Sort of a complicated question, I'll try to ask. How was I born me and not another?

[EruptedCarcassBloat]

You have alot to say about critical thought.  Perhaps you should try to use some regarding the subject of this thread?  Imagining that you could have been a rock, or that babies come from hamburgers, or that if you hadn't been born you'd have remained dead are all just as magical as any wish granting fairy.

You completely misunderstand what I'm saying. The "babies come from hamburgers" thing, actually came from this video I was watching about sci fi machines. Machines which can transform ordinary matter into other forms of matter. They were saying that the body already has it's own transmogrifier, which is how our bodies use food to fuel our bodies, and we use that same fuel to make our offspring. So sorry, it's you who misunderstands the question.

And you also misunderstand the question again. I'm not saying I'm going to "become a rock". Stop twisting what I say backwards. I meant, we come from star dust, that star dust can form anything. It could form a rock, it could form a human being. Carl Sagan is the one who said that we call come from star dust. So I'm sorry that I didn't fucking word it in a way that was understandable enough for you, but do you understand what I'm saying now?? After I said it like 10 times?

And yes, before we're born, we're just as dead as when we die. So, therefor, I could have not been born, therefor I would have remained just as dead as if I would have been born and then died. Get it yet????????????

---

Not my fucking fault you can't understand.

---

I hope some day religion is completely wiped off of the face of this earth. I think magical thinking is a byproduct of the infancy of human logic, and I hope that in this age of science, technology, and free information, that eventually we will move past it. I feel, all the time living on this planet, that I'm alienated from a lot of other people. One of the reasons for this is that I feel people don't think critically, so I am always liable to the people around me being magical thinkers. I am not one of those, and from the time I was just a young teenager, I remember being extremely upset about all the religion that surrounds me. It's been a point of extreme disappointment in my life, seeing how religion poisons absolutely everything around me. I see that religion is 100% worthless, people don't need god to be moral, people don't need to waste money building opulent structures to worship things that don't exist. And we don't need all the violence, and ignorance that comes from dogmatic thinking, and doctrines which fundamentally go against the scientific method.

I hate religion, so please DO NOT... EVER accuse me of being a religious person, because that is everything I'm not and it's everything I fight against in my miserable life. It's what I hope will one day be rid of in this world.

Quoting myself so anyone who doesn't look at the last page sees it here, for anyone who thinks I'm some "religious troll in disguise".

[Longhorn]

Fashionably late to the party and not caught up on the thread, but...

@OP, to me your question seems to come from the misunderstanding that there is some nebulous 'me' floating around waiting to become something, be it a rock or a human being. Meanwhile all our observations would lead us to the conclusion that what you call 'me' is a byproduct of the functioning human brain. You didn't come to be this, you came to be because of it and since rocks are, afaik, incapable of consciousness, it's rather obvious why you - a consciousness - are not a rock.

PS. your username is serioisly perfect material for a band/album/song name. Fuckin rad man

[EruptedCarcassBloat]

Fashionably late to the party and not caught up on the thread, but...

@OP, to me your question seems to come from the misunderstanding that there is some nebulous 'me' floating around waiting to become something,  be it a rock or a human being. Meanwhile all our observations would lead us to the conclusion that what you call 'me' is a byproduct of the functioning human brain. You didn't come to be this, you came to be because of it and since rocks are, afaik, incapable of consciousness, it's rather obvious why you - a consciousness - are not a rock.

PS. your username is serioisly perfect material for a band/album/song name. Fuckin rad man

Thank you for the complement on my username! I understand what you mean, and I have been trying for the past 12 pages to communicate what I have been trying to ask. I know that a rock doesn't have consciousness. I am merely trying to ask what the probability of you actually being born is. People here are saying that the statistics of you being born are 100% because any probability of something that already happened is 100%. You could also say that a person's chance of winning the lottery who just won the lottery is 100%, if you're going by that logic. What I'm basically trying to ask, is, is being born basically like winning the cosmic lottery? Something tells me no, but I just don't really understand how it could be that after not existing for billions of years, I all of a sudden had the misfortune of being born onto planet earth. 

What I meant by being a rock instead of a human being, is that there's other forms of matter besides human beings which all came from star dust. It's conceivable that if a tree or a rock came from the same source of matter as me, then there was also a chance that what formed those pieces of matter could have also been me. So, what I was basically asking is, are there potential pieces of matter around us that didn't win the cosmic lottery to become a human being?

That is really what I have been trying to ask for the past dozen pages. And yes, one of the mods thinks I am a christian in disguise trying to find "chinks in the armor" to insert belief in god or something, which is 100% retarded rubbish. I am keeping at it though because I am honestly amazed that it's taken this long to ask this question. I actually think this is a good question, I think this question belongs on a vsauce video.

[Longhorn]

Thank you for the complement on my username! I understand what you mean, and I have been trying for the past 12 pages to communicate what I have been trying to ask. I know that a rock doesn't have consciousness. I am merely trying to ask what the probability of you actually being born is. People here are saying that the statistics of you being born are 100% because any probability of something that already happened is 100%. You could also say that a person's chance of winning the lottery who just won the lottery is 100%, if you're going by that logic. What I'm basically trying to ask, is, is being born basically like winning the cosmic lottery? Something tells me no, but I just don't really understand how it could be that after not existing for billions of years, I all of a sudden had the misfortune of being born onto planet earth. 

What I meant by being a rock instead of a human being, is that there's other forms of matter besides human beings which all came from star dust. It's conceivable that if a tree or a rock came from the same source of matter as me, then there was also a chance that what formed those pieces of matter could have also been me. So, what I was basically asking is, are there potential pieces of matter around us that didn't win the cosmic lottery to become a human being?

That is really what I have been trying to ask for the past dozen pages. And yes, one of the mods thinks I am a christian in disguise trying to find "chinks in the armor" to insert belief in god or something, which is 100% retarded rubbish. I am keeping at it though because I am honestly amazed that it's taken this long to ask this question. I actually think this is a good question, I think this question belongs on a vsauce video.

I think I get what you're asking. IIRC the probability of you being born the way you are is calculated to be one in trillions, can't recall the exact number, genetically-wise. I don't think it's feasible to calculate the probability of specific atoms becoming your body out of all things, if this is what you mean.

This still doesn't really mean it's like winning the lottery, because before it happens, there is no you to win it. You are the byproduct of it happening. It's hard to put in words.
Yes, it's true that after something has happened the probability of it happening (or rather having happened) is 100%. It's mostly about the perspective you ask the question from. Since you were not there before you came to exist, it's hard to speak of a 'you' at all at that time.

[EruptedCarcassBloat]

Yeah, I just always think, what are the chances of me actually being alive? You know? It seems so strange, it would be nice if I was able to quantify what the probability of it happening actually is. It think it would be neat to be able to put it into perspective like that. Like, was it just a random chance that I happened to be born, or was there a good chance that I would be born eventually? I think it would be pretty sweet to actually know that.

[Longhorn]

Yeah, I just always think, what are the chances of me actually being alive? You know? It seems so strange, it would be nice if I was able to quantify what the probability of it happening actually is. It think it would be neat to be able to put it into perspective like that. Like, was it just a random chance that I happened to be born, or was there a good chance that I would be born eventually? I think it would be pretty sweet to actually know that.

It unfortunately isn't really possible to calculate, but yeah, I get that feeling of wonder. Comes with being alive. The human brain can have a hard time processing its place in the universe.

[LastPoet]

Why do I have the feeling of deja vu, reading this OPs progression?

[ukatheist]

Would it be something like no. of sperm in the world x no. of ova in the world?

Sent from my ALE-L21 using Tapatalk

[downbeatplumb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjlY3GxtIs8

[Whateverist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjlY3GxtIs8

Best reply yet.