Tough answers

[5tomidnite]

Just a FYI..there really was a St.Nicholas who we now refer to as Santa. I am not really jibing with your take on Christianity though...

It's okay we don't have to agree on Christianity. I'm no religious scholar so if someone can show me that I'm wrong about "early Christianity needing to eradicate the concept of personal gods to survive as a religion" I'd accept that.

Oh and I knew about Saint Nicholas

 

[Burnt State]

Wow. That advanced, huh?

Sorry, all I see is you projecting your own worldview on the "superior minds" of hypothetical ETs, probably to make it look more reasonable or something. Nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as you don't claim it's an actual excerpt of a dialogue between us and "them". Still, "immortality is a function of technology" is nothing but a hypothesis and there is actually some evidence against it.

In the philosophical proposition that we are currently all living in an ancestor simulation (our future descendants become advanced enough that they design technological simulations of their past and we're all oblivious to the Phillip K. Dick scenario we currently inhabit) technology would be a kind of immortality for the ant-farm, planet earth experiment we call home.

I think this thought experiment deserves more thought, especially along the lines of being someone else's property. That line has always stuck with me and it's haunting nature demands investigation. However, what's being denied from this experiment is that other classic sci-fi theme of species transformation - why could we not, with more thought, evolve ourselves to be more than just flesh on bone, to fuse with our own future AI technology and reach outside this solar system?

Aren't humans imaginative enough to make a technology that looks like magic too?

 

[Trajanus]

The most important way the Moon is important for life is that its gravity maintains an approximately constant tilt for the Earth's rotation axis, so that we have less extremes of climate than does (for example) Mars.

A moon can be a liability; slowing planetary rotation can also cause temperature extremes.

 

[boomerang]

Labeling a phenomenon as a demon tells us nothing more about its nature than calling water "wet". On the contrary, it implies that we should not ask but rather should rely on social authority or tradition to tell us.

Re possible intrinsic limitations of Homo sapiens to make sense of the persistently bizarre, I recently ran across these lines in Clifford Pickover's "The Loom of God":


Are there facets of the universe we can never know? Are there questions we can't ask? Our brains, which evolved to help us find food on the African plains, are not constructed to penetrate all the enigmas on the infinite mathematical cloak of our universe."

Pickover (if I understand correctly) goes on to muse over whether the tools we construct, especially computers, might allow us to continue our quest by filling in deficiencies in our own wetware, or whether we might attain a certain level of understanding and remain perpetually stuck there for lack of raw ability to understand.

 

[Trajanus]

Our brains, which evolved to help us find food on the African plains, are not constructed to penetrate all the enigmas on the infinite mathematical cloak of our universe."

Considering how far we've come since the food gatherer stage, this is too pessimistic. And who says the enigmas on the"mathematical cloak" are infinite?

 

[Ezechiel]

Our brains, which evolved to help us find food on the African plains, are not constructed to penetrate all the enigmas on the infinite mathematical cloak of our universe.

Sorry Boomerang.... But...

We've built impressive equipment that help us go way beyond our physical limitations and we are in the process of creating new tools that will deal with impossibly complex scenarios. Not to mention the research into neural implants that also will have the potential of boosting our mental capabilities. And the eventual quantum computer...

Whatever we think we need we'll build... And the more we build the more we can think of new things we need lol


.... I don't see any limits, we'll always construct stuff that can deal with these limitations. (ex..large hadron collider)

 

[boomerang]

Sorry Boomerang.... But...

We've built impressive equipment that help us go way beyond our physical limitations and we are in the process of creating new tools that will deal with impossibly complex scenarios. Not to mention the research into neural implants that also will have the potential of boosting our mental capabilities. And the eventual quantum computer...

Whatever we think we need we'll build... And the more we build the more we can think of new things we need lol


.... I don't see any limits, we'll always construct stuff that can deal with these limitations. (ex..large hadron collider)

Possibly true. Although by the time we evolve into a space faring species, we may come to resemble that fellow on the right.

 

[Ezechiel]

Possibly true. Although by the time we evolve into a space faring species, we may come to resemble that fellow on the right.

Strange that you raise that possibility. The creature on the right was engineered to be the ultimate biological weapon of mass destruction (Prometheus) capable of adapting to the most extreme environments. Our universe certainly is a place of extremes and we'll need to adapt if we are to propagate beyond this fragile planet. Who knows... Our eventual configuration might be something that looks like that creature

 

[Ezechiel]

NYT: Obama seeking to boost study of human brain - Technology & science - The New York Times | NBC News

Speaking of the devil ... timing is everything lol

The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Projectdid for genetics.
The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.

 

[5tomidnite]

NYT: Obama seeking to boost study of human brain - Technology & science - The New York Times | NBC News

Speaking of the devil ... timing is everything lol

Let me say it first. Cyber Zombies!!! Government created cyber zombies!! No free will for anyone. You know or something like that

 

[Ezechiel]

How researchers shaped the White House's brain-mapping initiative - Cosmic Log

BOSTON — The brain-mapping project that the Obama administration wants to facilitate isn't necessarily aimed at adding billions of dollars to the money already being spent on research, according to the scientists who inspired the idea. Instead, it's aimed at harnessing new technologies to uncover the secrets of neural function less expensively and more completely.

Uncovering the secrets of neural function? If our civilization is at that stage then we'll have the ultimate monitoring and control system... the development of neural boosters. True virtual reality becomes possible, the blind will walk the streets without the use or need of eyes (artificial stimulation of the optic nerve) .

MU-TH-UR 6000 will come alive as a neural network on a quantum computer linked to the internet will provide solutions to the fusion issues at NIF.

MU-TH-UR 6000 - Xenopedia - Aliens vs. Predator Wiki

 

[pickles]

Quite right, they would simply pull the demon card, saying any info from this source is from the Devil.

Even now the very possibility there might be ET's visiting (which logically puts a hole in the fundie pov) is regarded by them as "demonic".
Try telling a 4 year old santa claus isnt real, and the reaction will be "you're lying"
"This is deception not truth" is the instinctive reaction to an inconvenient fact

To the OP, i think its inevitable that an advanced species would have information that refutes and negates our own relatively primative views of the universe.

I think "is god real" would be one of the first questions we would have put to any ET emissary, in the various reported contact rumours that abound (Eisenhower et al)

And i speculate the answer would be no, since thats my personal view based on the evidence.

And thats just one scenario where we would bury the truth and try and keep it so for as long as possible

I always find it amusing when atheists fantasize about confirming their beliefs about nothingness to a group of bug-heads that presumably know everything about the universe, simply because they have neat spaceships.

And you say Christians will find a way towards justification?

 

[Ezechiel]

I always find it amusing when atheists fantasize about confirming their beliefs about nothingness to a group of bug-heads that presumably know everything about the universe, simply because they have neat spaceships.

And you say Christians will find a way towards justification?

Beliefs can be guides... When these beliefs are out of sync with common sense or scientific discoveries you're bound to lose credibility. A few hundred years ago you could put scientists behind bars or burn the mentally ill by branding them as witches. I think we've evolved a bit since then but the road is long