You only have one, short life.
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smithjgs — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 08:37 AM)
Meh, just another version of Hive mentality that theophobiacs desperately crave for some reason while championing individuality as long as its the exact same way they think.
Boring!
Sagan was a better person than just the quote used to your benefit.
It is far better that people can do what they like including worship they have no reason to think is not real, rather than pining for something as silly as a Star Trek fantasy.
It's goofy and childish to be bothered by them when ones like you suck at coercing them to an inferior view.
If this is Locke, then who's in there? -
PoisonedDragon — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 09:09 AM)
Sagan was a better person than just the quote used to your benefit.
That wasn't the quote. This is:
For thousands of years humans were oppressed as some of us still are by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia: on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea. Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made of atoms; that human beings and other animals had sprung from simpler forms; that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods; that the Earth was only a planet going around the Sun. And that the stars were very far away (pg. 174)
The Platonists and their Christian successors held the peculiar notion that the Earth was tainted and somehow nasty, while the heavens were perfect and divine. The fundamental idea that the Earth is a planet, that we are citizens of the Universe, was rejected and forgotten
After a long mystical sleep in which the tools of scientific inquiry lay moldering, the Ionian approach, in some cases transmitted through scholars at the Alexandrian Library, was finally rediscovered. The Western world reawakened. Experiment and open inquiry became once more respectable. Forgotten books and fragments were again read. Leonardo and Columbus and Copernicus were inspired by or independently retraced parts of this ancient Greek tradition (pg. 188)
What if the scientific tradition of the ancient Ionian Greeks had survived and flourished? That would have required many of the social forces of the time to have been different including the prevailing belief that slavery was natural and right. But what if that light that dawned in the eastern Mediterranean 2,500 years ago had not flickered out? What if science and the experimental method and the dignity of crafts and mechanical arts had been vigorously pursued 2,000 years before the Industrial Revolution? What if the power of this new mode of thought had been more generally appreciated? I sometimes think we might then have saved ten or twenty centuries. Perhaps the contributions of Leonardo would have been a thousand years ago and those of Albert Einstein five hundred years ago (pg. 209)
If the Ionian spirit had won, I think we a different we, of course might now be venturing into the stars. Our first survey ships to Alpha Centauri and Barnards Star, Sirius and Tau Ceti would have returned long ago. Great fleets of interstellar transports would be under construction in Earth orbit unmanned survey ships, liners for immigrants, immense trading ships to plow seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and writing. If we looked closely, we might see that the language was Greek. And perhaps the symbol on the bow of one of the first starships would be a dodecahedron, with the inscription Starship Theodorus of the Planet Earth. (pg. 210)
Ȥ -
washclothrepairman — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 04:22 PM)
If people had devoted the effort spent on religion for the past two millennia, instead seeking to further knowledge and benefit mankind, we would likely be traveling the stars by now.
Exactly. Religion is not only a waste of time, but it is actually harmful. It holds the human race back from its potential, and, I would say, it's destiny and its
right
.
It is a cancer of the mind. It causes people to be stupid and complacent, too busy saying "Things could be worse" to ask "How can things be better?" It makes people unquestioning slaves. Don't question authority, don't try to expand your understanding of the universe because you already have all the answers, and conveniently, they are are very short, simple answers that conform with our desires and prejudices. It makes people content with what they are given by society, and the scraps thrown to them by those above them economically instead of striving to improve things for everyone. They're too busy pining for the end of the world so somebody else will do the hard work and create paradise for them instead of creating paradise here for everyone to enjoy. It's a disgustingly lazy, selfish mindset that I just can't understand. Religion is an insidious, odious invasion, infection and perversion of the very thing that makes people people, and turn their backs and shun the very thing that makes the human race special and the thing that will save us: our intelligence and ingenuity.
Never trust a black man named "Chip." -
Lowtax-86 — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 04:31 PM)
"If I get joy out of religion, than it's not time wasted!", would be the counterargument, which I suppose is true enough. If someone wants to spend their life being a Jesus fanboy well that's their prerogative I suppose. Though there's probably better things to fanboy about (Batman for instance).
You're standing on my neck -
washclothrepairman — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 08:16 AM)
Disagree.
Devoting ones life to self enrichment is one thing. That's not a waste. Learning, or creating art, or simply being kind to people.
Mumbling to an imaginary friend and waiting for them to make a better world for you rather than creating a better world for everyone is a waste of a life.
Never trust a black man named "Chip." -
gladoscake — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 11:32 AM)
Disagree.
Devoting ones life to self enrichment is one thing. That's not a waste. Learning, or creating art, or simply being kind to people.
Mumbling to an imaginary friend and waiting for them to make a better world for you rather than creating a better world for everyone is a waste of a life.
Clearly they think it isn't a waste of their life, since that's what they choose to do.
People will be people, choices will be made, they'll be the ones who suffer the consequences. -
micCee — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 01:07 PM)
In other words, don't waste your entire actual life worrying about whether you're going to get another one after this has finished.
It could be a balloon. It could be Franky. It could be very fresh and clean. It could be those ways.