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.’