FB friend B.R. posted this:
You, yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. ~Buddha
Me: Which is to say, you don't.
B.R.: Um, what?
O.F.: rich, do you mean that no one is inherently deserving of love and affection?
O.F.: love is only freely given, so i could see your argument from one side: into the above quote could perhaps be read a note of obligation, which would remove that element of freedom which makes the idea of love meaningful.
O.F.:or do you mean it more from the protestant perspective that nature is fallen into sin and thus not worthy of love without the intercession of divine grace?
Me: B.R., it says that you deserve love as much as anybody. How does that comparison establish that anyone in the universe deserves love?
Me: I don't know if that's the protestant perspective.
L.W.: As Eastwood (as William Munny) says in Unforgiven, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it." You'd deserve love as much as anybody whether everyone deserved it or no one did. That's even assuming that love exists as some sort of Platonic ideal (I'd posit that Siddhartha Gautama/Shakyamuni/Buddha probably didn't), rather than as an ephemeral, functional social bond between organisms.
L.W.: It seems like a somewhat Protestant perspective. If not, to what do Sola Fide and Sola Gratia amount?
Me: I don't know too many protestants who employ Latin...
B.R.: He's recommending that we love ourselves.
O.F.: i would not presume to speak for all protestantism. that is a summation of a formulation of john calvin, i believe. perhaps luther. i will look for a source before standing by this any further, but it is a doctrine of some prominent figure of the reformation.
L.W.: Loving ourselves--I'm for it, for what it's worth!
Re: Protestants and Latin--The Five Solas were, collectively, a cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation. I grant that I've no idea how familiar therewith the modern Protestant layperson is. If you prefer, "Grace Alone" and "Faith Alone"; the point being that "grace" was defined by the Reformation as "unmerited favor."
Not to say that's what you were getting at (or that it wasn't); just pointing out that it's certainly A Protestant perspective, and a fairly important one to Protestant sects tracing lineage back to the Reformation.
Me: O.F., I just did a word search of the N.T., and could find no verse that even suggested that anyone was not worthy of God's love. Which was somewhat of a surprise. The verses that dealt with God's love were *unconditional* love, not love/unloved based on status.
O.F.: thanks, L.W.! i suppose semantically that i have taken this doctrine out of context by referring it to love between persons rather than the love of god for humanity, to which they originally refer. but i think that it is easy to extrapolate. if we are deemed worthy of the love of the supreme being (should there be one) and we are made in the divine image....
O.F.: you are absolutely right rich. the doctrines i'm (still without citation, sorry!) thinking of are non-scriptural.
L.W.: Well, O.F., love of [G/g]od(s) for humanity is only applicable if you believe that there is a deity that loves humanity--dubiously applicable to Shakyamuni, not applicable at all to a plurality of modern Buddhists.
Me: Love without a diety seems to me to be nothing more than a vague emotional state, the result of electrical impulses in the brain, lacking meaning and context.
O.F.: L.W., i use the christian formulation as a reference point because, though i am not a theist, it is the spiritual language with which i have greatest familiarity. I see your point.
L.W.: What I find interesting is that the first of the Solas is Sola Scriptura ("Scripture Alone") . . . and yet the Solas themselves would seem to constitute extra-biblical doctrine. But I am, at my own admission and with great apologies straying really far afield.
I think you're all factually correct, so far as facts are even in play here: Everyone/No One deserves love. Which is true, and what the implications of that really are, will depend entirely upon worldview.
O.F.: rich, elucidate how reference to the deity gives greater meaning and context to love?
L.W.: As a Buddhist with a nihilistic streak, Rich, I absolutely agree that love, like any and every other phenomenon we apprehend, is a vague emotional or perceptual state resulting from electrical impulses in the brain, and have no meaning or context beyond what any given organism assigns to imposes upon them. :)
Me: O.F., what he said...
Me: Matrix - What is real? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-M4kPxd03k
O.F.: i fully understand the ontological dimension of this discussion, but i am asking you, the theist, to support your apparent stance that tge existence of god gives greater meaning to what would otherwise be "vague electrical impulses".
L.W.: All that said, assigning and imposing meaning is arguably one of our most potent evolutionary adaptations. That meaning and context may well be anthropogenic constructs does not give me cause to value them any less than if they existed before we got here and were gifted to us by another, higher consciousness.
O.F.: well said. i do not feel any less the pull and power and mystery of love due to understanding the mechanisms by which we feel it.
O.F.: we can analyze and parse the nature of being all we want, but we are still in its thrall and i am just fine with that.
Me: I wouldn't say that the existence of a deity gives greater meaning to our vague electrical impulses. I would say that without a deity there is no meaning at all to our vague electrical impulses (hereinafter referred to as VEI), except what we assign as meaning for ourselves. Which of course is similarly meaningless.
Me: And L.W., the value you assign also falls into that category. The interplay of electrical impulses here is staggering in its complexity!
O.F.: so why are we so caught up with "meaning"? why the implicit valuation in this discussion of "meaning" as equal with "objective worth"? why is it preferable to believe that there is a fundamental, objective standard of worth in the universe?
O.F.: (asking sincerely, not flippantly)
L.W.: Sure--value and meaning differ only in why we assign it, and what to. Value tends to refer to quantities, whereas meaning tends to refer to abstract ideas, but even that distinction falls apart as we come to value abstract ideas as though they were quantities. And those meanings and values are meaningless, and valueless . . . except insofar as we desire that meaning, or those quantities, usually based on our electrical responses to them. Meaning then transfers from one organism to another based on how any organism's value system produces behaviors that attract or repulse other organisms, and any subsequent effect on the social contracts in which organisms engage.
Being of a pantheistic, rather than atheistic, bent, I see a certain "great chain of being" within that, but I acknowledge that it's just a construct. The thing is, I've never experienced a moment of pleasure that didn't arrive by way of some construct or other, even if that construct was as passive as "appreciation of the present."
Me: It's interesting that we humans seem to be characterized by our search for meaning and relevance. Contrary to L.W.'s assertion, I can find no valid reason for it, evolutionarily speaking. I'm sure dolphins don't ponder why they dwell in water but must surface to breathe.
We are not oblivious to the world around us. We don't simply respond to stimuli. We dive deeply into science, philosophy, metaphysics, anything that you could hyphenate with "systematic-." We have to explain things, we need meaning. Again, there is no evolutionary purpose for such a phenomenon. Nor is there a purpose for altruism or caring or mercy. These things do not make evolutionary sense. We are specifically and uniquely built this way.
L.W., the fact that the construct works seems to lend credence to my assertions, that there is purpose that cannot be explained by mere unguided events.
So maybe you guys can explain. Why do we have an a priori need for meaning?
L.W.: Why are you sure that dolphins don't (or didn't at one time) ponder why they dwell in the water, but must surface to breathe? When you grasp why I ask that question, you understand what, for me, is the problem with yours. I can't address suppositions as though they were facts in order to make factual arguments against them; I can only make suppositional arguments, which amount to suppositional counter-assertions, which basically turns any conversation on the matter into "nuh-uh!"/"yuh-huh!" That said, I'm happy to state my position, if you imagine it will do you (or anyone reading) any service to hear it:
Even if all we did was respond to stimuli, that would already be enough evidence that your statement that "[w]e are not oblivious to the world around us" is at least functionally true (if not actually true, since we can't really prove we're not in the Matrix). That said, I'm not convinced that science, philosophy, metaphysics--our "systems"--are something other than responses to stimuli. Sophisticated responses, but we're a sophisticated species (which could be a function of entropy every bit as much as of advancement; complexity and dissolution are not mutually exclusive). Our need to explain, like our need for altruism, caring, mercy, likely emerges as a response to other weaknesses in the system. Our physical shortcoming mean we have to rely on one another, which in turn requires social contracts, which in turn requires empathy and its corollaries; our need for meaning likely extends from the need for empathy, because only through systems (or understandings of systems--those we construct or those we observe) can we justify extending that empathy to someone other than our own progeny. Evolution, after all, is not (apparently or provably) a goal-oriented process. If it were--or if we were designed--certain matters (like the external location of the testes, for example) would require some explanation.
Me: There are many animals with physical shortcomings, yet none of them set up 501(c)3 organizations except us. None of them have food kitchens or help little old hamsters across the street. The very fact that you need to explain us via evolutionary systems is a tautology.
The "flaws" of creation are no more a problem for the theist than it is for the evolutionist. Either God screwed up or evolution doesn't really work like they tell us.
L.W.: I am not convinced that language, art, or non-profit advocacy, whatever admiration I hold for each, are fundamentally different in kind from insect hives, beaver dams, or the social nuances of groups of bonobos. Dolphins have been observed hunting sheerly for sport. Our distinctions represent our own genetic trajectory, based on the conditions to which we had to adapt. Or so it would seem; it truly is all theory. We can only speculate as to the how and why. But I think you make presumptions as to what "they" are really telling us.
Me: I can only conclude, then, that mankind is just an animal, a part of nature, and has no responsibility to care for the environment, for example. It's a natural consequence of our existence that other species are going to go extinct, and that must be deemed acceptable. Some of us are going to starve to death, and there is no law of nature one can point to that requires one species to accommodate another. That's not the the way nature is.
If indeed we are mere animals, there is no moral imperative to act civilly. there is no difference between a rapist and a male lion copulating with whatever lioness he can pin down. If we are nothing more than dolphins or bees, we should not expect to act any differently.
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