What makes humans so special?

[Revoltingest]

Why are humans so special?
- Pineapple & ham on pizza
- Aluminum trailers
- Hawaiian shirts
- The Simpsons
- Smartphones
- Pornography
- Limericks
- Tiramisu
- Bacon
- Go

 

[shunyadragon]

Humans sweat alot.

 

[shunyadragon]

Goldilocks Worlds

Other worlds with dumb blonds.

 

[Bathos Logos]

There's a lot of animals and insects that expend waste and toxify environments.

Like I said we are no different.

We are completely different. We create substances that don't exist via natural development. These types of compounds can easily be dangerous to environments that have not had any time to adjust to their presence. It takes time for animal life to evolve methods of coping with just about anything new in their environment, and yet we have created a huge number of new substances that have hit environments all over the world in the last 2 centuries alone. This is drastically different than any other animal species on Earth, none of which engage in this particular practice. Any development of new substances (poisons for self defense for instance) develop over many multiple generations, thousands, ten-thousands, or hundreds-of-thousands of years, and are very specifically and sparingly used.

 

[Truth in love]

When God created humans, he created the most destructive and killing species that has ever existed.

We kill, destroy, pollute, drive species to extinction, destroy habitats, etc more than any other species that ever existed.

For example.... We have killed many more millions of humans than the covid virus but think nothing of it.

Why would an all knowing God create something he knew would be so deadly and destructive?

We are the most powerful species. It’s a bit like absolute values in math. In order for us to have the power to create bridges, dams, space stations etc. we also need the power to destroy.

If is was impossible for me to rob, rape, murder etc. I could not make a choice in these matters. Because the options do exists I can make a choice.

God being all knowing tracks what we do. I will be judged for my actions some day.

 

[Revoltingest]

We seem to have entered a twilight zone. I'm going to bed.

Tis wise to know when to change the channel.

 

[Erebus]

We are the most powerful species.

Tardigrades would disagree with you there.

They're just biding their time, waiting for humanity to destroy itself. Global warming, disease, nuclear war... all irrelevant to the tardigrades. The tardigrades will survive. The tardigrades will prosper.

The tardigrades are eternal.

 

[sun rise]

Medieval cathedrals were planned with multiple generations of build time in mind.

As were irrigation canals by Native Americans in the Southwest - built with stone tools over generations.

 

[sun rise]

The current set of problems we face plus a selective negative view of history has generated a lot of hopelessness in this thread.

Historically the Native Americans worked with nature for the most part over many thousands of years including carefully setting fires to reset the land from a final succession of trees back to an earlier state which helped various plants and animals.

As the Kali Yuga has continued we lost that sense of living with nature treating it as a big garbage dump etc. What we see today is not the only possibility.

 

[The Hammer]

Why would one have to take gods out of the equation to make this true?

It's not required to. But the OP seemed. Abit focused on "how does an omnipresent God" allow this destruction.

I mentioned taking Gods out of the equation, because it's not provable they exist one way or the other outside of individual experience.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

These are a few of the reasons that Jehovah’s Word tells us “man’s way does not belong to him. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.” - Jeremiah 10:23

We weren’t designed with ‘self-rule’ capability. Only to guide & control our families.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

To listen to some people on here though, humans are doing better than ever before.
So thank you for the honest assessment.
These are the Last Days.
Revelation 11:18, last line.

IMO.

 

[Valjean]

Then it is bust. Million! We have been around here for just 200,000 years.

LOL! Good point. I was being hyperbolic.
Depends how you define "we:" H. sapens sapiens? Hominini? Hominidæ? Primates?
Actually, before the industrial revolution, our destructiveness was proceeding at a snail's. pace.

Quicker at destruction than you think.Some sky rocks are very big. Hope we do not encounter them.

True. Consider the one that knocked the chunk off the planet that created the moon.

 

[Valjean]

There are lot more effects than just muscle atrophy and osteoporosis. We discover new effects all the time -- and these in astronauts who've been weightless less than a year.

 

[Valjean]

Do you know what a Stanford Torus is?

Yes, and I read about something similar in Niven's Ringworld.
Maybe we could even build a Dyson Sphere -- but I'm not holding my breath.

OK, what would be the effects of removing ourselves from the biomic collective we're a part?

Consider: We're not independent, autonomous organisms. Most of the cells in our bodies are not human. Our bodies are complex, interactive, carefully balanced collections of human and microbial cells -- a community of organisms.

We have no ecological idea of what these alien cells are doing, how they're interacting, how the balance is maintained, or what long-term effects an imbalance would cause.
We live in a sea of these microbes. They come and go, live and die, and there's constant in and-out traffic, replenishing them and maintaining the balance. Remove us from this biological milieu we tap into to maintain ourselves, and what unanticipated effects would ensue, long-term?

It's not just heat, air, food water, radiation shielding and gravity we need to consider.

 

[Heyo]

OK, what would be the effects of removing ourselves from the biomic collective we're a part?

We don't remove ourselves, we take them with us (hopefully, minus some unhealthy ones). The Biodome experiments have shown us what can go wrong and so we are prepared for that.

 

[Valjean]

We don't remove ourselves, we take them with us (hopefully, minus some unhealthy ones). The Biodome experiments have shown us what can go wrong and so we are prepared for that.

The Biodome didn't remove anyone from the Earth biome. It just excluded some larger fauna and flora and restricted air exchange. The biomic soup was unchanged.Gravity and insolation were unchanged.

What of the tens of thousands of bacteria, archæa, fungi, algæ, plants, nematodes, arachnids, &c that are a part of us, interact with us -- mutualistically? Parasitically? Infectively? Who knows?
We can't take them all with us. We can't sustain them or maintain the proper balance.

We're immersed in them. They circulate in and out. Do we need them? What if some are removed from the biosoup we swim in, or the balance is altered? What happens if our immune system is unchallenged? What happens if a competive species is removed -- superinfections?

There have been no long-term isolation experiments. Nature is complicated. Life-support is more than food, water and air.

 

[Heyo]

There have been no long-term isolation experiments. Nature is complicated. Life-support is more than food, water and air.

I regard the ISS and other space stations as long-term isolation experiments. We know that micro gravity is detrimental to human health but that's about it. It will take a lot of experiments to create a fully self sustained ecology but I see no indication for major difficulties.

 

[Valjean]

I regard the ISS and other space stations as long-term isolation experiments. We know that micro gravity is detrimental to human health but that's about it. It will take a lot of experiments to create a fully self sustained ecology but I see no indication for major difficulties.

Of course not. There have not been 'lots of experiments'.
Long term is not six months. I can go without vitamin A or D for six months, just on hepatic stores.
What effects would ten years produce?
Astronauts' eyeballs deformed by long missions in space, study finds
Effects are only beginning to be discovered.