Lucy Masters wrote:
> Lucy responds:
>
> I have never held the popular opinion that "social Darwinism" or
> "survival of the fittest" was in any way cruel or inhumane. Because of
> this, I have also not had philosophical difficulties accepting that God
> would design a system that seemingly works this way.
>
> Consider...in the long run, it is much more humane and compassionate to
> have some humans lose their lives so that others may not only live but
> may live well. In the movies this is presented as heroic, but in
> biology we somehow depict the process as inhumane. So, we can take a
> small population of starving people and feed them, and forty years later
> we end up with millions of starving people - because they reproduced and
> still live on non-arable land.
Mt.14:15-17 & its sequel are germane here. The attitude of the
disciples is "We can't see how to feed these people with our limited
resources so we're not going to try." One implication (certainly not the
only one) of the story is that we should do the best we have to care for
people's needs with the resources we have & leave it to God to determine
success.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
> Have we created a humane situation? Or,
> we can extend the lives of a small population of people with an
> incurable cancer, who then reproduce and create a much larger population
> of people with incurable cancer. Is this a more humane situation? Or,
> we can provide welfare and housing to long-term drug addicts, who then
> reproduce and bring a whole family of long-term drug addicts into the
> population. Is this a more humane situation?
>
> Is long-term planning for the human race unGodly? Does God think in the
> long-term or only act in immediacy?
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