Lasty

Make sure I have a protective case for my glasses. Also, stock up on extra sets of glasses. There WILL be time...

I'm an agnostic, like everyone who looks at things scientifically. Atheists are the same as theists at least insofar as they claim to have definitive answers about things we cannot test for presently. What I've got is a set of hypotheses... hypotheses based on my experience. It tends to lean toward atheism, but some of my grand scheme of things ideas aren't exactly in holding with the notion that this physical reality and this universe are all there is, or death means an infinite nothingness for eternity. I just find that just because there's more to the picture doesn't mean that the parts of reality we can't see (most of it) are more or less special than we are in any way.

Would you have to spell it again after the first time? Who is rearranging your fridge magnets? gasp! It's a g-g-g-GHO oh wait we just came from there... >___>

inb4 repercussions

Koans are a kind of reverse psychology, as far as I can tell. If you just explain the proposition directly, it usually confuses people. If you ask a student a stupid question and they try to answer it seriously, they didn't know it was a stupid question, revealing their stupidity. Then they sarcastically avoid the issue until the student arrives at the logical conclusion by way of process of elimination. It's faster than the western method of repeatedly pointing to the thing itself as far as philosophical understanding goes, but western science has changed the world more in the last 50 years than the amount of change that has occurred throughout the rest of human history combined. Granted, not all for the better, but most. What we screwed up we can fix. If you point at the moon and someone mistakes your finger for the moon, just grab their head and point it at the moon while pointing, or point at objects they already know while naming them until they wrap their head around the concept of pointing, then point at the moon.

I don't know, and neither do you. Questions that require evidence we will never be able to collect are what I like to call stupid questions. ^__^

Sure, that's not totally in holding with my evolutionary trap hypothesis. You're definitely not afflicted by a culturally ingrained association of lack of faith = death. I grew up being psychologically tormented by Christians for not going to church. I can see very clearly how your perspective is more based on social stigma than it is on evidence. Your anecdotal report of enhanced mental health is a placebo that hurts more people than it helps at this stage in history. Superstition is a plague on mankind that dramatically decreases everyone's quality of life. If you need something to believe in, you should start with yourself, because that's all you'll ever have.

I felt too sorry for the ghost with no magnets for that to matter.

I don't see as how reality requires a purpose in order to exist. That seems like a projection of human behavior, why would a person make something without a reason for it? Just because people have reasons for making things doesn't mean reality at large has the same variety of purpose we attribute to sum of our efforts within the scope of our senses and our world. I believe that reality is exponentially, infinitely larger (and smaller) than we can begin to fathom, but that doesn't give any of that stuff we can't see any intrinsic purpose. Back in the dark ages, people had no choice but to believe no matter how much evidence indicated they were all going to die horribly. That belief was a placebo that prevented people from panicking which would have brought about the demise of society at that time on top of all the other issues they faced. A lot of this believer stuff is just left over evolutionary behavioral adaptions from that time, an evolutionary trap. The main issue I have with the notion of intrinsic purpose is that it is not falsifiable.

A creator isn't necessary for that series of unlikely events. Our universe is a big place that has been around a long time. Given enough space and time, all possibilities become inevitable. Just because it happened to us doesn't imply that we are special or that anyone's imaginary friend is real.

Sure, why not. It definitely had nothing to do with the gun in my face.

This is why they don't count...

What is that from? Those ships look like lice, gross

They don't count...

Why not any aliens older than that? It's not at all unreasonable, and if that were the case, we should be able to see something... another explanation is that we have seen aliens and it's being kept secret because it would indicate that the great filter is ahead of us and we're screwed and they just don't want people to panic:

Needs more sex and explosions. ... I kid, I kid. It's a cute story that makes me think about how things change all the time and not necessarily with satisfactory resolutions.

I don't know why this reminded me of The Indian in the Cupboard.

GO HOAM

some kind of periodic galaxy wide event that wipes out all intelligent life?

There are latte flavored oreos?

Zeni's shtick is being a wanker, and appropriating someone else's shtick is in keeping with that...

There's also the atmosphere. Being the right distance away from the sun for liquid water to form. Stars being a great enough distance from each other for us to not get hit by errant gamma ray bursts... etcetera. if you measure it all up, the odds of us being here at all so inordinately slim that you can't help but be at least a little grateful for the infinitesimally tiny sliver of time you get to exist. Go hug your mom

YES, NOW START ENABLING ME BEFORE I INTERNET FLIP OUT

I ALREADY SAID I am not going to test this personally.

I am foreseeing something more like sheer volume of marbles creating enough pressure to at least crack a marble, which would still be pretty bad if it cut you.