Ask the Interdome!

People spend an awful lot of time concerning themselves with "contexts". They complain about past quotes being taken out of context, whether or not present facts are considered in context, and about the proper context for actions or words in the future.

I say, forget the context! Let's go right to the text on this one! We're going to learn more if we just experience a shit-load of text than if we spend our time making sure it all fits together. Let the word-vomit begin, and ask the Interdome: "are we machines?"

"...then the question of whether or not we are machines would simply be the question of whether or not we are man-made (i.e., "artifacts"), which we clearly aren't (so far), but so what?"

"What I like is that we are machines OR devices. That latter word takes us even further out of the picture as actual people."

"...I want to stress here that I claim only that humans are composed of mechanical parts, not that we ARE machines."

"You know, I as a sort of strong scientist think that we are machines."

"If we are machines, then, we cannot say that God reveals his presence to us, and any awareness we have of God's presence must be explained in some other way."

"Logically, there are two possibilities: diminish our sense of self-worth because we discover we are machines, or raise our appreciation of the power of machines because we discover we are machines."

"We are machines, as are our spouses, our children, and our dogs..."

"They think we are machines while we work as hard as we can. "

"Apparently, we are conditioned to believe that we are machines, that our actions are determined by the stimuli we receive and by our prior conditioning."

"Of course, we do not experience ourselves as machines, but I told myself that we are machines under a double curse – the illusion of being more than machines and the desire for the illusion to be true. "

"But given what we now know about how the world works there isn't any question that we are machines: if by "machine" we mean a physical system capable of performing certain functions, then it is obvious that we are biological machines."

"We are machines that are constructed so as to inform ourselves that we have no purpose and no beauty."

"We are machines, like anything else. We are, however, glorious and marvelous machines, the kind of machine that other machines should look up to."