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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: briskit who wrote (16420)	2/25/2004 5:21:15 AM
From: Solon	Respond to of 28931

I think you are saying what I was saying. Perhaps one thing needs to be clarified, though: I don't suggest for a minute that the contemplation of religious claims for the afterlife ought not to matter to you or to be held as values. I was merely contemplating what seemed to me to be a lack of meaning (for me) should the REALIZATION of commonly held religious claims come about. Call it a form of reductio ad absurdum. I like having ten toes and an appetite. The concept of "meaning" in an unconditional world of certain beings and certain immortality, strikes me as absurd. You are right that one can consider more creative ideas of "God" than the Zarathustra/Christian conception. But thinking (or hoping) to preserve a single grain of dust, drop of water, or flower petal across an eternity of time is something I leave to those in the know. Our dog, Blacky, got hit by a car 45 years ago and he has never barked since. So I had a thought: We know that cetaceans (dolphins, whales, porpoises) left the land and adapted to the water while keeping their lungs, etc. We also know they developed their brain more while on land than have we--as noted by the size and surface area (convolutions). What will they do in an afterlife if they don't swim or eat? It is just a thought. One of those niggling things that bothers one early in the morning...

To: briskit who wrote (16420)	2/25/2004 5:50:53 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

"Certainly we take negative consequences seriously, but at the same time are not inhibited and restricted in the face of them" I know it is not your emphasis, but all I could think about when I read that was suicide bombers and their ilk--those for whom death is not a "serious consequence"...a "value" they also impose on their victims. As I said, I know this is not your slant on it, but it is embedded in your point. I see no problem with people choosing to value their death over their life. But it surely bothers me when they believe that all life is cheap simply because they have come to understand that their own is worthless.