=( ah that's sad.

On the bright-side, they showed a documentary in the cinema called Planet of the Apes with a cure for Alzheimers, I never saw the end...

There is none, you can only halt the progression for a time.

The goal is to halt the progression by about fifteen years, which is about long enough for death by natural causes anyway.

Wait you don't think I actually thought Planet of the Apes was a documentary do you?

But if there is a 'cure' to slow the disease down, sick! That's really amazing.

Needs further research. Lots of further research.

Funding bodies really need to get a clue and pour lots more into alzheimers research, in twenty years it will be the biggest healthcare drain in the world.

Also it's the most horrendous thing I can't even imagine happening to me ever.

Indeed, if it comes to it, suicide clinic before alzheimers.

They come in booths now.

I usually avoid talking seriously at discussions like these like the plague, sinc eI tend to get needlessly agitated and rowdy and miss the point of expressing how I feel. However, after a lot of introspection (and some outrospection, rrrow) here it is:

I would like to believe there is a God/Gods. I would like to think there is life after death in some form. I would like to believe in magic and Wizards and legitimate psychics and good luck charms and Christmas and that most corporations which as corporate entities are themselves evil have our best interests at heart.

But, almost tragically, I'm too logical at this point. I've known about evolution and eugenics and pheromones and star systems and the incomprehensibility of just how big the Universe is since I was just a little kid. I understand the mechanics of nature. They are so elegant and tactful compared to the idea that X made Y for Z. Ignorance is what's wrong with the world, and though I won't fault the fundamentally faithful for their faith, I will for their arrogance at not seeing God through nature and scientific process, as it is true understanding, at least it's the truest we have.

I want reality to not be reality.

Then what is reality? Is reality just us? And everything else an illusion? That would make dreams as real as 'life'. Funnily enough, when I was younger and I ever got into trouble at school, I would convince myself dreams were real and life wasn't so I wasn't really getting in any trouble and that dreams were actually real life...

http://inception.davepedu.com/

Reality is just reality. Unless you understand Quantum Physics, I don't think anyone os uf would ever have the answer.

What we perceive as reality is something different though.

Sometimes I wish I could be stuck in a dream-coma. I often like my dreams.

*raises hand...actually I do understand quantum physics to a degree ^-^

But yeh I agree, I'd rather be in a dream forever than live forever I think sometimes, in a dream you can be slaying zombies one minute or chilling with your dream woman the next, and if you get bored of that you can go talk to deceased loved ones or perhaps go by your favourite chocolate that went out of business...except you can't taste in your dreams but never mind that.

My point being, dreams are easy and fun, life is boring and hard work.

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. - Richard Feynman.

I just wish people could agree that we're all bound by some kind of mystery pertaining to the nature of the Universe and let that be a nice comfort in common.

I can honestly say that I have no idea what that means.

I think he's saying that humanity's lack of comprehension of the unknown forms a kinship.

Religion?

Religion, the study of science, hell if we found out the true nature of the Universe, more likely we would turn away in fear and stay ignorant...I believe I'm paraphrasing Lovecraft.
=/

Lovecraft was a fag. I'll chance cosmic despair to avoid ignorance.

I probably wouldn't.

I like to think I'd be the same as WoF, I mean I'd be gobstruck but hey, if it's God, Shiva or a giant omnipotent space worm, I'd be pretty happy there was something.

I'll take that bullet. I skirt madness every day anyway.

But hey, I'm happy that there's a star the size of Jupiter's orbit out there that's visible from Earth with the naked eye. Isn't that enough?

And if the world is under the throes of the Old Ones and everything we do is ultimately meaningless, hey, there's always absurdism.

Don't be ridiculous.

What's that?

Well if there are Gods I'll be happy. If it's the Christian God then hell I got it right, Amen brudda.

The chances are that it would be made of Hydrogen. And that means stars.

Star Gods? Wait...the C'tan?[/nerd]

Nah I can picture that, I mean hell if there was no God, the Sun would be the next closest thing for us.

And one day it will consume us, puff its mass away and slowly freeze into a shitty little ember.

That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.

Life has no intrisic meaning. Party on.

The name bugs me. Nothing about the concept seems absurd to me at all. Mundane.

The absurdity refers to the contradiction between our search for life's intrisic meaning and the understanding it doesn't have one.

For the record, I'm a Nietzchean. Life's intrisic value is what we aspire ourselves to be. The lack of meaning of life just means we should stop being lazy and make our own.

This.

Every time someone asks me 'What's the meaning of life?' I say 'To find one'. Or occasionally 'What does life mean to you?'

WoF...I love you, that quotation couldn't have come at a better time, I just need to memorise it and use it and I'll be all set!! ^_^

I won't be content til I find the meaning of existence.

I wonder if there was, some kind of existence before the Big Bang that ended in...well, a big bang.

Same way an asteroid fucks shit up, but the environmental stage changes and new life is born. Animals were ugly as sin back in the million year stage. I mean, there was a shark with a fucking buzzsaw for a mouth.

Perhaps a hyper-advanced race of squids created a Hadron Collidor and the Big Bang happened.

Really hate that thing.

The Faculty of the Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork, Discworld, offer their own purpose for the humanity of our universe: to get the hell off this deathtrap planet.

There's another quote, from Unseen Academicals, though I can't quite remember it.

It went that there was a postition, like Professor of Egocentric Biology or something. His job was to press his argument that the entire point of life's existence was to eventually evolve into a race capable of producing a Professor of Egocentric Biology.

I always liked that guy.

You're thinking of the Professor of Applied Anthropics. And that was from Hogfather.

But if there is a God and it's not the Christian one, S/He'll be pissed off that you weren't worshipping Xer. Best to hope that there isn't any god at all.


Yes, it's Paschal's Wager for the 21st century!

Perhaps it's a great big fish-thing that eats passing souls as they go on to their respective hells, and the best we can hope for is to pass by while it's still chewing on the guy before you.

I like to think any potential deity out there would be able to understand a human’s reasoning for worshipping the wrong/no god, and would be able to see past that to a person’s intrinsic “goodness” and judge them accordingly.

That raises the issue of what “intrinsic goodness” is, but I’ll cross that bridge when/if I get to it.

I don't think they'd care.

Why does every idea concerning possible gods seem to imply both their interest in us and the existence of an afterlife? Lovecraft's misotheism seems to be the only exception.