Why must humanity be the center of the universe?

[meltzerboy]

Most of us believe we humans and our planet are the center of the universe. Our thinking is not so different in this sense from that of the Church in Galileo’s day, which believed the sun revolves around the earth. We may not believe the latter anymore, but we still believe we are morally the center of the universe. After all, how could it be otherwise? G-d Incarnate in the Person of Jesus came to earth, and nowhere else. G-d’s Law was given to Moses on earth, and nowhere else. Our human lives are more important than the lives of all other, non-human animals. Doesn’t the (human) Bible tell us so? Moreover, our own religion is more complete than any other. It alone is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We evaluate other cultures in comparison to our own, which we generally prefer.

My question is why do we think this way, and why must we believe that all of this is true? Psychologists would say we have a cognitive and motivational need to differentiate ourselves from other species, other cultures, and other people, to consider ourselves special and superior. This differentiation gives us our unique identity. If we did not in some way satisfy this need, we would likely become uneasy, upset, disturbed, anxious, depressed, mad. We could not live comfortably without thinking this way.

Your thoughts on the matter?

 

[Tomdstone]

G-d’s Law was given to Moses on earth, and nowhere else.

I don’t see how you could prove this.

 

[808Catholic]

Most of us believe we humans and our planet are the center of the universe. Our thinking is not so different in this sense from that of the Church in Galileo’s day, which believed the sun revolves around the earth. We may not believe the latter anymore, but we still believe we are morally the center of the universe. After all, how could it be otherwise? G-d Incarnate in the Person of Jesus came to earth, and nowhere else. G-d’s Law was given to Moses on earth, and nowhere else. Our human lives are more important than the lives of all other, non-human animals. Doesn’t the (human) Bible tell us so? Moreover, our own religion is more complete than any other. It alone is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We evaluate other cultures in comparison to our own, which we generally prefer.

My question is why do we think this way, and why must we believe that all of this is true? Psychologists would say we have a cognitive and motivational need to differentiate ourselves from other species, other cultures, and other people, to consider ourselves special and superior. This differentiation gives us our unique identity. If we did not in some way satisfy this need, we would likely become uneasy, upset, disturbed, anxious, depressed, mad. We could not live comfortably without thinking this way.

Your thoughts on the matter?

I respectfully disagree: God is at the center of the universe. Always has been and always will be. The sin of pride allows humans to believe everything God has done is done because He owes us something. His Covenant with us was established by God, not by man. We cannot change His Covenant; only God can change the Covenant as only God can make it. We have all these things only because of God’s love.

So, to answer your question: “why do we think this way?” because we are sinful and fall into pride. If we can give up ourselves to God, we have no pride and will live to honor God. That’s the kingdom of God. God Bless you.

 

[Wollie]

We only know as much as God has told us though Sacred Scripture, Tradition and our own God given reason. I don’t see why ours has to be the only world. Perhaps there are other flocks. Just like children, God has told us what we need to know for our own salvation and to complete our own lives. I don’t think it’s wise to pretend to know everything that He has done or will do.

 

[GEddie]

Conjecture about space aliens and the like is useless until we have hard evidence for them.

As to “nonhuman animals,” it is only natural for members in a species to value their own over another species; it would be antinatural not to.

The fact that human life alone is capable of behaving altruistically toward other species should in itself be a strong suggestion that human life occupies a privileged position in the order of earth-based life.

That said, for Christians or that matter Jews, human life is **not **the center of being, rather God is!

ICXC NIKA

 

[Mumbles140]

I recommend reading CS Lewis’ The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength). Though allegorical fiction, it presents interesting arguments about this exact topic and the possibility of other rational beings created by God outside of Earth. Obviously written before the moon landing, but the concept remains the same.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Conjecture about space aliens and the like is useless until we have hard evidence for them.

As to “nonhuman animals,” it is only natural for members in a species to value their own over another species; it would be antinatural not to.

The fact that human life alone is capable of behaving altruistically toward other species should in itself be a strong suggestion that human life occupies a privileged position in the order of earth-based life.

That said, for Christians or that matter Jews, human life is **not **the center of being, rather God is!

ICXC NIKA

We don’t need to invoke space aliens. We could take a Nietzschean view and say that the universe is created for what we humans will eventually become or create.

 

[Allegra]

If there are other planets in the universe, we don’t know about them yet, so why worry about them? And isn’t it natural that when we encounter something new like a different culture or religion, we compare it to what we already know? Isn’t that how we learn about anything?

 

[Wollie]

I recommend reading CS Lewis’ The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength). Though allegorical fiction, it presents interesting arguments about this exact topic and the possibility of other rational beings created by God outside of Earth. Obviously written before the moon landing, but the concept remains the same.

I love that series! Just because we don’t know doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting to think about.

 

[AbideWithMe]

I recommend reading CS Lewis’ The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength). Though allegorical fiction, it presents interesting arguments about this exact topic and the possibility of other rational beings created by God outside of Earth. Obviously written before the moon landing, but the concept remains the same.

Some of my favorite books.

 

[Gregory_Olson]

Most of us believe we humans and our planet are the center of the universe. Our thinking is not so different in this sense from that of the Church in Galileo’s day, which believed the sun revolves around the earth. We may not believe the latter anymore, but we still believe we are morally the center of the universe. After all, how could it be otherwise? G-d Incarnate in the Person of Jesus came to earth, and nowhere else. G-d’s Law was given to Moses on earth, and nowhere else. Our human lives are more important than the lives of all other, non-human animals. Doesn’t the (human) Bible tell us so? Moreover, our own religion is more complete than any other. It alone is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We evaluate other cultures in comparison to our own, which we generally prefer.

My question is why do we think this way, and why must we believe that all of this is true? Psychologists would say we have a cognitive and motivational need to differentiate ourselves from other species, other cultures, and other people, to consider ourselves special and superior. This differentiation gives us our unique identity. If we did not in some way satisfy this need, we would likely become uneasy, upset, disturbed, anxious, depressed, mad. We could not live comfortably without thinking this way.

Your thoughts on the matter?

I’m thinking of a quote by CS Lewis, who seems to disagree with you:

“It is a profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and even the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience. . . . Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man.”

Certainly Divine revelation tells the story of God’s search for man, but there’s no way to conclude from this that there are or aren’t any other rational beings in the universe or other universes, who may or may not have fallen and needed saving… Regardless, even if we were the only rational beings in the universe, I don’t think this would make us any more or less special.

While I do think we have an instinct to want to be special, I think being special isn’t enough… We have a much deeper and more demanding need for the kind of fulfillment that only certain ways of life and only certain moral outlooks can begin to provide. Theoretically the ultimate satisfaction of this greater need lies in God.

-Greg

 

[Lucretius]

Dear Meltzerboy,

My question is why do we think this way, and why must we believe that all of this is true?

There’s an Anime called Umineko where the main character gets into an argument with the other characters when he denys that he is the main character of his own life (he was actually right: the whole show was a mindscrew). How can a person not think that he is the protagonist of his own story?

In the Genesis story, Creation is not complete until Man is created. St. Thomist speculates that this is because Creation, in order for it to be perfect, must share in the freedom of God (on the level of Created things). It seems that humans (and Angels, at least in Christianity) are the aspect of creation that has been gifted with that freedom, a freedom that is the definition of the Image of God (intellect and will). No other part of Creation enjoys this.

In a sense, we can say that Man is the meditator (intercessor!) between God and the rest of Creation.

Man is greater than the rest of Creation, but he is dust in the eyes of the Divine.

Christi pax,

Lucretius

 

[Tomdstone]

Man is greater than the rest of Creation, but he is dust in the eyes of the Divine.

I would say that is true as long as we consider only the creation which exists today on earth. I don’t see how you could prove that Man is greater than anything else in the whole multiverse.

 

[Rhubarb]

Well, when I contemplate the cosmos for too long in one sitting I’m struck with a horrible existential dread. The sort of thing that Lovecraft wrote about. We flit about in our little pocket of space, in a larger little pocket that we can observe, in however many pockets there are beyond where light has traveled. What is actually happening 200 light-years away from us, no person on earth right now can ever know due to the speed of light being what it is. There is places and things we literally won’t know about only because our frail horrible bodies won’t last that long to experience the sense data of it. Everything we know can be wiped out of reality by dispassionate lifeless matter or energy.

But all that science-y stuff aside. Imagine ancient humans. The world isn’t explored fully. Everything is so big, and, also trying to kill you. You could travel for literally months and not get to where you think you want to go. And then you look up and there’s just this sea of black and stars. You couldn’t even begin to start reaching up towards them. Even from the highest peaks you’re no closer to them, it seems, than when you’re under water. As big and empty and hardscrabble as the world is, the sky looks even bigger-er and emptier and hardscrabbler. There has to be some sort of anchor of foundation, right? How can’t there be.

 

[GEddie]

I would say that is true as long as we consider only the creation which exists today on earth. I don’t see how you could prove that Man is greater than anything else in the whole multiverse.

We don’t yet know that there is in fact a “multiverse.”

We shouldn’t get too caught up in the admiration of cubic-mileage.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Lucretius]

Dear Tomdstone,

I would say that is true as long as we consider only the creation which exists today on earth. I don’t see how you could prove that Man is greater than anything else in the whole multiverse.

There is as much evidence for the multiverse as there is for us living in the Matrix.

I’m not opposed to either the multiverse and aliens on other planets though, per se, but again, no evidence. Just because something is imaginable, doesn’t mean it’s possible

 

[DaveBj]

If there are other planets in the universe, we don’t know about them yet, so why worry about them? And isn’t it natural that when we encounter something new like a different culture or religion, we compare it to what we already know? Isn’t that how we learn about anything?

Au contraire, the count of “other planets” that we DO know about was up to 1,950 as of 1 September. The jury is still out on whether or not any of them support life.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Au contraire, the count of “other planets” that we DO know about was up to 1,950 as of 1 September. The jury is still out on whether or not any of them support life.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet

Even if they are capable of harboring life, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they do. They could be millions of planets capable of supporting human life, or life of any kind. In fact, I’d lay odds that there are more than we can count which are. That said, the number of planets which are capable of it is not necessarily a reflection of the number of planets which do.

Many people make the mistaken claim that, given the vastness of space and the number of planets that are in it, there must be life out there somewhere. This is a non-sequitur argument, the conclusion doesn’t flow from the premise. In fact, looking at what we know about non-Earth planets, it is more appropriate to say that there is not life anywhere else in the universe. Of all the planets we’ve found and cataloged, we’ve not found any evidence of life on them. That means that, of the 1,950 known planets, exactly 1 of them has life. Now, a person may say that makes the odds 1 in 1,950, but that’s not quite accurate either. In statistics, single-occurrence aberrations are usually ignored, and do not really affect the statistical probability of something. While we do have one example, statistically we are insignificant, and the collected evidence overwhelmingly suggests that there is no life elsewhere in the universe.

That’s not to say that there isn’t, or that we shouldn’t conjecture on the subject; but that conjecture shouldn’t have any bearing on logical discussion because there is no evidence for it. Its using a “what if” to try to influence a “what is.”

 

[Michael19682]

I guess psychologists are simply awesome, unconventional and “hip”, and exemplify all that is best about the human race in its capacity to set aside our lower beliefs and nature while maintaining their deeply held religious convictions at the same time. It’s why they are above everyone else, and born to lead the world into a new era of understanding.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

G-d’s Law was given to Moses on earth, and nowhere else.

Your thoughts on the matter?

Not precisely true. The natural law is given to all mankind in the form of our conscience, which tell us to do good and avoid evil.

Even the gentiles who know not our God are accountable for following the natural law.

True though that Moses received the Ten commandments from God, which verifies that we are at the center of the moral universe.

What is not provable, yet believable, is that we are alone in the universe as entitled to claim of moral centrality. After all, there has to be some planet somewhere in the universe that is favored above all others by the Creator God. Why shouldn’t that be ours since we know that the Son of God visited jus for our salvation.