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Just a few very simple questions
cvalue
Veteran
How come the earth, the moon and the sun get together and dance around each other in a perfect dance to create life on this earth?
How the DNA codes were written so they can pass on from one generation to the next?
Complicated human bodies are made up of atoms, protons, neutrons... by chance?
Any more questions any one?
How the DNA codes were written so they can pass on from one generation to the next?
Complicated human bodies are made up of atoms, protons, neutrons... by chance?
Any more questions any one?
0
Comments
The Buddhist answer, in Buddhist cosmology, which is for me a metaphor and rhetorical device, say that the world is so huge that pretty much everything you could imagine exists in it. So that is why we have planets & DNA & so on.
The other part of the question is implied, who set it up this way? The Buddhist system relies on cause and effect as a foundational mechanism. So there can't be a uncaused effect. The chain of cause and effect goes back forever.
I haven't quite figured out if the issue about a creator god is a reaction against Hinduism or if this is a serious issue that would contradict something basic in the Dharma were a creator god to creep in.
And there is the sutra about the guy wounded by the arrow asking unhelpful questions about who shot the arrow, what kind of arrow, etc. Some place I read imply the exact questions the Buddha said were useless, but I sort of read it as condemnation of speculation on the whole category of questions *in the context of the Buddhist path*. I'm sure these questions are quite relevant to making rockets and visiting Mars.
Otherwise it would not have happened! One can't argue with the truth that things are the way they are - global warming, hurricanes, tsunamis etc.
It is in that sense nature is "perfect".
Moved to general banter.
Gassho
We didn't need hair any more, because we got clothing.
After years of experimentation and contemplation, I think the answer is yes.
See? Mystery solved!!
Natural selection???? The evidence seems to point towards all our media views of what a beautiful human body is. Apparently its young, half starved and bereft of blemish or body hair.
Apparently a lack of body hair is essential for capturing your alpha mate.
Our ancestors lost their hair to live in the desert and to barely survive using a tool kit of barely effective survival strategies including hunting animals by running after them until they drop over from heat exhaustion. Humans are one of the only animals that can run and run and run, thanks to sweat glands and hairlessness-- other animals will overheat and collapse helplessly. This hunting technique is still used by Aborigines in Australia to hunt kangaroo and I saw a nature film where a wolf hunted a young caribou this way.
We also liked to scavenge, eat snails, coastal shell fish and turtles-- man, we were crappy hunters specializing in the dead or not moving. My how things have changed.
ref: lots and lots of pop-sci books on ancient humans.
What a system!
The moon would only need to be a few miles further from the earth or a few miles nearer and it would not happen.
For me, when I consider what it takes to create a human baby, the process is pretty miraculous. But to *me* that doesn't mean it had to have some sort of creationary force that explains it just because it's such a perfect system. Same with how the planets and the universe came together.
I think that we become privy to a lot of those unanswerable questions when we die, and then when we are reborn again, we forget it because knowing some answers would alter our ability to properly experience everything human existence has to offer. But that is just a sense I've had since I was young and I haven't reconciled it with my Buddhist practice at this point.
Look, it's a bit like saying, "Wow, look at that puddle of water; it's a miracle, look how the water fits in the depression just perfectly".
It's that way, because it's that's way.
That includes the phenomenon of time.
Let's say a planet has a 0.000000000000000000001% chance (I'm not using real math here, just explaining the concept) to bear life.
Now, count the billions and billions (lol) of stars in our own Galaxy. Many of them having planets of their own. Then count the trillions of other galaxies out there, each with billions upon billions of stars, many also with planets.
No matter how small the chance of something is, if there are enough opportunities it is bound to happen somewhere, at some time. This concept is also why I firmly believe in Alien life. Though as to if that alien life is intelligent or not is an entirely different matter.
That's my view on it anyway.
What is there in Love to question?
Perhaps we need to start with a definition of coincidence which does not assume a mechanistic universe that is merely material.
Because the mind has some serious limitations. We're lousy at comprehending very large numbers or complicated, slow processes we cannot observe in action. We're also pretty stuck up when it comes to the importance and unique position of humanity in the world.
If you think of all the many elements that had to come together to create us, the species with the brains to dominate the entire world, it seems impossible it's all due to chance or blind forces in the universe that did not have consciousness as a goal. Yet given the vastness of the universe, the billions of galaxies each with billions of stars and most of those stars with multiple planets, and all of them constantly changing including our own system....if the conditions our world provides turns out to be duplicated on one in a million planets, then there are still millions of planets exactly like our world out there. And millions more that existed in the past and another few million yet to be born. It boggles the mind.
We can intellectually understand the concept of huge expanses of time, but the mind has a hard time looking at that mountain in the distance and understanding it's only a hunk of crust that used to be on an ocean floor and is on its way to becoming sand on a beach. The mountain has always been there and seems to be eternal. Same thing with the moon, which has been pointed out started much closer to the earth and is slowly moving away.
The fascinating thing about the universe is, it is always evolving. If aliens observed our star and planets a billion years ago using advanced telescopes, they would have said, "Nope, no world capable of life there. Couple of planets inside the liquid water zone but they're all lethal to life. Shame that we're unique in the universe."
It's quite staggering when you think about it. It wasn't really a coincidence for all these millions of people to have met, procreated, and survived to in turn meet, procreate and survive - it's just what happened.
If it had happened in some other way, you simply wouldn't be the you that you are now.
Now apply that same thinking to the universe. The water fits the depression in the ground perfectly, because that's the way things are.
Above that is the Sambogakaya. The world of archetypes. The world of light.
Above that is the Dharmakaya . the true nature of all that is . The origin of all Buddhas.