Journal #13

Scientific Obscurism
1. There will always be things that humans cannot understand. For example, questions like "what came before the universe?" will always be left unanswered, because our brains simply cannot process the information. I think this belief came from simply thinking about abstract ideas and realizing that simply theorizing about them is impossible, because our brains cannot process some of the ideas. They are out of reach of our thought process. This is important because it means that humans are fallible, and we will always have problems because we can never figure everything out. we are doomed to have unanswered questions.
2. "God" exists in the above unknowable places. It is not a things, or a force, or anything.  It does not interact with the world, and it did not create the world or the universe. It simply exists in that humans can never completely process all information, since it is too complex and out of our reach. We will always have questions about life and our place in the universe, and since some cannot be answered, God will exist within us. I think this came to me because religions are always trying to answer life's questions.
3. Humans have no soul. Mind and body are the same, and will never be separate. When we die, our bodies become part of the earth, which is then eaten and made into new bodies, so in a way, we reincarnate, simply through the process of matter. We have no soul because we cannot physically find it in our bodies. This came to me in psych, when I realized that physically it does not exist.
4. Humans' main concern is passing on their genetic legacy. Every motivation, everything we do is bent towards this goal, and we will sacrifice everything towards it. Even if there is no actual child created, simply the drive is what matters. It dictates human behavior, and always will. I realized this while reading a book about evolutionary psychology, and it basically had the same opinion as above.
5. Everything is ordered and has reason, but only in acceptance that nothing has reason. single cases may present strange or unknowable decisions, but when looking at overall population, we can easily find reason in the madness. It is all in the patterns, in the statistics. If we look simply at our own situations or someone else's situation, it can become meaningless. But whole populations have overall characteristics. I started thinking about this idea while watching a documentary about identifying human behavior through statistical analysis and economic theory. It held that only through the numbers could patters be identified.
6. There is a cause to everything. This is a direct copy from determinism, but I strongly believe in it. I think that anything can be traced back to a cause, and that nothing is done purely for no reason. This idea is extremely useful to scientists, in that it allows us to assume that there is cause and effect. Otherwise, it simply becomes random and there is no point in determining what caused something, because it could always change. I also picked this up during my years in science class and psychology, because it makes sense out of something that could be otherwise random.
7. A human being could be created using technology. This idea is similar to the idea that mind and brain are the same thing, but it gives a new spin to it. I think that given the appropriate amount of time, and tools, someone could construct a human brain out of artificial parts. This means that humans are simply extremely well-functioning machines, that could be copied. It means that the only thing that makes us human is the fact that nature does the job for us, and it has given us an amazing gift. However, it could be replicated. I thought about this idea while reading science fiction, and the feasibility of constructing a human brain. All you would need to do is map the neurons, and you could essentially create one.