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From: beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (beth d. christy)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Not if we're put here?
Message-ID: <416@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 20:27:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.416
Posted: Fri May  3 20:27:52 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 7-May-85 08:16:00 EDT
References: <991@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 59

>[From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois), Message-ID: <991@uwmacc.UUCP>]
>>[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.

>[........]

>> 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 original posting by Colin dealt heavily with nuclear war and stated
that evolutionists oppose it *much* more strongly/visibly/vocally than
creationists.

Paul, I'm fairly sure I'm misinterpreting this, but gosh.  Saying that
the fear of unimaginable destruction from nuclear war is "[u]nnecessary
...because death is our lot in any case.  It matters more how we live than
die." sure *sounds* like you're providing Colin with the very "positive
confirmation" that you asked him for in just the last paragraph.

>"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.

This has just the same ring to it.  Is this *really* what you believe?

-- 

--JB  (not Elizabeth, not Beth Ann, not Mary Beth...Just Beth)