Laurentius

HYPOTHESIS

What makes a human tick is his/her belief. Each individual nurtures his/her individual creed, which may or may not be religious, which may or may not be altruistic, which may or may not be spiritual. In any case, each one has his/her own philosophy, functioning as a sort of either inner drive or safe net, or both, and endowing its bearer the power to find his/her actions coherent and meaningful.

Some may find the salvation of their ephemeral ego by placing their trust in a supreme divinity that they believe they are going to join after death. Some may choose a more earthly higher reality, such as their family, their nation, their ethnic group, or mankind as whole.

I consider myself a member of the last group. My convictions are secular, close to nihilist, but my propensities are humanist. For me, Man is the ultimate and highest reality. Individually, people may be selfish, ignorant, mean, and so on, but on the whole mankind is capable of wonders, of lasting works that gives Man the status of a superior being. And I am so proud to live in a era in which it proves that Man’s reason and belief, science and technology, all put together, can provide mankind the means not only to survive cataclysms of the kind that have erased the dinosaurs, but also conquer the outer space, to populate the galaxies and even to control the universe.


EXPERIENCE

Well, that’s the problem with human beliefs. They transcend reality and feed on fantasy. And there comes a time when one has to face the sheer reality that shutters the entire edifice that used to make one’s system of beliefs and forces him/her to readjust his/her philosophy. Or factual gravity will pull the whole wreck smashed up and leave the ex tower dweller irremediably mixed up and disoriented.

The other day I was watching a documentary on the Discovery channel about gravity, the weak force that has such a powerful cumulative effect that it may even be the decisive force as to the destiny of our Universe. I was reasonably familiar with Einstein’s initial attempt to introduce a physical constant (a kind of anti-gravitational force) in his theory in order to prevent the Universe from seeming either to contract or to expand (so that it should fit the astrophysical prejudices of the time), and with his admitting having made the wrong decision as soon it became obvious that the Universe is in full expansion.

You must be familiar too with the dilemma concerning the end of the Universe, whether it will expand forever and die out in a sort of whimper, or it will start contracting and crash in itself – the implosion of the ultimate kamikaze. Now, the documentary shows that scientists have not simply folded their arms waiting for some outcome; no, they have identified a way of actually measuring the comparative speed of expansion throughout eons by observing the behavior of numerous members of a specific class of supernovas called, I think, white dwarfs. Despite scientists’ expectations, the expansion pace is neither constant nor diminishing – it is accelerating. So, Einstein may have been (at least involuntarily) right – there is an additional force meddling with gravity, but it does not constrict expansion, it speeds it up.

The implications of this recent discovery are not yet studied, but one thing is clear. Gradually (and maybe way faster than we may have expected), galaxies will become so remote, so far from each other, that even light from other sister galaxies will fail to reach the Milky Way, and intergalactic travel will automatically be out of discussion. Not that our own galaxy would make a tight place to be, but still – the new reality drastically limits dreamers’ hopes that one day Man may colonize the Universe on a large scale.


CONCLUSION

My hypothesis proved wrong. Man will never reverse the odds in his favor, no matter how technologically developed he may become. Instead, he is doomed to fall prey to the Universe’s insensitive and unaware cruelty in much the same way the stupid dinosaurs did.

Well, it seems that it is high time I adjusted my belief. Once again. Frankly, I have grown tired of so many readaptations, not that I do not welcome intellectual change, but it looks as if every time it happens, some diminution accompanied the process – the stakes were lowered – and the more powerful blows my Humanism receives the deeper a Nihilist I turn into.


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My pseudo-experiment boils down to three questions:

1. To what extent should the discovery of the alleged anti-gravitational force affect our philosophy?
2. What is the rapport between one’s philosophical beliefs and the meaning of one’s live?
3. Why is it necessary that one’s life should bear a meaning in order for one to be able to “tick”?

AVE

YHWH666

>>>"What makes a human tick is his/her belief. Each individual nurtures his/her individual creed, which may or may not be religious, which may or may not be altruistic, which may or may not be spiritual. In any case, each one has his/her own philosophy, functioning as a sort of either inner drive or safe net, or both, and endowing its bearer the power to find his/her actions coherent and meaningful."
--------------------------------------------------

I disagree. I find that the most people wander aimlessly through life without realy ever knowing why. Most simply do what communal apelike animals would do in any given situation. They don't stop to wonder why they act, they just do.

Alas I'm even more of a nihilist than you <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: YHWH666 ]</p>

Laurentius

No. Humans project their actions in the future, they make long term plans. Some don't, but they do not make the norm.

Nihilism does not ground on the refusal of facts, but on the refusal of grounds.
AVE

LogicMania

I am not so confident in my species as I once was. Technologically, we are advanced but how advanced are we socially? For such a successful species we are unfortunately a very pessimistic species.

I am a Naturalist in the sense that I believe everything is part of natural cause and effect in space-time and maybe the other 6 dimensions defined by superstring theory. I just do not know about my belief in humanity since it clearly does not believe in itself.

Humanity continuously tries to classify itself different than the rest of itself. Humans can build powerful illusions that can have them go as far as killing other humans. Intellectual liberty doesn't come easy and there's no true clean cut intellectual liberty. I still live in illusions (prejudices). I do not know what makes people become more open minded than other people. It can be taught, I suppose. But it appears to usually occur by chance. Some people just like to ask questions more than other people.

My question is: are we really becoming more free intellectually?

Now that we're in the post-industrial age, I think we should start having the post-industrial attitude. We should use our reason and creativity to our fullest. We need to get rid of our prejudices (unjustified assumptions about a particular group) as best as we can because they hault us from our progress. There have been cases where I've seen Christians reason better than Atheists. Patience, reason, creativity...that's all I ask.

Laurentius

As if answering to myself, I say: believe in your fellow humans - I mean, there is no one else you can place your trust in anyway.

Human beings, as a whole, are able of "wonders" that are the fruit of both competition and cooperation. I disagree with a lot of what Mustlims do, but I cannot help to notice that they hold themselves apart from Globalization, thus leaving room for social diversity, which is so necessary to human development in the light of The Theory of Evolution.

What should philosophy be to you then if you "have lost your religion"? (I mean faith)
AVE

1sec

Answers:
1. These are only theories. Do not put your faith in them.
2. Faith is irrational. Philosophy and faith do not mix.
3. I do not know.

Laurentius

But philosophy does establish itself as an amalgam logical inferences and irrational drives.

For instance, no one can be indifferent to the problem whether there is an intelligent design of the Universe or not. And since it has not yet been irrefutably demonstrated that there is a God (or that there is not one) rational and irrational arguments continue to go and hand in hand in proving a point or another.

All areas of knowledge intersect and are confronted with each other in philosophy. My feeling is that, although less evidently sometimes, ontology plays the most influential part in all this game, and this is the reason why there are so many debates over the nature of the Universe, whether some entities exist or not, what they may be like, and so on.

Take the “fine tuning” argument, for example. Evolution does not fully explain anything, but I irrationally believe in its logic, while creationism – despite many of its sound points – seems to me aggressively limitative.
AVE

Laurentius

As for LogicMania's specific question:
I think that intellectual freedom is not an attribute that will stay permanent once it is gained. Intellectual freedom is more of a personal and social struggle as part of the more general effort to ensure emancipation from any form of coercion.
AVE

bd-from-kg

Laurentius:

I couldn’t help but be amused by your statement:

This reminds me of an old story: After a lecture about the evolution of stars, someone asked the speaker, “When did you say the Sun would engulf the Earth”? He replied: “In about four billion years”. The fellow responded, “Whew! For a minute there I thought you’d said four million years.”

Cool it. No one knows what the fate of the universe is going to be. No one knows whether there are other universes. You’re looking at the outermost fringes of scientific speculation and drawing vast conclusions based on very little evidence.

One thing that’s pretty certain is that the universe will look pretty much as it does now as far into the future as you can imagine. The supposed acceleration of the universal expansion that you mention is very slow; it’s essentially undetectable over periods of a mere few million years. And long before there is any significant macroscopic change in the universe, all traces of you will have disappeared.

Laurentius

Posted by bd-from-kg:
<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />
Continued by the same bd-from-kg:
I know the story, it's from "Fermat's Last Theory". (I'm not sure of the title, my copy was not an English version.)
Oh, c'mon bd-from-kg, stop pretending you don't know that it is not I that I'm worried about but my faith. This faith of mine may be farfetched, but it is dear to me for it seems able to fuel my joy of living. And this is exactly why I posted this thing in the first place (see the questions).

A Humanist Nihilist is an antinomy, but I would rather cope with this duality than become a straight nihilist.