(June 1, 2013 at 3:49 am)NoraBrimstone Wrote: We're one species on a teeny-tiny planet, in the teeny-tiny Solar System, which is one of at least 100 billion star systems in a teeny-tiny galaxy, which is one of hundreds billions of galaxies in the known Universe... How can the assumption that we are in any way significant in all of that be anything but arrogant and egotistical to the extreme?First of all, only ONE of these planets has life at all, and that is Earth. On this Earth, there are millions of species of different animals and plants. But animals are slaves to simply being animals; they do not collectively advance as society or make conscious decisions on whether or not to behave a certain way. Humans have these abilities. People can think, they can love, they can believe. Human society is changed by humans, and the record of these changes forms human history. Without humans, we have animals who just happen to be on an earth in a universe with no idea how they're there.
At the same time, human ability is limited; we can only do a number of concrete things. We have an ultimate being beyond ourselves, and we are a product of him that is subject to him. He keeps our ego down.
So don't underrate humanity, but don't overrate it either.
