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I've often encountered an interesting perspective people seem to hold regarding humans: that we, and by extension the things we create, like nuclear weapons, are apart from nature, not a part of nature. I have always seen man as just another animal, a part of nature, and thus anything we make is, as well.
Technically yes, nuclear fusion has been going on inside stars for billions of years! Though for a creature to create a controlled version of this as a weapon, not natural.
An asteroid or super volcano (like Yellowstone) could throw enough debris into the the atmosphere and end all life on earth. How do you think the dinosaurs died?
Please show me where I said nukes were natural? I didn't. I was simply disputing your argument that nothing in nature could be so destructive. That's just not true.
I think we separate what's man-made from what's natural so we know the difference between the two. You can argue semantics, but it's more of a distinction than it is physical law.
But in order to believe that humans and therefore human creations are natural you must believe that humans are not a part of nature, that we are something separate and elevated from everything else on this planet. Which not only strikes me as extremely arrogant but entirely baseless; human beings are animals, just like any other animal.
You're really taking that to the wrong level. Like the way wrong level. Man-made things are made by men. That's all that really means. Sort of how like bee-made things are made by bees. You can argue if their origins are natural or not all day, but I'd consider a bridge man-made before I'd consider it natural.
It's not arrogant; it's just categorizing things based on what's most relevant.
Perhaps I should have put more of my basis for this argument in the debate description and not on a specific side.
For me this debate is about addressing things who see man-made things are unnatural. If someone uses the term to describe a fabricated something more accurately I have no problem with it (i.e. bridge is man-made, but still natural). If someone sees something that is man-made as being apart from nature that's when I have a problem, and that's when I think it's arrogant. This is addressing a specific mentality I have encountered numerous times in which humans and everything else on the planet are separated into "us and them," when I see it as "we."
Humans are a product of nature, hence anything we do is "natural."
We like to think of ourselves as above nature, but we are not. Us making nukes is no less natural than a chimp picking up a stick to hit something. We've just figured out how to pick up bigger sticks.
Nobody ever looks at a dam made by beavers and thinks "how unnatural." Termites build termite mounds out of a compound that only exists because the termites make it. I don't see how humans making something like a nuke is fundamentally different, just more advanced.
