Guess who just won the Nobel Peace Prize?

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by eumesmo

Your god, is he anything like Gaia? or Tao? a principle like gravity that makes life possible? a universe that wishes to understand itself? or Plato's "The Good"? or just that Jewish god of war that at some point or another proclaimed himself "the god"? How is he better than Zeus or Athena or Ares for that matter? Please don't tell me the Jewish gods were "the chosen gods" too. Did he just come with the best manual? choose his Lieutenants right? were petty enough so common people could relate? condescend to bestow on humans his image?

Of what interest could we as individuals, as a group, as a nation, as humanity could be to a god? Entertainment, the immense opera written by the devil, in honor and staged for god, where each of us at one time or another sings an aria and then return to the chorus?

I wasn't going to respond in this thread, but these are interesting questions, so what the heck. As a reference point, I'm a Quaker Universalist. So with regards to whether my god is like Gaea, the Tao, gravity, Plato's "The Good," I would answer yes, all of these. (And also like some aspects ascribed to Zeus, Athena, and I suppose even Ares.) I go with the metaphor of the blind people and the elephant - we've each got a perspective on a small part of the divine, and it's tempting to try to draw conclusions about the whole, but I think the whole is too vast for any of us to perceive in its entirety. (That's where the "universalist" part of my belief comes from.)

As for what interest humans (or other sentient beings) might hold for a deity, I don't know, of course, but my working theory is that we're "gods in training" in some way -- meant to grow and mature as souls until we're able to do god-like things ourselves. Meanwhile, we should be taking care of our planet, each other, and ourselves, in approximately that order. I actually don't think god cares if we believe in god, or "worship" god. I wouldn't try to defend this theory to anyone who didn't believe it, I'm just offering it as a suggestion.

The times when I find god helpful are when I need to be better than I know how to be-- more patient, for example, or more forgiving, or more brave. I pray, I get help. Call it a psychological trick, if you like that metaphor better. To me, it feels like I'm getting extra help when I need it, and that's what counts, I think. (I don't ask god to make it rain or not rain, or to make me win the lottery, or whatever. I don't know if god ever intervened in human affairs to that extent, but even if so, I think we're supposed to be growing past that point.)

Ok, that's my 2 jiao.

[yvanleterrible]

Interesting, neko!

I was waiting for your response to this thread, you totally surprised me, I thought you would have contributed to the 'ecology' part.

I know next to nothing of Quakers out of some historical facts. Some of the things you say join my beliefs of the unfathomable dimensions, the unimaginable of God's essence. Oh yes, he exists! He's got nothing to do with any image, concept or phenomenon any man can imagine or grasp. No science can describe him; what toys we are. Made to his image... A metaphor to describe conciousness? All we can grasp are brief snippets of lucidity drowned in feelings of awe; so few, that we can remember them throughout our lives but not long enough to leave a lasting answer, just that there is one. Blessed we are that some can at times, because some have done. Religions are all good that they bring us conciousness of a whole.
One is born in a region of earth, given a culture and exposed to a religion. Born in an other region, he'd have an other culture and an other religion. Fight for them? Why?
We can not name God because we can not grasp what he is. The guides we have, the words and the wisdoms are there to bring us a focus to conciousness...None here can claim to know God. Would we have a right to?


Now back to this planet. Who are we to change the rules of nature or its order? We have science to seek its understanding but do we have the necessary wisdom to apply its use? We can mimic nature's processes but never really live by its rules other than what evolution has meant us to be. I do not suggest we go back to living the middle ages ways, deforestation almost destroyed Europe at the time. Nature has ways of control and used it then with plagues. It's showing us again with the fever of global warming. Why do we keep challenging? Is our ego so out of control or are we so stupid?

Simple laws should guide all we do that were not specified by the local wisdoms, because they knew not of the limits of the planet. The land they lived on was vast and unknown. Now that we know, what's the next step? Pursue our destruction to space and then to other planets. What a waste! I believe that going to space is an error and that it should not be attempted before we have stabilized our relationship with Earth first. Overpopulation, poverty, pollution, energy waste and its wrongful use, anihilation of other forms of life that were here before we were and I skip, all of which problems have to be dealt with before we ever think leaving this place, period. This Earth is Paradise! Why seek elsewhere? We should enjoy every moment we are here on it, not on what we make of it. Mankind has always fought nature for survival and has kept the ways. We are in an era where we must change to readapt. What do we do? We celebrate victory of science and technology over the elements, and plunder things we know next to nothing of.
What victory? We're destroying our own house! Our short lives are the standards which we aim by. We have no right as a whole, to meddle in things that live longer than us.

Mes deux cennes noires...

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Interesting, neko!

I was waiting for your response to this thread, you totally surprised me, I thought you would have contributed to the 'ecology' part.

It didn't feel like I had anything new to contribute to the ecology part of the thread. HarryT and others pretty much had my position covered already. I suppose I could post links to any number of pages which explain the most common global warming myths, but those who are most vehemently on the other "side" of this debate probably wouldn't read or believe them anyway. The only thing I'll point out is that many of the US "captains of industry" would actually like the US government to implement the Kyoto protocols and take other steps on global warming, because there's actually a potential for "new technology" projects like this to kick-start the US economy. (Example: http://www.utdallas.edu/news/archive...ming-opps.html)

Regarding the religion side of the discussion, I am reminded of a scene in David Brin's Earth in which a Jesuit (I think) points out that God's first actual command to humanity was to "name the animals." The Jesuit interprets this to represent a call to humanity to engage in science: to study the world around us, naming things and learning their natures. I think we are called to do more than that. We have the ability and power to destroy the ecosystem of our planet, or to help it. We ignore this power at the peril of ourselves and our world. If we take our power lightly, we are likely to take thoughtless actions with terrible consequences.

At this point, there are far too many of us to return to an agrarian lifestyle. We need to use our brains to get us out of this mess, or a series of catastrophies and plagues is very likely to come along and reduce the population for us.

[yvanleterrible]

Always comes down to economy does it? And what if economy was our plague?

There is no single solution, as much as variety is the spice of life. What we need most is cooperation but noooo! That's communist stuff. "You take care of your stuff, I'll take care of mine" Well I beg to differ, it's not your stuff and it's not my stuff, everything and we included belong to the planet. Sorry 'bout that! I always get carried away!

I have that Brin book in paperback somewhere, I'll have to dig it up someday and put it through the approximative 875 books I have yet to read.

[nekokami]

I like the "wedge" approach, in which we don't look for a single solution, but look for a collection of strategies that each help to address a portion of the problem.

Earth is highly recommended. For me, at least, it had just the right mix of big ideas, empathetic characters, and action.

[eumesmo]

I feel in the environmental question we're quite doomed, unless some breakthrough in nanotechnology is achieved. As I mentioned before, I'm Brazilian, most of our electricity is produced by hydroelectric plants, almost all of our oil is produced through deep-sea exploration which if I'm not mistaken, the barrel of oil needs to be at least 38 American dollars in order for it to be profitable, also Brazil is the worlds biggest producer or Sugar Cane, sugar and ethanol, with at least 30% of the automotive fleet running on ethanol,(blended gasoline and pure ethanol) with nearly all passenger cars being produced nationally capable or running on gasoline, any blend, or pure ethanol. I don't know if many of you actually ever though of this, but regardless of market price, oil tends to have a never changing contractual "in soil" price, and the cost of extraction, American oil companies would never even consider extracting oil at nearly 38 dollars of operational cost. Of course this same principle applies to ethanol, which is only profitable when the barrel is above a certain price, which is something like 42 dollars(I could mistaken), which can never be comparable with good middle eastern oil, with could cost as little as 10 dollars a barrel.

[Goshzilla]

I am not religious I will not subscribe to any of the following notions:

1.) That man has special privledge
2.) That catasrophes can't be man made
3.) That a likely extinction of the human race means we do nothing

Now with all that out of the way, I fail to see how religious dogma will solve this problem and it is a massive side track from the original premise here. That man has accelerated global warming.

I fail to see how man cannot be responsible for this current warming trend. At one time there was thick enough vegetation in the world that it too was responsible for a high amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is highly likely(that is we have to remove the impossible idea) that man can easily be responsible for the CO2 problem today.

[eumesmo]

It doesn't, that's what makes us the godless indignant(me, I don't know about you). True Republicans(modern stoics) except from a industry uncrippled by environmental laws, major breakthroughs within the next few decades(which is very likely), which of course gives them time to diversify their portfolio, but of course that has nothing to do with it . Meanwhile the Democrats, with their tree hugging members, and young idealists(engineers, biologists, geneticists) stand to lead part of the World well into the next century. Of course both points are very valid, but obviously, the public can't stomach neither of them, which makes the smear campaign oscillate from as high as moral duty, to as low as god, god's will, god's wrath, which makes it interesting how savagely the Republicans always hold to the shorter end of the stick, but that's beside the point.