Do you care what happens next?

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Mostly I apologized for not getting the question for some reason, for my obtuseness about it. You care about something, you find yourself being emotional about something but I'm not exactly sure what. It must be about humanity's fate but the way the question is posed it is so bound up in the fate of the physical universe it confuses me. I'm sure I'm just having a senior moment but if I can't figure out the question I can't answer it. Do I care what happens next? Well of course, but I care about humanity not the enormous cold physical universe. Sorry for my obtuseness. If you can clarify the question for me maybe I can respond to it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's a pretty good way of summing up our differences I suppose, but it prompts me to confess that even before I was a Christian I objected to the way "science" was always focused on mindless physical events rather than on humanity, on the vast cold universe or the mechanical chemical operations of evolution that supposedly brought about this or that human "adaptation."I can say I hated all that with a passion, without being even remotely a Christian. I hated the way "science" talked about human beings as mere accidents thrown up by physical machinations. I hated Sociobiology with an extreme passion for instance, and in the area of Psychology I hated Behaviorism with an extreme passion. I read a lot of stuff about all that and it depressed me that people think that way. I hated anything that mechanized and "scientized" US, that reduced Mind for instance to an "emergent property" of chemistry.The "universe" certainly has no "obligation" to us at all, but I abhor the idea that we are just part of such a mindless empty thing. I resent the way human beings are talked about as "arrogant" for putting ourselves above the rest of creation when we are *really* just the result of automatic mindless chemical processes. There is and always was nothing more obvious to me than that we are far more important than anything that ever happened, whether by evolution or whatever.I don't know why I had that mental set, I certainly had no Christian ideas about the image of God, I just subjectively personally assessed Us as more important than all that cold impersonal chemical stuff. I called myself a "humanist" because what else is there if you refuse to be reduced to chemistry but aren't a believer in God?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You misunderstand me. "Mindless physical events" is science's proper sphere and science does important work within that sphere. I'm objecting to science's pretending to explain phenomena outside that sphere: mind, consciousness, human creativity, feeling, even life itself, all the stuff that gets wrongly reduced to "emergent properties" of physical systems. Science can study anything physical to good purpose, including the human body, but it has nothing to say of any value about us as thinking feeling moral creatures. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Back to the question how everything is going to end, there is of course a Biblical answer to that: It doesn't say when but there are plenty of other scriptures that lead us to believe we could be fast approaching it now.Before I was a Christian, in appreciating the specialness of humanity I didn't think much about our moral nature for some reason. Sartre's stuff about responsibility just seemed trivial to me. I didn't have any objection to sin or any clear idea of the category, which is why I accumulated so much of it. I had the usual notions about doing no harm as my main moral standard. Something like that, it's hard to remember, but my picture of our specialness didn't have much to do with all that, just our capacities for thought, invention, feeling etc.But when I became a Christian what overwhelmed me was the revelation of our moral nature as the most important thing about us, our being "made in the image of God." No I don't want to get into another discussion about God's supposed immoral actions, the idea is ludicrous and dangerous. His justice is frighteningly severe, but it is justice and deserved. The main moral revelation was the revelation of original sin -- that was staggering to me, seemed to "explain everything" about what's wrong with the world. The fact that death is the consequence of sin is horrifying but could be said to be THE proof of our importance -- it's all about moral agency in the end. That is what makes us the image of God, our moral failure is how we Fell, it's what explains all the horrible things in our history, it's why we die, it's why we suffer, it's why God judges us individually and judges nations and in the end will destroy the entire Creation and give us a new one; it's why we need a Savior and why God sent us a Savior, it's why His job was first to take our sins upon Himself so that we no longer suffer them, and why He imparts to us His perfect righteousness, without which we would just destroy it all again. The physical creation is subject to OUR moral failures. It's why animals die.God says clearly He doesn't desire the death of the wicked, He desires that all repent and come to salvation. But we have to choose. Sometimes I wonder how anyone could be happy in heaven knowing people we care about aren't there. I know the theological answer but from our point of view here it's hard to grasp.

When I brought up the subject of human specialness I had something objective in mind, something completely independent of whether there is anyone including our dog and cat who cares about us personally, and it seems important to distinguish the two ways we are important. Yes, our objective capacities, intellect etc, OK but even those sometimes get reduced to physicalities by the science-minded. But what kind of "perspective" is that since there is no consciousness in any of that? This is the very mentality I was objecting to. We can't be meaningfully compared to the mindless cold vastness of the universe at all and the compulsion to make that comparison is nonsensical. Of course it's all justified by the theory of evolution in the end I guess. If you believe that as the explanation of it all you make a logical leap that deprives humanity of specialness that has nothing to do with our actual qualities. Even believing in evolution, though, it seems to me that all you have to do is look at those human qualities by comparison with all the rest of it to assess our specialness. You don't have to let evolution dictate anything about our value.But to keep the thread's topic in mind, I absolutely cannot care about the fate of the physical universe apart from Us, or apart from any living thing for that matter, but especially Us. You don't have to believe in God to see that we have a nature that puts us as far above the amoeba as the amoeba is above an atom, actually we're that far above the ape too, all that similarity of DNA notwithstanding, since the physical body is not the point. Believing in God makes it possible to explain it though, which the physical sciences can never do. That nonsensical list again. You are subordinating us to mere physical hugeness with your comparison to other galaxies. Yeah, this is the scientistic reductionist thinking I was talking about.For some reason Dylan Thomas' lines keep coming to mind: "Do not go gentle into that good night; rage rage against the dying of the light." Anyone who can think like that is far more important than any hundreds of millions of years, or a billion galaxies and the whole lineage of evolution that supposedly preceded us.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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It trivializes it, and it can indeed work to undermine its functions by depriving it of a proper respect. That's what I've been objecting to -- and really I think it has this effect on everybody even if you don't recognize it -- physicalizing the things of the mind or consciousness etc. does devalue it. Omni's cute little phrase "scantily furred mammal" is the same sort of reductionism. Even its cuteness implies the reductionism in it. No, because a potato is a physical thing. Looks to me like we're not going to find any other life in the universe, but that aside, I'm talking about intrinsic value as I said, and who or what we "matter" to -- doesn't matter, has no place in the objective evaluation I'm talking about. I guess you don't think much of my argument that the value can be assessed by considering its qualities, and that the objective evaluation I'm talking about is completely independent of the physical nature of the physical parts of us which we share with others. We are more than our physicality, a LOT more. The human being is OBVIOUSLY as superior to the ape as the ape is to the amoeba if you just compare all the qualities that are pertinent. If our subjective evaluation is based on physical reductionism we don't get anywhere near a fair assessment. Objectively, however, leads to what I say above, as superior to the ape as the ape is to the amoeba.Physical reductionism trivializes life, and it trivializes it in the mind that indulges the idea. As I said, believing in God, by which I mean of course the Christian or Biblical God, makes it possible to explain it all -- objectively and with a proper valuation. The values we derive from it aren't subjective because they were written down 2000 to 3500 years ago -- and again, it matters not a bit that the universe cares not - we're a billion times more important than the physical universe. I should have said I don't think anybody else does either, not REALLY. You reduce the value of humanity with your physicalizing and that means you have to devalue humanity in your own mind too. However, if you value anything at all it has to be humanity or living things, we just aren't made to care about a vast cold universe. Impressed, dazzled, awed perhaps, but care about it, love it? Don't think so. Everybody is just pretending to care, it's not in your nature to care. And you go on to say that: I do think you will know some day.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.