We humans think that we’re the be-all and end-all of evolution… that our bodies are mere support systems for our brains. Maybe we’re right, but some fascinating recent experiments suggest that we’ve survived despite our intelligence, not necessarily because of it.
I don’t think, as you know, that we’re the be-all and end-all of evolution. We definitely are the most important part of creation, however.
I’d disagree, on several levels. One should be obvious, another is that we’re only “most important” in our own minds. Going by sheer numbers, single-celled creatures have an insurmountable advantage. Going by size, whales and elephants win.
In fact, about the only way that we can legitimately claim uniqueness and importance is that we seem to be the only ones making such a claim.
Sentience. We are sentient beings. That’s pretty important. Of course, if your deity prefers inanimate objects, single celled organisms, insects, etc, to beings that can recognize His existence, among other things, then I suppose the view that these other things are more important by virtue of quantity makes sense.
If it is important — and I see no evidence that it is, except that we have it — how do you prove that humans are the only ones that do? Other creatures, especially other primates, have pretty much the same capabilities that we do, just not to the same degree.
I don’t see other primates creating and reading books, computers, and rocket ships. When they do, let me know. 😉 I’m sure there is a continuum, of course, but since the universe shows evidence that it was created in a sentient way, I’d assume that sentience would be an important quality that a Sentient Being would appreciate, over, say “big animal” or “lots of single cells out there”, which, although valuable, don’t quite reach the quality-over-quantity metric.
Other primates have no need for books, computers, and rocket ships. They’ve got everything they need within themselves or in their environments.
I’m afraid you’ve fallen into the same humanocentric trap that all creationists have: you look at God as a larger version of yourself, and the universe as a larger version of the terrarium that you built as a kid.
Try imagining how a sentient amoeba, living in a specific part of a human, might view things. That specific part (heart, liver, lung, whatever) would seem perfectly designed solely for him, because he’s perfectly adapted for it and few other creatures are. He would have to assume that the rest of the body was of no consequence, because the Great Amoeba that created it didn’t see fit to make it habitable for him. Nevermind the fact that there are literally billions of other “places” in the human body, and a whole different layer of existence that he couldn’t imagine even if he were as intelligent as a human being.
Now think of the universe that we live in, in all its size and complexity, and how large the Earth is in comparison.
Well, so far we only know of ourselves as being sentient, according to most reasonable definitions of the term. I happen to think that G-d cares about that, more than he cares about the lives of apes and amoebas, although he isn’t at all like a person. However glorious the rest of the universe may be, it doesn’t think as well as well as we do, and I think that thought is something that is rather important. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to understand the rest of the universe, much less be able to think about the One who created it.
Sentient is defined, according to Merriam-Webster, as “responsive to or conscious of sense impressions.” By that definition, even a rat can be shown to be sentient.
But even by the commonly-accepted definition of sentient, we’re not alone in the sentient realm. Several other primates have been taught sign language or to use a computer keyboard, and have shown that they can understand and reproduce human language — the hallmark of intelligence in the eyes of most people. I’ve heard that such sign-language-using primates even teach their children to use sign language as well, and consider others of their own species as “dumb animals” if they can’t understand signing.
Yes, but who’s the most sentinent, and typically has advanced language, tool using, science, religion, culture? What you’re talking about is like teaching a bear to dance, it doesn’t make a bear a ballerina, or a chimp Shakespere (or better yet, Philip K. Dick. 🙂 )
Other primates use tools, and even create them. Whales and dolphins use a fairly complicated form of language, and there’s no way for us to tell exactly how advanced it is. Science, religion, and culture — we can’t prove that any of that doesn’t go on in other creatures.
I could make a good case that most other creatures are far superior to humanity. Three points in particular: they pass on most of the information necessary for living directly to their offspring, genetically — no wasting the first twenty years of life just learning how to live. They’re honest with themselves, and between themselves. And they don’t need clothing, housing, and tools just to survive.
I could even go so far as to say that our culture’s insistence that humans are better than all the other animals suggests a deep-seated insecurity on our part. Not all human cultures have that problem.
The answers we find depend on the questions we ask. You define the peak of existence as intelligence, so we (apparently the most intelligent creatures on the planet) automatically fit there. But a cheetah might define it as speed, an elephant as size, and a Galapagos turtle as length of life. And if tomorrow it’s proven that dolphins are actually more intelligent than humans, I’ll guarantee that people will come up with some other system of classification that still puts us on top.
I posit that a universe-builder, i.e. G-d, would be interested the most in other beings who could understand the universe. i.e. scientists, of which there aren’t any in any other species we know of.
That’s a nice hypothesis, but where’s the evidence to support it? So far, we haven’t seen any credible indication that there’s intelligence, or even life, anywhere in the universe other than this one insignificant backwater of a planet. If intelligence were the most important thing in the universe, you’d expect the universe to be teeming with it, so much that you couldn’t swing a dead alien without hitting several different examples of it.
Sorry, but that idea seems little more than wishful thinking.
What about our planet makes it an “insignificant backwater”? Does it have to be the largest planet, the one in the Very Center of the Universe? All of this “insignificant backwater” talk seems to make my rhetoric alert go off. (Well, I just used my own rhetoric too, but you see where this is really so much hot-air IMHO.) I figure that G-d’s google-map is good enough to spot Earth, wouldn’t you? 😉
That’s exactly it — there’s nothing unique about this planet. So far as we can tell, it’s an extremely average rocky planet in an extremely average G-type star system, neither particularly large or particularly small, neither at the center of the universe nor at its farthest edge. It’s not even perfectly average, just mostly so. The Earth seems to be as common as elemental hydrogen.
However, you’re dodging the main point. I ask again, what is your objective evidence that a higher power would be particularly interested in intelligence, and especially scientists? The only evidence you can cite is that that’s how you would feel if you’d created it, and/or that others have said or implied it — all of which are scientifically inadmissible because they’re purely subjective.
You can’t have it both ways. If God wants acknowledgment from a race of scientists above all things, then He’s got to provide scientific evidence of His existence. He hasn’t, by science’s estimation, so logically, that can’t be what He’s after.
I find the idea that G-d would create the universe, and not care about what goes on in it one whit to be a bit odd, don’t you? Of course, if you don’t believe in a Creator whatsoever, that’s a whole different argument, and I’m not really interested in trying to argue that at the same time, or really at all. 🙂
Besides, the fact that the Earth is common, but intelligent life doesn’t appear to be, seems to be evidence that a Creator that would care about the intelligent life located on the “backwater” Earth, somewhat more than he would care for the Sagittarius Nebulae, located in the “backwater” Sagittarius. 😉 (It also supports my belief that G-d creates life, because if the conditions of life are supposedly ubiquitous, then why isn’t it all over the place, as you have said? This, however, is a separate contention, technically not relevant to the argument at hand.) Simply because, unlike generic planets or stellar formations, life is rare, important, and capable of relating to G-d and His universe. Besides, I didn’t mean to imply a “race of scientists”, I meant to imply “a race of thinkers”, Homo Sapiens, or as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik put it, “Homo Religiosis”, which includes religious intellectuals, many of which are involved with science or at least in the wonder concerning the universe that points towards the Creator’s presense to them; providing yet another way to relate to Him. Many scientists, such as Einstein or Newton, did react to G-d in that way. (You’ll probably point out that Einstein is claimed by atheists too – he’s non-conventional in theology from a xtian standpoint, a Spinozanist, but Spinoza is only one step removed from certain forms of Jewish theology; not surprising since he was one. The reason for Spinoza’s cherem was that he was teaching children that Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t receive the Torah, not his philosophy; this cherem is considered by many to be a bit of a blot on what is otherwise historically a rather tolerant attitude towards heretics in Judaism, incidentally. We usually view theological errors to be a private matter rather than a matter for prosecution. (Yes, of course xtianity claims we had something to do with the death of their deity, but that story seems to us to be rather fictionalized and contradictory, it certainly doesn’t match our records of who was on the Sanhedrin at the time, the way they conducted trials, or the nature of the great sages such as Hillel and others who were members of the Sanhedrin at that era.))
Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, I got a little carried away there. 🙂
It sure looks like it. 🙂
The only way that it seems odd is if you’re projecting your own desires. Our wants and needs are created and shaped by our genetic blueprint and our environment. Anything that isn’t human wouldn’t necessarily share those same wants and needs. It is an obvious error to assume that a non-human would share any of the same desires that we do, let alone a deity.
Why?
Who says that it isn’t? We haven’t detected it, but we’ve only visited a single neighboring planet so far, and have barely started looking around even there. The only evidence we have that intelligent life isn’t lurking in every corner of the universe is that none of it has contacted us in a way we’ve been able to recognize. Hundreds of alien civilizations may be trying to talk to us right now, and we’re just too dimwitted to notice.
I choose several things when it comes to my worldview, HG. One is that I choose to not to prefer to believe that the universe is absurd. Someone creating something like a universe for absolutely no purpose, much less a purpose of intelligent life, is absurd by any reasonable standard. It basically goes against all of the world’s religions, and even some of the observations of scientific law (i.e. that the universe has order) to believe that the universe is that arbitrary if one accepts a deity. (And again, I assume that since you don’t claim to be an atheist, we aren’t arguing about that. If you do, then we really are at an impasse – but I don’t think there’s enough evidence to be an atheist, either. Unless one first assumes that the universe is absurd with a G-d in it, and I posit that the problem more is in the atheist, and the average theist’s, conception of G-d than anything else.)
Also, as for “who says” that it isn’t all over the place, earlier you used this as an argument, and I quote:
“If intelligence were the most important thing in the universe, you’d expect the universe to be teeming with it, so much that you couldn’t swing a dead alien without hitting several different examples of it.”
Sorry, you can’t have it both ways, hold one way for one position, and the other way for the other, that’s logically indefensible, and/or intellectually dishonest. I suppose you just forgot what you’d said though. In any case, try to be a bit more consistent else I’ll have a harder time than I already am debating you, OK? 🙂
Oh yes, as for “desires”, I don’t pretend that a deity has desires. That would conflict with infinitude.
There’s no need to believe the universe is “absurd,” or has no purpose. I simply point out that it would be a lot more surprising if humans could understand the purpose to it, than if we couldn’t.
It isn’t even a matter of lack of intelligence. It could be a lack of knowledge, or a lack of the ability to see a particular layer of reality. A different set of sensory organs might make the purpose of the universe obvious. But with the knowledge, senses, and intelligence we have now, the universe has no definable purpose.
“The world’s religions” are, for the most part, based on questionable accounts from people long dead. Where they seem plausible, it’s likely that there’s a seed of truth in them; where they seem fantastic, it’s likely that they are fantastic — wishful thinking, delusions, exaggerations, outright lies, or some combination of the above.
You’re correct that I’m not an atheist. I don’t believe in some invisible uber-daddy in the sky that cares individually about each and every one of us. But I do believe that there’s a higher power than humanity, and that it has provided all the tools necessary for us to live the kind of lives that we were shaped to want. The natural universe is part of this higher power, and reflects it, so that studying it should tell us something about what it wants.
I agree that the problem is more in people, and how they imagine God to be, than anything else. But we have more knowledge of the natural universe now than any of our ancestors did, so we should be able to make better-informed decisions about religious topics than they did. There’s a lot of hard-learned wisdom passed down via religion, but it’s combined with a lot of bullshit, and it’s often hard to tell the difference between them. Especially when that wisdom has been filtered through people who didn’t understand it.
I hadn’t forgotten that, and there’s no disparity. I’m simply pointing out that we have no direct evidence that there is or isn’t a plethora of intelligent extraterrestrial races. If you claim that the universe was created solely for intelligence, I want to see what objective evidence you have to back it up. If you can’t produce any, then I have to assume that it’s merely an opinion.
That’s little more than sophistry. If there is no desire, then there is no directed action to bring about a specific result, and the universe can have no purpose. Since you claim that the universe must have a purpose, then it follows that it must have been created by a being that has a desire that it somehow fulfills. Quod erat demonstrandum.
I never claimed the universe was created “solely” for intelligence, only that it is significant to G-d; vis a vis our capacity to recognize Him, which comes out of the fact that we can recognize the universe. (If I used the word solely I was being imprecise, I don’t believe I did, but I’m too lazy to do an alt-f to find out.) For all I know, other things are significant too. I believe that even a rock has a soul; so there must be something important about that. (Don’t ask me to prove that one 🙂 )
Well, I guess one could term “giving” in the most abstract sense as a “desire”, but even that is an outgrowth of something even more abstract if it’s to be reconciled with infinity.
It’s not “sophistry”, rather it’s an attempt to address various parts of a theological conundrum. Part of the entire enterprise, as unimportant and peripheral as it is to Judaism (theology is a lot less important to us than xtianity, as many have noted), of Jewish theology, is trying to reconcile infinity, immanence, transcendence, and the appearance of attributes when to say there are any attributes is in direct conflict with the aforementioned infinity. This is what is Jewish mysticism. Remember, Judaism insists G-d is absolutely infinite and absolutely one, even to the point of questioning whether anything else could exist besides G-d. That’s getting too deep for me though. 😀 It seems the usual response is, after a lot of intellectual discourse, is to throw up one’s hands and say it can’t be resolved just yet by ordinary mortals; so let’s get back to doing good deeds!
Presumably everything in the universe would be “significant” to a creator. 🙂 I don’t see why humanity’s limited ability to understand it would be any more or less significant than, say, an amoeba’s ability to metabolize sugars. If you think it is, and can’t provide any objective evidence, I say that you’re projecting your own opinions on the matter.
I don’t see any point to trying to reconcile human opinions with infinity. Infinity is a concept; it simply is. Since you can’t change it, the only viable response is to accept it. If you hold an opinion that seems to be in direct conflict with the concept of infinity, then either your opinion is mistaken or incomplete, or your concept of infinity is, or both.
At least I can agree with your “usual response,” that there are a lot of things that can’t be determined at present, and we shouldn’t try to twist them until they fit neatly with our current knowledge. 🙂
Simple, because the ameoba doesn’t have any relationship with the Creator other than being an element of His creation. Well, our tradition says all living things say certain prayers, but their prayer is like the angels, not a voluntary service. Infinity is more than simply “is”, it has certain logical consequences when you follow it to it’s conclusions about reality. How, for example, do two infinite objects, much less an infinite object and a finite object, occupy the same space – especially when the infinite Object is one that is Singular in a complete way? But that is angels on the head of a pin stuff already.
I say that an amoeba has as much of a relationship with any creator as a human does, and any “more special” relationship is all in the mind of the person claiming it. But so long as it’s a harmless delusion, I’ve got nothing against it.
And yes, that’s a logically impossible question, akin to divide-by-zero or “what happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object?” Such things can only be formulated in sloppy human languages; there’s no physical or mathematical model for a truly unstoppable force or a truly immovable object, just as you can’t divide a pie (or a number) into zero pieces.
Hm… “sloppy human languages” implies a dislike of them that isn’t accurate. Probably closer to the truth to say “imprecise human languages.”
The difference between x/0 and immovable objects etc. is that this, infinity on the part of the creator, is a reality and those are fictions. At least, assuming that one accepts certain things to be the case, but then that’s an atheism vs. theism question, and again, we aren’t arguing that. The reason for it having to be a reality of course is that if one gives the Creator boundaries, i.e. “he’s here but in this part of the universe he doesn’t exist”, one runs into problems with all the other traditional attributes.
As for a relationship with the Creator being a delusion for a human being to have, this is a sort of false humility that ends up being a form of arrogance. Idolatry occurred because people said “what could a being as Mighty as the Creator have to do with us?” and then this devolved into “but a minor set of deities or forces, those we can relate to!” until they were reduced to worshiping things they fashioned with their own hands, and denying there was even a Creator in the first place.
I see little point in arguing theological questions any further, since we’ve got such widely divergent views to begin with. Besides which, this comment thread has gotten pretty long, it’s about time to close it up.
No problem. It was somewhat interesting I suppose, though a bit too philosophical, even for me.