Life: What is it?

(Scroll down and start from the first post if you haven't read the previous ones)

 
It’s strange how cultures can deny human value, and at the same time strive for life and survival. They teach in materialistic schools that human beings are merely animals, and that animals are merely an advanced composition of organic machinery. Then later they wonder why people have to hurt each other or treat others like junk pieces of hardware; and I wonder why the government doesn’t arrest us for murder every time we step on a cockroach. Yet this is the way it is, and none can provide a just explanation for these strange contradictions in the teachings of the modern world.
    First I’m going to talk some about the value of life, and then I’ll say a few things about human (not insect) dignity.
    Here’s where I’ll begin.
    In an episode of the 2006 series of BBC’s sci-fi Doctor Who, the Doctor states that Life is nothing more than a ‘quirk of matter’ and ‘nature’s way of keeping meat fresh.’ And yet, the series continually conveys Life as something to be maintained and protected, because in every episode there is always a life, or many lives, at stake in the conflict, and the heroes are always working to preserve and defend them.
    But what is the point in rescuing people or “saving the world,” if humans are just complex mechanisms of the right working pieces of matter? Why should people, if they are merely machines, be so important?
    “Well,” you might answer. “It’s so that the advancement of society can continue.” Well what for, I ask? “So that we can better this planet.” For what? “So we can have a better world to live in.” But why?!
    Because human beings have value, and deserve quality of living. Because Life is sacred, and needs to be cared for. Yet some of the people who demand security and human rights are the same people who deny human worth. Take abortion, for instance, or euthanasia: how can it be ok for some to die, but not ok for others? In the case of abortion, it is declared that embryo babies are not yet human, and therefore it is ok to kill them. But how can you prove 100% that embryos are not yet alive? If you can, then at what point do they become alive, and what is it that makes them so? If those people are unsure of the answer themselves, then perhaps it is wisest for them to stay on the safe side, and not to destroy without thought something that may be an unspeakable crime to destroy (even if it gets them money; for no amount of money is worth a human life).
    You could argue that human worth is in the mind, and only a fully-functioning mind is worth anything. But what do you mean by ‘the mind?’ The brain is a neat thing, but it too is only a machine when viewed alone. There has to be something more, something beyond what a purely physical interpretation can offer. To complete a human being, you need the soul as well as the body and mind, the spiritual as well as the physical. (*Extra: Eastern religions do exactly the opposite as materialistic views, stating instead that the spiritual is everything, and that the physical world is only an illusion. And yet they, like other people, do the best they can to take care of their bodies and preserve their lives. If the physical world is nothing, then does that mean it doesn’t matter if you suffer from pain, or die? What’s wrong with killing someone if the body is just an illusion? Here we come to the same conclusion as the other approach, and see that there is little difference between this view and the other.)
    Now, in common materialistic standards, which deny anything spiritual can exist, humans don’t have souls. But I can’t see anything logical in such a view. If a materialist (atheist, or whatever) asked me how I could sincerely believe that there is a spiritual part of a human being, what would I say?
    I would ask him this: “Suppose I had a gun, and I leveled it at you and pulled the trigger with a bang, shooting you dead. Would it matter?” After all, in a materialistic view humans are just soulless machines, so if we follow that logic there would be little difference between shooting a man and shooting a laptop. What does it matter? I don’t think a materialist could answer that question.
    Would you care if somebody came and shot you?
    The truth is, it does matter: because it is wrong to murder, because you, and all humans whether developed or undeveloped, have real value; we have souls (and who can prove embryos don’t as well?); we have real worth. Why? Because we were made after the fashion, in the image of, a personal, loving Being, and we are not mere “quirks” of matter. We think; we feel; we love; we hate; and we rightly take pride in that. No computer, no mere machine could ever amount to what we are.
    And we have dignity. To say a few words on the second subject, we as humans realize that somehow we are set apart from plants and beasts. You say you haven’t? Well, did dogs build Washington D.C.? Or cows invent cars and airplanes? I don’t think so. Humans are capable of so much more than monkeys, I think you will find, looking at the history of our race. The general argument for that is that the “lower species” just haven’t ‘evolved’ yet. But if humanity is something that can be achieved through physical development, then doesn’t that leave out the spiritual side and bring us once again to a mechanical level? I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: that there is a reason we don’t squash people like we do bugs. And in addition I, as a human, refuse to be labeled an ape. Human dignity is cast into the waste bin when equated with that of rodents and gorillas. We were made in God’s image, not King Kong’s.
    Life is something more than special, and to belittle it is to belittle the very existence of humanity. A culture should think hard about the cost of life before choosing a materialistic direction. If you are a materialist, then I ask you to explain what your basis for human worth is.

    Well, that’s all for now. I hope this post has given you something to think about. If it has, let me know what you’re take on subject is.
    God bless you!


Genesis 1:26-28 ‘Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
    So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”’

Psalm 139: 13, 14 ‘For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.’

“Is it rational to believe in God” you ask?

Many people have said, and are saying, that to believe in something like an all-powerful “God” is simply absurd. “The God of the Christian Faith is no more a reality than the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus,” I learned one atheist had said, for he saw no rationality in the concept, and had been given no reason to believe there was anything like a rational basis. Being a devout Christian, I felt very rankled at hearing his statement, but if I was to confront that atheist myself, you might ask, then what would I say?
    Before I make my reply, I want to clarify that as a seeker of truth, my goal isn’t simply to win arguments or fight the fight, but to find out the real answers to the matters I am confronted with, and communicate them. Also, I want to make clear that when I talk about God I’m not talking about some icon or mascot of a religion: I am talking about a being that could in fact be there, present in reality, and this is the object of my defense.
    Well, in return to the atheistic arguments, I am going to ask this one big, mind-boggling question that has confused many non-Christian intellectuals over the centuries, and it’s this: How did this universe we live in come into being?
    “What!?!” you might exclaim. “Why should I be thinking about this? I’m not a philosopher! Leave this stuff to the geeks in the ivory towers! I don’t have time to waste on such brain-pressing subjects, I need to get on with my life.”
    I have couple things to say about that. Firstly, if you think about it, everyone is a philosopher, because everyone asks the big question “why;” it would be strange if there was a person who never did once in their entire life. Secondly, if you want to understand your life, and live it more the way you would like to, you first have to understand the world you live in. And the first step into understanding anything correctly, is to find out where it came from: to go to its root. That’s why I pose this question.
    The most popular theory outside of the Christian explanation of where the universe came from is the Big Bang, in the theory of Evolution. As this theory explains, in the beginning there was absolutely nothing until there came a tremendous explosion, and as a product of that the universe just came into existence.
    But when we say everything started with nothing, it means nothing: zero, nil, zilch, not even space or time, less nothing, or what we normally think of it as. So how can you support the Big Bang theory? You’d have to believe, beyond all rational reasoning, that something came from nothing.
    Personally, I find it easier to believe that something came from something, than that something came from nothing. This is my first point.
    Point 1: The universe, and everything in it, had to have come from something.
    “But wait,” you might argue. “If the universe came from something, then where did that something come from? Another something. And that something had to come from another something, which had to come from another something, which came from another something, etc..” I see your point: it could go on endlessly.
    But what if that something which the universe came from was an eternal something? That would solve the problem, because being self-sufficient it would need nothing to back it up.
    Point 2: The universe had to have come from something eternal. (Take a break before moving on if your mind needs a rest.)
    Now, have you ever seen the Star Wars series? Most of you probably have. If you remember, the universe of story introduced an eternal essence known as The Force as the basis for all that exists, in the fashion of eastern Pantheistic beliefs. The Force is portrayed as an impersonal entity that governs everything, and special individuals known as Jedi are called to employ its power (for good or for evil). Is The Force our answer? It’s certainly something, and it’s eternal, so why not?
    Well I don’t know if you noticed the same, but ever since I was a kid I thought Jedi were like the coolest warriors ever but there was one thing about them that always bugged me. They are always taught to let go of their emotions, to throw aside human nature and strive to become detached and emotionless, to become like their all-powerful Force governor, pressing toward the impersonal. But if you lose everything that makes you human, then where can you place those things? Is the ability to love, or to have fun, a flaw that needs to be gotten rid of? I think you and I can both agree this is absurd.
    So if love, hate, happiness, anger, and all the like aren’t just defects in the natural order of things, then they had to have had a proper origin. I repeat, something cannot come from nothing. This impersonal Force cannot have begotten something personal. Thus this eternal something we are talking about cannot be The Force: it had to be something personal: it had to be a conscious being, a Person.
    Point 3: The universe had to have come from something personal.
    “That’s all very well,” you say. “But how can we know anything of the nature of this eternal, personal being?”
    Someone, I forget exactly who (Francis Schaeffer mentions him a few times in his books; Baudelaire was the name referred to), once said, “If there is a God, He is the Devil.” But if the creator of all things existing was the Devil, then how is it anything good exists? (You could reverse that and ask if a good God would allow evil to exist, but keep listening.)
    Deep down, everyone knows that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that what is right is more admirable than what is wrong. But if this eternal, personal being was the Devil, then why do what is right anyway? If Good is the flaw, a losing cause, then why not just join the cause of Evil, the winning team, to become more like our creator? Yet if in a story the bad-guys win, we think of it as such a bummer! There is a reason why Right is right. And there is a reason why Wrong is not right. Wrong is the flaw, I think we can agree, and since the original had to be flawless, this eternal, personal being had to be GOOD.
    And you don’t need to look inside only to see that. Look around you, past the evil and turmoil of the modern world, and at this planet we live on. There is not only good out there, but beauty as well. We, as humans, consider some things to be beautiful: an attractive woman, a splendid mountain/ocean panorama, or a tiny, delicate field flower. Evil cannot produce any love for such things.
    And neither could chaos or chance, as Evolution suggests. If you’ve studied Science, you can see how amazingly everything in the world, from the workings of the human body to the simplest laws of nature and physics, work together with such incredible unity, in such a beautiful way, as to create this living, working system we know and admire as our world. Art cannot exist without first an artist (a painting can’t paint itself!), and only an artist of infinite mastery could have devised such an unimaginably complex and wonderful system as our universe.
    Point 4: The universe had to have been created by something good, a lover of beauty and Right, an artist.
    SO…still think it’s irrational for us Christians to believe in God? Maybe you should reread this post :-)
    And now, putting these four points together, we therefore come to the conclusion: The universe had to have been created by an eternal, personal, artistic, loving, being. Sound a bit like the God of the Bible?
    This is why we Christians can so strongly believe in an all-powerful, eternal, artistic, loving God, who is present, watching us, and teaching us through His amazing works. These issues are the ones I would pose to that atheist, or any other non-Christian, when they question our faith, and would ask them what their answer to the origin of the universe is.

    I understand if I’ve overwhelmed you by now, but if you’re still reading at this point then I’m glad to know that at least someone is interested in the thoughts I am sharing. If you have more questions to add, please share them. (I can guess you might be asking if this god is really the same God as in the Bible, and if the Bible is really true. That’s a whole field of questions in itself, but I hope to confront that in a later post.) You can e-mail me at <bagheryan.stephen@gmail.com>.
    Whew! I’ve spent all afternoon on this post. I think need to take a breather! Anyway, thanks for listening.

    God bless you!