by purrpurr 4 Replies latest jw friends
I overheard a comment recently at the meeting. It was said how beautiful Jehovah had made the earth and how awfull would the earth be if we didn't have the green plants and vegetation?
But surely as an indigenous species of this planet we would always find our home beautiful? Even if earth had the same features as Mars or the moon? We would then find the rocky dusty red earth beautiful or the deep craters and grey postmarked surface beautiful?
Am I right or wrong?
You're absolutely right. Going further: we are designed by evolution to find green landscapes to be beautiful - any potential competing species that lacked this would've been less drawn to areas with plenty of food and were therefore less likely to have reproductive success.
Indeed many of the things that are so often cited as evidence of a loving creator are similarly explained away by the inevitable compatibility that life would have with it's environment.
A little different one is when people use our ability to see in color as evidence that good loves us. We would be just fine seeing in black and white, but good saw city to give us the ability to see in color so we could appreciate the beauty of creation, or so the argument goes. First I would argue that we would not be "just fine" without color vision - the ability to quickly identify predators, ripe fruit, poisonous insects, and potential prey are all heavily dependant on or ability to see in color. Second, if god is so loving that he wants us to see the beauty of creation, why not extend or vision into the infrared or ultra violet? Surely this would enhance our appreciation immensely. Or why not gov us the ability to see xrays, after all, much of our cosmos is only observable on that end of the spectrum. Third, similar to your point, of all we saw was black and white, surely we would learn to appreciate the beauty of our surroundings anyway, being completely ignorant of all that we are missing - exactly as we are ignorant of what we are missing in the rest of the EM spectrum.
agree. We would have no choice other than to accept our home planet even if it did look like some other planets. Most humans are open minded enough to obtain the look of dirt, dusk, and other materials that we view unsightly in the present. But seeing how you said that if the earth was always with those specific features, then again, we'd all think that they are beautiful and all humans would not be able to think of anything else better for our Earth. just like we do now.
This is just my personal thoughts, but I imagine that our sophisticated minds probably require a fair amount of pleasure to enable us to offset the existential and emotional anxieties that we face, and stay sane. Recreation is just part of our need for pleasant experiences. The other part is the appreciation of beauty.
The pathways in the brain that release pleasure chemicals would have come about by chance, and the ones that were most useful stuck around in our gene pool. So as you mentioned, if the sky was only ever gray, then we would find some gray skies as beautiful as we currently find blue skies to be. Because it's the only way we can enjoy life enough to keep our morale up.
not to bring up disgust, but these feelings are deep-rooted. When you are over-due for a shower, and the are steaming hot clean, on the way out, try to smell your old cloths,! apparel that had apparently a comfy, natural fragrance for you before.----
Our environment seem to have a deep influence on us.
Speaking from having been expatriated at the age of 10, I believe 'Heimweh' more than nastalgia, the mortal pain of missing ones home soil, smells, looks,would be the biggest hurdle to meintaining morale on any long term space mission.
