Human Destiny (Endings)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Thursday, June 19, 2008, 18:27 (5999 days ago)

Mark, in the thread on How Agnostics Live quotes from Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov: "Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, ..." - Mark continues: "The story is most commonly used to knock down the all too easy Christian response to the question of suffering which argues that the good outweighs the evil. The tale is taken to illustrate most starkly the injustice of founding all the good of the world on evil. There is no doubt that the most powerful objection to the Christian idea of God is the question of evil and suffering." - There are three aspects here I would like to discuss. The first is the concept of "human destiny". Dostoevsky's character speaks as if this is something preordained and that its purpose is happiness, peace, and contentment. The desire for such things to be oredered is perhaps understandable given Dostoevsky's own troubled experiences in life. However, it would seem that our human destiny is probably either to become extinct or to give rise to some successor species, perhaps part machine. One has only to read a few science fiction books! - The second is the question of suffering. Surely it is part of the nature of life to be involved in a continual struggle to survive. Some people do indeed get more than their fair share of suffering. Many of the religions of the world are designed to ease the minds of people who are suffering, those at the bottom of the heap. Though I'm not sure whether this is mainly for their benefit (the opiate of the masses) or for the benefit of their masters (encouraging quietism and obedience rather than rebellion). - The third is the question of good and evil as abstract principles or forces about in the world. I think these are projections on the world of human wishes and desires, and not part of physical reality. Nature is neutral on such issues. Or possibly, since the universe does not appear to be very hospitable to life, one could argue that Nature is against us, and wouldn't be bothered one way or another if we, and all life, disappeared.