[subversion]

Mr Nobody, other animals don't try to search for the TOE, that's the main thing that makes us different than other animals. I agree with you, we shouldn't consider ourselves as anything but animals, yet I also agree to the contrary. I know this seems inconsistent but I think you can have it both ways.

To answer your question about when we became divine, well there's no set point really, just a progression. Being able to invent the idea of God, whether it is a fictious or non-fictitious idea, makes us closer to him. As profet said, the very fact that we can think of what divine is makes us somewhat divine. We're actually not really fully divine yet, not until we uncover the TOE, then our closeness to god will be more than infinite! THen you'll definitely have to say that we are somewhat different than other animals!

Profet, it is true that what I said is said in the bible, but that doesn't mean I couldn't come to that conclusion independently. I took the part about God creating us in his image and just changed it to say that we believe God looks like us. As for us being closer to God, I didn't necessarily take it directly from the bible. God is the cause of our universe, I might have come up with that, but I'm not sure. It's too logical of a statement to lay claim to, can you really lay claim to a truth?

[Mr. Nobody]

Since this is thread of pure conjecture, I want to bring up another possibility: That the universe is godless, simple and only exists and that our intelligence is adaption to environmental pressures, purely evolutionary and is capable of creating questions without meanings, like the taste of a color, the meaning of life and so on. Our intelligence serves us well, look at all the gadget we enjoy. However, my question becomes: Is intelligence an evolutionary dead end or will it save the day in a big hurah for the space men spreading humanity across the universe and finding a way out of a dying cosmos.
Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn't be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms ... of that mathematical branch itself. You might be able to prove every conceivable statement about numbers within a system by going outside the system in order to come up with new rules and axioms, but by doing so you'll only create a larger system with its own unprovable statements. The implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules.
Does that no describe our search for a TOE?

[Haps]

I agree with Mr. Nobody here. I reject the idea of "hierarchical spirituality". It's bad enough being a subject while I'm alive, I gotta be one for eternity? No thanks.

I think Mr. N makes a valid point that in this being the Quest for the Theory of Everything it would include the spiritual realm (if such a beast exists). For me though, I don't see a need or a reason to separate spiritual from physical. If there is such a thing as a spiritual experience then I think we're all having it right now.

I remember a good analogy I heard a few years ago: all the terminology we use, all the measurements we take, all of the things we do which require the use of language are simply ways that we "map" nature or our reality. The problem comes when people confuse the map with the territory; especially when the map is constantly changing and nobody can even agree which way is actually North.

Anyway, I view the concept of God as little more than a reflection of our history. There have always been rulers and there have always been the ruled. I guess it's difficult for some people to conceive of a spiritual existence without comparing it to the brutality of human affairs. I mean, the Kingdom of Heaven? Didn't we decide Kings were a bad way to run things a few hundred years ago? I see strong atheism and anarchism as almost inseparable in their theory but maybe that's just me.

Sorry for the rant, just my .367% of a cent.

[subversion]

Originally Posted by Mr. Nobody Since this is thread of pure conjecture, I want to bring up another possibility: That the universe is godless,

there has to be a cause to the creation of the universe, therefore the universe must have a god. Whatever caused the universe we would have to consider to be god, whatever that would be.

For ppl who don't realize the barren truth that we are approaching godliness, than yes, intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. So I ask you, do you WANT intelligence to be an evolutionary dead end??

[Mr. Nobody]

I have this image of the human body in mind. As we are comprised of individual cells, all serving a function to make the body complete, a working, biological machine, so I view the universe. The cosmos as the body and energy/matter as its cells.

Now ponder this: What do you call the cell that loses its function, appears to acquire identity and spreads uncontrollable inside your body?

Finally, to answer your question: I view intelligence as a curse, an inherent imbalance of allowable or possible knowledge and knowledge acquired. I view the search for answers like an addiction, a thirst for understanding something from the inside. I view awareness as the oddity in this universe, a universe that is full of energies, matter, evolution, all involved in a seemingly eternal struggle against entropy. This struggle feels more like an orchestrated dance, with rules and regulations, with compliant participants willingly waltzing into death.

Viewing the human spirit within the context of total history, seeing the brief time we have occupied this realm, trying to understand it all, one can not help but conclude, that this brain, this sentience, is an aberration of the machine, a failure of intent, an evolutionary dead end. 13.7 billion or so years and only 10,000 years of human conscience

[subversion]

I still don't see why you think it's an evolutionary dead end. Do you want it to be? Is that your answer to my question?

[Mr. Nobody]

Self awareness, as the byproduct of intelligence serves no function, no purpose in the species survival. To be aware of ones death from early childhood on, does not furthen the survival or evolution, thats why I think intelligence may be an evolutionary dead end. Overpopulation and resource depletion is another reason. I am not talking this or next generation, I am talking about 10,000, 100,000 maybe 1 mil years from now. Where do you think we will be in 1 mil years from now? Keep in mind. the dinosaurs ruled the planet for 200 mil years, can we do the same or better?

It is almost impossible to speculate about our fate, the fate of the species as social and cultural beings when our history only spans across 10,000 years of society. Do I want intelligence to be an evolutionary dead end? No, of course not. However, I am realistic, maybe nihilistic and can not help but feel insignificant and helpless in this stroll to total entropy. The cosmos marches to its own rythm, it has its own evolutionary drums....

[SinJin]

On the largest of scales, we can only survive as long as the universe. But like you said Mr. Nobody, the universe is ultimately in the hands of entropy's increase. If the universe collapses on itself, then obviously anything that wants to survive is going to have a hard time doing so. But if the universe is static, it'll still become more and more disorganized, because of entropy's arrow.


Now, it has been said that life fails to yeild to the second law of thermodynamics, by making order out of disorder. But the amount of disorder that arises from the sustaining of life more than makes up for the amount of order that came about. However, as life strives to survive, in doing so intelligence comes about and in it's wake begins to reverse entropy. The amount of heat released from inventing a bicycle and then building a factory that makes them is far less then the amount saved by millions of people riding those bicycles to the grocery store instead of walking.

So what am I getting at? Could entropy possibly be the key here? Entropy constantly rises further and further towards useless disorder, but the universe tries to slow it down as much as possible, even trying to reverse it, by evolving into life and intelligence. Could that possibly be where our "good" and "bad" comes from? It is bad to feel sick, to not be sufficient, to kill and take life, which are all things that hinder human survival, which slows down our quest for more efficient ways of survival. In essence, anything that speeds up the increase in entropy is bad, anything that slows it down is good.

Just some thoughts.

[subversion]

I like your concept that entropy is connected with right and wrong, that's really original and rather genious. I never thought about it like that before.

You know I actually used to consider myself a nihilist too. I guess I still do in many ways, but on the other hand I've been really optimistic lately. You ask me where I think the human race will be in a million years, well, I've got a hunch it won't be be on planet earth. We'll go to another planet, I really think it'll happen. I think humanity can even reach beyond the end of the universe, I think we will be around forever, which is a fun opinion to have because most everybody would disagree with me! My outlook on humanity is kinda like star trek, "live long and prosper"

That's what TOE will grant us, but we must act wisely unlike in the past
we will become the ultimate slowers of entropy

[Haps]

Regarding the ideas about God that have been talked about, I just wanted to add some thoughts. I think that it should follow that if our intelligence is not a "dead end", that it is evolving perhaps towards something greater, than our conception of God will probably not be (and probably should not be) the same as the ones we created over 2000 years ago. I think that all religions share one thing - a feeling that people have. It's some kind of emotional reaction to the world around us and depending upon how we perceive our world we will associate it with different ideas.

I propose that there is no God in the sense we have come to think of it. In fact, using the word God in this context sort of takes away from the new meaning since it is so different. As I mentioned above, I strongly believe that there is no hierarchy after death and that such a thing could only be conceived of and drilled into people at the top of a hierarchy here on Earth. I think that as our intelligence "expands" into the 21st century a lot of people conceive of God, in the sense of having the same feeling, to everything around them rather than a Creator or an all-watchful diety. Even a lot of people I know who attend church regularly have views on Christianity that, it seems to me, are not compatible with Christianity. Which is fine, I know that people need to celebrate the "feeling" with something and religion is widely available.

Of course, people like me could be wrong but so could everyone else. As someone who has been a staunch atheist since the 7th grade (I'm 27 now) it's only been recently that I have even allowed to place ANY importance on a lot of my emotions simply out of skepticism. I have come to believe that "Everything" is what our concept of God has traditionally been, minus the need for God to be anything but every single part of said Everything. In other words, minus the need to use the word God. A lot of religious people will point to natural events as evidence of God's existence; I would simply point to the events as the beauty and wonder of the world around us.

I personally don't think there is such a thing as absolute right or wrong. Collectively, most people can easily agree that say, murder and rape, are wrong. However, since I believe in no "higher authority" to tell me these things are wrong, it is simply a matter of opinion as to whether they are or not. The fact that it is only opinion should not undermine its importance. If we lose the right to free speech I believe we are losing the right to express our moral beliefs because many others could have vastly different conceptions of such things.

Anyway, I got off on a rant, having said all that, I should add that I obviously have no idea what I'm talking about. Hopefully someone can read this, get a few sentences that make some sense and tell me what I'm missing. Good luck to you all in finding your Everything.