son of bitch! i just got jacked! i’m buying a gun so this doesn’t happen again.
there’s a five day e-waiting period.
…fine. This is gunna be a long story, so keep with me.
This summer was the first and only time I’ve done mushrooms. Whenever you experience a drug you’ve never taken before, you tend to sit there for awhile going “am I really feeling it yet?” The first time I got stoned, my friend Dave used to still live with his parents out in the country. So we snuck out when everyone was in bed out to near the woods and smoked out of a pipe. I wasn’t sure if I was “doing it” right until we had been staring at the trees in the dark for probably 10 minutes straight without saying a word. I kept picturing the tree creatures from LOTR. Anywho, mushrooms was more extreme for me. We ate some and waited 20 minutes and then basically ate the rest of the bag. So finally a half hour after eating some, I started to feel something. Just kind of stoned at first, but over time it became much more psychological. I started to think all kinds of weird thoughts and philosophies–my ex, who I ate them with, is a philosophy major so I was just starting to get into philosophy. After about an hour of listening to music I got up to piss, and as soon as I stood up I just said “woah!” in the most hilarious voice because I was overcome with feelings of connection with the universe and the Earth. After I came back from pissing I was laughing like an idiot with a new philosophy for my ex. “What if…” I began, trying not to sound like some idiot tripping on shrooms, “…what if the universe began when God got up to take a piss and he suddenly realized ‘woah! The fact that I just had a thought about getting up to piss means I exist and the universe was created in that instant!’” I remember at the time thinking it was a brilliant theory–the universe comes into being when god has his/her/its first thought, specifically about having to go piss–but of course once I wasn’t tripping anymore it was just dumb.
greg that is brilliant!
that is perhaps the funniest philosophy that i have ever heard! and it does make some sense. we exist when we are conscious. but i wonder if God created us after pissing, or he created us from his piss???
It’s a cross between Descartes philosophy and Sartre’s mescaline trip of 1935. This is brilliant. I’m not kidding. Do more 'shrooms and give us another report.
The only problem is a majority of the Big Bang theory is to explain how the Universe was created…not really how life on Earth was created. But, like is said above, there’s VERY circumstancial evidence on the “life on Earth” part of it isn’t very well explained or tested and thus can’t really be a theory. There’s really no true except theories on life.
I’m also with whoever said that philosophy is not a science. I’m a very literal person so I don’t have much use for philosophy and motivational speak and all that stuff since I rarely see it apply to everyday life nowadays. But that’s me…I’m sure many folks have attained great help in life from philosophy…I’m just not sure if it’s a science.
And I LOVED Greg’s theory. Fantastic stuff. I also like how he said that he took shrooms and they didn’t work so he took more. I did the exact same thing the first time I tried them…it must have been almost an HOUR after I took them before I felt anything but I kept taking more so once it hit it hit HARD. I was high as a kite and loving every minute of it. All I can remember was laughing alot and making some sort of “Taco Bell MotherFucker” joke that no one found funny but me. Ahhhh, college.
Stevo
Maybe it’s just me but I think that phrase “Taco Bell Motherfucker” is hilarious.
Thats a great phrase. I am laughing out loud.
That was really the whole joke. I think I was talking about what i had for dinner and yelled that.
Greg I think your much closer than your think…
I recently read an article about the ID controversy and if I ever find some time I’ll participate in this thread a little more… peeee-ace…
So lets see what I can come up with here concerning ID… what I’m writing is paraphased or word-for-word from an article. I havn’t read the thread so apologies for any repeat ideas…
Basically anti-evolution in America is a persistent rather than resurgent phenomenon. It ebbs and flows. The reason there is an increase in anti-evolution is due to the recent lobbying power of ID proponents.
ID derives from an English clergyman, William Paley who, in 1802 worte, if you found a watch in a field you would infer that so fine and intricate a mechanism could not have been produced by unplanned, unguided natural forces; it could’ve only been made by an intelligent being. This view-that the complexity of an organism is evidence for the existence of God-prevailed until 1859 when Darwin introduced “Origin of Species”.
Todays proponents of ID are renewing Paleys argument with a new gloss from molecular biology. Darwin himself acknowledged that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” In other words if something could be shown to come into being without a cause or causes then evolution would be bunk… but this is not the case with any perceived phenomena… all things have causes.
IDers claim that living things are full of such examples on a molecular level. For instance blood clotting happens due to ten protiens that have to work in sequence for the process to occur. So you have complex systems that will work only if all the components perform at once. They argue that such a thing could not happen from “successive, slight modifications” hence such complexities are evidence of an intelligent designer- God.
Since ID usually comes down to “God” it is rejected by the science community. IDs claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own.
Scientists also point out that IDs examples of “irreducible complexity” are not. Some organisims, for example, use only six protiens to clot blood- irreducibility reduced. In other cases, single parts of a complex mechanism turn out to have useful functions of their own, which shows it could have been produced by step-by-step evolution.
Still ID has won significant following among the general public. Many with strong beliefs naturally reject evolution, it makes them question their beliefs and feel uncomfortable. ID fits nicely with many of their views, that God has a divine plan etc… In short religious Americans who find evolution distasteful are jumping at the chance to teach an alternative that claims to be science.
In the end ID is likely to damage science teaching. This is due to the unwillingness of state Boards of Education to offend any sort of pressure group, instead they avoid controversial topics altogether. Hence teachings like evolution are not taught well or in full and students suffer from candy-coated fluffy teaching.
greg, i think it was you at that exact moment that realized the world and YOU made everything, including a false past we all remember.
interesting post goldphish… do you know the title of the article or the publication… sounds like a good read.
This could go in ghosts “signs of life” thread as I’m in PA for a wedding and found this article in a mag on the coffee table. Anyway its a magazine called “The Economist” July 30-Aug 5 05 issue. This mag has a bunch of articles about many different topics… interesting to find this informative article about the ID thing.
heres a link but its not the whole article as you need to log in or whatever…
you know, halfway through it i totally forgot what we were talking about.
i’m still not entirely sure, but i don’t think i really want to be.
Anyone see “Last Comic Standing” recently? There was a woman in Montreal, and yes I realize I am bringing comedians into this discussion, but I just found it funny. Basically she said that Evolution/Science v. Intelligent Design was like two people having different conversations.
Sci- You see, the sun has complex reactions of hydrogen and helium going on inside it producing heat.
ID- Interesting point, but…I feel like a sunbeam is like a giant hug…from Jesus.
This proves nothing other than she probably wouldn’t be an ID teacher soon, but , ya know, you gotta laugh sometimes.
The silly thing about creationists is they don’t realize that creationism and evolution can exist at the same time. One isn’t mutually exclusive of the other. It’s certainly possible for a higher being to create life and then have that life evolve into something else.
^Exactly. God could have created the universe and all of the life inhabiting it with a “big bang” and designed it to evolve. I mean, how could that idea be completly bashed. No one knows for sure, other than what they feel in their hearts. No offence to anyone, but I think it is closed-minded to completly turn your back on this idea. There is no proof denying it!
OK, so some folks (ex: southern baptists) are pretty radical about bashing these ideas, as are atheists and so on, so it makes all these folks look wrong and “stupid”. That’s exactly what closed-mindedness is. If you peice it together, it actually makes a lot of sense. I mean, look how intricately the world works. Look at how our bodies work. It’s all very complex. I just can’t bring myself to think that this just happened. I strongly believe that we were created by a higher being in a very complex and super-genius way.
Look outside at the trees and fields! Think about everything you think is beautiful. Think about love. That’s why I feel in my heart that there is something more than us just being here, we just aren’t intelligent enough to really grasp something that large and complex.
I guess you just can’t know until you feel the actual presence of this higher thing. Everytime I look up and see a blue sky through breezy trees, I feel it.
I’ve had some very hard times in life, especially during my early teen years. It was a very bad situation, but I’ve always relied on this being to help me help myself to get through it. And I always have. Call me stupid or ignorant or whatever, but that’s what helps me get through life at the highest possible happiness that I can.
I am happy and have always been, and I owe it to this thought. Like I said, none of us truly know, but that’s what I feel and I believe there’s no wrong in true feelings of happiness.
[2 cents]
Here are some thoughts from Mr. Aldous Huxley:
“All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.”
“Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.”