200 Posts
This is my 200th post, since starting everything is pointless last year and I thought I'd take the opportunity to look at what I've learnt over that time.
Firstly, I am now more certain than ever, that we already possess the answers to most of the important questions of life. There is no god. Life began randomly. The universe was not made for us. Death is a certainty. One day everything will be gone. Ergo everything is pointless.
The god question is boring. There is no god. The life-after-death question is boring. There is no life-after-death. The paranormal question is boring. There is no paranormal. The consciousness question is interesting, although since the brain creates consciousness, the actual details of the process will only be interesting to those who need to know exactly how each neurone's activity contributes to conscious experience. For the rest of us, the fact remains that the brain is the only organ which is required for consciousness and more specifically, a trained human brain.
We then find ourselves alive, in a very old and very big universe, on a small rock populated by intelligent apes. We have to deal with it. My favourite post of the last 200, is entitled What Are We To Do With Our Lives, which is the title of a book by H.G. Wells, on his hopes for the advancement of our species. What I find sad, is that nothing has really changed since Wells' day and that his name would have been forgotten, were it not for the enduring appeal of his science fiction stories. And so if a man like Wells cannot effect social change, what hope for one voice in blogosphere of millions?
Yet Darwin's words changed the world and at first he was alone in understanding evolution. Today we know even more than Darwin could have hoped for, and for that knowledge I am extremely grateful. How much longer I am going to keep banging on about the pointlessness of existence, I do not know. I do have some very big plans (and I'm talking bigger than Segway here) but part of me cannot believe that the human race is going to survive much longer. The other side of me hopes that before I die, I can put into action my plans, which I hope may one day provide all of the things that theists and non-theists alike have dreamed of. We'll have to wait and see if my hopes for the future, will become regrets of opportunities squandered.
