholic Church added it to keep all ye heathens in line), but I don't know exactly when it got added.

 

Well, I'm not sure about King James Bible (although I have two or three given on RSC), but as for Catholics...all churchs except Protestants opress their believers... as for Orthodoxal russian church, for example, (hate their praying voices) it is done according to "nice" russian tradition to opress people.

(By word Protestants I mean not fanatical churchs like Witnessers of Jehovah or how they're called)

 

I have a life philosophy for you:

Pac-Man is for pussies. Real men play Space Invaders.

 

i like pac man lol

 

Thank you. Comparing to this philosophy Socrates is nothing.

 

I have a bunch of em if you want em.

You can never really tell if you're over a girl until those private moments late at night, when you're thinking of her and touching yourself, then get bored and go make yourself a sandwich.

 

Well, still this thread is about philosophy... I myself tried to answer those questions about God by making a theory of permanent existance (maybe someone has already created this, I don't know), which states that if there is uncertainity in terms of what was before Big Bang, then the 'globule' from which all the world formed, exists in both 'directions' of time (we exist only in one direction) because of...well...high density (it's similar to the blackholes, but here density is much higher), and, therefore, there's no limitations of time for those world forming matter like there's no space limitation for us.

But once I believed that the special form of solipsism is right. In this case, I neither thought all is created for me nor thought I'm Creator, but the point is that I thought I'm the only conscious, and all others are ruled by someone else. The facts that one day all wanted to kill me, but another day all liked be could be interpreted as "Ruler of 'em all likes/dislikes you today". In a nutshell, I was playing in action, and all others were part of someone's strategical game.

 

The concept of Hell came from Norse mythology. Hel being the god that ruled in hels domain. The really cold land to which traitors, the sick and people who died of old age went. It was obviously used as a method to keep peasants toiling hard and unquestioning their purpose during the dark ages. Also I don't think that Satan lives in hell. I think he doesn't exist.

The only Philosophy that makes sense to me is Existensialist theory. There is no god. We are born we die. Everything we do in life is entirely without meaning and pointless. A good example of this is when you go to the fridge and find nothing you want to eat. Later on you are still hungry and return to the fridge and once again find nothing. This is a representation of man repetitive and pointless pursuit of anything.