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Why God can’t be outside nature. …

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In case you wondered, anthropologist Gregory Bateson explains,

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation, and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables. If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or simply of overpopulation and overgrazing. – quoted in Michael Dowd, Thank GOD for EVOLUTION! (San Francisco/Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 2007). p. 130, Web.

Face it, folks, normal theists are all doomed. Already. There is no population problem. Never was. Never will be.

Comments
Is he a son of the Bateson?VMartin
May 7, 2011
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"If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation, and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you." No, actually I see myself as a part of his creation. Not outside of it. "And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration." No, I see myself as having dominion over the creation. Not that this absolutely does not include abuse of the creation (I'm thinking of animal abuse) nor does it include pollution of the environment in which I or anyone else lives. Having dominion means to take care of, not enslave or pollute. "The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races, and the brutes and vegetables." This is pure idiocy. "If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell." Actually, no, as explained above, but don't let that stop you from fallaciously reasoning this way.Barb
May 7, 2011
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Not enough CSI in their diet? Not enough exercising of the design inference? Rapid atrophying of the explanatory filter? GilDodgen, with all your experience as an atheist, i thought you would have figured out how by now.paragwinn
May 6, 2011
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Idiocy of this magnitude is difficult to comprehend. How do some people end up this way?GilDodgen
May 6, 2011
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