How precisely does that follow? Supposedly your magic sky-man created humanity out of dust, so we're really all just walking, talking pieces of dirt.
The revelation states that man is far more than just the physical.
So what? Why does man being only physical or more than just physical mean that we should value human life more or less?
Although if you add the existence of an immortal soul, I'd suggest that such a thing
devalues human life - who cares if you're poor or suffering now for your temporal life, if you get perfect heaven forever afterwards? If this life is all you get, then there's a much greater moral imperative to help one's fellow man.
You know, the modern thought is that the universe is dying out. In the mean time we are specs on a second rate planet by accident. Either the super nova of our sun will gobble us up the ashes of the universe will expand into the coldness of infinite space.
Man is absurd. There is no objective meaning to human life for the atheist. Any meaning is illusionary. Sure, you could say "The purpsoe of life is to hit more home runs then Hank Aaron."
But there is no objective meaning. So I think the Bible's proclamation of man made in the image of God and for God is more meaningful.
I mean He seems to want you for eternity - "That whosoever believes into Him might not perish but have eternal life"
Why would an objective meaning (an oxymoron; all meaning is subjective, that's what the word, well,
means.) to human life be of greater value than a subjective meaning? I value my own life; my natural sense of empathy and desire to interact with other people in a society means that I apply that value onto others as well.
Yet that doesn't stop you or your fictional deity from valuing humanity (of course, your god supposedly valued humanity so much that he killed every last one of us except for a single family in a giant global flood - somewhat contradictory to commit genocide and then express valuation of humanity, rather like Hitler saying he cares about all the Jews).
In Bible there is a very WIDE scope of recorded dealings of God with sinners. Noah's flood is not the end of the book.
Indeed. If I were to rant against each specific instance of your god valuing human life as less worthy than you or I might treat a bit of rancid meat, I;d need more than a single post.
In this wide scope, I see that on one extreme you have the Flood of Noah. On the other side you have God showing mercy to an entire nations even when God's prophet was reluctant for them to have a chance to repent.
...if I
don't commit genocide, does that mean I'm being "merciful?" Should you thank me right now for
mercifully not burning you alive?
The book of Jonah is in the same Bible. And its theme is God's RELUCTANCE to have to judge a nation. So I balance my reading of the Noah flood with the book of Jonah.
...killing every person in the world minus a few individuals is balanced by
reluctance to kill
one city?
Really?
I very much want to explore the entire spectrum of God's ways.
I think it is God's responsibility to show us all the possible outcomes along this wide spectrum. And the extreme severe dealings have to be included with the merciful dealings.
Do you know who lived the longest in the bible? His name was Methusaleh. He lived 960 plus years.
Do you know what his name means ? It means something like "When he dies it will come". Many teachers believe that the "it" that is to come refers to the flood of Noah.
So, the longevity of Methusaleh "when he dies it will come" suggests that God prolonged the time as much as His righteousness would allow Him to do so. Judgement is His "strange work".
But He is righteous. God is one for whom a more righteous one cannot be imagined.
And it is His responsibility to ALSO show us that judgment WILL not be denied when it must come for His rigthteous being's sake.
Now, we see in the story of Noah, God's salvation too. We see a new beginning. We see a preservation not only of people for a new beginning but of the environment also. We see His plan of salvation for man and for animals.
And He prolonged the time as long as He possibly could, When the oldest living human being FINALLY expired God had, by His own righteous being, bring in judgment.
But He also saved 8 people for a new beginning.
So, I guess with me, I just have to take into account the fuller scope of ALL that the Bible tells me.
You've said a lot of words that don't even suggest to me that your deity values human life (with the exception of certain individuals that he likes, typically the ones who kiss his imaginary ass the most, which is quite different from valuing human life in general), let alone why, if he did, that would make human life more valuable than I consider it to be.
I've already stated that I think human life is the most precious thing in the Universe (I'd actually expand that to
sentient life, but that's a bit outside the scope here). Proving the morality or immorality of your deity is not the point of this discussion - it's whether the theistic view of humanity as "more than just physical" as you stated earlier conveys greater value than purely physical, evolved human beings. You haven't even tried to do that - you simply reacted defensively for your sky-fairy and let yourself be sidetracked.
Why, then, should the fact that homo sapiens are in fact apes mean that we are "worth" any less than how much you value us?
Apes are cool. So are dolphins and so are chimps and ants. But they are not as high as human beings. So I can say "Apes are wonderful. Bless their hearts. BUT, human beings are better."
...Human beings
are apes. There is no way to biologically separate human beings from apes. You might as well say that "Mammals are great. But humans are better." We
are mammals. We
are apes.
That said, I think you and I agree that human beings are more valuable than
other apes (if you can accept facts just for the sake of the argument; we both value human beings as greater than, say, a gorilla).
And Jesus said that not a sparrow falls to the ground without His Father. But we are of more value then the sparrows. So Jesus also taught that as good as animals were, man meant MORE to God then they.
Man means more to
me than a sparrow, and I don;t need a deity to tell me that.
God became a man. So man must be important. He did not become a gerbil or a hedgehog. The Word did not become an gorilla. But the Word became flesh - Humanity. So the worth of man is seen in the fact that the incarnation of God was to a man rather than a beast.
More words. Words words words, and not a single sentence that actually supports your contention that a theistic view of human life is valued higher than an atheistic one. If I, as an Atheist who couldn't care less about what your imaginary friend thinks about humanity, already value human life as the single greatest and most important thing in all of existence, how could you ever show that theists value human life
more?
But beasts are cool too. I use to have a pet king snake. I've had cats and dogs and birds and mice. So I like animals.
But man is unique because he has a spirit to contact God. And man is made to live in God and have God live in him.
Useles statements of belief devoid of fact. However, man
is self-aware, and in that we are mostly-unique among animals (there's some debate with regard to a few other species, as sentience is more of a spectrum than a binary switch). I couldn't care less about your sky-man or your imagined "spirit," but I
do care very deeply about
you and every other
person in the world, and I value you and everyone else more than I value a snake or a cat or a dog.
As an Atheist, my estimation of the value of human life does not come from any fairy tale book and is completely independent of our origins; it makes no difference if we are some cosmic science project, the magically animated dust-bunnies of Genesis, or apes. I value human life because we are self-aware, thinking and feeling individuals. I think that every single human life is absolutely precious, and that any time that anyone dies or suffers it is sad. I don't need some fictional father figure to care about me for me to care about everyone else - I want you, me, and everyone else in the world to be free from hunger, pain, and disease. I want you, me, and everyone else in the world to live happy, fulfilling lives. I don't think that anything in the world is more important than human well-being; that regardless of notions of fairness and the responsibility of risk, I don't want to see my neighbor be made homeless because he made a bad business decision, and I'm willing to pay higher taxes to ensure that society helps him get back on his feet. I oppose the death penalty because it's sad that any human being should have to die, and it's reprehensible that we could possibly ever execute an innocent person, and I'd rather show mercy to a hundred thousand murderers than make one innocent person die. I oppose massive military budgets because I know that the money we spend on weapons for killing could instead be spent on food and infrastructure to save millions of lives and improve the standard of living of countless more.
The problem here is that so much of your sentiment is probably based on Judeo/Christian ethics to begin with.
...and so now you try to take credit for Atheistic morality, and say that I'm just parroting you theists anyway.
You're a bad joke.
My morality is based upon
empathy and ethical utilitarianism. Ancient books don;t tell me what I should or shouldn't do; I don't feel guilty one bit about having sex outside of marriage, or "rebelling" against my parents, or coveting what others have, or not loving imaginary father figures.
Biblical ethics are
authoritarian, and authoritarianism makes me want to vomit. My moral thinking is completely and totally separate from any theistic influences...considering I don;t even believe any deities exist.
"Love thy neighbor as you love yourself" is great moral advice, except that I'd modify it to "treat your neighbor the way
he'd like to be treated, not just the way
you'd like to be treated, just in case you like cherry pie and he hates it."
But then, the Bible isn;t the only source for that little nugget of morality. The same basic instruction has popped up all over the world, in cultures both theistic and atheistic...not because we're all secretly basing our morality on
your morality, but because all human beings posses
empathy, the ability to identify with other human beings and recognize that the suffering of others is like the suffering of ourselves.
Drop the self-righteous bullshit. Your Jesus is
not the only source of morality in the world, or even the
best; he never was, and never will be.
Someone said they saw on a train a little child sitting on the lap of a parent and trying to smack the parent in the face. Without the child sitting on the parent's lap it would not be able to reach the face of the parent to slap it.
So when I hear a lot of athiests try to scold God it seems that they do so from the vantage point of having ingested so much Judeo/ Christian ethical philosophy to begin with.
How much of your sentiment about the worth of man, the good works of humanitarian activity is inspired perhaps subconsciously, by something in the Bible ?
You sit there and scold God and believers in God about the worth of people, freedom from hunger, good deeds, liberation, the sparring of the innocent, justice, etc.
So while you are sitting there wagging your finger in God's face, your positioned on the lap of a lot of Judeo/ Christian morality that is at the foundation of this Western culture.
In order to get close to God to give Him a good slap you have to be positioned on a lot of ethics and morality you derived from Judeo / Christian worldview.
...idiot. Prove that my ethics are based on Judeo-Christian ethics or concede, immediately.
You didn't derive all that ethical thought from Stone Henge or the Egyptian Ra.
No. I derived it from
logic and empathy, which I;ve stated all allong. Nitwit.
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