This is a picture of Earth. Yes. If you look very carefully and closely, you'd see it. Just below the center line, on the right side, bathed in sunbeam. Yes, it's that speck of dust.

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”�

Carl Sagan (astronomer)

I saw this at another thread and thought it would generate some interesting discussions here. What do you all think of this picture?

I prefer this one:


Looks alive compared to a speck of dust.

what are we supposed to think of that picture?

also when i clicked the title of the thread i genuinely thought i was going to be faced with this for some reason:

It can all be very disappointing....

Taken from "Myth of Freedom" by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

This is the actual talk, Disappointmenr, from which the above was taken...

To me, if this is all there is, it underscores our complete and total LACK of responsibility.

When I see a statement like this I read it as "I'm a sociopath and the only reason I stay in line is because because of god or desire of an afterlife." Now I don't actually think that's true of you but can you explain how you come to the opinion above? I'm confused why thinking that the Earth and our lives here are the only things we have, and ever WILL have, lowers its value.

It doesn't. But if you present a picture whose sole message, really, is to vividly present our insignificance in the grander scheme of things, it's somewhat contrived to extract from it "our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another." In a sense, you're mixing means and message.

Going by the apparent insignificance of us, and earth, as presented by the picture, what would be logical is to conclude that we should just LOLhookers'n'blow.

Sure. But it seems equally contrived to extract from that picture our lack of responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another.

There is nothing "logical" about this derivation. There is some cultural assumptions about how humans are evil without a god to punish them and the picture maybe makes people think god isn't watching them that closely. But that has nothing to do with logic.

I would assume that NR was making a somewhat rhetorical point there...

I'm fairly confident that NotReady was expressing his actual view, if you mean to indicate otherwise by calling it a "rhetorical point."

Ok.

Those two posts should go in the "Are all religious less Kantianly moral than atheists?" thread.

If God doesn't exist we are the inexplicable by-product of irrational forces in a universe that is doomed and before that death has no explanation or meaning. I don't see how you get responsibility from that. I think Nietzsche was right - if God is dead all is permitted - and I've seen no non-theistic answer to that.

As long as you admit that some people (and even a few animals) for whatever reason derive happiness from doing good, and that other people (and possibly even a few animals) are in the short run unselfish because it benefits them in the long run, I don't see how anyone can disagree with you.

Speaking of Sagan, I was just browsing through some of his quotes and came across this gem:

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

Why is that a gem? Because of another concept he constantly promoted, as in this quote from Contact:

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”

If you like apple pie, how can the space be wasted?

The above is full of drivel and preconceived notions and premises, and lies.

The universe is not doomed, that is some preconceived notion that you have personally put some spin on to justify your own beliefs.

Forces are not irrational or rational. They simply exist. F=MA. U-235 decays at a fixed rate by particle decay. The same goes for life or death or physical changes by immutable laws; of humans, other animals, solar systems, stars, or supernova.

Nietzsche wrote much that was interesting and poetical (and much that was not) but that does not make anything he said necessarily true. Or even smart.

I’ll reword your post to something more justified and reasonable:

A conjured up X doesn’t exist and we are still a product of forces in a universe that we are still trying to fathom and understand.

Re the Sagan quote. I don't know the context of it but remember Contact was a novel.

The idea in the quote was a constant Sagan theme.

Wha?

Pretty much equivalent to irrational - or if you prefer, non-rational, which in this context equates to the same thing.

I did some further research on this and couldn't find anywhere Sagan said it except Contact. I was under the impression he had but can't find it. I don't think that because the idea is in a novel means Sagan didn't endorse it. He wasn't writing literature but was using fiction to promote his worldview.

The idea is used by others, primarily as an argument for the existence of ETs, and I think Sagan himself endorsed the argument. At any rate, whatever Sagan believed about it, he provides one answer himself in the apple pie quote.

The modern cosomological understanding is much more extreme than what is expressed in that picture. No SUSY was found at the LHC ( at least the Higgs boson was found ) so the multiverse hypothesis is a strong candidate. Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin at Stanford have calculated ( see: http://www.technologyreview.com/view...he-multiverse/ ) the number of universes in the multiverse as ~ 10^10^10^7.

At the other extreme, string theory or M-theory implies matter and energy is made up of strings, so strings are considered important. Thus, size isn't what makes something significant.

It's conceivable that the physical multiverse has infinitely many universes, so one has to consider what's so special about human beings? First, they (collectively) are able to comprehend the universe ( and many subjects: notably, mathematics, physics and philosophy ) quite profoundly and the brightest often expect to comprehend the universe ( esp. cosmology or physics ) or mathematics at a very deep level. [ The obvious question is then, why should one expect this to be the case? ] Second, human beings ( at least some ) exhibit an understanding of morality or ethics to a great extent and some have a good understanding of relationships. Third, they ( esp. humans that can relate well with other human beings ) are able to cooperate effectively in the development, organization and maintenance of institutions/systems ( government, health-care system, education, etc. ) whose ( ideal ) purpose is quite often for the good of or the "progress" of humanity.

The common theistic answer of why human beings are special is that the "image of the Divine Being" ( or some "weakening" of the characteristics thereof ) is manifested in humanity.

This is an argument for deism.

First, you are actually (kind of) quoting Ivan Karamozov here, not Nietzsche. Second, as ever, you just don't get the views of the Existentialists right (this is because you can only think of humans as slaves). Sartre says this in response to those who claim that without god it doesn't matter what we do: "When I confront a real situation – for example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to have children – I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity."

It is only because you conceive of moral responsibility as having to derive from some master commanding you--or some heavenly sphere of values--that you think that when atheistic existentialists like Nietzsche and Sartre deny the existence of such a realm that they are denying moral responsibility itself. This is like reading half a sentence only. In fact, they believed very much in a kind of moral responsibility, enough so that they claimed that it was Christianity that denied real responsibility (see Nietszche claiming that Christianity led to nihilism and Sartre claiming that it was a form of bad faith).

If you want to say that as a matter of fact there is no morality or moral responsibility, fine. But that isn't what NotReady is claiming. He is claiming that we have two options: God or nihilism. That is obviously false and to claim otherwise betrays both ignorance and a lack of imagination.

For instance, if Plato's Forms are real, then morality + moral responsibility exists. If Aristotle is right, and teleology is somehow hardbaked into the world, then morality, etc. exists. If Kant is right about the autonomy of reason and the nature of morality, then we are morally responsible for our actions. And so on.

None of these views require the existence of a god. And none of them, at least so far as I can see, are any less likely to be true than the story of a divine creator who gives us rules on how to live.

Now, there are some arguments that none of these speculative systems are sufficient to justify a real morality. These arguments have more or less plausibility in each case. However, once we start worrying about that we have to just as much worry about the same--usually stronger--kinds of arguments about whether god can justify a real morality.

We are all animals who do what makes us feel good. (That may or may not include doing nice things for others). The only exceptions occurs when, unlike animals, we realize that temporary feeing bad is likely to result in more feeling good in the future. Religious people include the afterlife in the future. I see no reason to try to complicate the above near tautology with the thoughts of Kant, Nietsche, Sartre, or anyone else who probably wouldn't have been smart enough to become world class physicists.