(September 22, 2016 at 12:39 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: I don't think you guys get what the OP is saying. He's not talking about what you personally feel is important, I believe he's talking about your place in the overall cosmos.

We recognize that in nature all creatures / organisms are important to their environment which is why we refer to it as a system, everything has its role to play in the overall scheme of things; everything except humans.

Why not, and so what?

(September 22, 2016 at 12:39 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: ...everything has its role to play in the overall scheme of things; everything except humans.

Pulled that right out of your ass, didn't you?

I think my comment on a separate thread is relevant:

A non-believer can feel proximate meaning and find a local sense of purpose in things such as their work, community, and family. Perhaps that is enough for some. I wish you well. At the same time atheism precludes any possibility of ultimate purpose or significance – “All we are is dust in the wind” etc. etc. A secular sense of purpose is tied to having some external legacy or achievement to show for your life whereas a believer feels assured that their life matters, somehow, even if they left no lasting legacy (and for most folks what legacy truly lasts for very long). For Christians at least, they can feel significant not because of anything they did but because they know that by His Grace alone God loves them. One line from a hymn simply expresses this notion and goes “Nothing in my hand I bring / only to the Cross I cling.”

(September 22, 2016 at 4:56 pm)Gemini Wrote:

(September 22, 2016 at 12:39 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: ...everything has its role to play in the overall scheme of things; everything except humans.

Pulled that right out of your ass, didn't you?

Does the term ecosystem mean anything to you?

(September 22, 2016 at 5:29 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: Does the term ecosystem mean anything to you?

Do you somehow think that humans are excluded from the ecosystem?

(September 22, 2016 at 5:29 pm)Huggy74 Wrote:

(September 22, 2016 at 4:56 pm)Gemini Wrote: Pulled that right out of your ass, didn't you?

Does the term ecosystem mean anything to you?

Do you subscribe to the human-as-analogue-of-a-virus argument as put forward in The Matrix?

Not as a Christian, of course, but in terms of ecosystems?

(September 22, 2016 at 5:10 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: I think my comment on a separate thread is relevant:

A non-believer can feel proximate meaning and find a local sense of purpose in things such as their work, community, and family. Perhaps that is enough for some. I wish you well. At the same time atheism precludes any possibility of ultimate purpose or significance – “All we are is dust in the wind” etc. etc. A secular sense of purpose is tied to having some external legacy or achievement to show for your life whereas a believer feels assured that their life matters, somehow, even if they left no lasting legacy (and for most folks what legacy truly lasts for very long). For Christians at least, they can feel significant not because of anything they did but because they know that by His Grace alone God loves them. One line from a hymn simply expresses this notion and goes “Nothing in my hand I bring / only to the Cross I cling.”

Yes, this lasting legacy is the symbolic immortality that I was talking about.  But most religious people seem to want both.  They still work in the secular world in an effort to leave a secular legacy in addition to their hope for an afterlife.  Which may indicate that they do harbor some doubts about whether or not there really is an afterlife.  Or it may just be naturally human to want symbolic immortality even if you believe in a literal immortality.

(September 22, 2016 at 5:29 pm)Huggy74 Wrote:

(September 22, 2016 at 4:56 pm)Gemini Wrote: Pulled that right out of your ass, didn't you?

Does the term ecosystem mean anything to you?

It means a complex system of interacting organisms. What's your point?

Good, it seems you did a quick Google search before spouting off.

My point is; what I said is factual and not "pulled out of my ass".

(September 22, 2016 at 5:31 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(September 22, 2016 at 5:29 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: Does the term ecosystem mean anything to you?

Do you somehow think that humans are excluded from the ecosystem?

Acutually our survival is dependent upon the health of the ecosystem. The real question... Is the survival of the ecosystem dependent on us?

IMO it isn't.