Science evolves. However, science has never sought to explain subjective mental experience.
Birth of Jesus - Christmas
- Thread starter Cypress
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Daylight63
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No doubt. We took it all to an industrial level. Thanks to our advanced abilities to create technology. But it couldn't have happened without millennia of working our way up the ladder. I bet in the 21st century we can do a lot more!
And I'm not denying that. I'm just pointing out that what you might call "fate" with a smile countless pagans called getting killed by a violent invader to their lands and being forced to take the religion of the invader.
I'm not saying I don't like Western Civ. I'm just sayin' that it's hard to call it fate just because it wound up with me several hundred years later being happy to live in the West.
(Also: I don't tend to believe in supernatural magical forces to account for actions in the real world, but that's my philosophy, not necessarily everyone's)
In many cases we most certainly CAN know what motivated some people like Charlemagne and Alexander the Great. It was pursuit of power and control. No big mystery there!
Even the great "saints" like Olaf who beat the pagan Vikings into submission and made them Christians at the point of a sword (all irony aside), it's probably NOT that Olaf really cared a lot about saving the souls of the Vikings so much as gaining control of the people of Norway at that time.
Clearly I don't believe in supernatural forces like "destiny". But I understand that many do.
Oh we most assuredly CAN do so. It's actually something we can observe in other animals as they fight to control their habitat and defend it from others, or to pursue resources in areas they don't currently control.
It's almost the most BASIC of biology to explain all of this.
Daylight63
Verified User
There is a LOT of very interesting work in this area you can find and read about. It is far more in-depth than you seem to be familiar with. Some pretty cool experiments and data to be enjoyed.
I highly recommend poking around in the area of neuroscience. It's pretty cool. We know more than your oversimplified cartoon explanations would indicate.
I don't think free will is superceded by destiny. Alexander the Great may have had an intrinsic desire to rule the known world and to spread Hellenic culture to the far corners. He doesn't seem destined to have just played it safe and just enjoyed court life in Macedon.
But he still had to choose to take the massive risk of declaring war on the Persian Empire, and convince his Greek and Macedonian aristocratic peers to follow him.
Daylight63
Verified User
Wrong. WE may not be able to explain it fully or in great detail but there are QUITE A FEW researchers working on this stuff and have been for decades.
Seriously. It's some cool stuff. Unsettling, but very interesting.
There are zero legitimate scientists on the planet who can explain to me at the level of biology and chemistry what set apart Alexander the Great, Isaac Newton, or Abraham Lincoln as people of great ability and destiny compared to their forgotten peers of equal educational and social status.
And science never will explain those things because it would not be science.
Daylight63
Verified User
Ah, so this is a bit more limited than the original claim.
Doesn't change the FACT that scientists are a LOT further along on all this stuff than you seem to be familiar with. I honestly suggest you dig into this stuff. It's pretty amazing. Probably not science you are familiar with but the cool thing is there's enough real science out there that some authors have started to write for a layperson's level of understanding.
Daylight63
Verified User
Why not?
It does not explain subjective states of human mind.
Daylight63
Verified User
Give me the names of the scientists who can adequately explain at the level of neurological biology and chemistry what set Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill apart from their equivalently educated social peers in terms of capability, vision, and destiny.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
That's exactly my point; rational people have the ability to make rational choices. Results count and Alexander's results were pretty impressive.
According to historians, his death was equally impressive. Partly due to ignorance of people in ancient times.
Alexander the Great Died Mysteriously at 32. Now We May Know Why | HISTORY
“His death may be the most famous case of pseudothanatos, or false diagnosis of death, ever recorded.”
www.history.com
To the ancient Greeks, this confirmed what they all thought about the young Macedonian king, and what Alexander believed about himself—that he was not an ordinary man, but a god...
...But in one theory, a scholar and practicing clinician suggests that Alexander may have suffered from the neurological disorder Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), which caused his death. She also argues that people might not have noticed any immediate signs of decomposition on the body for one simple reason—because Alexander wasn’t dead yet.
As Dr. Katherine Hall, a senior lecturer at the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, New Zealand, wrote in a 2018 article published in The Ancient History Bulletin, most other theories of what killed Alexander have focused on the agonizing fever and abdominal pain he suffered in the days before he died.
In fact, she points out, he was also known to have developed a “progressive, symmetrical, ascending paralysis” during his illness. And though he was very sick, he remained compos mentis (fully in control of his mental faculties) until just before his death....
...While historians have long speculated over what exactly killed Alexander, Hall suggests he might not even have died when people thought he did.
She argues that the increasing paralysis Alexander suffered, as well as the fact that his body needed less oxygen as it shut down, would have meant that his breathing was less visible. Because in ancient times, doctors relied on the presence or absence of breath, rather than a pulse, to determine whether a patient was alive or dead, Hall believes Alexander might have been falsely declared dead before he actually died.
"I wanted to stimulate new debate and discussion and possibly rewrite the history books by arguing Alexander's real death was six days later than previously accepted,” Hall said in a statement from the University of Otago. “His death may be the most famous case of pseudothanatos, or false diagnosis of death, ever recorded.”
Possibly, but we don't know that.
We might need an entirely new scientific discipline for consciousness. Something we haven't conceived of yet.
We didn't have a science of chemistry 300 years ago, and we really didn't know the boundaries of our ignorance until the discipline of chemistry evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Margot
Verified User
I can't answer for God, I started my journey with the early Russian winter ! But as for the Holocaust , I'm in the dark, when it comes to the Jews ,he keeps that to himself,at least in my case.
Margot
Verified User
At that time 1789 slavery had been common for thousands of years. It's to bad The founding fathers could eliminate it then and there,but it was already wide spread in the Southern colonies
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Exactly. No slavery, no "We, the People". Nothing is perfect. The Founders knew about compromise. Modern American Congressional Critters? Not so much.
Margot
Verified User
The Bible reported on what was happening in the ancient world.
Slavery,murder,rape,every kind of crime is in the Old Testament is reported,that doesn't mean it was condoned.
Margot
Verified User
Modern American Congress nows about compromise,they just want to win for their side,and "We the People" can go fuck ourselves.
Like your old friend Lincoln said! "A house divided"!
Margot
Verified User
Chemistry has ways to expand the mind!