OT: Concert Etiquette

[bluesqueak]

 Silverthorne writes:


> Hell, we're only NOW coming to grips with the idea that life can  
> and DOES exist on some other
> planet than ours--and doesn't that just blow the centuries old,
> 'mainstream' ideas of our place in the universe VIA the various 
> holy texts(you know, where this is the 'only' world, created by 
> God...and we are the only intelligent beings, made in his image, 
the chosen ones etc)...?

Pip!Squeak:

Dicey's already pointed out that this notion doesn't fit with the 
bible. It doesn't even fit with mainstream Christianity up to about 
maybe the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Sorry.

The idea that 'man' was the pinnacle of creation (and I use 'man' 
deliberately) is against the medieval Christian notion of the 
universe. In that view of the universe, God created Angels *first*, 
and they were superior to human beings. Some angels fell through 
disobedience, and they became devils. Humans were most certainly 
*not* the only intelligent beings in creation. 

They weren't even the superior beings: humans rank between the 
Angels and the Devils; not a bad description of the human condition 
really. The Earth was created solely for the use of human beings - 
but frankly, it wasn't that great a place (the Fall, you know 
[grin]). 

Dante took a Fourteenth Century tour of the planets - he imagined 
them as part of heaven, full of angels and the souls of the dead. 
But he knew that they were places other than Earth. [He also knew 
perfectly well that the world was round, to destroy another myth 
about 'wot we thought back then'.]

'We are the only intelligent life in the entire universe' is more a 
scientific, post Renaissance view, 'man is the pinnacle of creation' 
derives more from people misusing Darwin's ideas about evolution. 
Neither is a particularly Christian idea. Even the biblical idea of 
God choosing us often has the distinct flavour of a Royal Marine 
sergeant staring in disbelief at the latest batch of recruits. 

*This* is what I have to work with? God chose *you*? 

:-)