Penelope wrote:

Dear Nadeen, your English is really very good indeed. I do disagree with you though. If we want to examine the efficiency of a certain drug which might help to relieve the suffering of humanity, then it should be tested on humanity.

I don't think there is ever any excuse for cruelty.....whether there is a belief in God or no God.....

I also believe that we know what is cruel....we don't have to be given instructions.

What if this drug didnot work and caused severe damage to the human?
Before Pharmaceutical companies release a new vaccination they test it on animals, we can't test it on human first, because if we did that and we people die it means that we don't cherish human life.
The point is that we human are more valuable than animals, than any other creature on this universe,and so our lives comes at the first place

What I meant when I said that we are slaves to the creator is that we are all equal on this earth no body have the right to be superior on the other.
Regardless of color, sex, race, we are all the same. And so people who like to torture other people because they think they are better than them, then these people deviated from the human nature.

"Everything in this universe is geared to serve man."

I have my doubts about this one Nadeen. Many have gotten caught up in anthropocentric ideas throughout history, only to have to widen their view when more data became available. And I think we are skating on very thin ice, considering that there are so many unknowns out there in the universe, some of a very fundamental nature, to make the assumption that we are at the center of the action.

Life is certainly precious, but in my experience people’s perceptions of themselves and of the world around them varies enormously. Most of us fit somewhere in the middle of that classic bell curve, and it is easy to think that pretty much everyone else does as well. But there are little flipper like projections at each end of the curve, and they represent the most extreme behaviours.

Many in the criminal justice system, for example, rate very high on tests that measure pyschopathy, or antisocial personality disorder as it is now called. The new name is a little unfortunate, as it implies it is something that is less than it is. The reasons why these individuals are as they are are murky and not really understood. But that some display a definite set of traits that fit the same pattern, and do so from birth, is pretty well documented. A general insensitivity to their environment, including their own bodies, a lack of empathy for others, a lack of remorse for wrongdoings, and thrill seeking behaviours figure prominently here. Not only are they dangerous to other people, but often are pretty damaging to themselves. The world just seems flat and dull to them, and it’s hard to find stimulation. In the general population, about one percent meet these criteria to some extent. In the prison population, in Canada anyway, typically numbers run from around 30 to 40 percent.

Is life precious to these folks? My guess is that it is, but not much. Certainly not as much as a Van Gogh, or a Mother Teresa, and perhaps not much more than it is to my Lab Retriever.

People are all individuals, all 6.7 billion, even though there are common threads, such as the one above, and all deserve consideration in an unbiased light. But we are not equal. Would you spring Charles Manson from his prison cell and give him a job in your kid’s school? There are huge variations on all sorts of scales. The problem here is of course, and I think Penelope may have touched on this earlier, is who is qualified to sit in judgement? I have found that getting more than about five people to agree on just about anything is a struggle, never mind a whole society. Certainly in matters of life and death, which has been discussed above, it is onerous indeed to find someone with the wisdom, the information at hand, and the objectivity to make these kinds of decisions about others.

"Everything in this universe is geared to serve man."

Explain this, if you would.

How is "everything" geared to serve us when we can only exist on a very few portions of this planet's land mass? What about the fact that the earth is some eight thousand miles in diameter, yet has an inhabitable environment that is only about 8-11 miles deep, and that's if you include the heights of mount Everest and the depths of the Marianas trench.

No, i am not going to even yield this space. You would die instantly, instantly, at the bottom of the Marianas trench.

You would freeze to death in minutes at the top of mt. Everest. if you try to go underwater for more than a few minutes without machinery, you die. If you stay out in the desert without protection you die. Toxic gasses, found all across the planet are lethal to humans.

The other 7 planets of the solar system are completely un-inhabitable without extensive terraforming. Lethal doses of radiation from the sun would utterly destroy you in space, if you were not crystallized by the bitter cold of space, or shredded by microscopic debris, or if your fluids didnt simply burst their way out of your veins in the vacuum of space.

"Everything in this universe is geared to serve man."

Knowing exactly how little of the universe we are able to survive in, i find that statement hard to credit.

I remember joining a college course where we were reading popular Victorian Novels.

Before we began, we had to read about the Victorian Cosmic Consciousness, which in those days, when the church was powerful in politics, as it is in Nadeen's Country, we believed as Nadeen does, that 'Man' was at the top of God's creation and everything else was beneath us.

It appears that after two terrible World Wars, we lost our innocence and now have a different cosmic consciousness, whereby man is just a link in the chain of natural development.

I don't know that either of these is a true perception but I just thought I would point out the different ways of thinking about life and its meaning.

Nadeen, this is not a criticism of you or your Country, it is just noting how our different social histories affect our thinking.

etudiant wrote:

And I think we are skating on very thin ice, considering.....

I enjoyed reading both yours and johnson's posts, but would like to remind you that English is not Nadeen's mother tongue and metaphore's like the one quoted above might confuse her.

It is an interesting thread, and Nadeen's contribution is very valued and appreciated, from this end anyway.

Thank-you Nadeen.

Just editing this - It's not a metaphore is it?? It's something beginning with 'A' and I can't remember what it's called. Senior Moment!

etudiant wrote:

I have my doubts about this one Nadeen. Many have gotten caught up in anthropocentric ideas throughout history, only to have to widen their view when more data became available.

At first when I read "Anthropocentric ideas" I didnot have any clue what it meant, then I searched it on the internet and found its meaning.

So what is wrong with "Anthropocentric ideas"? I see some people here didnot like when I said that we are on the top of all creatures, and that the whole universe is geared to serve man.

But we are not equal. Would you spring Charles Manson from his prison cell and give him a job in your kid’s school?

What I meant that if I applied for a job and another person applied for the same job and both of us have the same qualifications but they chose the other person for unknown reasons not related to the job it self.
This what I meant that we should treat each other equally.

Regarding Charles Manson and the kid's school, first I am not married yet to be blessed my a beautiful boy/girl :laugh2:

but lets assume that I already have a child then he/she -definitely- will not be Charles' student.
Charles Manson is not even a human although he looks like.
He killed many people without a reason, he is an evil, how come I treat him equally like all the others?
He didnot respect the right for others to live so he doesnot deserve it too.

Yes, you are right Penelope, we don’t want to give poor Nadeen too much of a workout with English. Learning another language is tough enough as it is. Although you seem to be doing an excellent job so far Nadeen.

Personally, I do have a problem with anthropomorphism. It is easy to look at what is in front of us and accept the evidence of our eyes, and assume that is all there is, or at least that is most of it.

But the more we narrow our focus, the more skewed things can get. In the First World War, all sides assumed they were right, in the narrow, nationalist perspective of the times. Four years later, 20 million or so where dead, arguably for nothing. Later in the Vietnam War, in the narrow focus of the times, Washington believed they were stopping an international communist expansion. Ten years later, about one million Vietnamese, and fifty thousand Americans were dead. Today, if it wasn’t for the death and destruction, the ideas subscribed to at the time could be considered laughable.

Anthropomorphism follows along the same lines. It says: This is what we know, so this must be it. It’s likely that all else is peripheral, because when we look around that seems to be the case; what we see in our lives is: It’s about us.

I think that assuming a humble stance and accepting that we know little, so let’s keep our eyes open and take in all that we can, is a better approach. We are learning as we go, and seizing on any particular belief or truism and not letting go can be, and very frequently is, problematic. Given our experience with the past, it seems likely that in the future many of the beliefs we take quite seriously today will be looked on as quaint.

An elementary school teacher put it to us very elegantly once. He stood at a blackboard, and drew a circle. This is what we know, he said. Then he drew a larger circle, encompassing the first. This is what we know that we don’t know, he said. At some future date, he continued, we may know much more. He drew a third, larger circle around the first two. At that point, this is what we will know that we don’t know, he said, drawing a large circle around the others. In other words, even though knowledge progresses, the area outside that outer circle could be anything. It could encompass the rest of the blackboard, the school, the city we were in, the universe.

How is "everything" geared to serve us when we can only exist on a very few portions of this planet's land mass?

The point is not how much we know about our planet rather than what the place-even if it was few portions-provide us to continue living on this Earth.
Take as an example, tropical forests in Africa, South America, almost no one lives in these areas, dense trees and plants, and high humidity, but it is very important for human life, where it acts like lungs of the world, and thus enters into a cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide cycle

You would freeze to death in minutes at the top of mt. Everest. if you try to go underwater for more than a few minutes without machinery, you die. If you stay out in the desert without protection you die. Toxic gasses, found all across the planet are lethal to humans.

If I would die on the top of Mount Everest that doesnot refute the fact that it is considered a vital source of water for the rivers surrounding it.
We all know- I guess- that if Mount Everest continues to melt due to global warming then people living there will be forced to look for other places since the rivers which previously provided water will soon dry.
So this shows the importance of its presence regardless its temperture.
And above all of this, what foolish reason will cause me to go and freeze at the top of that mountain while I can live happily here!!!

The other 7 planets of the solar system are completely un-inhabitable without extensive terraforming.

The other 7 planets are extensively important to insure the existance of the solar system. No one can disagree with the scientific fact that if one-only one- of these seven planets disappear then this will cause the destruction of the entire solar system.

Lethal doses of radiation from the sun would utterly destroy you in space,

and thats why the creator chose to make us live on earth and not in space, and thats why there is the ozone layer which was created to protect us from these lethat radiation which radiate from the sun.

"Everything in this universe is geared to serve man."

Yes, Everything in this universe is geared to serve man.

Nadeen: "Yes, Everything in this universe is geared to serve man."

This is not true. The universe has the appropriate conditions for life to evolve. It is extremely arrogant to think it was made only to serve man.

Nadeen: "and thats why the creator chose to make us live on earth and not in space, and thats why there is the ozone layer which was created to protect us from these lethat radiation which radiate from the sun."

The conditions that allow us to live were not designed for us. We exist because the conditions are just right. You have reversed cause and effect.

In your opinion then, what would dramatically change if all of humanity were to die this instant?

What happens to the universe? Would it wink out of existence, since it no longer has any "reason" to be?

Nadeen wrote: So what is wrong with "Anthropocentric ideas"? I see some people here didnot like when I said that we are on the top of all creatures, and that the whole universe is geared to serve man.

This is the problem. Let's take a look at a Cokecentric universe, say from the vantage point of the Coke machine at the airport. The Coke machine can tell that the whole universe was designed specifically for it's existence. Look at how the passageways are designed just perfectly so that the thirsty humans walk right past it. Look at the way the runways are designed in a manner perfectly matched to the airplanes which provide a constant flow of thirsty people into the terminal which happens to be right where people want to go. From the vantage point of the Coke machine it is obvious that this was all designed simply to support it.

Of course it would be silly to propose that the whole universe was designed just to support the Coke machine, and it makes no more sense to assume that the whole universe was designed for us.

The Coke machine is located at that particular spot in the airport because once the airport exists, that spot is a natural place for a Coke machine to survive. It is the effect, not the cause.

We are on Earth because once Earth exists, it was a place where life developed. Life is the effect, not the cause.