KevinSim wrote:Look, I admit I've made plenty of assumptions about God, but neither of those last two sentences are one of them. Why do you think they are? Do you really think that without anyone acting to preserve forever some good things from the human race, that some good things associated with the human race will last forever?
Of course they are assumptions, and big ones at that. We have no idea of all that is possible. You are not even being consistent with this. You claim to believe an entity, for which we have no evidence, possibly exists, which is really an admission that you don't know what all is possible. If so they it makes no sense to say
Nothing of lasting good will come out of the human race.
Do you really think that without anyone acting to preserve forever some good things from the human race, that some good things associated with the human race will last forever?
Why makes this huge assumption, that is clearly wrong. Many people are working on this regardless of whether it is possible or not.
I refer you to the article I posted right before this one. By God I'm not necessarily referring to God as most Latter-day Saints understand Him. All I'm talking about is someone who knows how to preserve forever some good things, and is in the process of preserving forever some good things. I'm not aware that the evidence says anything about the existence of such a being. Are you? In fact, if I had to make a guess, I'd say that the evidence is about 50/50 that such a deity exists.
No, I am not aware of any evidence. If you are also not aware of any, then 50/50 is a guess as you say. Look if such a being exists you probably cannot doing anything to help or hinder. If this being does not exist then you are wasting time and resources on things that certainly don't work.
Why do you think I don't know? Do you think I have not thought this stuff through?
I am sure you have, but I can also see you making many many assumptions, so I am skeptical you have thought it through without huge bias of what you want.
et me explain how I know the statement I made was true. Are you familiar with the game of Russian Roulette? Let me state a principle that leads to the statement I made. If one person, or one group of people, play Russian Roulette long enough, the gun will eventually go off. I can't prove that mathematically (since every time you pull the trigger there's a chance the gun won't go off), but it's true nonetheless. And let me state a corollary; this principle is true regardless of the number of chambers in the gun.
Sure, but I bet you probably don't buy lottery tickets. Why is that? Now if you don't buy a ticket, what is your odds of winning?
Humanity has had a certain amount of luck when faced with species-survival-threatening crises in the past. Most notably, with enough nuclear firepower between them to completely destroy the planet, the United States and the Soviet Union never escalated their tensions to the point of nuclear war, and in fact even now are significantly reducing their nuclear arsenals. It would appear there is no longer as much danger as there was in the past that Nuclear Winter will destroy most of life as we know it on the planet.
I don't think we have enough information to figure out the math to see if we got lucky. I tend to view it as just human nature. Both sides knew what it meant to go to war. Without such destructive capabilities I suspect we would have had at least one more world war by now. Sure there are many dangers to humanity. I believe some research suggests certain difficulties in surviving have helped us evolve the way we did. It will continue to do so into the future, although now we are at the point we can have more input into those changes. We may be within centuries or thousands of year of having to classify humanity as something other then Homo Sapien. How about Homo Novus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMx-EGI3vi8
That does not mean that humanity will be so lucky in the future. And I think it's fairly safe to say that there will be plenty of crises in the future that threaten the survival of the human race, from global warming in the short run to universal heat death (around 100 billion C.E.) in the long run, and (if we somehow survive the heat death) beyond. Each time one of these crises hit, it's the virtual equivalent of someone putting the gun to her/his head and pulling the trigger. As I said up above, it is a true statement that someday the gun will go off. Do you dispute that?
We don't know the math, and it's actually those difficulties that kill off so many that make the species better and influence evolution. It's not really equivalent to the gun analogy. That is suggesting it is an all or nothing. You even admitted a nuclear war may only kill off most, not all. Same with global warming and even an asteroid. Unless it is huge, but we are looking for them these days. Life has existed for billions of years. Even if humans cease to exist, other species may continue. Maybe one of them will gain similar levels of intelligence or better. Maybe humans will. We don't know what the future is, but we can try to have some influence on how it unfolds. I suspect we will continue to find solutions, and will begin to change ourselves over time.