Hello Alen, my name is Jonathan Wooldridge, a retired cook and hobbyist game designer.

A snowflake is a marvel of organization out of chaos. I suggest that a bird's nest is the same essential thing, a sorting of order from disarray performed with a biological component. And finally, the artifacts of human endeavor are in a similar way the result of organizational force.

The most amazing artifacts I know of is us, the result of a microscopic recipe book of DNA that generates the enormity of human endeavor from birth to death.

I want to debate the idea that human technology is awesome, wondrous, and sacred. I think that the man made is more wondrous than the stars, and that the most common utilitarian is an artifact of supreme awe and wonder.

What are your thoughts? Let us engage in an open and polite debate, and learn from each other's arguments. — Alen White

My attitude toward the non-human universe is not one of wonder or sacredness, it is one of family, home. The universe and I grew up together over 15 billion years. I'm not saying humanity is the goal of creation, but we belong here together.

Human technology is different. It's something we do rather than something we are. The universe is inside me. Technology is something I use. It's on the outside.

Glad to have you on the forum. Don't listen to anything Agustino or Hanover tell you.

I think it's all pretty wonderful, I wouldn't place man's products above or below the products of nature, because man's products are a product of nature too.

Hi George,

It is all pretty wonderful, isn't it? But I would place man's creations above nature in this respect: because man creates products by choice, because nature is so powerful, man's creations possess a superior wonder and awe. And while man and his products are part of nature, man brought his products into being by his own purposeful volitional effort guided by a conceptual faculty which he grasped and mastered.

I want to debate the idea that human technology is awesome, wondrous, and sacred. — Alen White

There's nothing sacred about technologies used for mass murder, technologies used to feed addictions, etc. Those technologies might elicit awe (as in horror), or wonder, but there's nothing sacred about them. That's also a weird appropriation of a religious term that I don't think holds. It's one thing to be in awe of a theoretical sacredness of human volitional effort, but what that effort produces is neutral in relation to any kind of value you might place on the effort itself. The technologies themselves reflect the human condition; a condition in which technology is used for anything from freely debating ideas with strangers all over the world, to sex trafficking, arms dealing, etc.

My attitude toward the non-human universe is not one of wonder or sacredness, it is one of family, home. — T Clark

:100: I totally agree.

Some of us, however, don't have a family or a home and so the universe becomes their family as a lonely child would their imaginary friends. Some even go so far as to pretend that the objects around them that they feel nothing for are a part of who they are. We need to go back to the heart of who we are as people, to re-create the importance of home, of family. I may never have had a family, but I know that I am bursting with love that I now give that to the universe around me as a whole, that I feel truly happy when others are.

We live in a technological world of marvel and awe. All around us are technologies of wonder and miracle. Consider the awesome wonder of human technology and what immense role it serves in the existence and flourishing of human life. Consider how naked and starved human existence would suffer had human technology never been created, or if suddenly vanished. But most consider why you hold the weight of blank indifference toward the bright spectacle of the man made and artificial, which grants you life and and happiness.

I want to debate the idea that human technology is awesome, wondrous, and sacred. I think that the man made is more wondrous than the stars, and that the most common utilitarian is an artifact of supreme awe and wonder.

We are part of nature, and so are the things we make out of nature.

It is in what we do with what is around us that makes the difference. Things qua things are indifferent. The "awesome, wondrous, and sacred" you discuss are in regards to our own inventiveness, a kind of pride in being able to come up with an I Phone or something other. I find the same awe and wonder looking up at the sky.

Our ability to relate with each other ethically, morally, justly, virtuously is far more "awesome, wondrous, and sacred", and I think this ability forms the basis for the possibility of any of our species achievements.

I may never have had a family, but I know that I am bursting with love that I now give that to the universe around me as a whole, that I feel truly happy when others are. — TimeLine

I sometimes feel split in two. I've never, up until the last couple of years, felt happy. Many times during my life I've been miserable and afraid. None of that was anyone's responsibility but my own. I've been given a good life. On the other hand, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the world we live in and the people we live with. The world is made as a place for us to play. I have a strong feeling I was meant, built, to be happy. It was my destiny. A metaphor used to describe something that takes a huge amount of effort and time is "turning a battleship." In evading happiness I've succeeded in turning, not a ship, but the universe, on its axis.

We live in a technological world of marvel and awe. All around us are technologies of wonder and miracle. Consider the awesome wonder of human technology and what immense role it serves in the existence and flourishing of human life. Consider how naked and starved human existence would suffer had human technology never been created, or if suddenly vanished. But most consider why you hold the weight of blank indifference toward the bright spectacle of the man made and artificial, which grants you life and and happiness — Alen White

We live in a technological world of horror and terror. All around us are technologies of dread and nightmare. Consider the awesome horror of human technology and what immense role it serves in the destruction and manipulation of human life. Consider how naked and starved human existence would never have suffered had human technology never been created, because creativity is an integral part of humanity itself, rendering that theoretical scenario tepid. But most, consider why you hold the weight of fully formed worship toward the twilit spectacle of the man made and artificial, which grants you bondage and suffering.