SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
I didn't mention anything about pleasure. You ignored the important part, again.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Man is not an animal
- Thread starter questfortruth
- Start date
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
It has sense in my religion:
vacuum is lower in value than minerals, minerals lower than plants, plants lower than dogs, dogs lower than humans, humans lower than angels, angels lower than God. God is most high.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Most people do not partake in your religion, so your position is largely irrelevant.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Who cares? Special pleading is not impressive.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Or you can learn to do both. I don't agree that these skills aren't needed now. Of course, I start fires practically every day, butcher my own deer and can drive, read and navigate the internet. The house and shop are heated with wood instead of fossil fuels, sure it takes some more effort, but think of how much money I'm saving in the long term. And meat has become crazy expensive especially if you buy it at the grocery store. I would like to think that raising chickens is saving us money also, but with the price of feed it's doubtful but at least we have free range eggs to give away.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Here are 3 DNA sequences:
1 of which comes from a human. With your powerful righteous science, point out the human one please.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Not sure how this answers my question ... ?
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
I do, as do hundreds of millions of other people not committed to a religious doctrine that requires that humans be seen as unrelated to the beasts. If you weren't burdened with that responsibility, you would see no reason NOT to use the word animal when describing human beings, just reasons to do so.
It points to whatever accounts for that reality. Presently, we have two hypotheses: a naturalistic one and, as you prefer, and a supernaturalistic one. Evidence for a deity is evidence that makes the latter more likely. Complexity is not that. The ID people understood that, which is why they sought not complexity, but irreducible complexity and specified complexity as evidence of an intelligent source for our reality. They found neither, which is consistent with the naturalistic models. There is no evidence that makes the supernatural hypothesis any more likely than merely logically possible, meaning that there is no finding in reality that makes an intelligent designer necessary, nor even more likely.
Is that OK to you? Do you allow yourself to make such judgments about whether what described deities do is OK? I do.
These comments are off putting to the secular humanist and probably many other kinds of non-Christians. Such people find it confusing that some of their neighbors find that description consistent with a moral agent. What you describe is incompatible with love as I define it, which is rooted in caring about others, in the pleasure of others sometimes requiring personal sacrifice.
My utilitarian and Golden Rule ethics tell me that if I were a deity, my duty would be to my creation, not vice versa, just as it is in my home, where I live with a wife and two dogs. Much that I do is for their pleasure, not mine, although I derive pleasure being of service to them all. I can't imagine telling my wife to marvel at the fact that I notice her at all. I have trouble identifying with much less loving any sentient creature
I am reminded of the people who tell me that their purpose is defined by their belief that they will go to heaven and be with that deity. They also imply it when they say that the atheist's life is meaningless without that hope of eternity with God. Then I consider what they are calling an afterlife which gives life meaning and without which is meaningless: eternal obeisance to a deity that you say created them for its own pleasure, not theirs. That's a meaningless existence to me. If I found myself in that chorus of praising souls and had a memory of what life was like before death, I'm pretty sure I'd be longing for the good old days with the wife and dogs, when I had a purpose that was meaningful to ME.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Great movie, but still doesn't answer the question.
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
One most have the system of values. Is human life more valuable than life of a bird?
It looks like you have practical reasons to do the things you do, reasons that don't pertain to my life - reasons that makes these skills valuable to you now rather than only potentially useful, but not useful to me. It would take some pretty extreme events to occur for my life to change so radically that those skills would be necessary for survival. That would be when such skills would be useful to me, not before.
Also, I don't want to spend time starting fires, and I've waited too long to learn to hunt. It's something I just couldn't do now except to survive, and I would hate doing it then as well. That's a consequence of growing up in a world where I didn't have to kill my food. In a different life, I'd be hunting right beside you, but not in this one.
Yes, one ought to have a system of values. Being a theist who has been taught that man is more valuable than the beasts, you probably wouldn't approve of mine or my answer. I don't hold that belief.
Today, I tried to rescue a spider from my shower. He was wet already, and having difficulty slogging through the water he was in. I tried to save him. I offered him a piece of paper to crawl onto, but capillary action held him fast to the tile. So I tried to pick him up by a leg. On my fingertip, he didn't look like a spider any more. He was barely moving. I realized that he was a goner, and crushed him between my fingers to end his suffering. I grieved him then, and am weepy now reliving it.
Last week, we had a person tantrum about being asked to put her mask on. She became bellicose, shoved an old man standing beside her, and deliberately coughed onto somebody into a car. Somebody shoved her and she did a faceplant into the grill of a parked vehicle.
You're a mathematical genius. I know because you told me. Do the math here. Answer the question for me based on this.
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
Do not trust my words, trust the facts. The fact is what I have an idea to prove the Goldbach's conjecture:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359413095_ARGUMENTS_FOR_GOLDBACH'S_STRONG_CONJECTURE
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
You don't understand at all then. God created us for his pleasure and then died for our salvation. That's not being uncaring, it's the ultimate expression of love.
It's not a problem at all to glorify a God like that. And he is worthy of praise, unlike us, because we don't merit salvation in any way.
I don't see how anyone could invent a more caring God than one who would die just to keep us from destruction.
questfortruth
Well-Known Member
Yes, because they do not accept, that there is God and even the value of a human over spider.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Not. It's God centered. We did not do anything to deserve any of the grace we are given so there is absolutely nothing to brag about.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
You too... In fact a very small part of the population follow your religion.
ppp
Well-Known Member
Deserving has nothing to do whether one is self-centered. And even if it is "nothing to brag about" the fact remains that the writer is boastful.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Wow, how anyone could see David's marveling that God even notices him as self centered is beyond me.
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
2 Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Who is David centered on here? Not himself!
ppp
Well-Known Member
It's still boasting to brag about your supposed glory and honor and near divinity, even when it is said in the middle of praising someone else.