Humans are soulless flesh machines governed by their internal programming.

Originally posted by Alyssa
Why does mankind deny this fact about their existence? If mankind accepted this ultimate truth they could then embrace Transhumanism. Fusion between man The Flesh Machine and advance machine is the only logical outcome if we wish to evolve beyond our current limitations. There are no gods, angels or aliens that will guide you in life. Everything from your morals to believing in good or evil are primitive means of keeping a societal structure maintained.

Just imagine a world where nobody is ever alone. If you have no sexual market value you simply can buy a mate who will always love you. Don't understand a language? Just download it into your cybernetic brain. Can't afford a vacation? Log into a simulated reality for low price. This is true bliss of what Transhumanism can bring to all those people suffering. Making the disabled walk again, cures for diseases, complete cybernetic upgrade into a better human being. NO RELIGION can do this, NO GOD will save humanity, only giving ourselves to Transhumanism can push us forward.

Upgrade to the better human.

As of right now, I'm with you in the first paragraph, mostly. I agree that we're flesh machines. I agree that we're confined to our flesh bodies and whatever evolutionary deficits they possess. I agree that it's likely there're no gods or angels or aliens to guide us. Rather, I see us as I similarly see bugs, viruses, birds, reptiles, fish, and other creatures. We're all struggling to survive and evolve. We all live under the tyranny of nature. I also agree, to some extent, that belief in good and evil and spiritualism is a feeble attempt to maintain order. It's a way to grasp a sense of control over things that, in many cases, are outside our control. It's a way to acquire purpose and continuity in the midst of adversity.

In the second paragraph, you move too quickly. I still have great respect for our history and our struggles. Even though I am saddened and often hurt in my soul when I contemplate this world, I do not think that changing it's as easy as you want it to be. In fact, combining ourselves with machines or computers or other such things to overcome limitations will require 100's of years, maybe thousands or more. It's already happening right now, with telecommunications, computerized databases, robotics, and so on. But it'll be a long process since technology can outpace our ability to use it well and war and strife and conflict can prolong our misery. You see, while I commend your forthrightness and your interest in Transhumanism, I feel that you fail to take into consideration the complexity and monumental effort that's required for us to transition to a new state.

Just look around you. At the planet. Lots of envrionmental degredation. We'll spend the next 100-600+ years cleaning up the mess. And there'll be more extinctions too. How will we clean that up? We'll be dealing with bad weather that result from added greenhouses gases for a while as well. This whole planet is going to become like a spaceship, as we'll be required to maintain it because our population is so great that we inevitably must control our actions and the actions of the planet to remain halfway comfortable. There's terrorism too. With ever increasing yields in explosive power and more devastating viral/pathogen weapons, the ability to kill others has never been greater and will just grow worse. With all of these wonderful technologies comes a swarm of problems that will, like parasites, storm our shores and invade our hopes and dreams. There's so much I could talk about here and it'll all be an obstacle to a better world. Consequently, even as things get better, more problems will crop up. All the way from the Amoeba to the Human there're struggles. Why would there be no struggles after Humans evolve further? There's no indication the struggles will stop. There will always be struggles. Worse, science shows that the longevity of a species is about 2 million years. The human species is about 2 million years old. So the clock is ticking and our future as a species is questionable. And all of the genetic tinkering that's sure to happen. I wonder how many outbreaks of bugged genetic code will escape from labs or residential illegal production? Genetic modification is a time bomb soon to explode. With so many people on the planet, it could spread crazy.

I want to be optimistic, but I'm innately a pessimist. I'm OCPD too. So I can't change. I obsessively stick to my pessimism like it's a natural compliment to my body. Almost everything I do is an expression of my critical or cynical attitude. I don't respond well to people who're cheery.

I fully anticipate most of the people here, if they're still alive in 60 years, laughing at their youthful optimism. We were so naive and thought we might live forever, just maybe. /lol. Well, I guess it kept us going. But now we're old. Wisened. We know that things require more time and that things are always harder than we want them to be. Death always seems scarier when we're young too.

I asked someone who was 99 what the biggest problem was. He said greed. Yes, 99 years and that's his best answer. If a guy can live 99 years and still think greed is a big problem, well...

...then I can only think it's something of a problem.

reply to post by homeskillet


Yes, if there was a scientific explanation I would be completely open to it.

I want to explain something for other who seem to have a misunderstanding. Having a spirit or soul does not mean that is your personality. Or even that it will effect your daily activities - other than that you may chose to perform various tasks or rituals etc...... Your personality, who you are, is in my opinion a combination of the DNA you were born with, and the environment in which you were raised. A belief in a spiritual world may be part of that environment, and may therefore impact on how you behave, but it is not the source of all personality!

Also, don't forget about your subconscious mind. It controls your autonomic nervous system, your heart, your breathing, temperature regulation, fluid regulation, your dreams, your cravings..... Hypnotism.... amazing and powerful way to help change peoples lives for the better.

I don't offer this as proof of anything other than there is a lot more going on that just what we think, or our consciousness.

The problem with scientific explanation of spiritual phenomena is that it is all too easy for some clever doctor to say "well, it is just the neuro transmitters doing strange things at times of stress", or "Oxygen starvation creating hallucinations" etc... These are hard arguments to counter.

I do know that what you may call ESP is true - I have had non verbal, verbal conversations with a couple of people. We talked without actually saying words out loud. I am not talking body language. I do know that too many 'coincidences' happen in my life, which you may just call a lack of understanding of probability. It isn't, I am actually quite well educated.

Explain deja vu for example. Explain Empathy.

The reason being spiritual changes my life is because I realise that you all are my brothers and sisters. That we all come from and return to the same spiritual source. This means whatever religion you choose, whatever country you come from. whatever your sexuality, I love you. We are a part of each other. What I do to you I do to myself.

There is a reason humans have had spiritual beliefs for millions of years. There is a reason I can draw a card from my Tarot deck and tell you what is going on in your life. There is a reason Shaman can heal, and have done for millions of years. (If they couldn't, do you think societies would have tolerated them?)

Look back over your lives, there will be things you can't explain. Things which start making sense only when you start thinking in terms of spirit.

Originally posted by Alyssa
Why does mankind deny this fact about their existence? If mankind accepted this ultimate truth they could then embrace Transhumanism. Fusion between man The Flesh Machine and advance machine is the only logical outcome if we wish to evolve beyond our current limitations. There are no gods, angels or aliens that will guide you in life. Everything from your morals to believing in good or evil are primitive means of keeping a societal structure maintained.

Just imagine a world where nobody is ever alone. If you have no sexual market value you simply can buy a mate who will always love you. Don't understand a language? Just download it into your cybernetic brain. Can't afford a vacation? Log into a simulated reality for low price. This is true bliss of what Transhumanism can bring to all those people suffering. Making the disabled walk again, cures for diseases, complete cybernetic upgrade into a better human being. NO RELIGION can do this, NO GOD will save humanity, only giving ourselves to Transhumanism can push us forward.

Upgrade to the better human.

Agreed. Thou I do believe you go short about a corner. It dulls you message to the litany of a prophet rather then to inform humans.

This is what I found out after about a decade or two of searching in my soul and breaking a few barriers that most would be afraid of.

What is consciousness?
Consciousness is the awareness of one self in the world. This awareness is being expressed by decisions we make. Decisions to questions such as; What clothes should I wear? What study should I follow? What is next in my agenda? What do I eat today.The stream of decisions is endless. Even if we do not seem to make them conscious, we are making decisions every instant of our life.

What would consciousness mean if we could not make decisions?
Nothing. It is therefor that consciousness flows out from the decisions we make and not the other way around. We are aware of ourself in the world because we make decisions, not the other way around.

What is a decision?
To know exactly what a decision is we do not need to look at an example, but at the universal structure beneath it. A decision is made out of a handful of factors; The start of a situation, the road from the start to the current situation, the current situation and what we want. In life this can be translated to the following;

- Genetic inheritance
- Traveled past
- Current situation
- The future

Genetic inheritance
The Genetic inheritance is how we start. As our genetic pattern is being formed we get the initial starting-point for each individual. Genetic inheritance determents the chance we have to develop different behavior traits and appearances. How quickly do we get angry? What color of hair do we get? Will we have a good chance to grow tall?

Traveled past
This factor is our own history. How we lived and what we experience can and does change the way we think and act on a day to day basis. Maybe we were once bold but an accident changed it. Maybe we were promising kids but a bad youth ruined our mind. Maybe we experienced a moment of excitement and found our goal in life. Important to understand is that the traveled past was at one time our current situation.

Current situation
This is the situation we are in when we make a decision. It pressures on us how a decision is made. While genetic inheritance and traveled past guided us here, it is 'here' that is the most imminent and deciding point of a decision. It is the hub upon which we are forced to make a decision. The crossroads of everyone else, even of the world and the mighty universe influence our decision. From the tiniest of factors like the color of our shoes to the things like the whether, the architecture of the buildings and the surrounding of friends. The future is in that our aspiring goal, the past is our guide that influences us in our chance of reaching it.

The future
While not a true factor in the word, the future is the world we want it to be. Its visage is changed by every step, every decision we make. It is also the key to understanding the reason why we are not sentient, why we are in fact robots.

Why does not every future become true as we plan it? Is it fate or chance? No, it is the limit of our own mind. The human brain is potent, yes, but it is not perfect. It does not know or understand its own genetic inheritance. It can not recall every facet of its own history. It isn't capable of knowing all factors in a current situation. There are to may unknowns, to may constantly changing factors. The brain has to do away with unknowns, it has to. If we tried to find out all unknown we would waste our entire life on one decision without ever making it. So it stripes things away. Things that do not seem to matter, like the color of your shoes.The result is that our decisions do not end the way we thought and the brain fools us; it creates the illusion of consciousness.

-WE ARE NOT-

reply to post by Alyssa

Your over reacting your irrational feelings spring from your pain, its quite understandable but you can only truly understand it when you have been there and done that, and so you shall be enlightened. What you were is gone, the pain you feel is for its passing. But maybe you should ask yourself this, if the current metamorphism you are going through is this bad....What makes you think that going from one form to another will be any better? Are you a child now that you think such things are as you seen them in the movies and read about them in books. When that is almost always not the case.

So now you want to go from meat/water composition, to screws, bolts, metal and wires. Which is fine and all, but remember that you will have only traded one set of woes for another. You will not have to eat, but you will need to change that fuel cell and lube those parts every once in a while, if you know what I am saying.

There will be no pain free cure to anything, life does not work like that, even in birth the first thing you feel is the pain of whatever life you are born to, so when you switch one vessel for another you are also switching one woe for another it may be a completely different set of rules and laws. But the premises at there core will be the same, because the premise of all lifeforms is change, so if the change you are going through now hurts this much, do you think that the change from human to machine will be pain free? You see as long as you are alive, in any form it does not matter, there will always exist pain in one form or another. If you think becoming a robot will free you from that, you would have then thought in error.

But hey I see were your coming from, and that needs to be remedied and there are always other options. You may not see them because your stuck on one thing, but if you let go and increase your peripheral vision a broader world and vision will come to life in time.