Not at all, not at all...friend808, it's a shame text doesn't have tone and texture, like speech does. Hearing my words and you would have discerned the spirit behind them. No problem and ditto for me too.
I am of the classical way of looking at and explaining physicality. And I usually only concern my understanding to non living matter. Live is super nature for me.
The only reason I commented on this thread was because of the evidence against alien life is so strong......and with absolutely no evidence other wise. For reasons in my earlier posts.
I don't believe that this cosmos permits man's concepts of probability, randomness and chaos. These concepts are just substitute terms for the unknown and un-diserned.
If an alien spaceship landed tomorrow, I would suspect it of coming from inside the earth, before believing it came from another star system.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we seem to be of similar thought, when we also seem to be of similar desire for constructive, honest, and fair discourse.
I appreciate the Greek meaning of 'chaos' from antiquity - that it was (for lack of a better word), the void before there was anything - because I feel that anything - even if that thing was somehow not based on any cause and effect and was truly random - would still have order - it's order being that it is completely unpredictable. But that's just an aside...and I've yet to understand any reason how such a thing as the random thing I describe could ever actually exist.
I think (but please correct where I am misunderstanding), that we both believe "odds" or "probability" is just a human-made concept born from our inability to know or calculate all the variables that would show with certainty who would, say, win the super bowl 20 years from now.
I ask people 'if you traveled to the future and found out the winner of the next super bowl, then traveled back to your original time - when you went to bet on the super bowl, would you bet on the team you saw win in the future or would you bet on the team you saw lost?'. Everyone always says, of course, the one that they saw win. But then I ask them, once a horse race is finished and the winner decided, doesn't that means the horse was always going to win the race? That even before it was born it was already certain to one day run this race and win? And once the race is over, we learn the real odds had been 100% that all other horses would lose? But they argue that and will die on the sword demanding that it didn't have to win. So then I ask them, isn't seeing the winner of the horse race the same thing as going to the future and seeing the winner of the super bowl? Once the horse race is over, we are in the future compared to where we were before the race, so if they now could go back in time before the race would they bet on any other horse?
And when that is also dismissed I try my last resort (possibly because I'm not smart enough to have any better argument), 'Look, once something has happened, there is no argument to be made that it could have ever happened differently, because it didn't happen differently. Nor is there any argument to be made anything leading up to that moment could have happened differently, because again, it already happened and it wasn't different. So there are zero examples to support the idea that it didn't have to happen, and there is everything that's ever happened to support that once something's happened, it's happened, which means it always was going to happen, because it did happen'.
I must either have poor ideas or be the worst at explaining myself, because the only person who I've ever managed to get to see it that way is my wife, and it only took 15 years...and I'm not positive how much she really believes it
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Here is a theory that maybe others have - but I don't read what other's write very often unless to attempt to gather any possible facts (or things that seem like they may be facts), so I don't know if this has been said by thousands: To me, it's not 'Free Will' OR 'Determinism / pre-determined' - it's 'Determinism' BECAUSE of 'Free Will'. Meaning, it's only because we can make choices, and because we choose based on the near infinite inputs from our life that cause us to choose or do what we do, that everything that will ever happen for the rest of time could be predicted, if we only had the right model, data, etc. Because if it was just 'determinism' then stuff wouldn't make any sense - like you'd go over to your best friend's house and even though he was always super nice he would knock you unconscious and torture you to death for literally no reason at all. Or people would just shout out "CHICKEN PARTS!" for no reason when walking down the street - and it would confuse them too. But because everything we do, how we act, if we get nervous catching the winning touchdown pass in the super bowl - everything - is based on (lets just say a huge amount of things, possibly down to the way the wind blew on our face when we were 2) all that went into creating that exact moment and everything in it, then while we get to make a choice, what we are going to choose is what we were always going to choose, and of course once we choose it, how can one logically argue they could have chosen something else, since they didn't and that moment will never come again.
Sorry, for a belief system I'm only guessing at I sure am sounding very sure of myself and I apologize - I just get excited. Please disagree liberally, all honest disagreement will be met with pleasure (though agreement will too lol). Anyway, off the topic of aliens, but, I guess it was "meant to be".
BTW - funny how we say "don't want to tempt fate" - when fate, were there such a creature, would be the only thing that couldn't be tempted to change. Otherwise it wouldn't have been fate, unless it was fate that it would be tempted, in which case screwed no matter what I guess? Sorry, being silly and maybe a wise-a** now. Hope I haven't turned the stomach or yet another person with my verbosity.