Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism

[Fast Eddie B]

Yea ! I am supposed to entertain the idea that tapeworms are highly evolved in relation to humans, but I maintain that tapeworms, or for that matter cockroaches are less evolved than humans.

Again, showing you misunderstand Evolutionary Theory.

Try this: which is more “highly evolved” to exist in the intestine of a pig, a human or a porcine tapeworm?

I think it might be meaningful to define “higher”.

 

[Scorpion]

Again, showing you misunderstand Evolutionary Theory.

Try this: which is more “highly evolved” to exist in the intestine of a pig, a human or a porcine tapeworm?

I think it might be meaningful to define “higher”.

Tapeworms may have adapted to fill a niche as successful parasites, but that does not make them comparable to us. Neither they or the pigs they infest are as evolved as humans. If pigs want to survive being eaten by us they had better evolve to develop language so they can complain about their rights, and even develop weapons for self defence. But its clear they are just going to play about in the mud waiting to get eaten, as we are the top of the food chain. And are more 'highly' evolved. As for tapeworms, they are going to continue to exist only if we allow it. We take medicine to kill them if they infest us, so we should be able to get rid of them in pigs too. Thereby making them extinct.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

They do not need to get to know you in that way. I had the "pleasure" of actually watching one of these charlatans at work. A ten minute conversation was all it took before they gave out their "predications".

This notion that a "medium" would need to spend a fair amount of time with a person in order to hit a good enough mark to seem to be convincing is plainly just stupid.

A "medium" can sit for a few minutes and fire off a few nonsense hits and the person being given the reading will lap it up because that's what they're there for, obviously.

Scorpion has been informed of all of the tricks of the trade over a dozen times and he won't budge because he needs to believe this sort of laughable bollocks, obviously.

He's a mark, and he's playing the role well. No offense, Scorpion.

 

[Scorpion]

he won't budge because he needs to believe this sort of laughable bollocks, obviously.

I don't need to believe anything. I maintain I have had some genuine messages, and some direct communication from the spirits into my own mind.

No offense, Scorpion.

It would take a lot to offend me.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Tapeworms may have adapted to fill a niche as successful parasites, but that does not make them comparable to us. Neither they or the pigs they infest are as evolved as humans. If pigs want to survive being eaten by us they had better evolve to develop language so they can complain about their rights, and even develop weapons for self defence. But its clear they are just going to play about in the mud waiting to get eaten, as we are the top of the food chain. And are more 'highly' evolved. As for tapeworms, they are going to continue to exist only if we allow it. We take medicine to kill them if they infest us, so we should be able to get rid of them in pigs too. Thereby making them extinct.

Again (again), showing you misunderstand Evolutionary Theory. And continuing to use “highly” in a vague and undefined way.

Almost intentionally, it might appear.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

I don't need to believe anything. I maintain I have had some genuine messages, and some direct communication from the spirits into my own mind.

None of which you can offer any meaningful evidence for. These spirits don't offer you anything meaningful, either. So, at the end of it all, we're left with not much.

When the spirits offer you the lottery numbers for next week, I'll develop some genuine interest in these matters.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

Tapeworms may have adapted to fill a niche as successful parasites, but that does not make them comparable to us. Neither they or the pigs they infest are as evolved as humans. If pigs want to survive being eaten by us they had better evolve to develop language so they can complain about their rights, and even develop weapons for self defence. But its clear they are just going to play about in the mud waiting to get eaten, as we are the top of the food chain. And are more 'highly' evolved. As for tapeworms, they are going to continue to exist only if we allow it. We take medicine to kill them if they infest us, so we should be able to get rid of them in pigs too. Thereby making them extinct.

I'll tell you something, though; pigs, despite their lack of language and self-defense weaponry, aren't able to be hoodwinked by other pigs into forking over their monies in return for pretend information from a fictional "otherworld" inhabited by spirits. So, swings and roundabouts, really.

 

[Scorpion]

None of which you can offer any meaningful evidence for. These spirits don't offer you anything meaningful, either. So, at the end of it all, we're left with not much.

When the spirits offer you the lottery numbers for next week, I'll develop some genuine interest in these matters.

The spirits will never give me all the lottery numbers because it would be bad karma. Even if I gave most of the money to charities I would still be depriving the people who would have won that money. That kind of personal gain is against the rules of the occult.

The spirits guided me to a 5 number win in 1998, which was just enough to buy my first good computer, and they told me in advance that I would win.
I figure it was a special dispensation because they wanted me to have a computer I could not afford at the time.
But they have never told me I would win again since then.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

The spirits will never give me all the lottery numbers because it would be bad karma. Even if I gave most of the money to charities I would still be depriving the people who would have won that money. That kind of personal gain is against the rules of the occult.

The spirits guided me to a 5 number win in 1998, which was just enough to buy my first good computer, and they told me in advance that I would win.
I figure it was a special dispensation because they wanted me to have a computer I could not afford at the time.
But they have never told me I would win again since then.

Excluding, for a moment, the fact that karma doesn't exist, and that "good fortune" and "bad fortune" occur in parts to everyone in the world throughout their life because that's just how the cookie crumbles, you seem to be suggesting that you put stock into the so-called "rules of the occult," which is just silly.

Why on earth would "the spirits" give a monkey's uncle whether you had a computer or not? Is this what "the spirits" do during their infinite time spent floating nonchalantly in the "otherworld?" They set up a series of events that lead to you winning the lottery in order to a buy a computer and have internet access so you can presumably spread the vague word of the occult?

Seems there's a fine line between being insane and being in conversation with "the spirits." That's bloody unfortunate.

 

[Scorpion]

Why on earth would "the spirits" give a monkey's uncle whether you had a computer or not? Is this what "the spirits" do during their infinite time spent floating nonchalantly in the "otherworld?" They set up a series of events that lead to you winning the lottery in order to a buy a computer and have internet access so you can presumably spread the vague word of the occult?

Yes, I think the spirit world are desperate to get a message through that life goes on and there is a better world after this one. I think they are desperate because they can see into the future and they see disasters coming. They want to comfort as many people as they can using anyone, even the likes of me. Obviously some spirits can see into the future or they would not have been able to give me the lottery numbers in advance.

Seems there's a fine line between being insane and being in conversation with "the spirits." That's bloody unfortunate.

Yes, most people consider me insane. Including psychiatrists and my own family. But I just soldier on because I know my own mind.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

Yes, I think the spirit world are desperate to get a message through that life goes on and there is a better world after this one. I think they are desperate because they can see into the future and they see disasters coming. They want to comfort as many people as they can using anyone, even the likes of me. Obviously some spirits can see into the future or they would not have been able to give me the lottery numbers in advance.

So, the Spirit World decided, presumably over drinks and Chinese food, that the best way to get information over to the human race was to

A) Tell you the upcoming Lottery numbers.

and

B) Have you buy a new computer with the winnings and then go on the internet to babble about the spirit world on forums such as this one?

Best. Plan. Ever!

Yes, most people consider me insane. Including psychiatrists and my own family. But I just soldier on because I know my own mind.

Do what you want, mate, it's your voyage. Just don't expect anyone with even a shred of common sense to believe you.

 

[JesseCuster]

If pigs want to survive being eaten by us they had better evolve to develop language so they can complain about their rights

This actually an excellent point and does not betray a bizarrely misinformed idea of how evolution works, because if you think about the millions of species that humans don't eat, it's because they have evolved the ability to have language and complain about us eating them...

Wait... what?

 

[Darat]

Yea ! I am supposed to entertain the idea that tapeworms are highly evolved in relation to humans, but I maintain that tapeworms, or for that matter cockroaches are less evolved than humans. Even though we may destroy our civilisation and even become extinct. The fact that cockroaches would survive us and still be running around on dung heaps, or whatever they do makes no difference.

Of course in a few million years of a planet without us, they might get larger and develop larger brains, and invent tools, and technology. Then they would be contenders for a higher place in the evolutionary chain.

But that will not matter to us as a species, because it is my belief that even of we become extinct on this planet and cockroaches inherit the earth, we as immortal souls will simply continue our spiritual evolution on other inhabited planets in the universe.



Actually I have heard mediums say in trance that we have incarnated on other planets in the past, and as this world is currently making great strides forward, there is a long queue of souls wanting to incarnate here at this time because of all the progress we are making.

Cultures can remain static for many generations, like the ancient Egyptians.

Life went on the same for many, many generations. But we are speeding forward at an incredible rate. Technology has leapt forward in the last 100 years and we are in a different world to our grandparents.

Planets such as Mars and Venus...... ?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Good point.

If there’s some sort of cataclysmic event where man succumbs to extinction and porcine tapeworms do not, in that case the tapeworms might be considered more “highly evolved” to deal with at least one type of cataclysmic event. If “highly evolved” meant anything, which it doesn’t - at least a Scorpion is simplistically using it.

I think Dawkins used rats in a similar thought experience. Let me see if Google can help me out here.

edited to add (Lordy, Google is wonderful):

“A world without rodents would be a very different world. It is less likely to come to pass than a world dominated by rodents and free of people. If nuclear war destroys humanity and most of the rest of life, a good bet for survival in the short term, and for evolutionary ancestry in the long term, is rats. I have a post-Armageddon vision. We and all other large animals are gone. Rodents emerge as the ultimate post-human scavengers. They gnaw their way through New York, London and Tokyo, digesting spilled larders, ghost supermarkets and human corpses and turning them into new generations of rats and mice, whose racing populations explode out of the cities and into the countryside. When all the relics of human profligacy are eaten, populations crash again, and the rodents turn on each other, and on the cockroaches scavenging with them. In a period of intense competition, short generations perhaps with radioactivity enhanced mutation-rates boost rapid evolution. With human ships and planes gone, islands become islands again, with local populations isolated save for occasional lucky raftings: ideal conditions for evolutionary divergence. Within 5 million years, a whole range of new species replace the ones we know. Herds of giant grazing rats are stalked by sabre-toothed predatory rats. Given enough time, will a species of intelligent, cultivated rats emerge? Will rodent historians and scientists eventually organise careful archaeological digs (gnaws?) through the strata of our long-compacted cities, and reconstruct the peculiar and temporarily tragic circumstances that gave ratkind its big break?”

From “The Ancestors Tale” - a great book.

Whoever thought the works of Richard Dawkins and James Herbert would converge.

 

[Scorpion]

Planets such as Mars and Venus...... ?

I am sure you are aware astronomers have discovered several local stars have planets. They are even aware of some planets that could possibly support life,
and that is only the stars near us. It seems likely that many stars have planets. There are a billion stars in our galaxy and billions of galaxies with billions of stars in them. It therefore seems quite probable there are countless planets with advanced life on them. There could be no planets until the death of early stars sending out heavy atoms. In fourteen billion years since the big bang there could be planets ten billion years old. They might have developed civilisations far older than ours.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Again, showing you misunderstand Evolutionary Theory.

Try this: which is more “highly evolved” to exist in the intestine of a pig, a human or a porcine tapeworm?

I think it might be meaningful to define “higher”.

You want 'evolved'? Sharks got it right 420 million years ago and are still around today. Want to know how right then jump in the ocean with a hungry one and see how much good those opposable thumbs do ya...

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

There are a billion stars in our galaxy ...

100 billion or more actually.

 

[philkensebben]

The spirits will never give me all the lottery numbers because it would be bad karma. Even if I gave most of the money to charities I would still be depriving the people who would have won that money. That kind of personal gain is against the rules of the occult.

The spirits guided me to a 5 number win in 1998, which was just enough to buy my first good computer, and they told me in advance that I would win.
I figure it was a special dispensation because they wanted me to have a computer I could not afford at the time.
But they have never told me I would win again since then.

45 pages in and this is where we are at?

 

[steenkh]

Of course in a few million years of a planet without us, they might get larger and develop larger brains, and invent tools, and technology. Then they would be contenders for a higher place in the evolutionary chain.

What is a "higher" place in an evolutionary chain? You seem to think that it means the development of intelligence, but evolutionary theory does not regard intelligence as something special. Humans have managed to inhabit the world through intelligence, but there are other species that have occupied more difficult places to live than humans, and without intelligence. Tardigrades come to mind as some of the most highly evolved species of that kind. Humans are also not the most numerous species that exist, not even among multi-celled organisms. Another way to define how "evolved" an organism is, could be to count DNA bases, but in this respect, humans are also not at the top at all. Apart from intelligence, humans are not special in any direction at all; lots of animals have more highly evolved senses than humans.

Evolution is has no direction, and nothing is more evolved than anything else.

Actually I have heard mediums say in trance that we have incarnated on other planets in the past, and as this world is currently making great strides forward, there is a long queue of souls wanting to incarnate here at this time because of all the progress we are making.

This piece of obvious fantasy must have made the mediums laugh inside when they presented it to their marks!

If pigs want to survive being eaten by us they had better evolve to develop language so they can complain about their rights, and even develop weapons for self defence.

But it is quite the other way round: there are far more pigs now than without humans, so pigs are extremely successful by having evolved to be of taste to humans!

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Actually I have heard mediums say in trance that we have incarnated on other planets in the past, and as this world is currently making great strides forward, there is a long queue of souls wanting to incarnate here at this time because of all the progress we are making.
Cultures can remain static for many generations, like the ancient Egyptians.
Life went on the same for many, many generations. But we are speeding forward at an incredible rate. Technology has leapt forward in the last 100 years and we are in a different world to our grandparents.

Yes, I think the spirit world are desperate to get a message through that life goes on and there is a better world after this one. I think they are desperate because they can see into the future and they see disasters coming. They want to comfort as many people as they can using anyone, even the likes of me. Obviously some spirits can see into the future or they would not have been able to give me the lottery numbers in advance.

So there is a long queue of souls waiting to reincarnate here on earth because of the great progress we are making and the bright future we have, but at the same time, there are disasters coming and it'll all be over soon.
Really? How can this possibly make sense?