(March 10, 2020 at 11:58 pm)Belacqua Wrote: The cool thing to me is that one of the criteria they used to rank the hierarchy is the capacity for enjoyment. Each creature in the chain can enjoy itself to the extent that its nature allows, but the higher you go on the chain the more things the creature is able to enjoy. So a snail can operate at 100% of snail-enjoyment-capacity, but people's capacity for enjoying different things is greater. We can enjoy books and music that a snail would be indifferent to. And since, according to this system, experiencing God equals the greatest possible enjoyment, people are said to be closer to God than snails are.
It's a fascination subject. Thank you for the quotes.
Again, that is very simple minded, you are not the one who can say if snail is enjoying life lesser than you do. Especially since snails can pick up and feel things that you can't.
![[Image: Snail.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/BZchhz9Q/Snail.jpg)
Not to mention that people have been worshipping animals as Gods since the early days. Some cultures even preserved it, like native Americans.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
