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A tweet from @its_death:
God’s in the next room. He sounded annoyed. I could make out “If humanity doesn’t stop pissing about” and “sending robot overlords”.
I use humour as a defense mechanism =D
…against the robot overlords.
When they drink, will it start raining booze?
and I thought I was weird! :-[
wassup everyone? rather talk about sex than the state of the planet? i don’t know!
i want to be a robot overlord.
I think it would be cool to be a robot overlord. Does it involve a revolution and putting some people first up against the wall?
too right it does, or else what’d be the point!? zappy laser guns, eyes that shoot red beams and everything1 ain’t no forgiveness in the land of the robot overlord! oh no, this is outright gratuitous, no holds barred, therapy of the most mecha kind!
OK, I’ll take the cartoon seriously.
Dialogue at 7 minutes.
Discuss
relationship. that’s the purpose, i reckon… all things to all things relationship. sadly though, i think we’re more like the germ or bad bacteria on our planet. we reckon we’re great because we have the power of reason and thought, but basically if we don’t relate, we are just tubes where food goes in one end and poo comes out the other.
more i could say on it, but that’s my starter for ten.
The creation narrative in Gen 1 gives us a role and purpose in creation. And “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”. The problem is that we as a species move away from that. There is a selfish nature in each of us.
“We need to reduce carbon emissions. You guys should all do that”.
I think that the real problem is that the time scale is too short. Big business isn’t concerned about 50 years because the CEO isn’t going to be around in 50 years (50-60 years old). In fact their children will be getting towards the end in 50 years time (70-80 years old). Often they haven’t yet got the grand children (children are in their twenties).
The end game is a big bank account not long term sustainability of the planet. Like a smoker who doesn’t think of cancer in 35 years time, the time scale is too long.
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”… and we grabbed what we can.
And then there is the other way of looking at it – if you take a petri dish and grow bacteria in it, they will grow exponentially until they have excreted enough waste into the petri dish that they all die. Sound familiar?
OK don’t get in a SPIN about it!
I’m currently reading Planetwise by the inappropriately-named Dave Bookless. I’m not entirely sure about all the theology of the book, but this is a useful point: “It is vital to hold together in tension that we are both earth-bound creatures and God’s image-bearers. They are the two legs we stand on. Lose either and we will have a severely unbalanced relationship with everything around us and keep falling over.”
To elaborate, he goes on to say that if we forget we are made in God’s image, we may either think that we thrive simply because we’re more clever and powerful than other species, leaving us with no reason not to exploit other species, or that the world would be better off without us.
And if we forget that we are made from the dust of the earth (ultimately, the dust of the stars) we can end up so other-worldly that, in particular, we don’t see the need to respect the environment.
“So, the two sides to our human nature must be held in balance. If we ignore either, we will fail to take true place in God’s world. However, if we remember that we are both creatures of the earth and also made in God’s image, this enables us to become truly human, to fulfil our God-given job description, and relate appropriately to our fellow creatures, the earth, and God.”
http://www.arocha.org/gb-en/resources/1663-DSY.html
The tension between the two leading to subduing the Earth in an ethical way.
I could construct a secular humanist argument that ammounts to the same thing without reference to God. Is there not something distinctive about theism that leads us into a better relationship with the creation?
Sorry – question in my head whilst I work. Thought you guys could ponder it too =D
Challenging question Robb.
As a follower, I know why it has put aside all of my previous hedonistic ethics in relation to the world around me. I’m not sure I can formulate it succinctly into an argument for why other than that connection I now feel to everything around me. I now relate to the world from the POV of belief in the creator and that colours my actions.
It is easier to nail down ethics in an analytical manner. We can put them under a microscope. It is harder to be hard and fast when talking about a relationship.
There are people who say Mars Did shake off the people virus.
I like this, it makes sense – ““So, the two sides to our human nature must be held in balance. If we ignore either, we will fail to take true place in God’s world. However, if we remember that we are both creatures of the earth and also made in God’s image, this enables us to become truly human, to fulfil our God-given job description, and relate appropriately to our fellow creatures, the earth, and God.””
Thinking further about your question – and now it’s follow-up comment also (just when
) Robb…
Trying again and thinking aloud here: Maybe the difference between a theistic and a naturalistic approach is located in the fact that the former is a less deterministic narrative in certain key ways: it has notions of grace, salvation and resurrection – and here I’m thinking about these in terms of being able to be transformed here and now rather than in some future ‘escaping hell’ sense – and thus it is not locked into a causally closed account of being (either personally or in terms of the wider created order).
Hmm…not sure if that is entirely lucid but I’ll let it stand as a first pass. And maybe it also makes sense of your comment about the difference between nailing down ethics and relationships. I would see relationality as a key in this as in many things – and our capacity for this to be an important aspect of what it means to be ‘God’s image-bearer’
Such an understanding of imago Dei also gives me a much better handle on the concept of sin, because one can think of this in terms of distorted relationality and its consequences….which of course also applies in the relation-to-the-world issue under consideration.