What's so special about being human?

[PJM]

=Robert Sock;8334149]We are so lowly that I often think of ourselves as “meatbots.” And, what’s so great about the world we live in? Sure, it has an element of “good,” but basically it’s miserable and corrupt from “evil.” Looking at technology could make a person proud, but look more closely and you will see that it all comes from on High. (As great as I believe technology to be, why is it that nothing seems to work? With all the wit necessary to create these things, one would think that with just a little more effort they would work flawlessly!)

*Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. *
-Genesis 3:19

*Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? *
-Romans 7:24

Hi Robert, a bit glum there huh?

What about the PARTS of US that NEVER DIE?

God has created us is “his image” [Genesis 1:26-27] HOW and WHY?

Isa.43 Verses 7,21: “every one who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." AND the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.” This is THEE WHY

Now Here is the HOW…

Every human being has been given by God a mind, intellect, and freewill permnantly attached to our souls… These Gifts allow HUMANITY ALONE to Love and to think creatively [solve problems, think and invent]. ONLY Humanity can do these things.

These Gifts like God Himself are spiritual and never die and cannot be killed:thumbsup:

Plus as a Catholic human you can and should receive the very BODY, BLOOD, SOUL AND DIVINITY OF THE VERY GOD THAT CREATED YOU That my friend is Heaven on earth. …

Life is what WE make it and what we make out of it.

God Bless you my friend,
Pat

 

[Simpleton]

We are so lowly that I often think of ourselves as “meatbots.” And, what’s so great about the world we live in? Sure, it has an element of “good,” but basically it’s miserable and corrupt from “evil.” Looking at technology could make a person proud, but look more closely and you will see that it all comes from on High. (As great as I believe technology to be, why is it that nothing seems to work? With all the wit necessary to create these things, one would think that with just a little more effort they would work flawlessly!)

Where is the fun in things actually working? You don’t like updates?

Also we get to use toilets and I find that to be pretty awesome. Well I get to use a toilet; some people however are less fortunate. Maybe you could change your surroundings…you know really embrace an animal’s way of life, for example you could live in a pig pen for a couple of days and then come back and tell us if being a human isn’t special.

http://www.animalsanctuary.org/animals/assets/rosie.jpg

Now that I see this picture I’m kind of jealous…that pig sure is living the good life.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Might you be clinically depressed? We cannot give medical advice on these forums, so I suggest you seek medical treatment or an evaluation at the very least.

I love life! I always see the good. ** I, of all people, have many reasons to be down and depressed, but that is not me. **

I was married just shy of 20 years. For about the last 5 years of my marriage, my husband was a severe alcoholic. When he drank, he was emotionally abusive. Due to his drinking, he drove us $50,000 into debt. He had a DWI (at 0.26 BAC!), several speeding tickets, and several minor car accidents and one major accident, all while drunk, causing his insurance rates to skyrocket. Due to his lawyer, he only had a suspended license for 6 months with all that. Eventually, his alcoholism killed him (thankfully not taking any other innocent person with him). I am now a single mother to 3 boys. I have to support myself and them (with 2 in college!) and maintain my house on a Catholic school teacher’s income. Yes, life insurance helps, but with the market so volatile, I cannot count on fantastic returns on investments at this point. Both of my sons’ grandfathers have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. One grandma has congestive heart failure. The other grandma is a cancer survivor.

How is my life? It is GREAT!! Why? Because I am alive, I am surrounded by a fantastic community, my sons are making me so incredibly proud, and my dog loves me! Seriously, things could be so much worse. But they aren’t. I enjoy each day, because each day is a gift. When I let my dog outside today, a butterfly was sitting on my flower basket outside my front door! How beautiful! I noticed. I appreciated. I thanked God for it.

Sorry about your rough ride in life!

Yes, I’m suffer from severe major depression and panic attacks. Without meds it’s pure hell. Spiritual love is my only consolation. All my hope is in the Hereafter. I hate this miserable and corrupt life.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Hi Robert, a bit glum there huh?

What about the PARTS of US that NEVER DIE?

God has created us is “his image” [Genesis 1:26-27] HOW and WHY?

Isa.43 Verses 7,21: “every one who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made." AND the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.” This is THEE WHY

Now Here is the HOW…

Every human being has been given by God a mind, intellect, and freewill permnantly attached to our souls… These Gifts allow HUMANITY ALONE to Love and to think creatively [solve problems, think and invent]. ONLY Humanity can do these things.

These Gifts like God Himself are spiritual and never die and cannot be killed:thumbsup:

Plus as a Catholic human you can and should receive the very BODY, BLOOD, SOUL AND DIVINITY OF THE VERY GOD THAT CREATED YOU That my friend is Heaven on earth. …

Life is what WE make it and what we make out of it.

God Bless you my friend,
Pat

Where is the fun in things actually working? You don’t like updates?

Also we get to use toilets and I find that to be pretty awesome. Well I get to use a toilet; some people however are less fortunate. Maybe you could change your surroundings…you know really embrace an animal’s way of life, for example you could live in a pig pen for a couple of days and then come back and tell us if being a human isn’t special.

http://www.animalsanctuary.org/animals/assets/rosie.jpg

Now that I see this picture I’m kind of jealous…that pig sure is living the good life.

He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.*
-John 12:25

 

[Simpleton]

He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
-John 12:25

There is a difference between being “thankful for your life” and “loving your life”.

 

[Robert_Sock]

There is a difference between being “thankful for your life” and “loving your life”.

Why be “thankful” for something you ought to hate?

 

[Simpleton]

Why be “thankful” for something you ought to hate?

I think you’re taking hate out of context and I think you already know this. When it says we are supposed to "hate"our life it means we shouldn’t hold any unreasonable attachment to it. We are here to do God’s will and when God calls for you, you go. This however in no way means we shouldn’t be thankful for our existence or that we should hate our existence since it is because of God’s perfect will that we do in fact exist and this is a good thing. It’s agood thing to be thankful forgood things and even for bad things since God send both your way.I believe thanksgiving is one of the 4 principle reasons for why Catholics go toMass isn’t it?

[bibledrb]Ephesians 5:20[/bibledrb]

Note: FOR ALL THINGs, this would include your life.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Robert,

“Meatbot” sounds like something Bender would say on Futurama.

Sounds like you’re having a bad day. I don’t mean to add to your troubles by adding a charge of (cough)heresy, but…

Actually, the traditional Catholic teaching is that matter, the world, the body, things, “stuff” are very good things. It was the Gnostic heresy that held that only things of the spirit were important, that the body was evil, that Jesus didn’t really assume human form but only appeared to, that women were evil because they brought even more life in the world, and that kind of nonsense.

Matter and the Body are good. We know this because God created both for us, and He doesn’t create bad things. We know this because our Redeemer assumed human form. We know this because Catholic sacramentals focus on material things, like chrism and holy water and bread and wine and such. We know this because one of the sacraments, marriage, is actually completed only when the couple have sex. Despite what the crazy media thinks, Catholics like sex and think it’s a great and healthy and fun and God-given thing, It’s one of the reasons are there so many of us.

Hope things look up for you soon.

 

[Robert_Sock]

I think you’re taking hate out of context and I think you already know this. When it says we are supposed to "hate"our life it means we shouldn’t hold any unreasonable attachment to it. We are here to do God’s will and when God calls for you, you go. This however in no way means we shouldn’t be thankful for our existence or that we should hate our existence since it is because of God’s perfect will that we do in fact exist and this is a good thing. It’s agood thing to be thankful forgood things and even for bad things since God send both your way.I believe thanksgiving is one of the 4 principle reasons for why Catholics go toMass isn’t it?

[bibledrb]Ephesians 5:20[/bibledrb]

Note: FOR ALL THINGs, this would include your life.

On the one hand, yes, we should be thankful for our existence, but on the other hand we should recognize our own wretchedness. We are living in a world of exile, and we are leading a pitiful existence. Consider the following prayer to drive home my point:

*Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! *

Also consider the following quote that drives home the point that we are slaves living in a miserable and corrupt world:

*The Golden Key to Heaven
by Saint Anthony Mary Claret

The death of the just: Death will reach everyone, the good and the bad; but the destiny of each one is quite different. The just man sees himself in this valley of tears as a prisoner, serving a very hard term. He considers himself a slave in this world, suffering an extremely distressing servitude. He regards himself a sailor caught in a horrible storm. And as death means an end of his confinement, an end of his slavery, and is the port of his salvation, he ceases not to cry with David, “Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged!. . .” (Ps. 119:5). He ceases not to ask with the Apostle, “. . . Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24)*

 

[Robert_Sock]

Robert,

“Meatbot” sounds like something Bender would say on Futurama.

Sounds like you’re having a bad day. I don’t mean to add to your troubles by adding a charge of (cough)heresy, but…

Actually, the traditional Catholic teaching is that matter, the world, the body, things, “stuff” are very good things. It was the Gnostic heresy that held that only things of the spirit were important, that the body was evil, that Jesus didn’t really assume human form but only appeared to, that women were evil because they brought even more life in the world, and that kind of nonsense.

Matter and the Body are good. We know this because God created both for us, and He doesn’t create bad things. We know this because our Redeemer assumed human form. We know this because Catholic sacramentals focus on material things, like chrism and holy water and bread and wine and such. We know this because one of the sacraments, marriage, is actually completed only when the couple have sex. Despite what the crazy media thinks, Catholics like sex and think it’s a great and healthy and fun and God-given thing, It’s one of the reasons are there so many of us.

Hope things look up for you soon.

Please see post 49

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t expect this to be persuasive. I just want to say it.

I have long admired Shakespeare’s lines:

“What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
In form and moving how express and admirable.
In action how like an angel
In apprehension, how like a god.
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals.”

This is Hamlet speaking, but we know Hamlet is a haunted man, so, acknowledging as he did man’s wonder, he adds:

“—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.”

By your smiling, you seem to say so. Yes indeed.

I recall Alexander Solzhenitzyn’s remarks in the “Gulag Archipelago” wherein he reflects on human capabilities. He remarks that of all animals, man is far and away the toughest…the most adaptable. He reflects the experiences of prisoners in the coldest of the Gulags at the Arctic Circle, who went out to work dressed only in sacks, in 50 or 60 degrees below zero or worse, and didn’t even catch cold, while tough mongolian ponies could not live through it for a single winter. He remarked how man lived in every desert, in every miasmic tropical climate, virtually everywhere, and lived.

On a purely natural plane, and as compared to the other creatures of the earth, man has no parallel.

But then, if we also believe that man has within him that breath of the Divine; an immortal soul, what, then, as physical and mortal creatures, could we say man truly lacks? If one believes that we fret and struggle on this earth for a purpose beyond us; a Divine Harmony that somehow only of a few of us really can see with any degree of clarity but which all are able to see “as through a glass, darkly” (and it certainly seems we at least do that, almost without exception) then man is truly and at very least, a creature of inestimable nobility.

(And, like a billiard ball returning from its careen off a rail, comes the voice of the “obligatory second thought”…“It’s all very well for you to say that, who sit in your warm room with a full belly in front of your computer, while I sit in a Calcutta gutter hoping some worthwhile scrap of infested sustenance floats down within my grasp.”)

 

[GEddie]

About our so-called “wretched bodies,” nobody could say it better than C.S. Lewis:

“You are always dragging me down,’ said I to my Body. ‘Dragging you down!’ replied my Body. ‘Well I like that! Who taught me to like tobacco and alcohol? You, of course, with your idiotic adolescent idea of being “grown up”. My palate loathed both at first: but you would have your way. Who put an end to all those angry and revengeful thoughts last night? Me, of course, by insisting on going to sleep. Who does his best to keep you from talking too much and eating too much by giving you dry throats and headaches and indigestion? Eh?’ ‘And what about sex?’ said I. ‘Yes, what about it?’ retorted the Body. 'If you and your wretched imagination would leave me alone I’d give you no trouble. That’s Soul all over; you give me orders and then blame me for carrying them out.”*
— C.S. Lewis

While I too would like very much to experience my pneumatikon soma; I still give thanks to God for this natural flesh that for now makes me someBODY.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA.

 

[Simpleton]

On the one hand, yes, we should be thankful for our existence, but on the other hand we should recognize our own wretchedness. We are living in a world of exile, and we are leading a pitiful existence. Consider the following prayer to drive home my point:

*Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! *

Also consider the following quote that drives home the point that we are slaves living in a miserable and corrupt world:

The Golden Key to Heaven
by Saint Anthony Mary Claret

The death of the just: Death will reach everyone, the good and the bad; but the destiny of each one is quite different. The just man sees himself in this valley of tears as a prisoner, serving a very hard term. He considers himself a slave in this world, suffering an extremely distressing servitude. He regards himself a sailor caught in a horrible storm. And as death means an end of his confinement, an end of his slavery, and is the port of his salvation, he ceases not to cry with David, “Woe is me that my sojourning is prolonged!. . .” (Ps. 119:5). He ceases not to ask with the Apostle, “. . . Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24)

Sorry Robert I don’t believe the above prayer and quote justify your gloomy disposition towards humanity and life. Sadness and depression are two completely different things since sadness still allows hope to burn brightly while depression tries to extinguish it. If the souls in Purgatory can be sad because they experience a seperation from God and yet Happy because they know they are saved and loved by God then you too can feel the same way while on earth.

“God save us from gloomy saints!” — Santa Teresa de Jesús

 

[lemondiesel]

Why be “thankful” for something you ought to hate?

Life feels like a burden doesn’t it? We grow up not evening thinking or questioning what it is all about, then one day, it smacks you upside the head. I mean when I was younger, I thought when I grew up that everything would just make sense. My mom even tells me stories about when I was young, I’d use to say, “I can’t wait to grow up!” 10+ years later, as I am getting older, I figured out we are all just wandering! No one ever comes up and tells you the answers to all your problems. Then we are left with the burden of what happens when we die? Putting 100% faith and belief, putting yourself out there for someone to come comfort you.

No one can sit here and tell you to love or be thankful for life. Hell, no one knows what you’ve been through. I’m in a similiar situation as you, but life for me seems to scripted and pointless. Death makes me curious, way too curious. I’ll write more about why humans are so special later, gotta jet to class.

This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad! Because “You” could have never been awaken.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Sorry Robert I don’t believe the above prayer and quote justify your gloomy disposition towards humanity and life. Sadness and depression are two completely different things since sadness still allows hope to burn brightly while depression tries to extinguish it. If the souls in Purgatory can be sad because they experience a seperation from God and yet Happy because they know they are saved and loved by God then you too can feel the same way while on earth.

“God save us from gloomy saints!” — Santa Teresa de Jesús

Who said I was depressed towards religion? No, I would not consider myself depressed when it comes to religion, but deeply sad of my plight here in this world. I do see religion as containing lots of hope for salvation and life in the Hereafter; things to be glad about. But still, I can’t help but feel that we are a bunch of meatbots, slaves here in this world. Again, compared to experiencing our glorified bodies in the Hereafter, these earthly bodies are pitiful.

 

[davidv]

Who said I was depressed towards religion? No, I would not consider myself depressed when it comes to religion, but deeply sad of my plight here in this world. I do see religion as containing lots of hope for salvation and life in the Hereafter; things to be glad about. But still, I can’t help but feel that we are a bunch of meatbots, slaves here in this world. Again, compared to experiencing our glorified bodies in the Hereafter, these earthly bodies are pitiful.

Please don’t project your feelings on the rest of us. Many of us don’t feel the way you do.

Have you experienced a glorified body?

How do you know how it compares with our mortal bodies?

 

[GEddie]

Please don’t project your feelings on the rest of us. Many of us don’t feel the way you do.

Have you experienced a glorified body?

How do you know how it compares with our mortal bodies?

No"body" has experienced the pneumatikon soma, since one does not change back into one’s human body to resume living one’s life. It is a onetime change.

However, based on scripture, the pneumatikon soma is far superior to the “human body” we know, if only in that the pneumatikon soma is immune to death. That alone is something to look forward to!

However, to long for death or to “escape from one’s [natural] body” is somewhat ungrateful, IMO. these bodies are a wonderful gift even if they do run down.

God bless and ICXC NIKA.

 

[davidv]

No"body" has experienced the pneumatikon soma, since one does not change back into one’s human body to resume living one’s life. It is a onetime change.

However, based on scripture, the pneumatikon soma is far superior to the “human body” we know, if only in that the pneumatikon soma is immune to death. That alone is something to look forward to!

However, to long for death or to “escape from one’s [natural] body” is somewhat ungrateful, IMO. these bodies are a wonderful gift even if they do run down.

God bless and ICXC NIKA.

I agree with what you say here. My point was that no matter how superior our glorified body is over our mortal one, it in no way implies that the mortal body is an evil that must be escaped from. It is this last notion (“body bad”) that is being objected to.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Please don’t project your feelings on the rest of us. Many of us don’t feel the way you do.

Have you experienced a glorified body?

How do you know how it compares with our mortal bodies?

Sorry if you feel that I’m projecting my feeling on you and everybody else. I’m just trying to do what others do on the CAF, and that is to engage in friendly and meaningful debate.

The difference between our earthly bodies and glorified bodies can be inferred. Are you inferring that the differences are slight?

 

[Robert_Sock]

I agree with what you say here. My point was that no matter how superior our glorified body is over our mortal one, it in no way implies that the mortal body is an evil that must be escaped from. It is this last notion (“body bad”) that is being objected to.

I’ve already stated that our earthly, meatbot, bodies are beloved, and that they are being used to gain our salvation.