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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:07 pm
(This post was last modified: December 11, 2013 at 2:08 pm by LostLocke.)
I should amend my statement.
Humans have control in the sense they are ones who decide to create a civilization in the first place. And, at any point, they can choose to disband their civilization.
There are of course other external factors that can influence civilizations.
A natural disaster, like a flood, volcano, earthquake, meteor...etc, can displace or destroy a civilization.
If two different civilizations meet, their interaction will change them both. Maybe they'll go to war, and one civilization will wipe the other out. Maybe they'll be friendly and join to form one larger civilization.
And so on and so on, with other factors.
The point being that no one factor has 100% control over the formation, growth, evolution, and death of any single civilization.
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:11 pm
(December 11, 2013 at 2:05 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: (December 11, 2013 at 1:52 pm)DOS Wrote: Anybody else of the atheists think like that?
Yes, humans "govern" the development of human culture/civilization and "stuff like that" "But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth?'
'Man governs it himself,' Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question. `Pardon me,' the stranger responded gently, 'but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how man can govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period - well, say, a thousand years - but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? `And in fact,' here the stranger turned to Berlioz, 'imagine that you, for instance, start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, generally, so to speak, acquire a taste for it, and suddenly you get ...hem... hem ... lung cancer...' - here the foreigner smiled sweetly, and if the thought of lung cancer gave him pleasure - 'yes, cancer' - narrowing his eyes like a cat, he repeated the sonorous word - 'and so your governing is over! 'You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own. Your family starts lying to you. Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors, then to quacks, and sometimes to
fortune-tellers as well. Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand. And it all ends tragically: a man who still recently thought he was governing something, suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box, and the people around him,
seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven. 'And sometimes it's worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk' - here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz - 'a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way? Would it not be more correct to think that he was governed by someone else entirely?'
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:11 pm
(December 11, 2013 at 1:38 pm)DOS Wrote: (December 11, 2013 at 1:28 pm)LostLocke Wrote: Define "whole order of things on earth".
That could men a few different things, which ones are you talking about? The whole order of things on earth is what you see, the development of human civilization and stuff like that. Who governs it and has control over it?
What does the development of human civilization have to do with the whole order of things on earth?
the age of the earth is supposed to be 4 billion years old humans have been here for around 60 000 of those years.
But if the question is who controls the development of human civilization then probably humans as some sort of group consciousness, and also as individuals developing technology.
Unless you believe the ancient aliens tv series. You forgot to add aliens in your poll so I guess you don't.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
Impersonation is treason.
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:22 pm
(December 11, 2013 at 2:11 pm)DOS Wrote: 'And sometimes it's worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk' - here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz - 'a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way?' That's called an accident.
Accidents happen. So what?
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:28 pm
DOS, do you think that admitting that there are factors in life beyond our control is a weakness?
Because that's what you seem to be aiming at.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:34 pm
He keeps swapping between the group and the individual in order to get an answer that he can attack. It's comically disingenuous.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:38 pm
(This post was last modified: December 11, 2013 at 2:42 pm by DOS.)
(December 11, 2013 at 2:22 pm)LostLocke Wrote: (December 11, 2013 at 2:11 pm)DOS Wrote: 'And sometimes it's worse still: the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk' - here the foreigner squinted at Berlioz - 'a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly, no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car! Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way?' That's called an accident.
Accidents happen. So what?
Berlioz listened with great attention to the unpleasant story about the cancer and the tram-car, and certain alarming thoughts began to torment him. 'He's not a foreigner... He's not a foreigner...' he thought, 'he's a most peculiar specimen ...but, excuse me, who is he then? ...'
You'd like to smoke, I see?' the stranger addressed Homeless unexpectedly. "Which kind do
you prefer?'
'What, have you got several?' the poet, who had run out of cigarettes, asked glumly.
'Which do you prefer?' the stranger repeated.
'Okay - Our Brand,' Homeless replied spitefully.
The unknown man immediately took a cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to
Homeless:
'Our Brand...'
Editor and poet were both struck, not so much by Our Brand precisely turning up in the
cigarette case, as by the cigarette case itself. It was of huge size, made of pure gold, and, as it
was opened, a diamond triangle flashed white and blue fire on its lid. Here the writers thought differently. Berlioz: 'No, a foreigner!', and Homeless: 'Well, devil take
him, eh! ...'
The poet and the owner of the cigarette case lit up, but the non-smoker Berlioz declined.
'I must counter him like this,' Berlioz decided, 'yes, man is mortal, no one disputes that. But
the thing is...'
However, before he managed to utter these words, the foreigner spoke:
'Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's
sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's the trick! And generally he's unable to say what he's
going to do this same evening.'
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Right, we know you can't think for yourself.
Now, accept the answers to your question and move on.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:43 pm
And from what I gather, his copypasta agrees with what we've been saying all along: that humans govern human civilisation "and stuff like that", barring outside environmental influences beyond anyone's control. So I repeat - what the hell is the point, since we're in agreement? Did the nasty atheists take the cheese out of your trap?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: If there is no God, then, one may ask
December 11, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Is there a point to this drivel?
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.
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