"Us"

[Babylon]

Let's get real momentarily, LB. Strap in, this will be a long ride.

You = An amalgamation of cells following a specific genetic code to create a human body. Within that body is a brain that contains a basic genetic program (basic fears, motor skills etc.), the program is able to arrange itself and develop based upon environmental stimuli.

Eventually over a long period of development, this program running in the community of cells, develops a sense of identity - and with that identity comes an illusion of self. Many call that illusion of self a "soul", more commonly we call it "me" or "I".

In reality this "I" is just an evolving wave flowing through a complex universe of which it is an integral part.

Death is the end of the coherence of that particular wave.

I loathe the concept that we are some special case in the universe that deserves such egotistical illusions like a cozy little afterlife when we die if we're good little boys, or a fiery pit of torment if we see coal in our stockings too many years in a row. All these shitty contrived egotistical attempts to justify the importance of your existence are futile, and frankly fucking idiotic.

The universe does not care if you live or die.

You are an animal, is there a squirrel heaven, or an ant heaven? Of course not, why would humans be different.

You live, you die, you decompose. Life goes on without you.

What happens when you die? Exactly what is happening right now, only you're not here. Same as before you were born. Do you have memories of before you were born? Did you give a fuck about your existence or fear the end of your non-existence before you were born? Of course not. You weren't alive.

Best you can hope for is to live in the memory of others.

Heaven is a fairytale for adults, it's one step away from the tooth fairy. The entire concept is egotistical almost to the point of megalomania. Some have used it to control others, others use it as a way to give meaning to their brutally meaningless lives.

The only things that seems to unify most "spiritual" beliefs - be them mainstream religions or personal spiritual musings - is that they tend to be

1 - Convenient to human desires.
2 - Pretty conceited and human centric
3 - Fanciful excuses to avoid basic human fears of insignificance and death.

Another question is why would a "god" create us in the first place? ESPECIALLY one that you believe to be omniscient (Christians.) This "god" figure would have already conceived every single possible outcome and decision one of us would make in our entire lives. He would have already known the exact moment he would have had the thought that sparked our creation in the first place. It would be totally POINTLESS. And if you subscribe to the "God was lonely" theory you're an illogical bastard, sorry to say. It would be no different from a mad-man locked in a cell wearing hand puppets and pretending he's now two people.

You would be the sock-puppet of an infinitely lonely deluded god, driven mad by his own isolation.

What a miserable meaning to life - it makes atheism seem positively peachy in comparison.

I think I'll stick to basic observations of what's going on out there in the real world. People get born, live, die. That's pretty much it.

There's a person who is going to be conceived in half an hour, then born in 9 months. Where are they now? Their "soul"?

There isn't one. They do not exist. The seeds of their body exist, which will be planted through sex and develop. Then once born, they will slowly develop a personality over many years through the programming of genetics and experience - until they reach a point where they feel that their personality is something special, a "soul". Easy mistake to make for a complicated bit of biological software that has developed in really subtle increments. All it's ever known is what it feels like to exist, because what else could it feel, it couldn't feel anything before it existed!

Death is the sudden end of a long slow development and evolving piece of biological software. When death arrives, the "person" becomes what it is right now, just bits and pieces in the universe.

Our "consciousness" is totally and massively complex. I think consciousness is just a word, and a misleading word at that - not an actual thing. It's a convenient label for what is basically one of the many illusions caused by being human.

One of the mistakes we humans make all the time is forgetting that language is not the same as reality, it's a tool to help describe reality.

People mistake the map for the terrain and then get all caught up in what are essentially linguistic traps.

"Consciousness", I would say, is an illusion, one that is compounded by us creating a label for it. At best it is an epiphenomenon of multiple brain systems working in tandem.

It's similar to the idea of free will. We 'feel' like we have it, but when you break it down, it's probably just another illusion. Not an illusion in the sense that someone is tricking us into seeing something, but an illusion in the sense that we, as a race, try desperately to find answers to everything. Want an answer to what is going to happen when we die? We have no clue, so lets create an afterlife! That's not complex enough, how about a god that made us all that runs that afterlife? Yeah that seems okay, but how about a religion that goes with that god and that afterlife to justify living like a good person? PERFECT! We try to give answers for everything, and when we can't we think of the best logical explanation, or in some cases, what we would LIKE to be the answer, we implement a solution.

I don't give a fuck who you are, you want there to be a nice little heaven to reside in when you die. You want there to be something more than nothingness, but there is literally nothing in our existence so far that has proven anything other than exactly that.


In short, we are egotistical fucks desperately grasping to give our meaningless lives meaning by creating illusions around us to comfort our existence, so that we don't swallow a shotgun barrel. It's pathetically poetic, and sadly necessary to most.

[Babylon]

Let's get real momentarily, LB. Strap in, this will be a long ride.

You = An amalgamation of cells following a specific genetic code to create a human body. Within that body is a brain that contains a basic genetic program (basic fears, motor skills etc.), the program is able to arrange itself and develop based upon environmental stimuli.

Eventually over a long period of development, this program running in the community of cells, develops a sense of identity - and with that identity comes an illusion of self. Many call that illusion of self a "soul", more commonly we call it "me" or "I".

In reality this "I" is just an evolving wave flowing through a complex universe of which it is an integral part.

Death is the end of the coherence of that particular wave.

I loathe the concept that we are some special case in the universe that deserves such egotistical illusions like a cozy little afterlife when we die if we're good little boys, or a fiery pit of torment if we see coal in our stockings too many years in a row. All these shitty contrived egotistical attempts to justify the importance of your existence are futile, and frankly fucking idiotic.

The universe does not care if you live or die.

You are an animal, is there a squirrel heaven, or an ant heaven? Of course not, why would humans be different.

You live, you die, you decompose. Life goes on without you.

What happens when you die? Exactly what is happening right now, only you're not here. Same as before you were born. Do you have memories of before you were born? Did you give a fuck about your existence or fear the end of your non-existence before you were born? Of course not. You weren't alive.

Best you can hope for is to live in the memory of others.

Heaven is a fairytale for adults, it's one step away from the tooth fairy. The entire concept is egotistical almost to the point of megalomania. Some have used it to control others, others use it as a way to give meaning to their brutally meaningless lives.

The only things that seems to unify most "spiritual" beliefs - be them mainstream religions or personal spiritual musings - is that they tend to be

1 - Convenient to human desires.
2 - Pretty conceited and human centric
3 - Fanciful excuses to avoid basic human fears of insignificance and death.

Another question is why would a "god" create us in the first place? ESPECIALLY one that you believe to be omniscient (Christians.) This "god" figure would have already conceived every single possible outcome and decision one of us would make in our entire lives. He would have already known the exact moment he would have had the thought that sparked our creation in the first place. It would be totally POINTLESS. And if you subscribe to the "God was lonely" theory you're an illogical bastard, sorry to say. It would be no different from a mad-man locked in a cell wearing hand puppets and pretending he's now two people.

You would be the sock-puppet of an infinitely lonely deluded god, driven mad by his own isolation.

What a miserable meaning to life - it makes atheism seem positively peachy in comparison.

I think I'll stick to basic observations of what's going on out there in the real world. People get born, live, die. That's pretty much it.

There's a person who is going to be conceived in half an hour, then born in 9 months. Where are they now? Their "soul"?

There isn't one. They do not exist. The seeds of their body exist, which will be planted through sex and develop. Then once born, they will slowly develop a personality over many years through the programming of genetics and experience - until they reach a point where they feel that their personality is something special, a "soul". Easy mistake to make for a complicated bit of biological software that has developed in really subtle increments. All it's ever known is what it feels like to exist, because what else could it feel, it couldn't feel anything before it existed!

Death is the sudden end of a long slow development and evolving piece of biological software. When death arrives, the "person" becomes what it is right now, just bits and pieces in the universe.

Our "consciousness" is totally and massively complex. I think consciousness is just a word, and a misleading word at that - not an actual thing. It's a convenient label for what is basically one of the many illusions caused by being human.

One of the mistakes we humans make all the time is forgetting that language is not the same as reality, it's a tool to help describe reality.

People mistake the map for the terrain and then get all caught up in what are essentially linguistic traps.

"Consciousness", I would say, is an illusion, one that is compounded by us creating a label for it. At best it is an epiphenomenon of multiple brain systems working in tandem.

It's similar to the idea of free will. We 'feel' like we have it, but when you break it down, it's probably just another illusion. Not an illusion in the sense that someone is tricking us into seeing something, but an illusion in the sense that we, as a race, try desperately to find answers to everything. Want an answer to what is going to happen when we die? We have no clue, so lets create an afterlife! That's not complex enough, how about a god that made us all that runs that afterlife? Yeah that seems okay, but how about a religion that goes with that god and that afterlife to justify living like a good person? PERFECT! We try to give answers for everything, and when we can't we think of the best logical explanation, or in some cases, what we would LIKE to be the answer, we implement a solution.

I don't give a fuck who you are, you want there to be a nice little heaven to reside in when you die. You want there to be something more than nothingness, but there is literally nothing in our existence so far that has proven anything other than exactly that.


In short, we are egotistical fucks desperately grasping to give our meaningless lives meaning by creating illusions around us to comfort our existence, so that we don't swallow a shotgun barrel. It's pathetically poetic, and sadly necessary to most.