Moontanman

How do you ask these questions and what answer did you get to that last one?

I don't even agree there is a hierarchy muchless that humans are at the top on Earth. Even granted a hierarchy, what criteria are you using to assert humans are the top of a hierarchy? And this was what exactly? The only problem I have with religion is there is zero evidence for it, no reason whatsoever to assume anything supernatural. Given actual evidence I'd believe in a heartbeat. I might not worship depending on the character of whatever this supernatural whatever was... Seriously Mike, do you not require evidence before you begin to assume something is true? Or even possible? It's quite possible that we humans are the only or maybe just the first in our galaxy or even generally close area to be able to understand much less ask the question. And your idea of a hierarchy requires a superbeing if i understand you correctly. A super being, is if not improbable, certainly requires much more evidence than thinking humans are somewhere on a rung of a ladder so it is must be probable there are rungs above us. Please define hierarchy, I am not kidding, what do you mean by hierarchy? I honestly do not see anything on this planet resembling a hierarchy. Can we are least settle on a definition? If i understand hierarchy it means something superior or inferior to whatever is below or above. You mentioned off worlder, read alien, let's say a K2 level civilization, one of them crash lands on our planet, his technology is destroyed. Would he still be superior to us? If you could take one of us and send us back to 300,000 years ago with out our technology would we be superior to the neanderthals living at the time? Not to them I bet, they would see us as weak and inconsequential, and they had bigger brains than us and some think individually were superior to us in every way important at the time. Think of it, drop you back 300,000 years "naked and afriad" (the TV show offends me, sorry) but would you be able to feed yourself, make stone tools, bring down a mammoth, even start a fire? I think technology and civilization doesn't necessarily mean superior...

I do not see a hierarchy in that photo, the horses are quite a bit more powerful that the human in many ways. A bear could run up and kill all of them and then eat the man. A shark could kill and eat them all as could an orca. Where is the hierarchy?

My fish have absolute knowledge of my existence, they see me, come to be for food and some of them even allow me to pet them. Show me something like that a higher being...

Then we are talking about super beings... A concept that i would require considerable evidence for, before I could consider it...

I am only suspicious of people who claim to know there is an afterlife...

It always looked more dangerous to non riders than riders...

But I do not refuse to accept higher life forms exist. To be honest I am still not sure what you mean by higher. I am always open to evidence but to assert something with no evidence is a place i cannot go... In the video I posted they talk about levels of civilization, K1, K2, K3, and possibly K4. We are less than a K1, K1 controls the entire energy falling on their planet, K2 controls the entire energy output of a star, a K2 would be very god like in their massed capabilities but individually they might not even be as smart as the average human. A K3 would be indistinguishable from a god but as before that doesn't speak to the abilities of individuals. A K4 would be god by any definition of the word but the individuals could still be more or less human. True super beings are difficult to define in any realistic way, in Star Trek they introduce us to the "Borg" a hive mind composed of trillions of individuals occupying thousands of planets but a K2 civilization could sweep them away like dust in a hurricane. A K3 could wield the entire energy of a galaxy, K4 would control the entire universe. What would a super being be? Q? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(Star_Trek)

And people used to think I was crazy!

In the face of lack of evidence the null hypothesis is the conclusion. Lots of things might be possible, but remain improbable at best. You seem to be asserting that not believing something is true cuts you off from the possibility. Not true, not believing is not the same as saying it's not possible.

Clouds?

I see no reason why the Dalai Lama would know anymore than anyone else about something we have no evidence for. Like asking Hawking why aliens are green. I honestly have no need for anything higher than me, in fact I'm not sure I understand what "Higher than me" even means. I have grave doubts about the concept of super beings even being possible much less probable. Possibly a AI might qualify but if the size and computing power is what we are talking about a sperm whale's brain is the size of a bushel basket, very complex, thought to be capable of very complex tasks, does that qualify as a higher life form or are we talking technology? As for surfing the universe, I have surfed, lots of fun but nothing compared to riding a super bike naked down a deserted road at more than 130 mph but I guess that's a personal thing... I still think we lack a definition of higher... Is this close to what we are talking about?

I am really trying to feel you Mike, but I don't get the need you seem to have for hierarchies, it seems unnatural, contrived. Now having said that SURFING THE UNIVERSE sounds like a good time, exactly what was he doing?

Is this what is being talked about! A hand grenade using the excited nucleus effect? https://www.wired.com/2008/08/from-pseudoscie/

Mike, I think you are going about this in a somewhat less than skeptical way. There is no evidence of something above in way that we are above goldfish. In the face of the lack of evidence logic say we should go with the null hypothesis. That being, what is in question that lacks evidence is not real. I am not a big fan of the super being meme, maybe intelligent machine beings might fit the bill but even in our own species individuals are not evolving toward the super being status. In fact the size of human brains is falling and the days of one person having to be skilled enough to do multiple things just to live are gone.

So you feed your cat vegan cat food?

Mike, I am not trying to be insulting but your inability to see something is not a reason to assume it cannot be. Unless you want to assert that some supernatural source is where the laws of the universe come from the laws as they now exist account for how things come into being.. It starts with the simple fact that under the right conditions order will arise from chaos. Chemicals combine in a limited number of ways and those ways select more complex forms due to interaction with energy sources. What I am trying to say is that the chemistry of life is simply how larger molecules radiate away waste heat more effectively than smaller ones. In the case of carbon, it's cosmic abundance and chemical properties allow a huge number of combinations. All these molecules are in competition for energy and other molecules. This allows things like catalysts to form, competition between catalysts selects for those catalysts that produce more copies of themselves. This at least is my understanding of this process. As more and more complex catalysts organise eventually you get huge molecules that reproduce with errors creeping in, these errors allow complexity to grow when sorted by natural selection. If I might I would suggest that you are looking at this from the top down, like looking at a school of fish interacting in a complex way and assuming one fish is in control and the others are following. In fact it is quite the opposite, all the fish follow each other. It's called emerging complexity... This short video explains it far better than i can...

are you talking about natural selection? You are making a huge but completely unsupported assertion. No one has said things come out of thin air, physics determines how everything interacts with everything else. Order can arise out of chaos, it can be demonstrated, but the chaos is not a random thing. Physical systems can only interact in certain ways, physical laws determine those interactions. No goals, no direction, Genes simply select for genes that reproduce the best, that allow physical systems to use the available resources in the most efficient way... Chemicals will spontaneously increase their order due to chemistry, chemistry is determined by physics. Some think we just happen to be in a universe that allows this to happen out of a multitude of universes with random constants. I personally think it's more likely that thing are the way they are because it's the only way they can be and us exist to question them...

I'm betting the Orcas are getting high! https://www.livescience.com/59056-orcas-may-be-killing-great-white-sharks.html

Personally I think life is inevitable, Thomas Gold suggested in his book "The Deep Hot Biosphere" that life probably arises in every planetary system on every planet as a consequence of the chemical processes involved in planetary accretion. On some planets the conditions that allow life persist even to this day. He proposed that Earth, Mars, most of the major ice moons and even kuiper belt type objects probably had life under the surface.

The idea is that it had a far larger chance of happening then and was spread all over the universe. Most panspermia would limit that to life originating on another planet, but I do agree few people look at it that way... I should have been more specific about that, I apologise, I was trying to get across the idea that panspermia can mean something other than life being spread from another planet where it would've had to originate as well...

So all you really have is basically propaganda?

We know where we came from, we are all star dust, we know we were not placed on earth, we evolved here, we know no one placed us here thousands of years ago, We evolved here over billions of years, we know no one paced complex life here, it evolved here, we know human life evolved here. Your hierarchy problem does not exist, between fish and you or between you and the universe..

Exactly where do you think the stuff in a grocery store comes from?

Yes there is, panspermia is one and no it doesn't just push the problem to another planet. At one time, for about 700 million years the entire universe was at the right temp for life to start. Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of a warm puddle..