One of the biggest issues for me in our
discussions is our natural homo-centric view on things. As humans, we
naturally revolve our world around ourselves and describe things in
human terms. With very few exceptions, mankind has not had the
chance to talk to another species, and even those chances are
simplistic commands and question-answer style phrases. Because the
majority of humans only can talk, argue, and discuss with other
humans, using a human perspective is useful because it allows other
people to understand the point we are trying to make easier. However,
this has been incorporated into our philosophical views as well.
When discussing things such as how
does a human live a good life or what is the purpose of human life,
having a homo-centric view is appropriate. But when discussing more
wide ranging thoughts this is problematic. For example, when we
discussed God. One of the things according to many of the works we
read brought all existence into being, not just people. Yet it seems
that according to our discussions, God is a human-like being, who may
or may not have human-like motives, who sees things like evil in
human-like terms. It is natural for us to think on these terms, yet
as Mark twain so aptly put it “If the Eiffel Tower were now
representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob
at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody
would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for.”
Mankind has not been on earth very
long. Before us there were animals and plants, before them
microscopic creatures, then minerals, dust, and space. According to
modern theories of evolution, we were not created right off the bat,
so why act like everything was created for us and thus everything
must be in human terms or follow human standards? Though God is a
being that is all powerful, omnipotent, and immortal, we give him a
human image (usually of an old, wise, strong male), a gender (usually
a male as I've been pointing out with the pronoun “him”), and
admiral human qualities (such as good, benevolence, and loving). Yet
being immortal, omnipotent, and all powerful are all traits that
humans do not have and thus can not understand beyond our imaginings.
If God is so not like a human than why must we turn him into a human
figure when what he should be is a being so far beyond our
imagination that we would struggle to understand it. It seems almost
silly that we actually have to turn God into a relatively lesser
creature to try and understand him.
Now maybe I'm wrong. I don't know for
sure and just like any argument this can probably be disproved. But
what if I'm right? Then what does that mean about god? Does he have
to be benevolent towards us? Does evil and good even matter to him or
are they solely human traits? If he is not like us then do we need to
aim to be like him? I don't know for sure, but I will try to find out
and I hope you all do the same.
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ReplyDeleteOn page 142 of the book, I found amusing the reference that Simon Blackburn made to Voltaire. I looked up the quote that was paraphrased in Blackburn's "Miracles and Testimony" on the internet.
ReplyDeleteVoltaire said, "If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor."
This reminds me of another amusing quote from the philosopher Xenophanes:
"If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the gods' bodies have the same shape as they themselves had."
I do not necessarily completely agree with these quotes, but the observations have some truth to them. People tend to imagine that God or the gods would be like themselves.
edit: I needed to correct a typo.