RE: Two babies discussion.
February 6, 2015 at 10:13 pm
(This post was last modified: February 6, 2015 at 11:30 pm by Jenny A.)
(February 6, 2015 at 6:20 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover if there is life, then why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”
Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
If this is meant to be analogy for theists and atheists in the universe (and I think we can assume it is) then why would the baby guess there was something called a mother? Because in your little story, the second baby guesses right, but has no evidence whatsoever. Why wouldn't that optimistic little tyke guess god and heaven? And how pray tell would the babies (either one) know there was such a thing as delivery?
But, if we are talking about real babies and giving them speech and reason at a per-birth stage, I like your analogy, because unlike people looking for god, they would have very good evidence for mother and a world outside:
1) Babies can feel pressure from outside the uterus as well as the motion of the mother's movements.
2) Babies can hear their mother's heartbeats and perhaps breathing as well, not to mention digestive sounds.
3) Babies can hear sounds including voices outside the mother.
So unlike people making up a god with no evidence, the babies would have very good evidence for a world outside the uterus. That's not surprising because there is a world outside the uterus. It suggests that if there were life after death or god, there would be evidence of that too, and yet there is none. So, I'd say your analogy explains why we should expect there to be evidence of god and the afterlife. Yet there isn't such evidence.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.