I have been working on a manuscript, but this has nagged at me all day. It represents such a sheer incomprehension of the religious point of view that, at first, I thought I would overlook it, as a courtesy. But I cannot.
The religious point of view is that man is "a little lower than the angels", "made in God's image", and the focus of Divine Love. Even with acceptance of the doctrine of Original Sin, as I have pointed out, plenty of religious people do not believe in Total Depravity, and even among those that do, the focus is on that grace which not only saves, but uplifts them.
From the religious point of view, it is the atheist who thinks that man is a turd, essentially and irredeemably. Since there is no value in the nature of things, there is no value in man. The reality is that he is just another waste product of a pointless universe. Agnostics are just people who are not sure that man is no better than moss or, for that matter, mud.
The objection is, of course, we "make" our own value, and life is so rich, What, me worry? Why we should find it better that we care about certain things, when the truth is, all of it is inherently indifferent, beats me. It would seem to me that it would be worse to know that there is no difference, in the actual order of things, between life and death, heroism and villainy, human dignity and human degradation, that it is all a matter of personal choice and/or social convention. But I am not intent on arguing the point, only in contrasting points of view....... |
