What does it mean to be human?

[M43]

I
Here is the next philosophical question, if you can transfer your consciousness into an android tomorrow and you can live forever in this reality, which of you would do that, and why?

This question can only actually be honestly answered by those who truthfully believe that they are the result of a one in a billion/zillion anomaly that caused the existance of organic life forms on this planet.

For those who believe / know / have faith they were created in the immage of God and that they are saved and will inherit eternal life in a new uncoruptable body... the option of spending any length time as trapped in a metal shell full of microchips that will fail or burn out and batteries that only last so long might not be that enticing...
Its sort of like being "concious" while stuck in a jar on some sceintists' shelf...Better than burning in hell for eternity, but not by much.

[SoldierMan]

Some questions:

1. Why is it that basically all religions offer a way of entering into afterlife?

2. Where do reports of angels, demons etc come from?

3. Why does mankind have an idea/awareness of other means of existence?



No. My soul (what gives consciousness) isn't mine to give away, store away or anything similar. It was made by God and it goes back to him. Point and basta.

It would indeed need one exceptional computer to run the programming of a soul. One might be able to store memories. I doubt that it is possible to store life or consciousness.

Imagine packaging oneself into a flash drive, and then a computer glitch occurs? "Oops, sir, you still have the same registration number but your soul has taken a few knocks. We need to book you into Weskoppies for observation."

Leaving the soul aside for a second, at best you will be able to copy some of the data stored in your brain. But the whole human consciousness, personality and functioning - what makes us alive, involves far more than just stored data.

You might be able to create some AI that has some of the data stored in your brain, but you will never be able to recreate Ds J as a software duplicate, it will always be a copy, not the original. When you and your brain dies, you are dead.

[GAZZAMCK]

This question can only actually be honestly answered by those who truthfully believe that they are the result of a one in a billion/zillion anomaly that caused the existance of organic life forms on this planet.

For those who believe / know / have faith they were created in the immage of God and that they are saved and will inherit eternal life in a new uncoruptable body... the option of spending any length time as trapped in a metal shell full of microchips that will fail or burn out and batteries that only last so long might not be that enticing...
Its sort of like being "concious" while stuck in a jar on some sceintists' shelf...Better than burning in hell for eternity, but not by much.

Always find religious posts entertaining, the whole "will be saved" "all other religions and beliefs are wrong"
"Mankind came from adam and eve", Noahs ark etc etc

It's great to have faith, and to follow rules with discipline, but to not believe scientific proof of evolution because of it, in 2022, I can't fathom that

[SoldierMan]

Always find religious posts entertaining, the whole "will be saved" "all other religions and beliefs are wrong"
"Mankind came from adam and eve", Noahs ark etc etc

It's great to have faith, and to follow rules with discipline, but to not believe scientific proof of evolution because of it, in 2022, I can't fathom that

According to Darwin's own standards and words (fossil record) he would have rejected evolution in 2022.
People reject molecules-to-man evolution on FAR more than just faith.

[AJR]

Personally I would not want to live forever.
Old people (healthy) are lonely because their spouses are buried, their friends are sick or buried, all whilst they have little in common with youngsters who might even identify as something else. They cannot listen to the radio because the music is crap, fashion makes no sense and tv shows are sexual, violent and expletive laden. My grandfather would not be able to watch the shows on tv today. The fact is we have a context, and a best before date as a result.

As to afterlifes spent in one format or another, I have to wonder who is the sick bastard that created "hell", and think it is permissable to burn and torment human beings' souls (exclusively) there for all eternity. For all of time. Ripping families apart. In fact, is there anyone here who would enjoy heaven's benefits, whilst you know your friends, your children , your parents are burning in unfathomable pain forever, every waking moment of your eternal existence. It seems to me that if such a place exists, whoemever is responsible for it should be committed to it. It is crudely beyond cruel, and inelegant.

As to morality, lets be honest: it changes over time. What was acceptable 100 years ago, is no longer. What was not acceptable, now is. Many of the rights we hold dear today, stem largely from the secular and humanist behaviour. Right to free speech, due process, no slavery, sexuality etc. are not bible based. The moral compass of abrehamatic religions is not particularly high in the old testament. Fire and brimstone is just so first milennium. As to the rule of the bible, few adhere to some of the weird rules contained therein. And lets not forget Elisha who had 42 boys mauled by two bears, having cursed them.

[Messor]

While I am a religious person, I did not want to make this thread about religion.
I firmly believe humans are capable of much more than we know, maybe in our past we had abilities lost to time. If we don’t use a muscle in your body you lose that, maybe that is the same for the neurons in our brains. Engineers are always astounded by the things we build thousands of years ago, even though it 2022 now and everybody thinks they are “cleva”.
We cannot even see the full spectrum of light, much less than other animals, we cannot even fathom the thought of there being more dimensions.
We have a deeper connection to nature, something we have neglected to a point most don’t perceive it anymore.

It’s like Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said, the thing that keeps him up at night is not the things we don’t yet know it is the past, the things humans either never knew or forgot. The earth is a few billions years old many things have happened the likes we cannot even fathom.

Were we visited by aliens, dunno, does human accounts literally translate to encounters with angels, dunno, what I do know as far as we have come we know much less about humans than what we do know, so what it means to be human remains a great mystery.

[AJR]

I wonder, will one be able to hunt in heaven? Are there gunsmiths? Wil I be issued a 30.06? So many questions! Hornady or Barnes?

[MrK]

Far in the Northern Cape I also came across the ruins of a sizeable homestead. Tough country with sandy stoney soil, very little in the way of shade except for the odd Kameeldoring and sparse grass. Hand dug wells of which one still showed some water. Hand paved irrigation canals (leivore) showing that someone had put in a lot of hard work to try and make a living there. There were still some stunted fruit trees clinging to life in the orchard. Big dam wall close to the homestead showed more hard work. I then came across several graves. I cannot remember the dates, but what grabbed my attention was that there were five or six graves of children younger than 8 or 9 years old, the youngest only a few months old, all having passed away in a short time period. All with the same last name. An entire generation passed away. Other graves had the same family name but were for older people, the oldest being about 60.

Some distance away was another group of graves with a different family name, again with lots of young children but in a different time frame.

If that does not make you ponder just how fragile human existence is I have to wonder what will.

[M43]

Always find religious posts entertaining, the whole "will be saved" "all other religions and beliefs are wrong"
"Mankind came from adam and eve", Noahs ark etc etc

It's great to have faith, and to follow rules with discipline, but to not believe scientific proof of evolution because of it, in 2022, I can't fathom that

You would be surprised how many actual scientists reject the idea of evolution based on actual science, some even started out as agnostics / atheists etc. and eventually became Christians because they observed actual science... You should Google it.

And I dont understand how you can say its great to have faith but that one must in adition to having faith also believe a made up story about life / living things "evolving" to become more complex and better adapted to their habitat when the sceintific fact is that everytime a mutation happens some information is lost... And last I heard "mutation" was punted as the cause of "evolution" while no scientist will be able to provide you with even ONE example of "mutation" leading to an increase in information. You should Google that too, its actually quite enetertaining if somewhat pathetic to see a guy who published dozens of books claiming there is no God and everything is caused by mutations sit there for three minuted before admitting he cannot think of ONE example of his theory. he has since moved on to the "Aliens seeded earth with life squad" because his "scientific theories" were all BS.

Claiming to have faith that the Bible is correct but "Evolution" is also correct is to put it mildly, utter dumbfuckery. The two are not compatible.
Eveything was either created by sheer accident when nothing exploded for no reason at all..., or a omnipotent Creator created everything, there is no inbetween.

[FNBROWNING]

Cleaning out a relatives old house with old black and white photographs of people he knew in a different time. I wanted to hold onto them as some link to him but my father just turned to me and said;'they only hold meaning to the people that knew them.'