Why do we Existance?

[*Twitch]

Marry me.


tencharacters

[Ben Lahnger]

@GM: Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

Originally Posted by ape descendant

..we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
-Carl Sagan

What an imbecilic thing for a bright man to say.

[Cruel Intentions]

Originally Posted by viscus

I for one wasn't being overtly hostile. But as a matter of personal policy I hold people to their opinions, as benign as they may be. I can't force anyone to change their beliefs, but I will tell them that they're wrong and why they're wrong.

In hindsight, given the not insignificant amount of hostility that has gone before in the thread, I may have read the tone of your post a little harshly. But I believe my point and yours mean, in essence, the same thing.

Originally Posted by gothicusmaximus

Don't know much about Crowley
Don't know much about Nietzsche
Don't know many philosophy majors
Don't know many psychic new-agers

But I do know that I Existance
And I know if you Existance too
What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about past lives
Don't know much about Criminal Minds
Don't know much about jellies of the sea
Don't know much about je pense, donc je suis

But I do know my gothic.net password
so I can post whatever I want
as long as it doesn't cast the administration in a negative light

Genius, sheer genius!

[ape descendant]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

@GM: Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!



What an imbecilic thing for a bright man to say.

Ben, you are officially a retarded troll.

[Catch]

Here we go. I know the answer to this...

BECAUSE YOU DO EXIST SO SHUT THE FUCK UP!

[vindicatedxjin]

I think....therefore I ammmmmmm.....

[Ben Lahnger]

Originally Posted by ape descendant

Ben, you are officially a retarded troll.

I am a fan of Sagan's work. He managed what few others could do at his time ... get the public excited about space and the exploration of our universe.

But saying that we are a way for the cosmos to know itself is 1) a dumb thing to say and 2) the type of borderline, new-age religious thinking that you typically argue against.

Calling me retarded is pretty politically incorrect, don't you think? As far as calling me a troll is concerned, so many people have been called troll here that I believe it has lost all meaning.

So, I'm a troll! Yay for me! That is (apparently) why I Existance!

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

But saying that we are a way for the cosmos to know itself is 1) a dumb thing to say and 2) the type of borderline, new-age religious thinking that you typically argue against.

It's really just a flowery way of saying "people enjoy/are learning how the universe works".

[ape descendant]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

I am a fan of Sagan's work. He managed what few others could do at his time ... get the public excited about space and the exploration of our universe.

But saying that we are a way for the cosmos to know itself is 1) a dumb thing to say and 2) the type of borderline, new-age religious thinking that you typically argue against.

Calling me retarded is pretty politically incorrect, don't you think? As far as calling me a troll is concerned, so many people have been called troll here that I believe it has lost all meaning.

So, I'm a troll! Yay for me! That is (apparently) why I Existance!

There is nothing supernatural about the statement, it is by its very nature NOT religious.

It is a reference to the heavier elements being formed 'in the guts' of stars as Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it.

It is a reference to the fact that we're made of some of that stuff, 'star stuff' as Sagan puts it many times.

And that that star stuff came together on a little blue-green planet called Earth to make life, and how over billions of years, from a common ancestor, life evolved, interconnected and interrelated.

How humans have developed a reliable method for testing information that we call science, for gathering information about the workings of the natural universe.

There is nothing new age about how someone like Carl Sagan uses the word Cosmos, which is the order of the universe.

It is one of the most beautiful, deep and grand statments ever said about the human species, and it takes a special kind of imbecile to call it imbecilic.

So, maybe retarded was the wrong word, but ignorant, mentally lazy, lackluster, may perhaps be more accurate.

In calling you a troll, I gave your intelligence the benefit of doubt, instead of merely being a drooling moron, I thought tha maybe you don't really believe the sad, paltry, babble flowing so freely from your fingertips and perhaps instead that you were just bored and wanted to say something irritating.

The question remains, are you stupid and small minded or just an asshole?

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

What an imbecilic thing for a bright man to say.

If we're a part of the cosmos, the action of observing the cosmos is the cosmos observing itself.
This is almost certainly what Sagan referred to. It is not imbecilic at all, and I can see how new-agey types could appropriate that quote, but we're talking about Ape Descendant here, a person who has made her atheism very clear and always talks about the wonders of the natural world without marring it with fantasies of the supernatural.
Did you read the rest of her post?

[Ben Lahnger]

I understood the part of his statement that referred to us exploring the universe, and I am well aware that we are made of stardust. But the statement also implicitly says that the cosmos has consciousness. Call me literalistic if you like, but everyone coming to the defense of the statement by providing their own interpretation of what they think Sagan meant are in denial of this intrinsic truth: the cosmos cannot know itself - it is largely an unthinking object with a few very rare sprinkles of intelligent life here and there.

[ape descendant]

I think you're failing to understand that we as conscious beings are a part of the cosmos... so some of the cosmos is conscious.. and through the little pieces of it that are, it may know itself.

We are part of the cosmos, not some special little pocket that is some how outside or not a part of it.

[Ben Lahnger]

Sagan frequently warned against humans' tendency towards anthropocentrism. I think he failed to follow his own advice when he made that statement.

[Alan]

Thinking that the cosmos observes itself through us is exactly the opposite of anthropocentrism.

[Ben Lahnger]

Thinking we, in our finite period of experience and knowledge, can know the cosmos IS anthropocentrism.

A mosquito cannot know the earth.

You're romanticizing this out of all perspective.

[ape descendant]

Mosquitos don't have science and written language either. It is a poor analogy.

Of course our knowledge is finite.. and there are a shit ton of things we don't know, that's fine, but just because we don't know everything about the cosmos doesn't mean we don't know anything of it.

I think you're grasping at straws.

[Ben Lahnger]

The cosmos knowing itself, or having self-awareness, has been given support by much straw grasping here.

Your case did not get stronger with your last statement. I'm not interested in reiterating my previous statements.

I think Carl Sagan was a brilliant man and did much good to bring popular interest to the study of astronomy. Imbecilic was a poor choice of adjective on my part, and for that I am sorry.

I think the statement is faulty and inelegantly stated, but I don't expect I will change your mind about that.

[ape descendant]

Er, are you talking about some sort of mystical awareness of the entire cosmos in its entirety? Because that is something for which there is no evidence, and we'd agree upon.

But if you wish to push the idea that conscious beings can't know the universe they are a part of, then I will have to adamantly hold my ground. I don't think that the statement is faulty at all, as it has a firm basis in reality.

The elegance of this statement was partially explored in one of my previous statements in this line of conversation.

Perhaps you're just not familiar with cosmic evolution or maybe you have a dismal opinion of the intellectual capacity of humans... I'm wiling to grant that.

I also understand if you just plain don't like the saying... no one said you had to.

[Raptor]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

Call me literalistic if you like, but everyone coming to the defense of the statement by providing their own interpretation of what they think Sagan meant

He pretty much explained what he meant in the next sentence.

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. We are creatures of the cosmos and always hunger to know our origins, to understand our connection with the universe."

[Alan]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

Thinking we, in our finite period of experience and knowledge, can know the cosmos IS anthropocentrism.

Jesus Christ, did you even read the quote? It's not about us knowing the cosmos; it's about the cosmos being able to observe itself because WE are part of it and we observe it.

Your reasoning dictates that our goddamn eyes are the center of consciousness, then, and that we are not really seeing if we don't know every little detail that happens within our bodies.

[Ben Lahnger]

That second sentence is a perfect explanation of the statement "We are a way for ourselves to know the cosmos." Or it could even have been "We are a way for a portion of the cosmos to know about the cosmos." It does not support the original sentence.

It also requires us to be forgiving of the use of the word "know" as a substitute for the word "learn."

We are a subset of the cosmos.
We are made of the same building blocks as the cosmos.
But we do not equal the cosmos.

AD, we agree on your first paragraph. We actually agree on your second paragraph ... at least in that conscious beings can know part of the universe they are a part of, and can expand their knowledge of that universe to some degree through learning.

*I have to go for now. The cosmos has deemed it necessary that I go get a flat tire replaced. Okay, maybe not the cosmos.*

[Cruel Intentions]

Originally Posted by Ben Lahnger

That second sentence is a perfect explanation of the statement "We are a way for ourselves to know the cosmos." Or it could even have been "We are a way for a portion of the cosmos to know about the cosmos." It does not support the original sentence.

It also requires us to be forgiving of the use of the word "know" as a substitute for the word "learn."

We are a subset of the cosmos.
We are made of the same building blocks as the cosmos.
But we do not equal the cosmos.

We are not the whole cosmos - of course not otherwise the universe would be a gargantuan press of naked bodies! Fun for some but not my idea of a perfect universe. But being made of the same stuff and being a subset of it still makes us part of the cosmos. We know it in the same way that we know our right hand. We are not our right hand but we know it's there and we understand it to whatever extent and accept that it is a part of us.

And as for our finite existance, well... We grow we learn. Our cells die but our brain remembers things - fire hurts, eating is important and don't take your bits out in public. Similarly for the cosmos, each human learns, records and dies (like everything else) but future generations still benefit from their predecessor's learning. Assuming we aren't wiped out in some mass extinction (which admitedly is entirely possible) then eventually, we will know the cosmos.

You're both right but I think, Ben, you just don't want to admit that someone other than you might be right as well because now you're just arguing somantics.

[vindicatedxjin]

Ben, here you are being as stubborn as a gate post. And yet you always tell "me" that "I'm" the one who argues till I'm blue in the face. Just let...it... go.

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Cruel Intentions

You're both right but I think, Ben, you just don't want to admit that someone other than you might be right as well because now you're just arguing somantics.

Yeah, Ben is trying to correct our posture when typing retorts on Gnet.

Semantics.

It had to be said.

[JCC]

I think posturing is exactly the problem with Gnet.