Subject:
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Re: God and worth (was re: The Brick Testament: A Family Stoned and a City Massacred)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:15:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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1921 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Well, I happen to find the things Man finds worthful completely worthless.
Monetary wealth? Success? Fame? Getting laid? Or happiness? Even happiness
for its own sake is empty.
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Only if you choose to define it that way. I used to work with a Christian who
said something like “if emotions are just chemical reactions, aren’t they
meaningless?”
Well, sure. Insofar as I attach no truly transcendent, metaphysical
“meaning” to those chemical reactions, I guess they are meaningless. But if you
take the next logical step and recognize that perceptions of mind, self, and
consciousness are themselves chemical reactions, then emotions achieve a level
of personal importance on par with the importance of perceived-self, which is
about as important as it gets for the individual.
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God doesn’t seem to do much for athiests.
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At the very least, focusing on God turns our narcissistic gaze from
ourselves.
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I disagree. The very notion of a personal god is the ultimate narcissism. The
atheist who concludes that the universe is vast and we just happen to be in it
is much less self-focused than a theist who flatters himself to have found The
One Truth.
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And people who can’t find any value in life without the need to resort to a
god seem to me to have something of a lack of imagination.
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What people find valuable is what doesn’t impress me.
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I suggest that people who identify themselves to have a “god-shaped-hole” in
their hearts may indeed feel that they can only fill it with some notion of a
god. However, it is, ultimately, narcissistic to conclude that all people must
have that same hole.
Dave!
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