My fundie friend says that it makes sense that alien depictions are semi-human like because if we were made in gods image, they probably were too.
Makes perfect sense in that framework.
Yes. Since this was a (more than) full-time job, we were required to keep up certain standards. Companionships had āGolden Invitationsā, where we saw another person struggling with an issue the Church could help with and easy and seemingly effective answer.
We had quotas for the following, if my brain cells are still working (semi-)properly: Each week we had to:
- Have new prospects (for baptism) in the pipeline
- Give a rundown of all serious investigators. Sometimes itās 20, sometimes itās 2.
- Report how the companionship is running. The Mission President sometimes makes transfer decisions based on this stuff.
(Rhetorical questions)
How does one even do that? Given the size of the church, the mandated growth rate (I.e. quota), attrition, coverageā¦ Thatās more work than being in sales in a startup.
Mormonism felt logical to me at the time, and those I won, I won by appealing to logic and cherry-picked passages from the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Pearl of Great Price.
The accepted take in the missionary field is that the missionary converts no-one, that Holy Spirit does.
I was an effective tool (yeah, I see it) in the hands of the Lord.
I take comfort in having focused on smart people. Perhaps they will look for further truth as I have. Perhaps they will come to terms with living their lives without a Sky Wizard. I canāt say.
But fundies arenāt aliens. Theyāre normal people like you and me, and with empathy they can be swayed.
Ramble alert!
It just seems like such a hilariously American way to run a religion (although Iām sure there are plenty of Evangelical groups that arenāt all that different).
I have a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact that a number of the people I was close friends with as a missionary have either lost their faith or left Evangelicalism. The best man at my wedding is now Eastern Orthodox, my workmate for a lot of the time ran a Christian bookshop for a few years, but got fed up of listening to Christians talking about their pet theological points and left the church. I donāt think I converted anyone, but I got to talk to lots of interesting people about their perspectives. A kid from Sierra Leone taught me an Islamic prayer in Arabic and I spent some time talking with a guy in South Africa about his combination of Christianity and ancestor worship. I also met lots of people who wanted to illegally immigrate to Europe, or who had family members or friends who had already tried it. I wasnāt a particularly effective missionary, although as the person in charge of unpacking the containers of books to sell, I kept a library of actually pretty good theological books and books that I knew would be banned but somehow had managed to reach us (e.g. Harry Potter), while doing my best to trash as many Left Behind books as possible.
I never got around to reading Left Behind. Is it as bad as the movies? I mean poorly written, of course. Cuz man those movies are eyewatering. The early 2000 series makes Birdemic seem good.
I canāt remember how much I read of them, but there was a lot of that kind of tripe coming from Tyndale House Publishers. Different publishers in the US would ship containers of extra stock for a tax write-off, and I guess there were a lot of Left Behind books that were, uh, unsold. I was happy to see that they failed to sell in the US, but did what I could to avoid dumping them on impressionable people in other countries. We had some other books with dire predictions about what would happen in the year 2000 and how this tied into Biblical prophesy (it was 2002 by this point). Actually, about 40% of our books were university textbooks or other reference books and pretty good quality - McGraw Hill, Wiley and other publishers would send us a lot, and you could get unused medical textbooks that were only about 5 years old for about $5. Science books that taught evolution didnāt make the cut, but that was actually a lot less than Iād have thought. (I only found out the reason later).
Iām looking at the den bookshelf right now. Thereās nothing new there since my parents decided to give up on trying to control everything me and my brother do. Soā¦ About 2008.
I see two copies of To Train Up A Childā¦
I remember that book, and The Strong Willed Child (or one of its many iterations). I thought it was interesting to hear my mum say that despite using physical discipline far more on me than my other brothers, she didnāt see any evidence that it actually affected my behaviour at all. It didnāt make it worse either, Iām just more or less immune to carrot and stick motivation tactics. My parents actually had a lot of religious and secular books (probably about 20,000, including almost a complete illustrated set of Dawkins - my dad likes his books on science and heās an easy atheist target), and that kind was very much in the minority.
As noted, Iām not one for the āsoulā hypothesis; but in the case of someone who is, FMRI is more or less orthogonal to the question.
I actually didnāt know that this was also a thing among some Protestants until this thread; but the āanimals are machinesā thing shows up in Descartes in almost identical form: he concludes that the āthinking substanceā of ācogito ergo sumā fame is effectively āthe soulā(exactly how orthodox he was about the salvation-related properties of this soul, Iām not sure); and it was what allowed the existence of introspectively experienced phenomena(though, after a bunch of steps to pull himself out of Cartesian skepticism he concludes that these introspective phenomena are frequently caused by sense impressions; but that the introspective phenomenon(eg. āRednessā) is fundamentally different in kind from the external trigger of that phenomenon(an object reflecting light of a certain wavelength into your eye).
Had he had access to FMRI, he would presumably have agreed that animals exhibit neurological responses to external inputs, just as he did agree that they obviously exhibit behavioral responses to such inputs. He just didnāt think that they possessed introspectively-experienced correlates to sense impressions.
While I agree that the apparent existence of subjective mental phenomena is pretty freaky, Iāve not been impressed by the ābecause soulsā argument(it can be invoked for almost anything; but elucidates nothing); nor do I understand why people who are fond of it are typically willing to give all humans the benefit of the doubt: but no animals(my own introspective experiences are pretty compelling; but even when I share a language with you, yours are merely hearsay, and nonverbal people provide even less evidence, so I can understand the desire to explain why oneās own experiences are so compelling; but not why youād necessarily count all other people in, or all animals out); but the āanimals donāt have souls/emotionsā claim is one about qualita, not about neurology; and canāt really be directly argued on those grounds(though, indirectly, the more we can observe the brain doing, the more nagging the doubt that the āsoulā has some function that the brain isnāt attending to.
It isnāt an argument I subscribe to; but it is worth distinguishing between people who are dualists, and claim that animals lack whatever the magic immaterial secret sauce is; and people who are just plain ignorant of the behavioral and cognitive capabilities of animals. One can(and some do) assert that animals lack some metaphysical substance, while admitting that they are machines of exquisite capability, sophistication, and complexity. One can also believe that animals possess some sort of āsoulā while grossly underestimating their behavioral sophistication(most common with animals that arenāt fuzzy and adorable, like fish).
Yeah. Spot on.
The thing is, in this kind of fundie worldview, anything we can do to animals is at worst amoral. While humans get to feel special and privileged.
Itās also a sort of interlocking system of dualism at its core. If animals donāt have souls, and humans are evolved animals, we shouldnāt have souls either, and anything we do is amoral. But since weāre not evolved animals, and have souls what we do to each other is strictly governed and judged by god, while at the same time what we do to animals and the planet doesnāt matter at all, since the immortal soul can only come to harm through godās will. Even in death the soul lives on, yadda yadda yadda, all that crap that keeps my dad from having to feel bad about running over a possum, or eating veal.
I believe in itās modern incarnation, a lot of the animals donāt have souls so harming them is amoral comes from Calvinism.
Although my dad doesnāt believe in the elect or predestination. Although I have no idea how he can not believe in predestination while also believing with 100% certainty that god created the universe, is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. I tried to bring it up when I was a teenager, and he got so mad I decided to spend the week in the local park instead of coming home.
The combination of omnibenevolence, predestination and salvation only of the elect is a thorny knot; impossible to untangle if you stop to think about it. Unless you try to take the position that those predestined for damnation are philosophical zombies, placed only for the benefit of the elect? Which, if fMRI data are totally ignored on the grounds of possession (or not) of a soul, is the position you have to take for dogs. And if dogs are zombies, then people shaped things can be too ā¦ Thatās the first step onto a thoroughly unpleasant slippery slop.
I donāt think itās clear from the Bible that God is omnibenevolent, and a number of theological perspectives either donāt emphasise it or reject it. Predestination seems to be mainly a Calvinist doctrine, and a common argument is that people who arenāt chosen are incapable of even wanting to be saved - they go willingly to their deaths, because thatās what sinful humans are naturally like. God can be infinitely just and still would be if he had damned everyone, but he chooses some people to be saved. Another idea is that Godās infinite love is for himself, and we should stop making it all about us. Calvinism is cheerful like that! Calvin was actually more moderate than many 5 point Calvinists and others on this issue, who seem to want to paint God as what you get when you go to 11 on all qualities like goodness, power, justice etc. The Bible is a lot more personal and doesnāt really work like that, IMHO.
Nice typo
As for animals with souls, there is a story about a talking donkey in the Bible, which might suggest that we arenāt seen as all that different. The creation story has humans being created on the same day as the animals, but separately, in Godās image and with responsibility over the rest of creation. When Nebuchadnezzar became insane, his hair and nails grew long and he is given the heart of a beast, at which point he is put outside with the animals. After a while, his reason returns and he comes back to the palace. Iām not sure if that shows that humans are seen to have a discrete soul or just that the human properties of language, reason and authority were being taken away from him for a period.
This goes to show how long it has been since I have actually read the bible (and ive only read the two entertaining books, strikes back and a new hope) and how often I just look up passages.
Damn. Ah well, itās too good to edit!
I know how cheerful Calvinists are ā my neighbour in hall of residence at university was one. And Iāve had to work with dour and irascible Scottish surgeons whoāve been messed up by 5 point Wee Frees.
I remember having long conversations with my brother during his mercifully short five point Calvinism stage - Iād get emails that I just had to print out because they were dozens of pages long, logical arguments that were often just extrapolating from ideas about Godās character, long sermon series outlining the five pointsā¦ it all just seemed a bit disconnected from the Bible, which is already quite disconnected from reality. Fortunately he moved on to a focus on Biblical symbolism, which is much more fun. I donāt believe it any more, but itās fascinating to see the different layers of meaning as they develop and how they are interpreted by New Testament writers. Which reminds me - Iāve still got to finish reading his thesis on the typology of the Red Sea Crossing in baptism. Iāll probably get around to reading the Biblical extended universe and fan fiction at some point too.
Hereās a worthy place to donate: https://experiment.com/projects/capturing-canine-personality?utm_campaign=newsletter_10&utm_medium=email&utm_source=p_3470
After all, if we donāt understand their little personalities, how can we reach them?