I am curious to know if, based on your faith, you think it is possible for the human race to become utterly extinct. Does the free will we have been endowed with make even that awful fate possible, or do you think that, because of the particular interest God has in us (we being created in His image, for example) this is not something that would ever be allowed to happen? In a word, should we take steps to ensure that there will still be human life in 100 years, or (assuming–at least for the moment–that the apparent dangers to our continuance haven’t just been fabricated somehow) homo sapiens are safe in God’s hands.
I’m particularly interested in the Judeo-Christian response to this, but I hope those with less traditional theist views will also chime in. Thanks in advance for any responses. I have “Believer” in the title because I’m less interested in the responses of those who, e.g., consider themselves Jewish because their parents were Jewish and they enjoy matza ball soup. I’m interested in the responses of believers.
Any port will do in a storm and all that.
I do wonder what makes choices matter in your world.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Take so long to figure out what ‘matters’ means. I think Parfit’s book on that is in multiple volumes.
Fwiw, unlike many of my friends, if I have a bucket list, it doesn’t involve climbing any mountains in Africa or taking the water at Lourdes. I’d like my kids not to have inherited a world with such a limited lifespan, such shitty career opportunities and no UBI,* but, well, we can’t always get what we want. Those would take a big bucket, bigger even than coming to believe some Deity loved me. That latter is pretty easy really. Just give in to our fears and neediness and….Voila!
*Don’t mean to suggest they’re ALL so other-directed. The celebratory award dinners at Harvard and Princeton are also in the mix. I understand too that when we get very sick or troubled, we get needier and that–as with Lord Marchmain in Brideshead–it can only take a teensy tug to become a little whiny baby again. So I try not to be too cocky about it. Sadly, we’re not all as tough as Russell and Hume. I, myself am a delicate flower–pretty fragile. Not proud of that, though. That’s the biggest difference between you and me: you take your neediness as a virtue.
I suppose It all depends on what the definition of is is. If you need a book for that well ok
Personal subjective preference is what really seems like the weak reed here. To me anyway.
All of us would like certain things some good some bad. The same goes for every creature in the universe I suppose. And every creature that ever existed and ever will exist
The question at hand is what ultimately makes your own personal preferences matter in the scheme of things
peace
People who need people,
Are the luckiest people in the world
😉
peace
Was that the question at hand? OK. I guess they’re in there with all the other ones. Matter (in that sense) neither more nor less than anybody else’s–including the dogs and cats, probably.
Well, you got that song lyric going for you! You and Streisand should tour, maybe.
I’ve been reading a lot of existentialism lately, and one theme they emphasize is what’s called “constitutive intersubjectivity” — our entire mode of existence in the world is shaped by how we are with others. Martin Buber has a nice line that God is the only eternal Thou. So I think that’s the crux of the issue between theists and atheists: does one feel a need for an eternal Thou, or put somewhat otherwise, for a Thou who is not also an animal? I think that this more important than we commonly acknowledge: after all, the person of faith doesn’t just want immortality for himself, but for the sake of being reunited with loved ones who have passed on.
I would agree wholeheartedly with that
Yep, that would be the crux I suppose. Does someone just like me supply the ontological heft that is necessary to move my choices from the realm of statistical noise to the realm of “they actually matter” in the world?
To ask the question is to answer it
peace
fifth,
Yes, but not in the way you think.
For something to matter in the relevant way, it just has to matter to somebody (or somebodies).
I agree but if the somebody is just like me then they have absolutely no presence beyond a couple thousand miles and a few years more or less.
Pretty small potatoes in a vast universe lasting for billions and billions of years don’t you think.
If everyone I know or will ever know ceased to exist would it matter to the world at all? I doubt it
peace
They matter as much/little as everybody else’s. No less (and what is obviously important to stress in your case, NO MORE). I know you’re attracted to a Spinoza-type panpsychism–you can have that. You contribute your teensy mite. That’s it.
Tough nougies.
That depends on who your friends are 😉
The nihilist’s hymn 😉
peace
There was a time when the God that Spinoza tried to understand became flesh and dwelt among us. 😉
peace
Oy
I could be wrong but I think possibly the reason for your exasperation here is you are relying on bottom up wisdom. You need to think from the top down. Of course Spinoza got some things wrong here or there that is because he was working from his own finite biased perspective.
quote:
This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.
(Jas 3:15-17)
end quote:
peace
Still better than Jesus’ 33 years and a few hundred miles at most 😉
FWIW, the steps that need to be taken to conserve the environment probably won’t be for the simple reason of biological imperatives….
There are 7 to 8 billion people on the plant. If the population were only 70 million people, this would reduce the stress on the environment. Green energy won’t be enough, imho, to alleviate the environmental problems. Nuclear might, but that also has issues! Solar? Wind? It may help… but the fundamental problem is overpopulation. So what if we reduce present day “fossil” fuel use by 10% in the USA only to see China and India and Africa add more cars and the population increase by 20%…..
The biological imperative of survival and reproduction won’t drive the population to size that is friendly to the environment. In 500 years we could be looking at 50 billion or whatever buzillions it could be.
And beyond survival and reproduction, let’s say we (collectively and voluntarily) limit families to 1 kid each. That will be a manpower burden and economic disaster at least on some dimensions. We need robots to help in that situation. That might be helpful…
So, yeah, Graham2, I’m quoting Bible verses because it looks like man cannot save himself from himself. We could put guns to people’s heads and demand they don’t make anymore kids. Green energy isn’t the fundamental solution, reducing population is.
As far as humans cooperating on Global scale to solve their problems? We few can’t even cooperate on the frigging TSZ blog….
keiths:
fifth:
Do you really think that those who stay put matter less than the peripatetic?
Would you tell a grieving mother that her dead child mattered less because he died at age 5 rather than age 50?
No like walto I would say that sans God none of us matter at all in the scheme of things. There is no difference at all what we do.
A mother’s grief or joy doesn’t matter at all to a cold unconsciousness unfeeling universe. Those are just the hard facts for an atheist.
Again like walto so eloquently said sans God all you can ever have in this regard is “tough nougies”.
peace
You don’t realize it but you have unintentionally hit on one of the main things that makes Christianity special in this regard. Moses and Buddha and Mohammad can only claim to tell us about KN’s far away eternal Thou.
Jesus on the other hand gives us an access point, a specific time a place where he made it possible for us to meet God and relate on a truly personal level. He does this because the choices of his friends matter to him.
peace
fifth:
Then why mention the “couple thousand miles” and the “few years more or less”?
It matters to her. The fact that it doesn’t matter to the unconscious universe is no more relevant than the fact that it doesn’t matter to her toaster.
I agree, and the key to bringing the population under control is the education and empowerment of women as well as promoting the health and well being of existing Children so that families will not feel the need to have children for insurance purposes. What is needed is a radical change in culture in much of the developing world
As a Christian I think that the way to do this is to promote the spread of the Gospel. Churches are on the front lines of things like increased female education empowerment and improved health care. It goes hand and hand with the missionary enterprise. As communities are touched by the Gospel birth rates inevitably go down.
peace
Because all our influence and all the impact of our choices could never ever be more than a literal a drop in the bucket when compared to the vast universe.
So, Why is that relevant?
We are talking about our choices mattering to the world. And sans God they can’t. One person’s opinion is simply statistical noise in the universal scheme of things.
It doe if we are talking about our choices mattering in the world. Which we are bye the way
peace
Minor point but i disagree with the judeo-christian tag someone invented 20 years ago. The judeo part is irrelevant and just a spin to include jews in the religious origins of our civilization. actually only potestantism matters in anglo american civilization and the Roman Catholic being included is already going a long way, and bit more, to be share relevance. its only CHRISTIAN.
anyways
its impossible for mankind to go extinct. the bible predicts our future and god protects our future. There is no reason to expect disaster except as the bible allows. there are more people then ever.
mankind is too rich to allow any problems and these days the upper classes have it made for them/their kids and so would cause less trouble then in the past.
All of them lived longer lives than Jesus according to wikipedia
Mother Theresa and her opposition to contraceptives says fuck yourself… unprotected, of course
Haha. Nice rewrite. Nobody will realize it isn’t an original screenplay.
You’re a kick, Robert. Thanks for your response. I feel like I’ve heard from most of the Christian regulars. Not phoodoo, Gregory or Mung, though.
Byers:
Um, no:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
You can’t have it both ways, fifth. The “couple thousand miles” is either relevant to the point or it isn’t.
Regarding the “few years”, I wrote:
fifth:
keiths:
fifth:
Because we’re talking about what matters.
I wrote the following…
…and you agreed with it:
The child matters to his mother, obviously. So to argue that someone doesn’t matter because they only live “a few years more or less” is silly.
keiths:
fifth:
You’re getting “mattering to the world” mixed up with “mattering in the world”.
The latter can happen even in an unconscious universe.
As I said:
Mother Theresa was a Catholic, She was a fine lady and did a lot to promote health care for the least fortunate but as a protestant I would say she did not the spread the Gospel. That is what the reformation was about.
Protestants are generally not apposed to artificial contraceptive use and the best contraceptive is an empowered educated woman who can see a future for herself as more than a babyfactory.
peace
What? You are claiming that our choices actually matter to the world now??
It’s your position that in a million years or we will all be dead and the universe will roll on like nothing happened is it not?
peace
No we are talking about what “ultimately” matters or what matters to the world.
Of course our choices matter to us. That is what choice is If they didn’t matter we would not make them. The same goes for choices of every creature to ever live in the universe. That goes with out saying.
However Sans God you can add up all those choices and you get “squat” and “tough nougies”.
No it can’t. To see why just ponder the individual choices of all the people who have died over the millennia.
In your worldview once you are dead and you will be dead soon your choices rapidly cease to matter at all to anyone at all.
Once we are all dead and we will all be dead very soon in the cosmic scheme of things all the choices of all the people who ever lived will add up to “tough nougies”.
Your choices don’t matter at all in any ultimate way…………Sans God You are just dust in the wind………..You need to own that.
peace
Does the idea of a universe sans Dieu frighten you?
IMO it is quite within the realms of possibility that humankind can become physically extinct, but that is far from the end of the story. In Corinthians, Paul is of the opinion that it is one thing to destroy the physical body but in so doing the spirit remains.
From 1 Corinthians 15:
Paul recoginised the perishible nature of the physical body and he was happy to, “die daily”. The Gospels and the Bhagavad Gita tell a similar story.
From Luke 12:4
Killing the body does not extinguish the being to which it belongs.
From the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2:
The body is made up of ever-changing, transcient physical substances, not so the spirit. The spirit wears the body like a garment.
Not at all. I view the idea as utterly impossible. I truly can’t fathom how anyone could possibly conceive of a universe without God. The idea literately makes no sense. It’s like trying to conceive of a square circle. I think that the only way that you can posit such a thing is to willfully suppress logic. I’m not kidding about that. What I find to be frightening is the prospect of facing the God of the universe with out a suitable mediator. I’m so eternally grateful that he has graciously provided one.
Does the necessary corollary of a godless universe namely that your choices don’t matter in any ultimate sense bother you at all? It seems like most folks here find that to be objectionable for some unspecified reason. Hence this thread.
peace
Easy. the very same way, no difference at all, as “fathoming” a universe without a real in-the-flesh Peter Pan.
The opposite is what doesn’t make sense. An absurd magical being with absurd properties, who controls whatsoever comes to pass, yet blames you for being exactly what he built you to be, and then killing himself to forgive the sins of the few chosen, that he still built so that they’d commit those very sins, and the rest of the nonsense. Shit, how can anybody believe that such being could possible exist is beyond me.
And that’s what’s so scary about you. You cannot reason when it comes to your magical imaginary friend, despite all the nonsense involved.
Sure, to mediate for the very sins he’d built you to commit, he’d controlled you to commit, he’s mandated you to commit. So glad I did not fall in your particular sect. Gives me a headache to imagine having my mind obliterated by such nonsense.
Nope. Not in the slightest. It’s as if I had finally grown up and realized that it’s not all about me, that this is going to end, and that’s that.
It’s curious that you’d think that your choices “matter in an ultimate sense” in a universe where you’re but a puppet of some absurd magical being. That would mean that there’s no such thing as “matter in an ultimate sense.” Unless you feel pride to be a guilty sinful-but-forgiven man for no reason but your imaginary friend’s entertainment.
It’s a perfect storm of abject neediness (“We are nothing whatever without God:our lives would be utterly meaningless”) and self-glorification of the highest order (“Of course my cares matter more than just a few miles/years around me: they span beyond the farthest galaxies and to the ends of time”) That in a nutshell seems to be the religious personality–at least as exemplified by FMM.
Neediness is the greatest virtue: it’s what endows us with the grandest importance imaginable.
See, That is your problem I think.
You create a jacked up conception of what God is and then dismiss your own jacked up conception as unnecessary.
See, you begin by positing that God is an “absurd magical being with absurd properties ” then you decide he does not exist. That is what the suppression of logic looks like.
Then why fuss about the environment or politics or anything else beyond your own pleasure?
quote;
If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
(1Co 15:32b)
end quote:
peace
Because, you know, if you could just be as scared and needy as he is, you’ll find the greatest fantasy imaginable right at your fingertips!
Interesting how important TRUTH is to FMM, except, you know, in being more important than illusion.
CharlieM,
Thanks for your response, Charlie.
I don’t aspire that my choices matter in the “ultimate sense”. Just to me and the people I care about. I content myself with small potatoes.
No it’s just that you always have such a hard time when it comes to seeing things from somebody else’s point of view.
Maybe because he realizes that him being all-important and never-ending isn’t the only thing he can care about. He’s not needy enough for you: if only he were, he could stop caring about stuff like other people or the environment because, like you, he’d know that heaven would provide! How noble!
Just be more needy, goddamit!
“abject neediness” and “self-glorification of the highest order” are mutually exclusive don’t you know.
It’s not my self-glorification. It’s God’s gracious gift he does it for his own Glory. In it’s absence you have Pascal’s God shaped vacuum longing to be filled.
peace
Cool I can respect that. So contrary to what Entropy claims it is really all about you.
I do agree with that on this one at least.
It is genuinely difficult for me to understand why someone would choose to live in denial of the obvious. Or conversely why what is blatantly obvious to me is hidden from their conscious observation.
peace
He cares about himself and the dozen or so people he cares about.
What else is there in your world?
peace