Uncle_DaveO, re post @ 9:41AM, Huh, the Big Bullet? The Big Fuse? The Big Interstitial Brat with a cosmic hammer? Perhaps.

A real good discussion, again, as usual, here at the 'cat. It is noteworthy that this is pretty much the same discussion that has been going on for thousands of years with no clear winner as yet.

Some ancients noticed that there is always a little puff of air going in and out of living things, as they understood them. This "pneuma" or "spirit" must be the life force (they thought) that animates all living things (they thought). Whether it is still a popular idea today, I don't know, but we still use the term and mean, pretty much, the same thing.

So where did this breath of life come from...? ...and on it goes. We approach these things with the thought tools (words) and understandings that have been conveyed to us over the centuries.

Perhaps the better question is the one of consciousness. What is the body/mind connection? After all, it is the human consciousness that asks and then attempts to answer these questions. The galaxies don't ask and don't tell. Right in there is the Existential Question too. How we answer them or attempt to answer them, or even ignore them tells us who and what we are.

In the final analysis and in answer to Dorothy Parshall's 1:11AM post about who cares and flying fish cakes: The only mind you truly inhabit is your own. True, whether we are remembered or not, has little to do with on-going life on this planet. Without a theological perspective and an eye toward eternity, a "who cares" is really the RIGHT question. If it matters not then, it matters not now. In fact, life on Earth matters not at all. It is simply a minor anomaly, infinitesimal, in the scope of the space time continuum. Shakespeare's "...tale told by an idiot..." sums it up pretty well.

What I was trying to convey was that, for the preservation of life and our species, the one who reaches beyond himself or herself, the one who effects others positively and promotes the good that we assert life is, they have truly lived and have a heart, which in this age, seems to be a little more rare than in the past.