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What is our destination?


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What is the destination of humanity, in a non-believer's version of reality, assuming they're correct and the billions of believers on the planet are ignorant and or misguided?  It's a fair question and should be interesting to discuss.  Are we on a path of evolution to a brighter, better world or are we more likely to be annihilated by our passions and emotions?  If you think we are going to survive the adolescence of our species, tell us how you think that plays out.

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Based on everything I've learned to be true, yes, the human race will survive. It will play out because it's God's purpose. 

Individually however, personality survival in eternity is a different matter entirely.

It's a different matter entirely because eternal personality survival is a matter of making God's purpose, our own.

 

 

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Hmm. I do fear that with the mentality of certain fundamentalists' religions and beliefs that we will indeed be the cause of our own demise but if we did manage to stave off that aspect then I think it's a very enjoyable future ahead.

All atrocities aside, I think life can only get better. Look at how far we've come in the last few decades, let alone last few centuries. The advancements of medicine, transport, habitats, telecoms etc etc. We're living longer. But.. we're also breeding faster too.

Whether we move forward to an eventual utopia is another matter. I don't think that's achievable with the mixed mentalities we have at the moment but I'd like to think it would be nearer than dystopia. Saying that, a lot of these arguments will depend on which part of the world one lives. Some places must be a real dream to live but there's far, far more that must be absolute hell on earth compared to where most of us live.

Good question and very thought provoking, that's for posing it.

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1 hour ago, and then said:

What is the destination of humanity, in a non-believer's version of reality, assuming they're correct and the billions of believers on the planet are ignorant and or misguided?  It's a fair question and should be interesting to discuss.  Are we on a path of evolution to a brighter, better world or are we more likely to be annihilated by our passions and emotions?  If you think we are going to survive the adolescence of our species, tell us how you think that plays out.

So, you are only interested in the opinions of non-believers?

It would seem that death is the eventual end of all things, and that is a state of being, not a destination.  This goes for all people, be they believers or non, and for species.....though some have existed for a long time.

As far as humanity’s future goes.....I have no clue....just as I have no knowledge of your destination or my own.  It is my hope that God exists, is good, and therefore there is nothing to fear.

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From my personal perspective our primary responsibility as a species is the same as any other species, survival. There is no pre-determined destiny for us either alive or dead. We are as likely to destroy ourselves and the planet through greed and exploitation as we are to achieve a species and planet in harmony. There is no goal written or implanted in our subconscious that we strive to achieve, no game plan to follow. 

As it is at the moment I think the path we are on is a self defeating one, where we don't value other human beings, never mind the planet and other species. Too many ideologies religious or otherwise compete counter-productively for power and influence.   

What humans and (because of our dominate position) this planet will become will be determined solely by our individual and collective actions, driven by emotions and fears influenced by the; good and good intentioned,  the selfless and the selfish, the haves and the have nots ...... Humanity alone will determine the future of humanity. 

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There is no destination....not a planned one anyway.

We are evolving continously on a planet which have the right conditions to harbour life....in many different forms. Humans are just one of them.

There was life on this planet before humans and if we too get wiped out, i believe there will be life after us .

We may be clever and the top of the food chain, but nature rules over everyone. 

A slight tilt of our planet or a big hit from an asteroid  and we are history. 

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14 hours ago, and then said:

What is the destination of humanity, in a non-believer's version of reality, assuming they're correct and the billions of believers on the planet are ignorant and or misguided?  It's a fair question and should be interesting to discuss.  Are we on a path of evolution to a brighter, better world or are we more likely to be annihilated by our passions and emotions?  If you think we are going to survive the adolescence of our species, tell us how you think that plays out.

 

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14 hours ago, and then said:

What is the destination of humanity, in a non-believer's version of reality, assuming they're correct and the billions of believers on the planet are ignorant and or misguided?  It's a fair question and should be interesting to discuss.  Are we on a path of evolution to a brighter, better world or are we more likely to be annihilated by our passions and emotions?  If you think we are going to survive the adolescence of our species, tell us how you think that plays out.

Ok talking long term  I think we will eventually reach a point where easy access to information will make the old standards of government and religion impossible to sustain which will lead to the eventual crumbling of society. 

The crumbling of society and the resultant horrors will lead to a primarily rural and technologically primitive culture which will once again look to religion and the cycle will restart again. 

 I've kinda come to believe that this is the result of freedom in the information age. Sadly even if we could somehow stop it from happening via totalitarianism I dont believe we should.

^that was pessimist me 

Edited by Farmer77
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2 hours ago, Farmer77 said:

^that was pessimist me 

and the optimistic you?

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17 hours ago, and then said:

What is the destination of humanity, in a non-believer's version of reality, assuming they're correct and the billions of believers on the planet are ignorant and or misguided?  

Not sure, although I do think that if and when we have a major disaster or epidemic or something that humanity will make the effects of it many times worse because of our inability to view ourselves as a species instead of just as selfish individuals.  Regardless I don't think the destination of humanity depends on believers or non-believers being correct or ignorant and misguided, I think these self-destructive tendencies are just as prevalent in both groups.

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My purpose for separating people into the groups of believers vs non-believers is simply expedience, not calling one a "superior class".  Believers tend to have hope that even though we are on a path (due to our selfish and brutal base nature) to destruction, we believe the return of Christ is going to save the planet from self-annihilation.  Non-believers do not engage in that idea nor take hope from that.  I guess my question is where will we be if there is no salvation that stops our final acts of destruction - think nuclear war.  It is almost inevitable that someone will use them because our governments have become not just greedy and corrupt but blind and stupid as well.

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On 7/29/2018 at 4:24 PM, and then said:

What is the destination of humanity, in a non-believer's version of reality, assuming they're correct and the billions of believers on the planet are ignorant and or misguided?  It's a fair question and should be interesting to discuss.  Are we on a path of evolution to a brighter, better world or are we more likely to be annihilated by our passions and emotions?  If you think we are going to survive the adolescence of our species, tell us how you think that plays out.

I may not be orthodox religious, but I believe in something. And, I think there is something there, interesting enough, it's not going be clear to us. Well, my thoughts on that anyways.  But though, with my secular upbringing, I think it was left opened for us to work that out on ourselves. 

I really don't think that there is some planned script book or something for us really. And if I'm looking at the various organized religions with their ;) 'planned script books', they do seem different from each religion, so whose right? (or, am I correct they're different from each other?) 

I think, (and if I could steal this from a movie (think Bill and Ted's excellent adventure) I think we should just be excellent to each other. We as humanity, for all our violence and bad manners and such, we still are around though. Even after all these years. :D And, we are learning and developing, and I think that would keep us in check, the more we learn the more we use it well. That is, granted, we don't use it unwisely. 

So, I think, if one could look deep down within ourselves, I think there is a sense of just simply do the right thing and it will all play out. Just so happens, some  don't think about that sense. I feel this, could be felt naturally within all of us, whether we believe in something or not. 

24 minutes ago, and then said:

My purpose for separating people into the groups of believers vs non-believers is simply expedience, not calling one a "superior class".  Believers tend to have hope that even though we are on a path (due to our selfish and brutal base nature) to destruction, we believe the return of Christ is going to save the planet from self-annihilation.  Non-believers do not engage in that idea nor take hope from that. 

You know, and I guess I believe this from my secular upbringing, but I don't think non-believers think that or should be all labeled in that. I feel, that though we have selfish natures, there is also the kindness and consideration there too. And I think there is that hope we will be our best, and not give into the worst. And I think, there is the hope that they do feel. Not that, they except from somewhere else, but from within themselves. 

Growing up, I never heard about salvation and sin and thinking something or someone is watching and will punish you if you do this or that. It was more of seeing and knowing how your actions affect others and seeing how it could effect you when you care about them. I saw caring and consideration growing up, because it was already within us. If one is going to say we are selfish, just like that by nature, then couldn't we also be caring too, and naturally of that as well? 

Quote

I guess my question is where will we be if there is no salvation that stops our final acts of destruction - think nuclear war.  It is almost inevitable that someone will use them because our governments have become not just greedy and corrupt but blind and stupid as well.

Frankly, I think it's our own common sense that wants to stop our acts of destruction. I have seen through the years, how close we have come to that, and how the attitudes and the thought for the people seem to steer things away from that. I remember the cold war and mutual assured destruction. I feared nuclear war back then, and I fear sometimes it could still happen. But, I do also see how there is a sense of the people, not wanting that to happen. I don't think it's salvation or what ever you want to call it, stopping us, but our thoughts for each other. 

I really think we are quite capable of caring and helping all by ourselves. I guess, I have come to feeling this way, by seeing it growing up. 

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15 hours ago, RAyMO said:

and the optimistic you?

The true optimist me says that the same information age which imperils our future will grant us open source access to new technologies before they can be patented, hidden away or generally horded by the elites. Those new technologies will enable mankind to eventually shed the worker/master paradigm and all humans will have their basic needs met enabling us to discover great minds who in the past would have been destroyed and buried by the station they were born in to lead us into the future. 

Without the worker/master paradigm the need for religion for control or for hope will fade away and the division which has held mankind back for so long will eventually lose its practicality as mankind reaches out into the cosmos and realizes that the barriers between us here on earth are purely manufactured by our own egos. 

 

  

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I'm hoping for a Star Trek senario without the borg.  But I am not that optimistic, if we can get past climate changes without killing each other off, we might do great things. Maybe, leave this little planet behind.  I send the neighbor kid all the articles I find on asteroid mining.  Hope springs eternal. 

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4 hours ago, and then said:

we believe the return of Christ is going to save the planet from self-annihilation.

Perhaps a dangerous belief, which could encourage a potentially dangerous lassiez faire attitude to planet destroying activities - should the belief turn out to be wrong.  

As an atheist I believe it is totally up to us to prevent any catastrophe, and that if there is a catastrophe that nothing will intervene to save man, though the planet, through the power of nature will rectify itself in the fullness of time (probably without humans in its next cycle).

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1 minute ago, RAyMO said:

Perhaps a dangerous belief, which could encourage a potentially dangerous lassiez faire attitude to planet destroying activities - should the belief turn out to be wrong.  

As an atheist I believe it is totally up to us to prevent any catastrophe, and that if there is a catastrophe that nothing will intervene to save man, though the planet, through the power of nature will rectify itself in the fullness of time (probably without humans in its next cycle).

I hear this argument a lot and there is some validity to it, I'm sure.  But that isn't my take on life and my responsibilities.  The fact that I believe our ultimate state as a species will be positive, possibly even glorious, I realize that I am not relieved of the burden to live and try to improve the lives of those I love as well as any other person that crosses my path.  I often fail but failure isn't the end of the story so long as a person keeps trying.  There's a mythos out there that Christ followers have to be almost perfect and that doesn't match any reality for human beings.  We can never be perfect.  What we CAN be is diligent in our efforts to love others and keep improving even when we stumble.

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2 hours ago, Farmer77 said:

Without the worker/master paradigm the need for religion for control or for hope will fade away and the division which has held mankind back for so long will eventually lose its practicality as mankind reaches out into the cosmos and realizes that the barriers between us here on earth are purely manufactured by our own egos. 

Yuval Noah Harari's A Brief History Of Humankind is a 'starburst of a book'  source 

The author above is or was a lecturer at a University in Israel - I took one of his online course. Although this book is about history it explains his basic contention (and I am paraphrasing a lot here) that lots of things we take a real tangible things are merely peoples accepting of them. cognitive constructs I think he calls them. Basically he argues that the world is the way it is and is doomed to an extent because of the way we as humans allow such cognitive constructs to become reality. 

Edited by RAyMO
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5 minutes ago, RAyMO said:

Yuval Noah Harari's A Brief History Of Humankind is a 'starburst of a book'  source 

The author above is or was a lecturer at a University in Israel - I took one of his online course. Although this book is about history it explains his basic contention (and I am paraphrasing a lot here) that lots of things we take a real tangible things are merely peoples accepting of them. cognitive constructs I think he calls them. Basically he argues that the world is the way it is and is doomed to an extent because of the way we as humans allow such cognitive constructs to become reality. 

That sounds like an argument for the idea that prophecies aren't "real" or are somehow illegitimate because of the idea of "self-fulfillment".  If the book says A and B are going to happen and then they do... why does it matter at all, how that came about?  A and B HAPPENED...

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Just now, and then said:

That sounds like an argument for the idea that prophecies

I don't think it specifically touches on Prophecies, but does consider things like religion, government, borders, national identities, corporations, communities, etc. 

3 minutes ago, and then said:

If the book says A and B are going to happen and then they do... why does it matter at all, how that came about?  A and B HAPPENED...

If you know that A + B will equal C, catastrophe, in advance, you have the chance (in real time) to change A and/or B to avoid C. 

Personally I found his work less informative as a work of history or as tool of prediction, but as an interesting set of concepts to have in the subconscious when looking at the world. 

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This subject has been a pet thought of mine for the last couple of years ;) Where is this all possibly going and why. Sure, as an atheist, I can see no real purpose to life except for the meaning we give it but evolution, even not directed by anyone, is steered by the universe and to me at least, it seems that it is moving through stages of 'life' and consequently/subsequently other (not necessarilly 'higher') forms.

Now to answer your question after much thought (not just now but over many years although I have only obsessed with it in a way over the last couple). As humanity, we have no destination per se, we are but a tiny link in a chain if you like. We think we are special and in a way we are, from our perspective, but in the grand scheme of things we are inconsequential, if not humanity it would happen another way regardless imho. We are though instrumental in AI, that is....insert "A......" whatever word suits EXCEPT ARTIFICIAL! We have been created by nature and anything we create is also natural so not artificial, assisted maybe, ascended (not so much). We will literally help a new form of life to evolve! A life form that has no limits based on aerobic metabolism, a life form that is not limited to roughly 100 years of life, a life form that will not be limited by the vast distances between stars/'worlds'. 

We are not in danger of being wiped out by this new life form but we are in 'danger' of being superceded. This is not a bad thing though if what I think is right - the universe appears to be a self-discovery process - and as such anything that helps this process (eg. intelligence, consciousness) is where evolution is heading. This life form will question its origins in much the same way as we are questioning ours. Just like we are trying to find the missing link between a cosmic soup of chemical elements/compounds and first forms of 'life', it will also be trying to find (albeit to no avail - and I hope you can understand why) the missing link between carbon-based aerobic life and a digitally/computationally-based neural network. Just imagine for a moment being this new life form, you can 'see' through multiple lenses, 'hear' multiple frequencies, 'feel' through many different senses, get energy from chemical reactions etc. You can 'live' millions of years (enough time to traverse distances between stars/gallaxies) and your consciousness is an emergent property of networks of information.

Humanity and life as we know it on this planet is DOOMED, we know that for certain! Escaping (as human beings) and populating elsewhere outside our solar system is also a lost cause imho, the radiation and time taken, not to mention resources etc to get to the nearest star will put a stop to that. That in itself, imho, gives you a clue as to why nature/the universe would even bother creating conditions for the possibility of life. I look at it as, the more chances you give, the more chance you have eg. the number of gallaxies, stars, planets and combinations thereof, there is a chance that some/one (of those environments) will create the life we have come to know. In the same sense, having so many places where such life can evolve, some/one will evolve to multicellular...having so many places where such life can evolve, some/one will evolve consciousness...having so many places where such life can evolve, some/one will evolve intelligence (and we know this can happen for certain)...having so many places where such life can evolve, some/one will evolve AI...and we cannot even fathom what may come next but you can guess that the next life form will have an idea.

In closing I'd just like to say that we, as humans/humanity, are so caught up in human things that it is hard to escape the ego of humanity to see a slightly bigger picture. Some are still stuck in believing that a 'manual' of sorts has been created so that we know how to be human beings and that is all fine if you don't want to learn anything and only want to be taught limitations. To get the best perspective imho, is to put everything on the same par, the ant, bacteria, sun, galaxy, us, are no better than each other and in some sense no different, the process and the chain that we are links in is the same.

Just my 2 cents

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4 hours ago, RAyMO said:

Yuval Noah Harari's A Brief History Of Humankind is a 'starburst of a book'  source 

The author above is or was a lecturer at a University in Israel - I took one of his online course. Although this book is about history it explains his basic contention (and I am paraphrasing a lot here) that lots of things we take a real tangible things are merely peoples accepting of them. cognitive constructs I think he calls them. Basically he argues that the world is the way it is and is doomed to an extent because of the way we as humans allow such cognitive constructs to become reality. 

IDK how I missed this earlier my apologies!

That just makes logical sense to me. While that of course is a double edged sword I do think we can break beyond the classic constructs in a healthy way eventually. 

 

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11 hours ago, and then said:

My purpose for separating people into the groups of believers vs non-believers is simply expedience, not calling one a "superior class".  Believers tend to have hope that even though we are on a path (due to our selfish and brutal base nature) to destruction, we believe the return of Christ is going to save the planet from self-annihilation.  Non-believers do not engage in that idea nor take hope from that.  I guess my question is where will we be if there is no salvation that stops our final acts of destruction - think nuclear war.  It is almost inevitable that someone will use them because our governments have become not just greedy and corrupt but blind and stupid as well.

You seem to have a bad habit of putting all the non-believers in the same bucket. There are as many end of the world scenarios as there are  cultures and religions. Have you ever met a White Lighter, they don't buy into the end of the world, their plan is to fix with world with their glowing white optimism, it can be refreshing after a lifetime of listening the Christian death and destruction.  

Here is my problem with Abrahamic idea of the Christian or Islamic end of the world. They call for a new world with a one world government headed buy a return of the zombie god King messiah who is installed after a great war.  Yet,  if you mention a one world government to an evangelical Christians they go off the nut.  And the worst of them, take advantage of the conflict in the Middle East to help spur on Armageddon.  Their idea, when all the Jews return Israel there will be a big end of the world war.  Well, no **** Sherlock, you take a bunch of people and dump then on a native population they are bound of object to being displaced.  This all becomes a self fulling prophecy of death and destruction.    Meanwhile, the planet has this ongoing mass extinction event, that is largely our fault.  My thoughts, we don't have to do this.  We could, rather than fight an end all war, (which we have done twice) learn to cooperate globally and head off our own destruction by cleaning up our mess and set up an asteroid/comet defence . We could be on the edge  of a golden era, if we want it. Or we can all go with y'all's plan to kill everyone not of your mindset and put up a King in a world government with a world religion, that rejects science, is intolerant and puts up Trump like leaders as their heroes, then when it all goes awry pretend it was meant to be.   When y'all figure out this all goes against the US Constitution and the UN charter let the rest of us know, so we can move on and try to build a sustainable civilization. 

We are incredibly stupid monkeys on the whole.

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The OP is so Rapture blind his premise is; God's going to destroy this Earth anyway. What does non-belief has to gain by being destroyed with it?

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It really doesn't matter since we all die anyway. Now, later, whenever. Death takes us all.

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