Often times when reading other people's posts on various subjects, I get an urge to ask them what they feel drives us to be special? It's only a curiosity of mines; one which I haven't sought an answer for until recently. And so I present the following query to my fellow TFP members:
Do you consider us, human beings, as being more than just a complicated assortment of chemicals interacting with each other? Is there some facet about us which you feel elevates us from being just a bunch of elegant machines made of proteins?
Here's my take on it:
Of-course we can think and reason and conceptualize, create tools, imagine, make art, communicate, etc, but these are all just the results of, once again, chemicals reacting with each other in such a way as to give our genes a means for surviving by providing advantageous abilities to their carrying bodies. This is the conclusion I've come to after studying and researching into a broad range of scientific branches. Biology, chemistry, physics; these are the rules of the universe. Fact is, if we weren't here to observe these processes (i.e, if we didn't exist) then these natural processes would be present anyways. In this mind-set, I don't consider us to be any more important or useful than a tree frog.
Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, and I see the world as a cold, dark, lonely place, illuminated and warmed only by our presence within it; but this warmth and light is only apparent to us, so who are we to dictate how the world should be? Who are we to believe in a God when it's presence is only felt in human hearts? Why should we fight over trivialities, all the while ignoring our fundamental brotherhoods, and the insignificance of our existence?
Beautiful harmony exists in the world; a harmony which we should only be an audience to, not an arranger of.*
I kind-of veered off into another direction there near the end, but anyways, enough of that; what does the TFP think? Are we only protein machines, or are we something more? Are we so grand that we transcend the applicabilities of our collective components?
*This post was inspired by this video (Youtube) and Debussy's Clair De lune...I don't know why.