Originally posted by Digi
Being peacekeeper is fine, I can respect it. But there's a reasonable line to be drawn. What if one side was espousing the ethnic cleansing of the Jews? Is playing peacekeeper the best option? Obviously that's an extreme example, but it serves to make a point: that the line exists somewhere. It's just a matter of where you draw it. Do you dutifully pat someone on the back who's being biased? Doesn't have his facts straight? Isn't making sense? I'd say that being respectful is actually the opposite. Truly being respectful of the debate process is the ability to call out BS when you see it, but not have it devolve into personal attacks. I have no issue with Oneness personally, but I think his logic is incoherent, and his points demonstrably false. I'd consider it more disrespectful to him if I said nothing or "agreed to disagree" than if I challenged him.What interesting points do you think Oneness is making? I want to hear that. Because your endorsement of both sides lacks definition.
Well the thread really went in the other way to be honest, I created it to talk about kind of greek gods and how people have seen them more or less, he brought up some interesting thoughts to mind about how human were all immortal at one point and I was interesting in reading this philosophies.
When he said "I truly believe that the earliest humans were immortal until they doubted their immortality and aged. I truly believe the earth may have been a million years old but then its age suddenly increased by several billion years because some stupid scientist had to verify and doubted deep down that the earth was that young. He may have proved the earth really was 1 million years old if he'd not doubted it."
This got me thinking alot about the biblical scriptures and how back in those days people seemed to live for a thousand years and before that who knows how long.
When he said "Science is the collective of rules that chain us down. Which would be a good thing if it chained everyone but me. "
That makes me think that we are bound by what can only be explained even though we cannot explain everything and can only explain what we can see. We can't explain or define what say could be happening in another galaxy, maybe gravity is different there, maybe there are other elements. Only what we know and can explain is on this earth.
Originally posted by Time Immemorial
...This got me thinking alot about the biblical scriptures and how back in those days people seemed to live for a thousand years and before that who knows how long...
But people didn't live that long. These are just very old stories that were added to the early writings that later because the bible.
Originally posted by Time Immemorial
Well the thread really went in the other way to be honest, I created it to talk about kind of greek gods and how people have seen them more or less, he brought up some interesting thoughts to mind about how human were all immortal at one point and I was interesting in reading this philosophies.When he said [b] "I truly believe that the earliest humans were immortal until they doubted their immortality and aged. I truly believe the earth may have been a million years old but then its age suddenly increased by several billion years because some stupid scientist had to verify and doubted deep down that the earth was that young. He may have proved the earth really was 1 million years old if he'd not doubted it."
This got me thinking alot about the biblical scriptures and how back in those days people seemed to live for a thousand years and before that who knows how long.
When he said "Science is the collective of rules that chain us down. Which would be a good thing if it chained everyone but me. "
That makes me think that we are bound by what can only be explained even though we cannot explain everything and can only explain what we can see. We can't explain or define what say could be happening in another galaxy, maybe gravity is different there, maybe there are other elements. Only what we know and can explain is on this earth. [/B]
It's fine to wonder about things we don't know. But quite another to hold them as likely or even remotely possible. To use one of your examples, we have very good reasons for believing that gravity is constant throughout the universe. That doesn't make it irrefutable, but there is literally nothing to suggest otherwise.
So when someone talks about us being immortal or even longer-lived, it's entirely made up. We have documented evidence that lifespans were significantly shorter than ours throughout much of recorded history, and no reason to believe otherwise. And if you choose to believe the Bible in a literal sense when it says people lived for thousands of years, there are other problems at work.
Basically, it means we don't have all the answers, but saying "we don't have all the answers" isn't intellectual justification for making stuff up.
Do you disagree with any of that?
Don't you think in a environment without pollution, radiation, cell phones, millions of chemicals surrounding us, chemical treated water we drink, not having much of an ozone or firmament to protect us, diseases, hunger, malnutrition, degeneration of our food's nutrients we actually could be living shorter then people from the ancient scriptures? I would think those people lived a much cleaner life without all the current products of the industrial revolution and its citizens in my opinion.
Originally posted by Time Immemorial
Don't you think in a environment without pollution, radiation, cell phones, millions of chemicals surrounding us, chemical treated water we drink, not having much of an ozone or firmament to protect us, diseases, hunger, malnutrition, degeneration of our food's nutrients we actually could be living shorter then people from the ancient scriptures? I would think those people lived a much cleaner life without all the current products of the industrial revolution and its citizens in my opinion.
The evidence we have disagrees with you. Today's advanced civilizations are, as best we can tell, the longest lived era in human history, usually by a lot.
You're also taking a needlessly dystopian approach here. We understand complex nutrition, diet, fitness, etc. and have medicine and medical practices that are exponentially better than even 50 years ago, let alone hundreds or thousands. Most of what you mentioned has existed in every era of history. But nothing I just countered with existed until the last 100 years, with several advances only in the last 10-20. And a couple you mentioned have no discernible affect on aging, like cell phones and "radiation." Sure, if you're in the fallout zone of an old blast, it might be harmful. But 99.9% of the population, not so much.
In any case, don't take my word for it. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
I realize it's wiki, but some basic research into evolutionary findings will corroborate the data. Current world life expectancy is about 20 years better than the next closest era, dating back to the Paleolithic Era. Even ignoring infant deaths, which dramatically hurt the numbers from other eras, we're about 5 years better than the next closest (and that includes modern child mortality rates). Anyway, Google is your friend.