Why are we here?

Great Debates
41

i would agree that our existence is the result of evolution and the nature of dna. HOWEVER, at some point in that evolution consciousness emerged. Animals began to have the instinctual desire to survive. As humans emerged this instinctual desire to survive became a fear of death, a fear of the unknown. As i see it humans created religion to deal with their fear of the unknown, that unknown of course being the meaning of their existence and if in fact there was more to their existence than their mortal lives. An examination of the evolution of religion in my opinion further supports this idea in that the egyptians, greeks, romans and other early civilizations fewed the cellestial bodies as gods, and derived their religion from stories about these gods which today we call myths. I find it hard to distinguish the difference between their “myths” and books such as the torah, bible or koran.

That said i would also say that i too after considering this question have only found myself with more questions and few definite answers. I have only been able to eliminate possibilities as very minute. I do not know what the higher meaning of life is, so as a result i am forced to live a pragmatic idealism devoted to the finding those answers.

Religion can be a wonderful thing, especially if it is able to instill in people the ideas of right from wrong, or put in another way just behavior and intentions. That is all we can ask from each other is that people be fair and just to one another and allow others to live.

Much of what i see people seeing as an answer to the question of why we are here are simply the result of social constructs that have survived many generations and the longer they have been around the more ingrained they are making the idea that they are nothing more than the creation of man harder and harder to accept. One could counter that argument that human thought is a social construct because our thoughts are expressed by way of language which was created by man. I say this because i dont immediately deny something as being valid or beneficial becuase it is a social or any other construct. I am simply saying that one must question everything especially those things which were created by people to solve their problems during the time they lived which may or may not apply any longer. IMHO, only by questioning everything can someone truly say they have a general answer to the question of why we are here.

42

i thought these quotes from Albert Einstein were an interesting take on the question

http://stripe.colorado.edu/~judy/einstein/god.html

43

to annoy other people as much as possible to help them loose bad karma from their previous lives.

since we a children of God. God had to come up with a really complicated method of reproduction. attaining nirvana is a bitch.

Dal Timgar

44

What is north of the north pole?

The question may have no meaning…

45

The following explanations contain several philosophical/scientific points of which I am at least slightly uncertain, so please feel free to shoot them all to Bejesus and back. No offense will be taken. Also, these do not involve religious views of any sort, and thus the Creator is not taken into account but could still theoretically be present.

My explanation of the purpose of humans, as well as any other intelligent life, has been the following since I was 9 years old:
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the idea that order (or law) and chaos must be balanced in the universe, because if one of them became dominant, everything would either be in constant change or never change. If you consider for a moment all things in the natural and non-living world, you may draw the conclusion that everything is very ordered and adheres to basic physical and natural laws. Most things are predictable; even those which are not immediately predictable follow a predictable set of patterns. Hence, the order. So whence cometh the chaos? Thought itself is the only thing which is not limited by physical means, and thus is totally unpredictable and capable of any and all things. Therefore DING DING DING THE POINT IS APPROACHING the purpose of human life is to maintain balance between order and chaos by creating the latter through thought and ideas.

Oh, and also, I’ve read in a few books that according to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics, every time a quantum event occurs, a new universe branches off to accomodate the change, and so there are an INFINITE number of universes in which every possible event or combination of events is happening. So basically, things had to pan out the way they did – I mean with human life and earth and everything – in an infinite number of universes. Might as well have been this one. In other words, WE ARE NOT SPECIAL!!! :eek:

46

[SMARTALEK] 42 [/SMARTALEK]

47

Okay, here’s an interesting thought experiment:

It’s the future, and they have developed a way to make artificial neurons that can be plugged into the brain in place of real ones. But these neurons are little computing devices, and can be replicated and report their state, etc.

So we sit you in a chair, remove the top of your skull, and start replacing neurons. You’re awake through this entire process. Bit by bit, your brain is cut away and replaced by an exact functioning replica. When they are done, your original brain is in the trash, and you have a computer in your head. You never lost consciousness.

Are ‘you’ still ‘you’? Do you still have a soul? How could you tell?

Now, we send a command to your brain to send back its state, so that we can make an identical copy. We store this so that you have a backup of ‘you’ in case something should happen. One day, you’re walking down the street, and a bus squashes you flat. So they make a clone of you, and plop your backup brain in it. Let’s say it had been a week since your last backup. Are ‘you’ STILL ‘you’? Isn’t this exactly the same as suffering blunt trauma to the head which destroys short-term memory? Wouldn’t you just lose a week?

But wait! Someone has been archiving backups of ‘you’. So they crank out another one from a week before that, and place it in another clone. NOW which one is ‘you’? Wouldn’t both of you have the same claim to being the ‘real’ person?

Would a backup copy essentially be a ‘do-over’? Would people make a backup of themselves before doing something dangerous, so that if it went wrong and they were killed, they could be restored to the same state?

Here’s yet another one - During the initial process of replacing your brain, they make TWO of them, both outside your body. You’ve been twinned, but you wouldn’t know it. Both copies never lost consciousness, or so they think. Which one is the real ‘you’?

To me, all of these thought experiments lead to one conclusion: There is no soul. ‘You’ are merely the expression of the complex calculations of the brain. If they made two of you, both of you would think you’re the real one, and both of you would be alive and self-aware.

48

Okay, here’s an interesting thought experiment:

It’s the future, and they have developed a way to make artificial neurons that can be plugged into the brain in place of real ones. But these neurons are little computing devices, and can be replicated and report their state, etc.

So we sit you in a chair, remove the top of your skull, and start replacing neurons. You’re awake through this entire process. Bit by bit, your brain is cut away and replaced by an exact functioning replica. When they are done, your original brain is in the trash, and you have a computer in your head. You never lost consciousness.

Are ‘you’ still ‘you’? Do you still have a soul? How could you tell?

Now, we send a command to your brain to send back its state, so that we can make an identical copy. We store this so that you have a backup of ‘you’ in case something should happen. One day, you’re walking down the street, and a bus squashes you flat. So they make a clone of you, and plop your backup brain in it. Let’s say it had been a week since your last backup. Are ‘you’ STILL ‘you’? Isn’t this exactly the same as suffering blunt trauma to the head which destroys short-term memory? Wouldn’t you just lose a week?

But wait! Someone has been archiving backups of ‘you’. So they crank out another one from a week before that, and place it in another clone. NOW which one is ‘you’? Wouldn’t both of you have the same claim to being the ‘real’ person?

Would a backup copy essentially be a ‘do-over’? Would people make a backup of themselves before doing something dangerous, so that if it went wrong and they were killed, they could be restored to the same state?

Here’s yet another one - During the initial process of replacing your brain, they make TWO of them, both outside your body. You’ve been twinned, but you wouldn’t know it. Both copies never lost consciousness, or so they think. Which one is the real ‘you’?

To me, all of these thought experiments lead to one conclusion: There is no soul. ‘You’ are merely the expression of the complex calculations of the brain. If they made two of you, both of you would think you’re the real one, and both of you would be alive and self-aware.

49

Sam, I hate to be the one to break this but your basing your assumption that there is no soul on your thought experiments working out the way you intend them to. Unfortunately, as there is no good substitute for a neuron at the moment there is no way to know if in fact an artificial brain will function exactly the same as an organic one. We know a lot more about the heart than the brain and we still haven’t made a perfect replica of that organ.

Second, the soul and the mind are abstract concepts that don’t exist in the physical plane of existence where we do. There is no way to ‘sense’ your mind other than with your mind itself. If you can’t see, touch, hear, smell, or taste it how do you know it exists at all. Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum,” “I think therefore I am.” I’ll buy that, but it still doesn’t resolve the mind/body problem, or how does our mind which exists in a non-physical, ethereal reality interact with our bodies that exist in this reality? Despite the continued efforts of philosophers, scientists, and various clergies that question is still as unanswered as, “why are we here.” Therefore, until such technology as you describe is available, if ever, we won’t know whether or not the soul exists. Personally I think it does; how else can you explain James Brown?