When are we going to stop ignoring the proof?

[jewel]

Sado masochism at its finest.

"I can see nothing in life to glorify; I can see nothing in life to justify an intelligent, decent being in awakening a piece of senseless clay, and implanting in it feelings, emotions, hopes, and then make it clay again. I can see nothing in life to compensate for all the misery and suffering that is incident to the human race."
Darrow.

The pollyannas cannot see beyond the delusion of birth. We are all born into bodies of clay.

[jewel]

The whole purpose of life is to replicate itself time and again. We are just meat machines at the end of the day. It truly is a gladiator war and we are all in the arena

phpBB [video]

[newcastle]

The whole purpose of life is to replicate itself time and again. We are just meat machines at the end of the day. It truly is a gladiator war and we are all in the arena

phpBB [video]

That's certainly my take on "the meaning of life"

What's the betting those of "faith" have a different perception

[Zooropa]

I'm reminded of the old joke about women saying the pain of childbirth is worse than a kick in the balls.

Then, after a year or so they say..."It would be nice to have another one"

Something you won't hear from the man on the receiving end of a kick to the balls.

Q.E D.

Apples and pears my dear Newcastle - there is nothing to be gained by being kicked in the balls.

There is no natural instinct planted there by thousands and millions of years of evolution to want and desire a kick in the balls.

The continuation of the species is not dependant on you being kicked in the balls - if it were, then like a lot of women, im sure you are of the right calibre to step up to the plate

[Zooropa]

The whole purpose of life is to replicate itself time and again. We are just meat machines at the end of the day. It truly is a gladiator war and we are all in the arena

phpBB [video]

That's certainly my take on "the meaning of life"

What's the betting those of "faith" have a different perception

The meaning of life is to suffer in his holy lords service until thy day of judgement and your ticket into shakari.

[newcastle]

I'm reminded of the old joke about women saying the pain of childbirth is worse than a kick in the balls.

Then, after a year or so they say..."It would be nice to have another one"

Something you won't hear from the man on the receiving end of a kick to the balls.

Q.E D.

Apples and pears my dear Newcastle - there is nothing to be gained by being kicked in the balls.

There is no natural instinct planted there by thousands and millions of years of evolution to want and desire a kick in the balls.

The continuation of the species is not dependant on you being kicked in the balls - if it were, then like a lot of women, im sure you are of the right calibre to step up to the plate

As I reach my dotage I am increasingly convinced that a 'kick in the balls' - applied to the appropriate testicles - would indeed be a positive move towards the continuation of our species. The testicles of people like the Pope (for which read any dogmatic religious leader of influence).....certain industrialists....and politicians too legion to list

[Bullet Magnet]

Now then Jewel, What does Buddah say about change ?

ThereIN lies the answer to your problem...

[Dusak]

Over the years, life has taught me many a time that a verbal kick in the little fellas can be just as painful as a physical one. The one difference being is that the pain associated with the former can last much longer.

[jewel]

Buddha is quite right BM except that he looks for a meaning and reason to life...which of course as I have said does not exist, it is merely to replicate. As David Benatar states in his book 'Better Never to Have Been'.


On the subject of Benatar's Asymmetry and 'Better Never to Have Been', from my experience of many years of this existence the bad has ALWAYS outweighed the good. Not only from the daily dribble of horrific news reports from around the world of natural calamities, wars, conflicts and the suffering inflicted on animals, but also my own personal experiences.

The Killing Fields of Cambodia, Gallipoli and Auschwitz, the markets of Vietnam, the slaughter of pigs in Bali, cock-fighting in the Philippines, the torture of a turtle on Flores, as well as many random acts of cruelty and chance which lead to horrendous pain and misery.

I know of only two people personally who have had a half decent life. One, a barrister succeeded in his profession through hard graft and his own intelligence, though he did have the support of well to do and loving parents. The other managed to slowly climb the corporate ladder without going completely insane and has done quite well for himself.
That is not to say these guys haven't had any **** in their lives, but they've 'Risen Above It' I suppose. Of course there is no way to guarantee that as they grow older the **** won't hit their fan and they won't be able to wash it away so easily.

Now let us come to the other 99%. I know of people who have attempted and committed suicide, one who has been murdered, one raped, those who have died from cancer, bronchitis, pneumonia, strokes, a viral infection, road and other accidents, and as to old age, the conditions are mind boggling. Then there are the ailments and diseases you don't die of, well not immediately, including diabetes, pancreatitis, heart, respiratory and digestive problems.

And while you are still alive, there is the drudgery of work, of being a wage slave, of kowtowing to the factory owners, of being a number, a cog in the machine of existence, only to be spat out at the end onto a pile of redundant and obsolescent parts.
So are we to glorify our lives, to be deluded into thinking its all roses, rainbows and unicorns, without the thorns, storms and horns to puncture our little bubbles of self conceited nonchalance. Or should we stand up and be counted and say 'Better Never to Have Been', Life is a Bum Steer.
http://utilitarianism.com/benatar/index.html

"Nature tricked man into life: she lied to him and cheated him and defrauded him and tricked him so that life would be born everlastingly upon the earth. And when man is intelligent enough to learn the cheat, and the fraud and the lie, and to control it, then the race is going to die."
Clarence Darrow


"For life IS Jeffrey Dahmer. Life eventually dopes us, strangles us, tears the flesh from our bones, ***** our every orifice, drills into our minds, and ultimately eats us up and throws our remains out with the trash. I love my children with every fibre of my being. But I hate myself even more for ever bringing them into existence."
Jim Crawford (Confessions of an Antinatalist)

[Scottishtourist]

I disagree with you Jewel.
You have no right to dictate to people with regards to the size of their families.

Do you have any idea of the pleasure a family brings?Children,grand-children?They're an extension of YOU!

They can be any religion they want,have any beliefs they want..but the one fact remains that they are somehow connected with YOU..and their love is unconditional!

Animals?Well yes,ok.They're loving,affectionate and somewhat cute.But..they ain't human.They have no emotion,no soul.They'll revert to "wild"that's their nature!

I'm very proud of fact I've gone through labour three times and have 3 children to carry on their dad's name.

They're comfort to me..and so well adjusted that I sometimes stop in my tracks and wonder what I did right!!

[jewel]

We all have the right to our opinions ST . I happen to believe that being childfree is the moral responsible choice,
As I never asked to be born,life was imposed upon me, why would I wish to force existence on another poor being without consent? I am not that selfish.
An extension of me? No, thanks...

Parents are control freaks, they force a life into existence and then reign over it, give it orders, expectations, and eventually the "life" dies. Parents are slave drivers, Fascists, & murderers. I equate parenthood to a Nazi regime, parents are Hitlers.
Natalism and Nazism are the same thing, as expounded by Hitler's Lebensborn policies.


I realise that many breeders wish to have a child to fulfil their egocentric narcissism.
Everybody wants a kid, just not the pain of birth, pain of carrying the baby, the expenses of caring for a child, the time off they have to take to raise it, they don't want the expenses of feeding a child, schooling thing child, don't want the child to get sick, hope the kid is smart enough to not do drugs...... But everybody wants a kid.

Humans are just animals...another species that's all.
Anyone who has looked into the eyes of an animal or heard their cries will realise that they do have emotions, they are sentient beings just like the human animal.i don't want any more animals to die by humans consuming or wearing them.

All species reproduce there's nothing to it.... the results of the act of copulation. Personally I don't think it's very classy to abuse your body like that.

[Scottishtourist]

I've watched these nature programmes Jewel.
I've seen how the animals protect their young!

They look after them,then abandon them to a life in the wild.

So what's the difference with human mammals?I'll tell you in my own words.We have LOVE,we share emotions.We don't just look after our young.Any responsible parent will love,care for and nurture their young until adulthood!

We won't abandon them to the wild at a very young age.We will protect and even in some extreme cases,KILL for them.

Show me an animal who will do this for their young...they're few and far between!

We may be of the same species..but humans take the upper hand,and have a brain that works in a completely different way to the animal kingdom.

[jewel]

Wow ST!

Humans are supposed to have intelligence? But this isn't apparent in the way they keep breeding. To condemn another life to existence is entirely thoughtless and selfish in the extreme when you consider it.

“The idea of struggle is as old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle… In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle… If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won.” Hitler’s speech at Kulmbach 5/2/1928

This is the struggle of Gladiator wars.

David Attenborough ( an antinatalist) depicted this sorry story in a recent programme.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... -courtship

Reproduction is the most irresponsible act that a human can do. Nothing is more immature and irresponsible than breeding a human into existence.
And yet, most people do it without thinking about the consequences.

There are many cases reported of children abused and killed by their parents, it is very prevalent.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... order.html

Child sexual abuse ( incest ) is common in families also, just giving birth is abusive, condemning that child to a lifetime of suffering, as no matter how you gloss it over that is what it is, with death the final outcome.
The victims of this abuse not only become emotionally stupid, but they also become sexualized and sexually active. The combination of sex, material wealth, and psychopathology leads to overpopulation and environmental destruction, conditions that are about to destroy humanity and life on earth.

Adults sexually abused as children tend to lose emotional intelligence and only care about their momentary needs. What happens in the future makes no difference.

If a couple feels like adding another child to the family, the immediate desire wins. The woman becomes pregnant with another child, and sometimes with more than one. The couple's immediacy of thought also results in focus on self.

When confronted with overpopulation, the couple thinks: What is the big deal? We are only having our third child. One more child on earth will make no difference in the overall population. The couple fails to understand that the earth has a billion of other families with the same mentality. Is it a crime to have a second, third, fourth, or fifth child? Apparently not.

Other species do have very close bonds, you have to look no further than dolphins, elephants, primates to see examples, there are many more.
But at the end of the day it comes down to Gladiator wars whatever the species it is all the same.

[newcastle]

I've watched these nature programmes Jewel.
I've seen how the animals protect their young!

They look after them,then abandon them to a life in the wild.

So what's the difference with human mammals?I'll tell you in my own words.We have LOVE,we share emotions.We don't just look after our young.Any responsible parent will love,care for and nurture their young until adulthood!

We won't abandon them to the wild at a very young age.We will protect and even in some extreme cases,KILL for them.

Show me an animal who will do this for their young...they're few and far between!

We may be of the same species..but humans take the upper hand,and have a brain that works in a completely different way to the animal kingdom.

Oh dear me !! There is so much nonsense in what you believe - ' I don't where to begin.

You need to watch a few David Attenborough programmes to appreciate the remarkable and diverse ways many animals, even 'lowly' insects, employ to nurture and protect their offspring

Try reading any of the tomes on evolutionary biology and you will discover that animals, all animals, and that includes our species, have evolved to raise their young in a manner commensurate with maximising their chances of survival and thus continuing the species. It's plain silly to look at this in an anthropomorphic way...as if cossetting ones offspring to maturity is somehow "better" than say, as turtles do, producing hundreds at at time and leaving them to their own devices.

It's somewhat puzzling that in taking "the upper hand" with our "brain that works in a completely different way" (more nonsense incidentally) we've managed to produce psychopaths, paedophiles and a host of other undesirables...largely unknown in the 'inferior' animal kingdom.

[newcastle]

We all have the right to our opinions ST . I happen to believe that being childfree is the moral responsible choice,
As I never asked to be born,life was imposed upon me, why would I wish to force existence on another poor being without consent? I am not that selfish.
An extension of me? No, thanks...

Parents are control freaks, they force a life into existence and then reign over it, give it orders, expectations, and eventually the "life" dies. Parents are slave drivers, Fascists, & murderers. I equate parenthood to a Nazi regime, parents are Hitlers.
Natalism and Nazism are the same thing, as expounded by Hitler's Lebensborn policies.


I realise that many breeders wish to have a child to fulfil their egocentric narcissism.
Everybody wants a kid, just not the pain of birth, pain of carrying the baby, the expenses of caring for a child, the time off they have to take to raise it, they don't want the expenses of feeding a child, schooling thing child, don't want the child to get sick, hope the kid is smart enough to not do drugs...... But everybody wants a kid.

Humans are just animals...another species that's all.
Anyone who has looked into the eyes of an animal or heard their cries will realise that they do have emotions, they are sentient beings just like the human animal.i don't want any more animals to die by humans consuming or wearing them.

All species reproduce there's nothing to it.... the results of the act of copulation. Personally I don't think it's very classy to abuse your body like that.

There's more "rationality" in your take on life, Jewel, than ST's ....although I wonder whether you might be diagnosed as manic depressive ! (No offence intended!).

We are, of course, genetically 'programmed' to reproduce. In some ways it is an answer to the question as to the 'meaning of life'. Life has no 'meaning' as such....it just IS

I'm happy to say I've had a long and thoroughly rewarding (to me) life...albeit with the inevitable ups and downs....and I firmly believe that the same can be said of the majority of humanity, although in different ways. There's little point in extrapolating ones own wishes, desires, hopes etc. to others. The impoverished peasant may consider his existence with as much satisfaction and comfort as the successful and rich western businessman. Finding that the crops he's planted will enable his children to survive another year probably gives more pleasure to the peasant than the joy experienced by the man who sees his investment portfolio has, through little effort of his own, appreciated 5%.

[Zooropa]

[Try reading any of the tomes on evolutionary biology and you will discover that animals, all animals, and that includes our species, have evolved to raise their young in a manner commensurate with maximising their chances of survival and thus continuing the species. It's plain silly to look at this in an anthropomorphic way...as if cossetting ones offspring to maturity is somehow "better" than say, as turtles do, producing hundreds at at time and leaving them to their own devices.

Wow Newcastle, I thought you were going to go the whole hog and say the kryptonite word "Darwin"

I think you are wasting your time with our friend ST, remember, she is "of the book" so the earth was made in 7 days about 10,000 years ago by a man with a white beard on a cloud.

Intelligent design not evolution.

I quite agree with you Newcastle, and I would go further and say animals are much better parents than humans, too often, and I have been just as guilty as the next parent, we make decisions with heart and out of this love that st mentions which is quite true, that turn out to be the worse thing for the child in the long run.

If not hunted or interfered with in their nature habitat they are much better than humans at ensuring their own survival.

[newcastle]

If you're still reading this thread ST...please understand that my comments are not in any way directed against whatever religious beliefs you might hold.

Rather - I was taking issue with the presumption that we as humans are in some way better at looking after our offspring than other animals.

This is demonstrably untrue.

An excellent book on evolutionary biology (if your mind is open to the concept of evolution) is "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Prof. Richard Dawkins.

[Dusak]

Going off what you say Jewel, do you resent being born? Quite a few of the animal kingdom eat their offspring. Could never envisage eating a newborn bouncy rug rat, some even eat their mate after the business is over, can't even go down that path of thought.

[Scottishtourist]

If you're still reading this thread ST...please understand that my comments are not in any way directed against whatever religious beliefs you might hold.

Rather - I was taking issue with the presumption that we as humans are in some way better at looking after our offspring than other animals.

This is demonstrably untrue.

An excellent book on evolutionary biology (if your mind is open to the concept of evolution) is "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Prof. Richard Dawkins.

I don't think for one minute that you were intending to offend me newcastle..so no offence has been taken!

Reckon though that the book you're recommending would be too "long winded"for me.
I personally prefer Terry Pratchett's fantasy world...and "Witches Abroad"is my idea of a good read.

In this life I'm too busy "doing"things..rather than thinking about things,lol!!
I fear my little brain would go into meltdown if I started questioning the theory of evolution,world population crisis,animal vs human,etc,etc.
It's all too much for me to compehend!

Maybe when I'm a decrepit old woman(will probably come sooner rather than later)I'll have time to ponder and question all these issues.
But for the moment...I'm relatively happy in the belief that "que sera sera"..and that there is a higher power somewhere guiding me "towards the light"lol!!

[newcastle]

Going off what you say Jewel, do you resent being born? Quite a few of the animal kingdom eat their offspring. Could never envisage eating a newborn bouncy rug rat, some even eat their mate after the business is over, can't even go down that path of thought.

Eating your own offspring (actually not that common) in the animal kingdom is so "anti-evolutionary" that one can be assured that it only happens 'in extremis'. You don't have to go back too many centuries to find humans doing the same thing...but again not as a natural event.

Eating a rival's offspring however (as lions do) has a perfectly rational evolutionary explanation.

Chewing your mate's head off after he's performed his procreational act also makes evolutionary sense....and I'm sure might have occurred to many women at some point in their relationships although it seems nowadays to be confined to the metaphoric rather than the literal