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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Not if we're put here?
Message-ID: <991@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Apr-85 00:14:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.991
Posted: Sun Apr 28 00:14:16 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Apr-85 07:20:43 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Madison Primate Center
Lines: 64


> [Colin Rafferty]
> If we were put on this Earth, then we belong here, and we don't really have
> to worry.  But if we sprang up over the course of 3.5 billion years, then
> maybe we don't belong.  Look at the dinosaurs: around for hundreds of
> millions of years, then wiped out.  maybe that's the way the humans will go.
> BUT NOT IF WE WERE PUT HERE!  If we are here for a purpose, then it's all
> right.

I do not see that this follows.

> But if we sprang up due to this 'Survival of the Fittest' scheme,
> then maybe we don't belong, and maybe something will come along that's
> fitter than us.  BUT NOT IF WE WERE PUT HERE!

> What the main problem most Creationists have is that they are afraid of, not
> their own, but mankind's mortality.

I tried to apply this to myself to see if it was true.  I really did.
I can't resonate to it.  The statement therefore fails in at least one
case.  I think that a demonstration of positive confirmation is needed.

> By believing that they were placed
> here, they don't have to worry about what could destroy mankind, but
> Evolutionists do.  The political forces that lean toward Nuclear War are
> invariably Creationists: Reagan, Faldwell, etc.  Those against are

You make it sound like they WANT nuclear war.  This is irresponsible.

> invariably Evolutionists: Mondale, Sagan, etc.  There is a definite
> connection.

Kind of strange.  If there is no purpose, then why try to prevent our
extinction?  Really.  Why?  Because you feel like it?  Or do you have
a real reason?

> What can we do about this?  The one thing that we cannot do is let this
> feeling of safety be taught in the classrooms.  If we send out a generation
> of people who don't worry about their own future, and leave it in the hands
> of Something else, then what is left of our future?

What "feeling of safety" is this?  And what should we teach?  What we
have now, thanks to the continual fear propaganda is a generation of
kids growing up panicked.  Not very healthy.  Unnecessary, too, I
think, because death is our lot in any case.  It matters more how we
live than how we die.

"The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing
our duty.  The great thing is to be found at one's post as a child of
God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though
our world might last a hunderd years.  I find it difficult to keep from
laughing when I find people worrying about future destruction of some
kind or another.  Didn't they know they were going to die anyway?
Apparently not.  My wife once asked a young women friend whether she
had ever thought of death, and she replied, 'By the time I reach that
age science will have done something about it!'"

C S Lewis, "Cross-Examination", _God in the Dock_, p266.

-- 
                                                                    |
Paul DuBois	{allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois        --+--
                                                                    |
"There are two sides to every argument, until you take one."        |