Scientific American Calls For World Government

[John F Kennedy III]

But your logic must first start with the assumption that evolution is true. Your logic follows from this assumption to say that, if life evolved here, it must have evolved on other planets given that there IS a chance that life can evolve, and therefore, given the vastness of the universe, there must be life elsewhere because a very large number of possibilities must yield at least one actuality. However, your logic fails in the fact that it assumes life evolved from nothing with no intelligent design.

You don't use logic. You make assumptions and then use only the logic that suits your theory. Hell, logic could tell you that there is no chance that life could even evolve on its own, but you must leave that fact out of the equation in order to even consider the idea that "advanced" life exists elsewhere. That's why Carl Sagan is there. He is there to reconfirm this bias in your mind to shield you from real thinking under the guise of superior logic despite all evidence to the contrary. You are fooling yourself. Your mantra of logic is just that, a mantra. It sickens me when people can make such brash claims and then act like nobody can question them. This is the mindset of the authoritarian scientific community that serves the interests of the state. Why don't you come down off your high horse and use real logic for once.

Straw man fail. Try again.

 

[John F Kennedy III]

Suit yourself, but if we are truly just animals and the gods of our own universes, there is no objective morality. You can believe what you want, but don't act like it's consistent for you to insist that others follow your belief system just because you seem to think it's the best way to live. Logic cannot determine morality. It must come from an absolute source and cannot be derived from the minds of men.

Are you saying morality MUST come from god and god alone?

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Such arrogance, and ignorance.

LOL. I like it when people accuse me of arrogance for thinking humans are supposed to be special. As if it were a travesty to say we weren't just another drop in an infinite pond. As if it were a bad thing to actually suggest we are here for a purpose. Like I said before, I am not being ignorant. The idea that there is DEFINITELY life out there on other planets rests on the assumption that abiogenesis happened here (something that was disproven by Louis Pasteur) so it MUST have happened on other planets. If anything, it is arrogant and ignorant to suggest that you somehow know this without even the slightest evidence even though scientists throughout history have found to the contrary of the idea that life can spontaneously arise.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Without a doubt. It's a FACT.

What makes you say this so dogmatically?

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Oh dear god...

What? You got something to say?

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Straw man fail. Try again.

How did I misrepresent anyone's position? Explain it to me. Don't just be the guy who yells fail and walks away with his tail in the air like he won the argument by virtue of the mere fact that words did proceed from his mouth.

ETA: after typing that, I realized I did the same thing earlier in the thread, so I apologize but have since explained my position. Your turn.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Are you saying morality MUST come from god and god alone?

I am saying only OBJECTIVE morality can come from such a source. If you are a secular humanist who believes we are the masters of our own world, then morality is subjective. What is wrong to one person may be fine to another and there is no way to judge who is right and who is wrong. Morality in this situation can only be decided on a personal basis. The problem is that it makes a mockery of law because no morality can be claimed to be THE morality to follow and no morality can be binding on everyone because it's subjective.

 

[WilliamC]

You cannot separate science from morality because science has everything to do with how you interpret the evidence. That is why we have all these "experts" (read: puppets of the state) to "help" us interpret the evidence so we don't have to think. Is there anything moral about that? I advocate a free market as much as the next guy, but the fact that we are not in a free market doesn't exactly help your argument. Science is just one perspective on the world. It is useful and I am a fan, but to pretend that it is the only way one is allowed to think and still be a sane individual is just not true.

You really have a two dimensional view of people don't you?

Science is amoral, all it deals with is the accumulation of knowledge about the natural world.

Basic moral principles are like mathematical axioms, they are no more scientific than stating 1 = 1.

But unlike religion, science tends to work the same for anyone, that's why we have religious Christians in the USA wanting to war with religious Muslims in Iran for building an atomic bomb.

The science of nuclear physics works the same in the USA and Iran and allow both to build atom bombs if they so chose, but why they want to kill each other for religious differences I can't fathom.

In the USA both science and religion are heavilly politicized, that's the problem.

Get government out of religion and science and everyone will be better off.

 

[WilliamC]

Oh, you mean 10 in this galaxy. And you only mean advanced civilizations. I think I can agree with that. I wish we had more than just guess work to go on. I'm sure Sagan wished the same.

We've got far more than guesswork to go on, especially since Sagan died.

There are over 700 extra-solar systems now known, and we have the technology (but not the wealth) to build telescopes which could directly image Terrestrial size planets in Stars up to several parsecs away.

Indeed, we can now confidently state that planetary systems are not rare, and this increases the probability of finding non-human civilizations quite significantly.

Now if we find life on Titan or Mars or Europa, even primitive bacteria-like life, the probability becomes much closer to 1 than to 0.9 for eventually finding advanced life elsewhere in the galaxy.

For now though the light-speed barrier makes even theoretical considerations of interstellar travel impossible, but we don't know everything yet, including even what most of the matter in the Universe is composed of, so it's safe to say our theories are not yet complete when it comes to the physics of propulsion.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

You really have a two dimensional view of people don't you?

Science is amoral, all it deals with is the accumulation of knowledge about the natural world.

Basic moral principles are like mathematical axioms, they are no more scientific than stating 1 = 1.

But unlike religion, science tends to work the same for anyone, that's why we have religious Christians in the USA wanting to war with religious Muslims in Iran for building an atomic bomb.

The science of nuclear physics works the same in the USA and Iran and allow both to build atom bombs if they so chose, but why they want to kill each other for religious differences I can't fathom.

In the USA both science and religion are heavilly politicized, that's the problem.

Get government out of religion and science and everyone will be better off.

Are you really so naive as to think that morality can be reduced to mathematical axioms? Can you give an example of this?

 

[WilliamC]

LOL. I like it when people accuse me of arrogance for thinking humans are supposed to be special. As if it were a travesty to say we weren't just another drop in an infinite pond. As if it were a bad thing to actually suggest we are here for a purpose. Like I said before, I am not being ignorant. The idea that there is DEFINITELY life out there on other planets rests on the assumption that abiogenesis happened here (something that was disproven by Louis Pasteur) so it MUST have happened on other planets. If anything, it is arrogant and ignorant to suggest that you somehow know this without even the slightest evidence even though scientists throughout history have found to the contrary of the idea that life can spontaneously arise.

I just think it's funny how some people somehow assume that god would not be capable of creating life on other planets when we mere humans have already created synthetic genes, synthetic membranes, synthetic proteins, synthetic viruses and even synthetic cells here on Earth.

For a somewhat dated review see http://www.imamu.edu.sa/Scientific_selections/abstracts/Biology/Synthetic cell biology.pdf

Synthetic biology is a growing field that thousands of scientists work in every day, so explain again why god can't do evolution when we already are?

Certainly it's not beyond his ability to understand how it works if we are already doing it?

 

[WilliamC]

Are you really so naive as to think that morality can be reduced to mathematical axioms? Can you give an example of this?

I really can't read your mind, I just know I use reason and empathy to create my own morality.

Maybe you have voices in your head or see visions to tell you what's right and wrong, I don't.

I just try to feel like what it would to be the other person, then reason what consequences my actions might bring.

That's all.

 

[Travlyr]

Haven't we been under world government for nearly 100 years already?

The League of Nations

The League of Nations (LON) was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing war through collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

 

[palm]

I really can't read your mind, I just know I use reason and empathy to create my own morality.

Maybe you have voices in your head or see visions to tell you what's right and wrong, I don't.

I just try to feel like what it would to be the other person, then reason what consequences my actions might bring.

That's all.

Isn't it the relative measure that you judge the action against morality? You may say that you judge the action against reason, but in order to think rationally enough to reason you would have to have something to reason with and to judge your reason against.

Even reason needs something outside of itself to rationalize its conclusions

In other words, in order to judge reasonably to begin with, to reason you would need a standard outside of the facts themselves to come to a just conclusion. In order to reason you need a standard method of thinking that everyone would be familiar with, sort of unspoken.


Please Answer: Also, why would you not want anyone to go through something you wouldn't want to go through?

 

[WilliamC]

Isn't it the relative measure that you judge the action against morality? You may say that you judge the action against reason, but in order to think rationally enough to reason you would have to have something to reason with and to judge your reason against.

Even reason needs something outside of itself to rationalize its conclusions

In other words, in order to judge reasonably to begin with, to reason you would need a standard outside of the facts themselves to come to a just conclusion. In order to reason you need a standard method of thinking that everyone would be familiar with, sort of unspoken.


Please Answer: Also, why would you not want anyone to go through something you wouldn't want to go through?

I guess you missed the empathy part of my statement?

I don't use just reason, but empathy and reason.

It works for me, but if someone else needs religion to tell them it's wrong to hurt and kill people then by all means keep I want them to keep praying or whatever it is they do to stop themselves from doing so.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

I just think it's funny how some people somehow assume that god would not be capable of creating life on other planets when we mere humans have already created synthetic genes, synthetic membranes, synthetic proteins, synthetic viruses and even synthetic cells here on Earth.

For a somewhat dated review see http://www.imamu.edu.sa/Scientific_selections/abstracts/Biology/Synthetic cell biology.pdf

Synthetic biology is a growing field that thousands of scientists work in every day, so explain again why god can't do evolution when we already are?

Certainly it's not beyond his ability to understand how it works if we are already doing it?

Wow. Just because God can do something, doesn't mean He will. Are you really suggesting this? Just because you can kill someone does that mean you do it?

Also, we are far from creating synthetic life. Even if we did do it, you would fail in trying to tell me that it can happen by itself. If humans create synthetic life, then that proves it takes intelligence to create life, not the other way around. You simply have to admit that abiogenesis simply can't happen, as far as we know. If you want to hope for some superstitious idea that, somehow, somewhere out there, inanimate matter became complicated living systems, you go right ahead. Don't tell me it's inevitable that that has to happen, though, because that is just laughable.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

I really can't read your mind, I just know I use reason and empathy to create my own morality.

Maybe you have voices in your head or see visions to tell you what's right and wrong, I don't.

I just try to feel like what it would to be the other person, then reason what consequences my actions might bring.

That's all.

Exactly. But you can't expect anyone to behave the same way if there is no God because morality would be completely subjective. I could decide it's okay for me to shoot someone. That would be perfectly moral on my part because I don't follow your principle of "feeling what it would be like to be the other person." Or, maybe I do and I decide they suffer too much and should be killed. In your worldview, that makes it okay for me to do that. Reasoning can differ from person to person, and if they decide it's worth it to commit acts of violence for the greater good that they see, then it would be completely reasonable and moral for them to do so.

I want to hear how you come up with an exact moral code and not some touchy feely idea of vague understandings and concepts of morality. After you come up with that exact moral code, how do you make it so that everyone else should follow your moral code?

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Haven't we been under world government for nearly 100 years already?

The League of Nations

You better believe there's more to come. It will be out in the open someday, unlike the sinister crap they've tried to push and deny it even though it's obvious to those who even bother to look.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

I guess you missed the empathy part of my statement?

I don't use just reason, but empathy and reason.

It works for me, but if someone else needs religion to tell them it's wrong to hurt and kill people then by all means keep I want them to keep praying or whatever it is they do to stop themselves from doing so.

These are very vague concepts and just further prove my point. You can't come up with a moral code that everyone has to follow because someone else could choose not to use empathy like you do. How can you tell someone they shouldn't lie, steal, cheat, or kill just because you think it's wrong according to the ideals you use? What if that person doesn't use the same ideals you do? Nothing can possibly be illegal in a world like that because all laws would be arbitrary standards created by men to control other men.

 

[WilliamC]

Wow. Just because God can do something, doesn't mean He will. Are you really suggesting this? Just because you can kill someone does that mean you do it?

Not me, no, because I chose not to.

Some people just think the universe, including evolution, is all part of gods plan, that's all

I can't prove it isn't.

Also, we are far from creating synthetic life.

Then why are people getting paid for it today?

Synthetic biology is already happening, including the creation of synthetic viruses and synthetic cells that are alive. Pretty soon there will be synthetic bacteria churning out biochemicals for industrial or medical use.

Synthetic biology and artificial life is no longer fiction, it's as real as nuclear physics.

Even if we did do it, you would fail in trying to tell me that it can happen by itself.

Why can't it just be the way god is actually doing it? I can't disprove that.

If humans create synthetic life, then that proves it takes intelligence to create life, not the other way around. You simply have to admit that abiogenesis simply can't happen, as far as we know.

No, I just have to recognize the fact that abiogenesis is the process that life arises from pre-existing complex biochemical processes and systems. If we can do it then obviously it can be done, and we are in fact currently able do so on the scale from molecules to complete viruses and, by using non-living cellular components, make synthetic cells.

Maybe there is something supernatural which will prevent the formation of complex 3 dimensional cells from scratch, but so far there is nothing in the science that indicates so. If you have any suggestions as to how to test for such and those suggestions result in testable hypotheses, then by all means go for it.

If you want to hope for some superstitious idea that, somehow, somewhere out there, inanimate matter became complicated living systems, you go right ahead. Don't tell me it's inevitable that that has to happen, though, because that is just laughable.

We're already doing it here on Earth, but don't take my word for it.

Synthetic biology exists independently of my belief in it.

I just want the government to stop funding it, that's all, just like I want them to stop funding religion through tax-exempt status for churches.

Get the government out of it and what do we have to disagree about, really?