While I was sitting trying to find a quote to write an essay on I came across one that sparked a few thoughts. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?" (234). I definitely agree with this quote, but I realized that we also have other natural feelings of pleasure and temptations. That is why the world of Huxley's has no belief in God. They have let their desires and plesurable feelings become stronger than the one of God. I don't know i guess it just makes a lot more sense of why so many people give in to things today. I don't know do you guys have any theories. Help me out. I was also thinking about when they were talking about how they distract them form God by keeping them young. The same thing is happening today. No one is growing up anymore. People are just giving in. We are being run by ourselves in a way of speaking. We need to conquer ourselves and grow and learn and mature into something more than humans seeking pleasure.
Rachel Fisher
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I like the fact you posted about a very thought worthy (and sometimes, gravely important topic). However, for the sake of a good discussion (One that does not involve everybody agreeing, because learning and exchanging ideas cannot be done that way), let me kindly disagree.
You said it is natural to feel there is a God. I had a lengthy response, but I'd rather just ask a question- why do you think so? Here in America, it’s very simple to think God is a normal thing, and that anybody who does not believe in one is a fool (Believe me, I know). It’s a totally different story in North Korea.
You state that natural feelings of pleasure and temptations lead us astray, correct? I don’t know if this is appealing to argument from "sin", but many belief systems (even some spiritual philosophies) may include teachings of self-denial. Why would a natural thing lead away from a natural feeling for a God?
I know for a fact that sometimes people desire strongly to believe in a God, with all honesty, but cannot do it. But, I guess, what’s easy for some is impossible for others. I don’t call that feeling natural, and in doing so, it may be taken as calling somebody without those feelings unnatural.
I’m having a difficult time understanding what you mean by saying people are being distracted by being kept young, and how we’re not growing up anymore. Can you be kind enough to explain, please?
I do agree with your closing remarks though. When we begin to understand that living for our own pleasure is selfish, we make a step forward towards altruism. Whether you have to realize that through a singular belief or not is not the issue. I’ll eagerly explain myself and anything in my comment if one so desires.
If you don't mind, I thought this would be a great place to enter one of my favorite quotes from one of my personal heroes, seeing as though your last sentence made me think of it (forgive me if it's rather lengthy)...
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan
Post a Comment