War or Peace--free will says it our choice?????

[LateBloomer]

Holy cow.

Would like to respond to everything but I just don't have the energy.



Two problems right off the bat:

1) You're a smart guy. No shit about that. But you consistently make a very FUNDAMENTAL (as in "fundamentalist") mistake with regard to the Bible. You take it too literally. It's not MEANT to be taken literally. The only people who read the Bible literally are the zealots and the atheists...oh wait an minute...you're not an atheist, but a pagan! My mistake, but you see my point?

2) The $30 Trillion spent on defense was NOT for NOTHING! Some very select and powerful people got very rich off of all that borrowing from the Chinese and Japanese. So that money went SOMEWHERE!

I'll give you this:

--Yes, the money would have been better spent at home on our schools, parks and libraries. That's the kind of country I wanna live in.

And YES, this is NOT the country I grew up in either.

One more thing, you were out, loud and proud in a time when it wasn't as easy as today and for that I take off my hat.

Salute.

[Aester]

Gosh thats alot of text, a pain with dyslexia :redface:
The only thing i think about peace is ''Remove state, remove government, remove countries, remove boundaries, remove possessions, remove houses, remove politics, remove money, remove religion... We can only achieve peace when there is nothing to fight for''

[bluefox4000]

War will NEVER end. Seems it is human nature.

Mick

[MysteryGuest]

My personal belief is that war is just an inevitable consequence of being human, or perhaps even of being a sentient life form in general. Will it ever disappear? Well...while I don't think it's likely, I do see a small glimmer of hope: technological advancement. Currently, there are plenty of projects in the making that could reduce the need for war. For example: the nanoscale assembler. This is a machine that can make literally anything molecule by molecule from the ground up so long as it is fed raw materials and contains the specs for how to make said object. This would make almost everything very inexpensive and would likely radically alter, perhaps even destroy, the rich-poor divide. World hunger would likely take a pretty big hit as well, since food would be able to manufactured by said machines. Dwellings, too, could be made on a whim with little effort or cost.

Essentially, this could eliminate most of the things that people usually fight for: wealth and basic needs. Those who fight for wealth are greedy, but they should have pretty much everything they want with just one of these assembler machines. Those who fight for basic needs do so out of necessity and would just as well not do it if they could help it.

The problem will be intellectual disagreements. Things like religious differences, the machinations of people in power, and good old fashioned feuds have always lead to conflicts. The one way we may be able to cure this is with the coming brain upgrading intelligence enhancing technologies. Perhaps if we make people smarter they will be more inclined to seek out compromises and other alternatives to armed conflict. No one truly likes war, after all. This is, unfortunately, only a fleeting theory, however. It really is impossible to say what a human with, say, double the brain power they currently have would be like. Would that kind of intelligence allow them to see the world in a different light, or just allow more tools for war and destruction? Only time will tell.

[jbd555]

At Gilhooly, You are pagan but you quote the original sin, Cain and Able etc. IMO, God has allowed us a chance at free will (choice) and he seems very patient with us. You are correct in saying that war is raged for resources... whether it be minerals, water, currency or slavery. When there is nothing left to conquer, nothing left to plunder, the country, or whatever will fall. Look at the Romans. When they could no longer replenish their resources their government collapsed. So yes, there will always be war but if it does end it will be because everyone has enough to eat, drink etc and there will no longer be any reason to hate.