Anybody else think this picture is pretty creepy? ;) Hey look! It’s the Pope’s Nose! :)
Got this from coalspeaker (whom I respect a lot, despite my disagreement with him on this issue):
Interesting concept worthy of an Easter debate..
The Pope says that humanity is not an accident and not a product of evolution..
Really? This old debate? :) I see one type of living being on the planet that recognizes any meaning at all—humans. We conclude a meaning to things. Therefore, meaning doesn’t exist before us. We create our own meaning. Not God. (My take, I’m not the king of you, make up your own mind!)
A cat doesn’t look at his poo and develop a language to express meaning. Even the bonobo or dolphins don’t seem to express a meaning to why things are one way or the other. A rock, a mountain, a planet, does not understand a meaning to something. We conclude meaning. So, in my opinion, there is no meaning inherent to the universe. It simply is.
Here are the Pope’s concerns regarding my belief/understanding of the universe (taken from the article CoalSpeaker links to above):
“If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature,” he said.
Why is this a bad thing? Doesn’t it make humanity, and life itself, much more valuable if we are an accident? If we fail, and every form of life on Earth is wiped out, can’t God just start over?
Why are we valuable with meaning?
Isn’t our existence more precious if we accept that we could easily be wiped out by a meteor or a virus or famine or plague?
Besides that, there is no proof that there is meaning to us anymore than there is proof of a god. Once again, we bring meaning. We see patterns that we attach meaning to.
Because I build a chair, it does not mean that all things “constructed” were built by someone (like a cave, or a mountain, or compounds, or elements, or atoms). We see things we don’t understand and try to explain them in terms we do understand.
Why does it rain?
Well, someone is waaaay up high and he dumps water on us.
Does he make the thunder, too?
No, that’s someone else with a big hammer!
Ohhhhh!
Like that.
There was a time when that’s all we could do. But now we know more, understand more about the universe, and, with terms we do understand, can try to explain things we don’t understand (we hope) more effectively than we could centuries ago.
So, while I said earlier that there is no inherent meaning to the universe, I’m not saying there is no meaning at all. We create meaning.
This is why we are so important, in my opinion, because without us, without humanity, there would be no meaning.
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