How about a deep ecology 2.0 which isn’t just about a numerical diversity of species nor about life restricted to genetic diversity, but about a measure of life in terms of potentiality – the capacity for learning, awareness, and creativity. Because frankly, I don’t see all that much special about having over 350,000 species of beetles. In the aforementioned measure of life, human beings have all the rest of life on the planet beat out by a considerable margin.
I don’t look at things that way. I don’t think there is anything special about the homo sapiens species as such. It is simply that we developed the capacity for language so that God could communicate with us more directly and adopt us as children giving us an inheritance of mind that transformed us from the biological organisms to a different form of life altogether. But that inheritance of the mind might be passed on to other species or even artificial life and the need for homo sapiens would be no more. They would be children of the mind to us even as we are children of the mind to God.
Indeed… But I don’t see why being Christian means you have to be specieist any more than it means you have to be racist, sexist, or nationalistic. You really have to be careful of some of the cultural baggage that people sell to you as part of some Christianity package deal.
@Dale
Take your one-line bickering with @Klax to PM. No one else cares.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
14
He chose us to walk among as we are the only creatures on this insignificant planet that could begin to recognize that He had. Just like the trillions of sapient species throughout the insignificant universe.
I don’t begin to pretend to any knowledge that there are any others out there which God has also adopted and communicated with. I don’t think 13.8 billion years is such a terribly long time that we should say others like ourselves must exist, but I think they could and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if they did. I believe in an infinite God and we cannot possibly think we exhaust all of God’s love and attention.
The only arrogance greater than thinking we are the only ones is thinking that the entire universe (let alone an infinite God) should revolve entirely around us, our problems, or our redemption for that matter.
I should have not used the term ‘fine tuning’ as a shorthand, confusing you. There are multiple planetary, interplanetary, solar, interstellar and galactic factors that determine potential habitable zones, let alone any extant biospheres, way more than not “any at all.” Your extrapolations are off by “orders of magnitude” and are merely wishful thinking to comport with your imaginings.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
20
The next order of magnitude up from Maggie’s World being the only world where, in a galaxy of many trillions of worlds, it rains, is ten, 10:1,000,000,000,000=1:100,000,000,000 - one in a hundred billion, the second OOM is 100:1,000,000,000,000=1:10,000,000,000 - one in ten billion, the third OOM is 1:1,000,000,000 - one in a billion. So far we’re 1:4000 - one in a skewed four thousand. OOM we’ve detected a billionth of the worlds in our insignificant galaxy. I’m more than happy with the rationality of my imaginings, of my wishful thinking. Why you would wish to think, think to wish, that rain is impossible on trillions of ‘local’ worlds I don’t know. It has nothing to do with the possibility of transcendence.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
21
We are the very short term future for the biosphere. The next <<0.01% of its future. I doubt we’ll leave as much trace as Chicxulub.
In the Bible project there are a handful of episodes that goes into it a bit.
Design Patterns episode 3 and 4.
Poetry and Metaphor episode 5.
This article touches on “ chaos monsters” which includes sea monsters that ties into why Mesopotamians viewed the sea as chaotic.
I’m pretty sure there are a handful of others episodes also but I don’t remember them. I think there may have even been a actual sea monster episode, though it could have been a segment from one of the episodes mentioned.
I once heard an interesting idea from a young preacher. He lifted up the possibility that when Jesus returns, we humans are the ones that will cleans the world. Not wise to pollute your home, this world, especially if you have to cleans it later.
This is a bit different topic. It is not about us suffering. It’s about what happens when Jesus returns.
When Jesus returns, does the destruction caused by humans suddenly disappear?
My answer is that probably not. A cut forest does not suddenly have fullgrown trees. Plastic trash in a lake does not suddenly disappear. It is unlikely that excess carbon would suddenly disappear from the atmosphere. Possible, yes, but unlikely.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
29
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.
26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
27 Neither give place to the devil.
28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.
29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.