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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 04/15/2008 : 11:56:56 [Permalink]
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bng asked:
| Could you have meant sentience? |
I read that as since the dawn of humanity. H. sapien.
Which really gets to the point... the boogeyman (and various gods) has been around as long as human imagination has existed.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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| Edited by - Dude on 04/15/2008 11:57:31 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/15/2008 : 12:19:15 [Permalink]
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Thanks for the kind words, but I really did mean the curse of "sapience."
Y'see, over the years, observing the human condition and it's sundry insanities, I have come to think of us as a species: Homo the sap. Indeed, sometimes I think that evolution, never the most efficent of creators even if it is the only one, really fucked it up with us.
Evidence in support of that statement, you ask? Well, I see no need to give any because it surrounds us every day and there's no escaping it. One has but to look.
Even the incompentent and the suck-ups get votes. 
Dude is correct because there were clever tool-makers well before there was even Homo, and that is a sign at least some sapience. It is not too much of a streach to think that these, well, bipedal primates began looking for a god or gods of sorts about the time they began advanced, verbal communication and abstract thought -- became primitively sentient, and became saps.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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| Edited by - filthy on 04/15/2008 12:43:19 |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 04/15/2008 : 14:52:03 [Permalink]
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Filthy.....
It is indeed difficult to quarrel with your characterization of mankind while looking at a photograph of Our Great Leader embracing Our Probable Next Great Leader! I blew my morning cookies all over the desk!
But, Filth, give some credit to a few examples of human sapienceWebster's Unabridged Intl. Sapience
1 a : the quality of being sapient : profound knowledge : WISDOM, SAGENESS |
Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer (forget the religion, consider the works), Socrates, Thomas Jefferson, James Randi, Budda, Louis Pasteur, Darwin, Shakespeare, Plato, Ludwig Von Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Omar the Tentmaker .....maybe a few that have been less than venal, corrupt or stupid! Hell, even Jesus - if he really existed - might have been a pretty good guy!
But if you're talking about the great unwashed (by reason, commonsense, or any form of education) masses, particularly those in the USA, I'm afraid you are right on target! |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 04/15/2008 : 16:27:23 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by bngbuck
Filthy.....
It is indeed difficult to quarrel with your characterization of mankind while looking at a photograph of Our Great Leader embracing Our Probable Next Great Leader! I blew my morning cookies all over the desk!
But, Filth, give some credit to a few examples of human sapienceWebster's Unabridged Intl. Sapience
1 a : the quality of being sapient : profound knowledge : WISDOM, SAGENESS |
Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer (forget the religion, consider the works), Socrates, Thomas Jefferson, James Randi, Budda, Louis Pasteur, Darwin, Shakespeare, Plato, Ludwig Von Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Omar the Tentmaker .....maybe a few that have been less than venal, corrupt or stupid! Hell, even Jesus - if he really existed - might have been a pretty good guy!
But if you're talking about the great unwashed (by reason, commonsense, or any form of education) masses, particularly those in the USA, I'm afraid you are right on target!
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Great minds all, great minds all, certainly, but, alas, they are badly outnumbered by other great minds such as 'Boss' Tweed, 'Lucky' Luciano, Myer Lanski, Leopold & Loeb, Hannible Lector (a personal inspiration), Karl Marx, Vladimire Lenin, Napoleon Bonaparte, 'Soapy' Smith, Ernst Rommel, Ted Bundy, Al Bundy, 'King Kong' Bundy, Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Borgia popes, Friederich Golz, Vlad Tepes, Rasputin, Michael d'Notradame, Pat Robertson, Willie Sutton, Alexander the Great, Lafayette Hubbard, Sylvia Browne, the scoundrel in my signature, and lots of other really sapient people too numerous to list in these few, short pages.
And the sad part is that we, the Great Unwashed, the most numerous of our species, are trapped between the two extremes, one that we don't understand and the other that we would do well to avoid but are too staggeringly ignorant to manage it. From our point of view, sapience sucks.
Edit: I forgot to include Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, Jonathon Sarfati, and other liars for Jesus. I didn't bother with Dembski because I don't think he's got enough smarts to pour sand out of a boot, PhDs not withstanding.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 04/15/2008 16:39:27 |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 04/16/2008 : 07:50:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
And the sad part is that we, the Great Unwashed, the most numerous of our species, are trapped between the two extremes, one that we don't understand and the other that we would do well to avoid but are too staggeringly ignorant to manage it. From our point of view, sapience sucks. |
Hey speak for yourself, I'm somewhere between God and "the second wisest person who ever lived" |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Why not go to the beginning?
