How can we be possibly be happy in Heaven?

Of course we may believe that God doesn't condone predatory behavior in us humans, but that idea originates from a particular theology that we were not supposed to "fall" and therefor to stay non-predatory. I am more inclined to believe my former Biology professor who explained why we are Omnivores.
I don't know whether or not predators were "designed right from the start" as you say. Please provide evidence for that assertion. One may choose to fit the discoveries of science to any creation myth one chooses, if one so desires. "God"..."Good"...Hmmm...We may have differing definitions.
Perhaps, wrather, a world like the one we have is the only one for us; UNLESS we can adapt, like the Dinosaurs did after a large meteorite bashed the planet 65 million years ago. But that's another subject. I don't believe in Hell,unless one means the concequences of poor choices we make here & now. If you mean by "current state"; the theological FALL of Genesis, I think that's a myth created by us humans to explain why life on earth is hard.
Eden...Hmmm...A mythical place that describes what "Moses" thought a perfect earth would be like. I was taught in my church days that Eden was a place of innocence while Heaven was a place of perfection.
Have you ever heard of the theory that our universe is just one bubble in a cosmic eternity of bubble-universes all with their own physical laws. Sounds a little like your idea of transcendent worlds,(some with only pain).
Oh goodie; another way to get to heaven; be a vegetarian.
Duuuhh! We don't have adaptations for predatoral behavior??? I must object profusely and strenuously, and with intense prejudice. Certain teeth of ours are great for shearing bovine flesh; another subject for another thread.
Perhaps whatever created nature is'nt good or bad, just indifferent, and it's really up to us to think and do good. That puts all the responsibility for our behavior squarely on our shoulders, doesn't it? I don't think it negates the existence of
God, but it does help us to be more "god-like".

Thankyou for your response. I have been impressed with how thoughtful all the responses have been to my mailings. Thankyou to you all.Your point that humans are able to do things that they are not specifically designed to do suggests a degree of freedom, for example freedom from instinctive determinism. So we can CHOOSE to be either vegetarian or omnivore or carnivore. Even if we have an appetite for meat, we can choose to ignore it or maybe even "switch it off".It seems that the higher up the "evolutionary ladder" we go, the greater is the degree of freedom that creatures have to escape determinism. Physical, chemical, biological, determinism is transcended, then reflex is transcended, then instinct - always moving towards pure freedom.Question: when we are completely free , what directs us then?

Questions: 1.What does it mean to be completely free? 2. Do all animals live only or by varying degrees of "deterministic instinct"? 3. Do we humans live by any degree of "deterministic instinct"? 4.Is evolution like a ladder?(I say no) 5. Is it possible for some animals to learn new things thereby adding to their "specific design". 6. What on earth is a "specific design"?
PM PS- sounds like we're getting off topic.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 10-10-2003]

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Thankyou for your response. I have been impressed with how thoughtful all the responses have been to my mailings. Thankyou to you all.

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You're welcome.

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Your point that humans are able to do things that they are not specifically designed to do suggests a degree of freedom, for example freedom from instinctive determinism. So we can CHOOSE to be either vegetarian or omnivore or carnivore. Even if we have an appetite for meat, we can choose to ignore it or maybe even "switch it off".

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Well, yes of course we can choose to eat meat or animal products or not.The problem comes when one begins talking about divine "design".

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Question: when we are completely free , what directs us then?

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What do you mean by "completely free"?

Hello Prozacman,Pure free-will is completely free, since it is unconditioned by any environmental causes. In other species there are varying degrees of deterministic instinct. The reflex is the most deterministic behaviour - it is hardwired into the nervous system. Instincts seem to be pre-programmed patterns of behaviour ie the migration instinct - such behaviours follow a set pattern. In humans there is greater flexibility. Basic physical needs are universally experienced, but the ways in which they are satisfied are very varied, owing to our greater degree of freedom from set patterns or programs. Beyond needs there are values, such as social, aesthetic, political, religious, intellectual values that are even further removed from determinism. Values influence behaviour at a very rarefied level, and are expressed in thousands of different ways.There is some evidence that evolution is not really like a ladder because each species is too specialized and distinct to have evolved from it's supposed pregenitor, and very advanced (complex) organisms are found at all points on the "ladder".Some animals can definitely learn new things and new ways of satisfying their instinctive drives. I do not think that this learning adds to their innate pre-programming because such learning is not an inhereitable characteristic.

Thankyou for your reply Prozacman.I believe that the anatomy of creatures is too highly organized to be the product of chance - I am therefore forced to conclude that the anatomy of creatures is the product of an intelligence or intelligences which may or may not exist for our good, and infact which may or may not agree with each other.As you point out, it is not necessarily true that predators existed from the beginning. Infact they could have been created at any time after the beginning.I am inclined to agree with you that nature does seem indifferent - neither pushing us towards or away from what might be deemed good. As you suggest, such a neutrality might be important for enabling us to take responsibility for our actions.Belief in transcendent worlds is very common throughout all cultures. There is a general belief in a spiritual world, and some evidence supports the existence of such a world. In the current climate of thought at this time, it seems quite hard to believe even in a soul. Yet even the existence of one disincarnate soul would suggest the existence of a spiritual world.My point about heaven and hell, is that our current world seems to be neither completely like the definition of one nor the the definition of the other, but if anything, it seems like an amalgam of both; which is perhaps what God intended it to be.I don't really believe that being a vegetarian is all that important for getting into heaven. It just feels good to be a vegetarian. Believe it or not, a lot of unconscious guilt is attached to meat eating. People experience this unease with life, without knowing quite where it comes from. It is simply not possible to routinely commit a million animals a day to a miserable death and not be effected by it on a subliminal level. After all we are all only human, and the unnecessary suffering of any creatures effects us all.For me the feel-good factor is the reason now, and would remain the same reason to carry on being a vegy in heaven - if there is a heaven.

I don't believe that evolution has ever been characterized as a ladder, except by people who don't know anything about evolution. It's always been thought of as more of a tree.After all, is your family tree a ladder? Of course not. Then why would the family tree of anything else that's alive be a ladder?

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I believe that the anatomy of creatures is too highly organized to be the product of chance - I am therefore forced to conclude that the anatomy of creatures is the product of an intelligence or intelligences which may or may not exist for our good, and infact which may or may not agree with each other.

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This is not a rational argument.It is an Argument from Personal Incredulity; because you just can't believe something does not mean that it isn't true.In fact, there are many things in nature that are highly organized and form purely by random, such as crystals.This is beside the point, however, because the evolution of life is not the product of random chance alone.Mutations are random, but natural selection is the opposite of random.So, you are arguing against a straw man of evolution.

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Belief in transcendent worlds is very common throughout all cultures.

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True.

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There is a general belief in a spiritual world, and some evidence supports the existence of such a world.

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Really? what evidence is that?

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In the current climate of thought at this time, it seems quite hard to believe even in a soul. Yet even the existence of one disincarnate soul would suggest the existence of a spiritual world.

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Yes, that's true, but there isn't any evidence of such a soul, is there?

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Believe it or not, a lot of unconscious guilt is attached to meat eating. People experience this unease with life, without knowing quite where it comes from. It is simply not possible to routinely commit a million animals a day to a miserable death and not be effected by it on a subliminal level.

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Now you are projecting your feelings about eating meat onto everyone else. Don't you think that's a bit arrogant and presumptuous of you?Since I work in the food business, I can pretty confidently say that most people in the US probably live their whole lives never having really thought about where any of their food actually comes from. To them, meat comes out of the refrigerated case at the grocery store, mostly bloodless, plastic-wrapped and on a styrofoam tray.At my workplace, we have cured, bone-in hams hanging up on display. I have often had to explain to people what they are, because they are not accustomed to seeing pieces of meat that look like an animal in the least. When they see the ball joint and the skin for what they are, they often wrinkle up their noses and make a "yucky" kind of face. The ironic thing is that they are probably in line to order a huge corned beef sandwich and won't give that a second thought.So, I doubt that many people think very deeply about the suffering of animals and therefore don't have much guilt about it.Personally, I don't believe in the needless suffering of animals, so I am careful to buy from companies which humanely raise and slaughter their animals. I also eat less meat than I used to because a meat-heavy diet is wasteful of resources and not good for me.

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After all we are all only human, and the unnecessary suffering of any creatures effects us all.

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If you were an Inuit, and there was no such thing as growing things in the ground because of the snow, ice, and permafrost, you would probably live on your diet of meat and not ever feel one iota of guilt about it.At the end of the day, the feelings of guilt you mention about the eating of meat are a luxury, and are spoken like someone who always has enough to eat every day.

No guilt here. I love meat. If we weren't supposed to eat it (and enjoy it) then animals wouldn't be made of it. And it wouldn't contain chemicals that make my brain feel good.Death is natural. I don't fear my own and I'm not shy about inflicting it on animals when it serves my purpose. If it were practical to do so I'd slaughter the thing myself.If we were supposed to be vegitarians, we'd have the capability to digest cellulose. But it's clear to me we have a digestive tract for succulent vegetables plus meat when we can get it. (Too much of it is bad, of course. But none of it can be bad, too.)Now I'm hungry.

As I have said in a previous post, I've just gotta have my monthly monster-plate of stone-crab-legs, shrimp scampi, & L-O-B-S-T-E-R! Yummy. Preferably dipped in hot butter!
I am not wholly convinced that we have "total" free-will as humans, whatever "total" means. I believe in Medical Research which has produced the "Bioamine Hypothesis". This idea holds that our varying abilities to think, feel, & make rational choices are at least partially governed by the interactions between the brain, nervous system, and certain brain-chemicals. An imbalance in these brain-chemicals within the brain & nervous system, can lead to neural and mental disorders that are beyond a person's volitional control. This is not to say that one's surrounding environment doesn't play a role in influencing one's decision-making ability, or that one may have some ability to make rational choices regarding basic needs(like eating, sleeping, working, keeping healthy relationships, etc). I think the researchers are working on these ideas now.
I must agree with 'Schraf' that the process of evolution isn't all chance. Natural-Selection is not a 'chance' process. N-S is driven by competition for available food. When a mutation happens within the genes of an individual animal of an idividual species, then that particilar mutation may, for example, give the animal sharper canine teeth than his parents, brothers, cousins, etc. It will then be easier for that animal to bite thru very tough skin, than it will be for his parents, etc. Therefor this animal has an advantage in survival&reproduction because he can eat things with tougher skins. 'He' can now eat more than 'them', and pass on his tough -skin animal eating trait, while other members of his species may die out. That's evolution. The more new traits that 'pile up' within a species, the more likely the species' decendants will not be able to reproduce with their parent species. When this finally happens, then: snap-crackle-pop; a new species is born. I say if God exists, then evolution is his design process, but if God doesn't exist, then "design" is a concept humans use to percieve nature.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 10-15-2003][This message has been edited by Prozacman, 10-15-2003]

I propose a plausible moral dilemma using the idea that God only allows for people who are "saved in christ" as some have suggested.
You are the father/mother of a child who is raped by a close relative or friend and your child grows up rejecting your beliefs and never does accept christ into their lives and,despondent from the rape, subsequently commits suicide. During the course of their lives the close friend /relative does choose christ to enter into their lives and to the day he dies does good deeds.By the conditions stated could you as a believer in christ accept existence in heaven with the person who raped your child while your child is in hell?[This message has been edited by sidelined, 10-15-2003]

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