What? a yolk sack all made for just little old me, with you all created just for my well being and happiness?
That does seem a little unreasonable.
Oh… you mean it seems too much for just Americans? just our species? just life on this planet? just life in this galaxy? just all the life in the universe? Is this because all the stars, and rocks, and things seem so much more important than living things to you that you cannot imagine they were no more than stage props? This is more of that size = significance nonsense, isn’t it?
No I cannot say that I share your sentiment. I don’t think it is too self satisfied to think that the universe was created to support the development of living things. I happen to think life is pretty significant and this size = significance idea is total garbage. AND… I happen to think that human beings are more than just one species among billions. I think we are significantly more alive than all the others on this planet. None of the others are anywhere near as aware of the universe as we are let alone concern themselves with the survival of some species of bug far away from where they live.
Through elementary school when I still fervently believed in God as Jesus with almost no biblical basis, just the general mythos of being with Him after our lives were over here. So I pretty much filled in the gaps myself. I imagined that after living we’d have an opportunity to have our choices critiqued by the morally best being, get filled in on layers of understanding not available to us now. I imagined God as lonely and our potential contribution being to relieve that. But to be of any use we had to own our choices and be ready to justify them. Only in that way could we serve as an adequate other to God or be fitting company.
Before moving on to the middle grades I stopped believing in an afterlife or God. But I transferred my desire to become adequate company for God to being worthy of the friendship of people I respected. Conscience seems nonetheless to connect us to depths beyond our exercise of reason, so I really resonate with what I’m reading in Haidt’s book. So now I think that what gave rise to god belief is something more within which includes conscience, inspiration and creativity. Whatever it is still makes it worthwhile to sometimes pause to reflect and wait for insight when a problem is larger than ones knowledge or experience. Maybe that is what prayer does for Christians? But it seems to me that there is more to us than what meets the eye, not as something we create but rather something within which is cooperating in helping to find meaning in all this. Many people will say if it is subjective it isn’t real or doesn’t matter. I disagree.
Well I’m willing to disagree with you, Mitchell. To me it seems our track record has been to make it all about ourselves, only retreating when science makes some naive assumption no longer tenable. It seems to me that valuing ourselves above all other life rather than seeing ourselves as enmeshed within the tapestry of life is wrong. Seeing the physical world as a stage prop for the spiritual story we are enacting with God also seems mistaken to me. In general, the truth we eventually find always seems to be a larger context in which we are not so central.
Since you’ve had two shots at this, I would like to point out that in my original post I was deconstructing this view and you cut out the rest of my quote. I keep hearing people say our lifespan or our size compared to the universe is insignificant - and so I responded to that with a scale of complexity. Particularly against non-consious matter, which viewed from another perspective is just fluctuations in fields.
You wouldn’t happen to place more value on your own life than the tiger’s would you?
How about the lives of the plants or animals you eat?
I just thought this idea of it being wrong to value our own life above the life of other organisms to be absurd. It is the nature of life in every way to value your own life above the lives of other organisms – part of evolution. Seems to me the real problem has been ignoring how our life (including quality of life) and survival is tied to the life and survival of other organisms.
I suppose I have suggested the scope of awareness and concern as a means of comparison.
And what shall we do with that greater awareness? Shall we stand in front of a mirror and fall in love with all things human, valuing all the ways that we are above every other living thing?
On your way to putting us above all else you use as a stepping stone the observation that: “I happen to think life is pretty significant”. But by the time you get to the end you are ready to throw every other living thing under the bus of human culture.
The point I was making is that even though humans are more complex and more free in their consciousness than all the other life on this planet, this planet is a limited resource. You can’t have more and more and more of us without assenting to permitting less and less of the others until finally it is just us. To co-opt the entire planet to produce the maximum number of human life forms is an ugly thing to do and beneath our better nature. To assent to that is to ignore the responsibility that comes with all this extra consciousness and knowledge. It surely has been wasted on us if all we actually do with it is blindly pursue the exact same path of action as every bacterium placed in a Petri dish. To act as they do when we have the choice, is immoral.
Your suggestion that to withhold my life from the feeding a tiger is inconsistent with my position was a red herring. No, our instinct toward self preservation does not justify blindly pursuing the extinction of every other species. We never have and never will arrive at some sterile room as in the conclusion of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey in which we complete the transition to godhead and leave our animal nature behind. That is a costly fantasy if that is what justifies for you plowing all of nature into the ground to feed our bloom and bust on this planet. Anyone can see we are part of a web of life here on this planet, including Christians who take “creation care” seriously. Dominion does not have to equal domination and destruction.
I think you are ranting aimlessly. Nothing I said was to support throwing living things under a bus of human culture or pursuing the extinction of every other species – quite the contrary. The idea that the universe was specifically designed for the purpose of giving rise to life is quite distinct from this and your suggestion that one implies the other isn’t even rational.
That would include me in my own comment above.
The point was that it is perfectly natural for us to value our own life more than other living things. Doing so is not opposed to seeing ourselves as enmeshed in a tapestry of life.
You are firing your guns off at the wrong target in a reactionary soapbox manner. It is my suggestion that the “image of god” applies primarily to all living things rather than just mankind alone. And yet I will also point out that concern for other living things for their own sake is only found in human beings. You certainly will not find it in the competition for survival in the theory of evolution. What you are doing looks to me like a bending all rationality over backwards in abandonment of honesty for a political agenda. If you think I am not quite on board with an anti-human eco-terrorism ideology then you are correct.
I see it now but hadn’t read that far initially, having stopped to deal with your continued misrepresentation of my position. When you do that you won’t get my best.
What misrepresentation would that be? Can you quote it?
Could it be that I wasn’t actually representing you at all but only that you felt I was reacting to only part of what said rather than making a balanced assessment of your position? Because if so, I can quite agree. Sometimes, its not about you and your position but the parts which stick in our craw and which we feel we have to voice an opposition to.
For me i found God in a really dark place.I have depression(although is better now) and during that time i was ready to commit suicide.For me this tight line prevents my destruction.If theres no God then life is pointless for me ,with all the pain and suffering why not end it a little bit earlier?At least thats my thoughts .Theres no reason to “live”.Plus i hold to the potision that energy in the universe cant just randomly be like"booom now energy"…
Suffice to say I find the way in which you voice your opposition overbearing and unpleasant. If the parts of me or my position which stick in your craw become too hard to deal with just let the moderators know. I have a standing offer to leave whenever they like since I support what they do. But it seems they value having a range of voices here, another reason for me to stay.
I won’t make you the same offer but I’m willing to avoid responding to your posts if that would help.
You are not the first to find it so and I doubt you will be the last. But such is not always intentional or visible to the person doing so, and in fact sorting out the perception from reality is complicated.
Are you saying that you would rather leave the forum than have people voice opposition to any part of what you say that they disagree with?
I value a range of voices also. Most of the time we are on pretty much the same page and I appreciate the objections you make on a lot of issues. But while I respect the basic atheist and non-theist positions, there are a few things they frequently say that I will take issue with.
No, I’ve offered to leave if they felt my atheist presence interfered with the site’s ability to dialogue with YECs and fundamentalist denominations with which they would like to normalize relations. I expect that my presence would be an affront to some but I generally don’t take it personally. But with you, what you say and how you say it surprises me. I find I don’t want to explore topics with you because I don’t know when you’ll become surly or demeaning, but I don’t need to leave the forum on that account. I just have to decide when I’m up to dealing with it.
Actually, I do too. But I take an intermediate position between that and the idea that we are just accidental uninvited extras. I think the physical universe was an absolute necessity for God’s creation of children. I think the physical universe is very much a womb for that purpose. I don’t think the physical universe was a matter of God indulging in artistic impulses, and I certainly don’t think it was some accidental convergence of natural phenomenon. You are welcome to believe that if you like, but since we cannot prove either alternative then I don’t think we can expect others to accept our own conclusions on the matter.
wow… it has been the first time I have ever been described in that way. Now talking with you is going to feel like tip toeing through a room full of glass – not sure that is worth it to me either.
It seems odd to me that God can be described as “I am that I am” and yet the universe itself can’t have that status without being called “accidental”.
Personally, I think what gives rise to God belief and who we take ourselves to be live in a universe which is what it is and that we are living through an actual adventure together with some shared goals and challenges, not just living through life-lessons which are for our benefit. I just don’t share the notion that there is anybody or anything in control of it all. But I do think that who we take ourselves to be are more dependent on that which gives rise to god belief than vice versa. But Christians apparently share the intuition that what it is is infinitely powerful and all knowing and therefore our part is pretty minor. I think we are more significant than that.
I agree since I wasn’t setting up any such dichotomy. The idea that the measurable universe came about by some natural phenomenon in a higher dimensional context of natural law is a different idea than some higher dimensional steady state universe and natural law simply existing. Surely you aren’t talking about the measurable universe since we know that isn’t steady state or self-existing. But in any case, I often make the point that theist and naturalist simply start with different things as their first cause, God or natural law.
But neither do I. I believe in a God who chose love and freedom over power and control – that the whole point of creating life (which I equate with free will) is that control isn’t very interesting.
Apparently not. Maybe that is your experience of Christians but it is not mine. It is my perception that Christian intuition is that our part is central… the lost sheep whom God will go out of His way to find and even for whom He would give His only Son.
You know, I think that we lose our fear of death/nonexistence to some degree when we overcome the narcissistic feeling that we are the center of the universe, finding it hard to imagine a universe without us. But this can go too far from narcissism to low self-esteem, a feeling of insignificance, and depression. It certainly seems to me that many people search quite desperately for some feeling of being special and a lot of people find it in a personal relationship with God. The world doesn’t have to revolve around them if the infinite creator of the universe is paying attention to them at least.
I haven’t been on board with that agenda or shown much support for it. I guess it is a worthy goal, but I have never been very comfortable with evangelism and selling things. Plus I am just so tired of that particular debate. Thus I tend to emphasize and promote a different function of this forum. I suppose in some part it is wishful thinking, because it is what I want this forum to be, which is a place for Christians to consider the theological implications of evolution and the other findings of science.