Dear Tim,
I'll set this out as a discussion. It's easier to follow that way. :-)
Tim: I'm not sure I completely understand that idea about evolution. Are you saying that one of a certain ancient species is destined to become human and therefore has always been sacred or special?
Mary: One of the early species was human from the very beginning. It had been endowed with a gift that was something none of the other levels of creation were given. It was special. I don't know if I would call it sacred.
Tim: That seems at odds with a scientific understanding of evolution where one species gives rise to many species by divergence on a genetic tree.
Mary: Scientific understandings have always collapsed as new information was discovered. Many scientific understandings have been undermined lately in the 20th century. More and more of the sciences have had to review everything they thought they believed as all their understandings were tossed out by new facts.It has been exciting for young scientists and sometimes very discouraging anddifficult for old ones who need to relearn in order to continue or to teach.
I think I should elaborate a little. In this material world of ours the mineral kingdom has the level of spirit of adhesion, (ability to stick together.) The vegetable kingdom has the power of adhesion plus the additional power of spirit called growth. The animal kingdom has the power of adhesion, growth and the additonal power of spirit called movement. The human kingdom has the power of adhesion, growth, movement, and the great additional gift from God called the gift of understanding. This is also sometimes called the soul. This gift of understanding is not a physical power.
Minerals, vegetables, animals of all sizes are all subject to nature's laws. By their power of understanding, humans are not bound by nature's laws. The sun and planets, the oceans, clouds, rivers, seas, trees, animals, are all bound and can't escape the law of nature. Humans have the power to overcome some of them through the gift of understanding, and will overcome more. We fly like birds, but faster than sound. We swim like fish in submarines. We split the atom. We go to the moon, and now explore Mars. We preserve images using the light of the sun, we have found a number of uses for electricity, and I could go on. These are all the products of our gift of understanding.
Recently, scientists who are not necessarily of some religious persuasion, have been able to study the human brain in greater detail than could be done before and have become puzzled. They don't find that the brain can explain how humans can do all they do. The brain isn't the seat of the soul or gift of understanding. It is a tool of that gift. The gift places humans above animals with a gift that is not of this world. It is an immortal gift. I could go on more about this, but I don't want this to get too long.
This planet is completed by having humans with this gift as its highest level. Humans are to this planet as the soul is to the human body.
Tim: There would seem to be a strong element of destiny in your statement. I personally don't have much use for the concept of destiny. Even if it were true that our lives and our future were 100% determined at our birth, we still have freedom, because we apparently cannot know our destiny. If we can't reliably predict our future then we are not under any rigid requirement to live that life.
Mary: Destiny exists, insofar as the Creator chose one of the creatures to endow with this immortal gift of understanding. That creature then was destined to use it. Regarding individual human destiny involves free will and predestination. If you don't mind I'd prefer to consider that in another post because this one is long enough already.
I don't believe our lives and our future were 100% determined at our birth, either. We do have freedom. We didn't have a choice of where or to whom we would be born, or in which period in history though.
Tim: Given the universality of chaos theory and the uncertainty principle, it sure seems to me that the Creator went out of His way to make the universefree and unpredictable.
Mary: I think it would be boring if it were predictable. Probably it would bore the Creator, too. :-)
Tim: But even still I think that the goal (not the destiny) of life is to become more and more like the creator.
Mary: I agree. I think the way we become more and more like the Creator is by drawing nearer by living the attributes of God, such as mercy, compassion, justice, unity more and more. This becoming goes on after this life, too.
Tim: But were it not for the accidental destruction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, I think the intelligent, bipedal dominant species on earth might very well have scales or feathers rather than hair.
Mary: Well, I think the Creator, being all-knowing, knows the end in the beginning. But that doesn't mean it is caused to happen any more than knowing that the sun will rise tomorrow means we made it happen. Knowing the end in the beginning would allow knowing that the dinosaurs wouldn't make it. So maybe that's why we were in place.
Tim: And I think that the Creator might be equally pleased with the outcome. But I'm not sure.
Mary: You mean that it could have been another species that was endowed with soul instead of us, and it could have looked quite different, and the Creator would have been equally please. Why not? My understanding is that the way we are put together as bodies has some way of attracting and keeping the gift of understanding or soul involved with us. So maybe we were made to be it.
I would agree with you that it is entirely possible that the gift of understanding that makes us human may belong to quite different looking species on other planets where there are different conditions. After all, if varying conditions of heat, degree of sunlight, minerals in soil, food eaten, and so on can cause us to vary so much that some of us are tiny and others are very tall, some of us are richest black and some are palest pale, with pale eyes, whitish hair and pale ivory skin, then why shouldn't other planets produce different looking highest levels of being endowed with the same gift of intellect which allows them to be as human as we are?
Tim: I hope that we don't become so much like the creator that we cause the destruction of our own species. You seem to think the ultimate success or humanity is assured. I am not so sure.
Mary: I think success is assured, but we may take things so far that only people in remoter areas will be left of the human race. Enough would be left that civilization would be able to renew itself this time, and not die out. The time for the great destruction that erases all past traces so that everything starts again from a mew beginning isn't going to happen this time, as we are in the early stages of this universal cycle. There have been many universal cycles before this one. Each time, at the end, all past traces have been erased by the cataclysms that happened. Eventually it will happen to our cycle, too. We began the childhood of this cycle around what we call the time of Adam.. Now we are just entering the beginning of maturity as a human race. The pattern isn't completed yet. It has a long way to go through maturity to old age I suppose. We will become one united humanity on its home, this earth during this next thousand years. That's the next stage in our development. There are at least a half million after that before this cycle is ended with cataclysms that erase all traces of us.
There are many other planets and we are just beginning to go to them. Every fixed star has its own planets and every planet has its own creatures, many, like grains of sand on a beach. I suppose various planets are in different stages of development. The universe is full of life. We are a bit self-centred, as we were before Galileo and Copernicus. We thought we were the centre, and the sun revolved around us. We keep finding out that we are part of a greater whole and not the centre of things. I expect that understanding what makes a human, namely a rational soul, the gift of understanding is very important. Otherwise we may think that any beings that ever reach our earth and become known to us are our inferiors. It was dont to black people and native peoples who were used as slaves and could be killed at will. We wouldn't want to make that mistake!
Tim: And He ain't sayin
Mary: I think it's been explained. We just aren't listening. When we do we'll really thrive. Will we listen soon enough, before things get very bad for us and many of us die? The planet can carry on very well without us, but we can't carry on without many of the species we're about to kill off, and a hospitable planet.
Warm regards, Mary
