Things you can't get your head around...

[CollinsLCFC]

Our own individual existence. You, as a sperm, beat the race of c200 million others to fertilise the exact egg required to create you and come into this world.  Not only that, but this was the same for each generation before you, from human existence.  The probability that you as a person are here living is incomprehensively astronomical. If any generation before you did not meet and create the offspring that eventually led to your own birth, you simply would never have existed.

 

Sometimes that is worth reflecting on when you feel worthless. The fact you are here is an absolute miracle and I struggle to get my head around that. 

 

What also amazes me is the miniscule time Humans have inhabited Earth.  If you condense the history of Earth into one year, with our world being formed at 12:01 on January 1st, Humans only came into existence on the last hour of NYE.

 

Dinosaurs would appear on December 13 - The age of the dinosaurs is unbelievably vast as well.   We are living in a closer to in time to the last species of dinosaur than they did to the first species that roamed.   .

 

Our minds simply do not have the capability to comprehend the size and time of our own world and more so our universe. 

 

 

[Innovindil]

18 minutes ago, Benguin said:

I can’t get my head around how people are able to cope without faith. 
 

I also can’t get my head around how people are able to make sense of reality, truth, logic and morality without faith. 
 

I can only conclude that people suppress their worldview and borrow from a theistic worldview rather than embrace and live within it. 
 

I mean how can one be okay with the idea that they are bags of stardust floating around a vast expanse for no purpose other than chance and anything they know or feel is illusory? 

Eh? 

[Fightforever]

41 minutes ago, Benguin said:

I can’t get my head around how people are able to cope without faith. 
 

I also can’t get my head around how people are able to make sense of reality, truth, logic and morality without faith. 
 

I can only conclude that people suppress their worldview and borrow from a theistic worldview rather than embrace and live within it. 
 

I mean how can one be okay with the idea that they are bags of stardust floating around a vast expanse for no purpose other than chance and anything they know or feel is illusory? 

The truth is often disappointing and rather boring isn't it

[tom27111]

3 hours ago, Izzy said:

I can't get my head around the net worth of people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

 

I can sort of imagine £1 million in cash (100 piles of £10,000) but I can't imagine having over £100 billion 

 

I mean £1billion is a thousand million but Bezos has nearly £200 billion and I can't get my head around that.

 

If you'd earned $10000 an hour since the year 0, you still wouldn't have as much cash as Jeff Bezos.

 

That is mind blowing.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

Both World Wars were extremely recent relative to the impact they had on the world. 

 

Also just the wars themselves, WW2 in particular. 

[worthosoriginals]

1 hour ago, CollinsLCFC said:

Our own individual existence. You, as a sperm, beat the race of c200 million others to fertilise the exact egg required to create you and come into this world.  Not only that, but this was the same for each generation before you, from human existence.  The probability that you as a person are here living is incomprehensively astronomical. If any generation before you did not meet and create the offspring that eventually led to your own birth, you simply would never have existed.

 

Sometimes that is worth reflecting on when you feel worthless. The fact you are here is an absolute miracle and I struggle to get my head around that. 

 

What also amazes me is the miniscule time Humans have inhabited Earth.  If you condense the history of Earth into one year, with our world being formed at 12:01 on January 1st, Humans only came into existence on the last hour of NYE.

 

Dinosaurs would appear on December 13 - The age of the dinosaurs is unbelievably vast as well.   We are living in a closer to in time to the last species of dinosaur than they did to the first species that roamed.   .

 

Our minds simply do not have the capability to comprehend the size and time of our own world and more so our universe. 

 

 

Interesting, and yet, religious people inform me, humans and dinosaurs were around at the same time, as the world is only 6000 years old. Am I to believe them or Hawkins, Einstein and  fossil records? 

[RoboFox]

How supposedly empathetic, sentient human beings can shoot some of our most incredible, majestic, even endangered animals for fun - then pose, smiling with their corpses - is beyond me.

 

Like, you know, enjoy killing living beings? It's natural to anthropomorphize other creatures, yet you wanna kill them from half a mile away with a rifle? There's something fvcking inherently wrong with you. You're damaged.

 

Fvck, I feel bad if I accidentally tread on a spider.

 

 

Edited 9 September 2020 by RoboFox

[CollinsLCFC]

8 minutes ago, worthosoriginals said:

Interesting, and yet, religious people inform me, humans and dinosaurs were around at the same time, as the world is only 6000 years old. Am I to believe them or Hawkins, Einstein and  fossil records? 

I appreciate and respect peoples faith and religion, however I feel it is an easy solution to the mystery of the Universe (i.e. it was made for us by a divine creator and that's all there is).  I feel people tend to ignore Science, as we essentially no nothing about it. Why and how are we here? There may be no answer to these questions or at least we will never have the ability to find out.  For some, Religion is the answer and puts an end to the debate, allowing them to carry on happy without needing to find out the truth.  

 

I feel the difference between religion and science is the ability to change hypotheses on the subject.  With science, we are constantly finding new evidence which leads us to change everything we know and disregarding theories we have worked on which turn out to be incorrect.  With religion, whilst they may accept some evidence (Catholicism accepting the big bang actually took place, for example), God remains the ultimate answer and it will not be considered that there actually may be no God. 

 

 

 

[Innovindil]

One from today/yesterday I can't wrap my head around, this whole california fire caused by a gender reveal party. First off, just why. Second off, how come this has probably been one of the most reported gender reveal parties ever, causing mass news coverage and a zillion memes, potentially going to cost the person who set off the "device" millions of dollars or potentially jail time and I still have no idea whether it's a boy or a girl. 

 

It's the small things in life I guess. 

[FOXYTALK]

Life after death. The consciousness of the soul and where it goes after it departs the body. Another life? Another world? Trapped in the ether? 

[SpacedX]

Brendan's substitutions.

[FerrisBueller]

The monetary system

[BeardyFox]

Dreams, especially the altered realities and how you can seemingly dream about people you've never met (don't tell the Mrs).

Edited 9 September 2020 by BeardyFox

[Babylon]

4 hours ago, Benguin said:

I can’t get my head around how people are able to cope without faith. 
 

I also can’t get my head around how people are able to make sense of reality, truth, logic and morality without faith. 
 

I can only conclude that people suppress their worldview and borrow from a theistic worldview rather than embrace and live within it. 
 

I mean how can one be okay with the idea that they are bags of stardust floating around a vast expanse for no purpose other than chance and anything they know or feel is illusory? 

I have zero issue with people having faith, in fact I'm slightly envious that people are comforted thinking that there is some grand plan for them. 

 

But suggesting you somehow can't understand or have morality, logic or truth without faith just blows my mind. 

Edited 9 September 2020 by Babylon

[Babylon]

Facebook conspiracy theorists. 

[RoboFox]

5 hours ago, StanSP said:

Yeah the space thing baffles me too. Weird to get my head around what we're seeing is 'x amount of light years' away. 

Also just the scale and enormity of stuff just boggles the mind.

 

 

[Benguin]

4 minutes ago, Babylon said:

I have zero issue with people having faith, in fact I'm slightly envious that people are comforted thinking that there is some grand plan for them. 

 

But suggesting you somehow understand or have morality, logic or truth without faith just blows my mind. 

If you do not believe in an ultimate standard of truth, logic and morality then how do you justify those things having an ultimate standard? If they don’t have any ultimate standard that by what basis can you ground them in objectivity? Are you saying truth is subjective? 

 

[leicsmac]

2 minutes ago, RoboFox said:

Also just the scale and enormity of stuff just boggles the mind.

 

 

It's wonderful, isn't it?

 

Just now, Benguin said:

If you do not believe in an ultimate standard of truth, logic and morality then how do you justify those things having an ultimate standard? If they don’t have any ultimate standard that by what basis can you ground them in objectivity? Are you saying truth is subjective? 

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but can this be done in the dedicated religion thread rather than the endless circular debate I know it will be here?

[Fox92]

1 hour ago, FOXYTALK said:

Life after death. The consciousness of the soul and where it goes after it departs the body. Another life? Another world? Trapped in the ether? 

Amazes me. Sort of my point too.

 

Nobody will ever know of course.

 

It doesn't make sense to me that people are here for a set number of years - very little - and that's it.

[Babylon]

1 minute ago, Benguin said:

Are you saying truth is subjective? 

Clearly as you seem to believe in something there is zero evidence of. 

[Innovindil]

4 minutes ago, Benguin said:

If you do not believe in an ultimate standard of truth, logic and morality then how do you justify those things having an ultimate standard? If they don’t have any ultimate standard that by what basis can you ground them in objectivity? Are you saying truth is subjective? 

 

Of course it is. Truth evolves just as humans evolve. So do faiths. Can you imagine the church of England just a few short years ago supporting anything to do with gay marriage? Course not. They openly do now though, are they wrong to? 

Edited 9 September 2020 by Innovindil

[Benguin]

1 minute ago, Innovindil said:

Of course it is. Truth evolves just as humans evolve. So do faiths. Can you imagine the church of England just a few short years ago supporting anything to do with gay marriage? Course not. They openly do now though, are they wrong to? 

Well there you go, my original post was that I can’t get my head around people who do not believe in essentially objective truth. 

[Guest]

Religion. It's so fundamentally ridiculous and I can't imagine what it would be like to believe in some nebulous higher power, or how you could reach adulthood without going "hang on, this doesn't really make much sense does it?"

 

Technology in general makes my head spin if I ever think about it for too long. How could someone just invent the internet, or computers, or cars? That's probably more to do with the limits of my own imagination and intelligence, I just find it pretty weird to think these things didn't exist and then one day some genius(es) made it so they did.

 

The fact we haven't signed a winger yet.

[worthosoriginals]

1 hour ago, FOXYTALK said:

Life after death. The consciousness of the soul and where it goes after it departs the body. Another life? Another world? Trapped in the ether? 

I reckon, we shall return back to the state we were before we were born, I.e didn't exist, humans being aware that death is coming, I feel have created these other ideas of what happens, as a sort of comfort, eternity in paradise if you behave, access to 77 or so virgins if you've bombed people

Etc etc, I see no evidence of us not returning to our former state, pre conception, of simply not existing, it wasn't that bad was it? Fast asleep without dreams?

You mention the soul, is there such a thing, I haven't seen the evidence, if it's presented I may consider

a rethink. Or query the amount iv had to drink. 

 

[Fightforever]

22 minutes ago, Guest said:

Religion. It's so fundamentally ridiculous and I can't imagine what it would be like to believe in some nebulous higher power, or how you could reach adulthood without going "hang on, this doesn't really make much sense does it?"

 

Technology in general makes my head spin if I ever think about it for too long. How could someone just invent the internet, or computers, or cars? That's probably more to do with the limits of my own imagination and intelligence, I just find it pretty weird to think these things didn't exist and then one day some genius(es) made it so they did.

 

The fact we haven't signed a winger yet.

Growing up with Kosovar Albanian parents I was taught to never doubt Islam. You are essentially taught that exploring doubt is bad. In Islam once you leave or doubt Allah that's it there's no way back so people tend to suppress any doubt they have because there is more to gain by believing in a religion that in their mind is true then to doubt it and let it be wrong. The moment I stopped being scared of doubting Islam the illusion shattered. Since you can't think about doubting the existence of Allah you avoid thinking about it. Your family won't like you in most cases for doing so my parents were pissed but reluctantly accepted it. You really have nothing to gain hence why people just don't.

Luckily most Albanians don't give two ****s about religion (most drink alcohol to celebrate eid imagine the irony) so I didn't have to cut off my family but imagine being part of a Saudi family and saying you doubt Allah. Wouldn't end well at all.

Edited 9 September 2020 by Fightforever