Seeing as how justice is a purely human concept, yes, I'd say we deserve to live on earth. Whether the vast majority of our race "deserves" to be alive at all under natural law is a different matter.
Seeing as how justice is a purely human concept, yes, I'd say we deserve to live on earth. Whether the vast majority of our race "deserves" to be alive at all under natural law is a different matter.
Nobody deserves anything. It's not like anyone has a choice...things are simply happening. Even if we deserve it or not...who are we to decide that?
I really hate the way people think we are a "cancer" or whatever. We are just animals at the highest evolution... Look at any ecological environment, if you put a complex animal (us) in a seemingly infinite space (earth) with seemingly infinite resources without any natural predators, that animal will continue to fill its surroundings. It's basic principle of evolution and animal instincts. Clearly our evolved brains had a hand in making us the predominant species, but IMO we are just doing what ANY animal does when you set the stage for said animal perfectly. Exponential growth is inevitable, where it will eventually taper off and then decline. Most scientists seem to agree we are reaching that breaking point.
Assuming the Evolution mindset, this planet created us. Complaining that we're bad for the planet strikes me as rather silly. The planet existed just fine for EONS prior to humanity's arrival. If you imagine that paving the surface of the planet, creating and dumping hazardous (to current life forms) waste around, or doing stupid things that lead to the extinction of very recent other species is bad for the planet, I don't think you have a full appreciation of the wonders of nature.
Most of the things we consider to be bad for the planet are actually just bad for us. Contaminating the water - over time, that stuff'll take care of itself. Long after the people are all poisoned or starved or the ecosystems have collapsed due to our laziness, arrogance, ignorance. The planet doesn't hold any other current animal or plant in particularly high esteem, compared to humanity. It's all here, and the planet simply exists. It doesn't care who lasts longest, it doesn't care which animals or plants encroach on the territory of others - it really, really doesn't. Humans care about ecosystems because we rely on them for our convenience, or our pleasure, or our personal health, or for profit. We don't care about ecosystems because we care about "the planet."
The planet is fine. If it can handle meteors that wipe out dinosaurs and still pop out oversized, stupid creatures, it can handle us.
It's not about deserving to live on the planet, so much as not deserving to be wiped out; I'm sure we'll do that just fine on our own. The planet, the solar system, the galaxy and the universe have near eternity. Why rush sending us off?
Unless they're putting in an interstellar freeway.
That's not the question though. Just because we are born and adapted to life on earth doesn't mean we can behave or treat the planet like shit without consequences. And if we even start to jeopardize the very brittle echo system on this planet we don't deserve to be here, especially not since we as a species are intelligent enough to understand when something might be harmful to ours and our fellow earthlings living space.
What we've done so far is nothing. This hasn't been harmful to anything, yet. But as our species grow and more areas become populated we do actually have a real effect on the echosystem. The planet will always be fine, we can't harm the planet. But we can and currently are beginning to make it a very difficult place for evolved life to flourish on.
If we as a species deserve to be here is entirely up to us and our willingness to adapt our ways around nature and not the other way around.
Last edited by mmoc098be2d235; 2013-02-12 at 05:22 AM.
It's a far-fetched hypothesis that isn't impossible (because meteors have been found that contain traces of life from Earth; it's therefore not too strange to assume that other planets in our solar system contain traces of life from Earth, flung there on the back of a meteorite), but it's so incredibly far from probable that there's really no reason to assume this happened to Earth. Life could not have come from another planet within our solar system (though possibly from a moon, but since that moon is covered in ice (and we have yet to find traces of life there), it's not very likely), and it's not very likely that a meteor from beyond the Kuiper-belt could have reached our planet with life still intact. It's pretty much a hypothesis that states: 'I don't understand how life could have spontaneously arisen on Earth, and I don't believe in gods, so it must have come from another planet!' Thereby simply replacing the problem to a farther away location. :S
OP: Of course we don't deserve to live here. In nature, there is no such thing as 'deserve.' It's a simple matter of kill-or-be-killed, and we're rocking the charts.
where else would we live?
Anyone who says no feel free to leave.
We are the Apex Predator, we are the ones who rised up from mindless humping machines into something more. The earth is ours by right of conquest, and until something can conquer us it remains ours, to do with as we please.
When you see someone in a thread making the same canned responses over and over, click their name, click view forum posts, and see if they are a troll. Then don't feed them."Gamer" is not a bad word. I identify as a gamer. When calling out those who persecute and harass, the word you're looking for is "asshole." @_DonAdams
Yep. Thanks to evolution and survival of the fittest, here we are. I haven't read all the replies yet but I'm sure there are already some emo people replying how we are a cruel and assholic species (while of course excluding themselves from said description) and they'll say how trees and bunnies are superior species and so the world would be better off if we are all dead. Gonna have to go ahead and disagree.