ABEL\'S UNIVERSE (General)

by Abel , Saturday, November 19, 2011, 01:33 (4754 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Saturday, November 19, 2011, 01:49

dhw: Predation on Earth is the invention of god(s) or of godless Nature. Since you do not believe in godless Nature on Planet Earth, (although you do believe in it on Planet X), what does the invention of predatory self-interest – in my view, the basis of evil – tell us about the nature of your god(s)? Let me start you off with a simpler question which should elicit a direct answer: are your gods meat-eaters or vegetarians?

There is nothing evil in what animal predators do. They do not kill members of their own species unless there is a need just like herbivores. They eat what they kill and do not kill again unless they are hungry. They do not slaughter things just to wear their skins like men do. Buffalos know how greedy men can be.

It is men who kill each other because of desire and not a need to survive. And that is the difference between a necessary evil and evil. Evil is the invention of men. They will kill out of envy, greed, anger, pride, jealousy and the whole range of human emotion because their brains can violate any instinct though a "just us" system created by its' own self-interested reason. If I was a tiger I would feel much safer in a cage full of tigers, than as a human in a prison full of men.

The Elohim (angels) eat food processed from vegetable sources. So they are vegetarian.

dhw: "Of course life and Nature are based on the concept of equilibrium, but you don’t need predation for equilibrium, for suffering, or for death. (Thank you, Tony, for proving the point.)"

I have read Balance_Maintained's hypothesis and I disagree. The system you propose would not achieve homeostasis, but rather teeter-totter between extremes creating extinction events and reducing biodiversity to just a handful of species. Then one world-wide extinction event and the whole biosphere is lost. Since I have reams of empiric evidence on my side, the continued efforts of our ecologists and scientific communities as well as our governments to maintain our biodiversity, it seems you should take your hypothesis to them. Perhaps you can save us all a lot of time and money.

And dhw, if you ever saw what was left of a child who was born without the ability to suffer (feel pain), then you would not wonder why there was suffering. You would see that a child who feels no pain doesn't understand why he/she shouldn't gouge their eyes out, or put their hand into flame. Those who have lost the ability to feel pain because of Hanson's Disease (leprosy) understand their need to suffer. As now they must survey every inch of their body for injury every day.

Or perhaps you'd feel better if we felt no cold and did not seek warmth, or did not feel the heat so did not seek the shade. If we felt no hunger, would we not starve? There is a need for suffering or it would not exist.