World News Korner

Another Gryphen's daughter contribution to IM. This one is pretty fascinating.

Courtesy of Elephant Journal:

“Empathy is the opposite of Utopia. There is no empathy in heaven, I can tell you before you get there. There isn’t any empathy in heaven because there’s no mortality. There’s no empathy in utopia because there’s no suffering. Empathy is grounded in the acknowledgement of death and the celebration of life and rooting for each other to flourish and be. It’s based on our frailty and imperfections. So when we are talking about building an empathetic civilization we are not talking about utopia, we are talking about the ability of humanity to show solidarity not only with each other but with our fellow creatures who have a one and only life on this planet. We are homo-empathicus.”

In other words the idea that what makes us law abiding, compassionate individuals, with morals, comes from God, or the idea of a god, is pure crap.

What makes us loving, giving, empathetic creatures is our sense of connection to those around us. It is our humanity.

And what can strip that away are the artificial differences created by geographic distance, politics, and religion.

And in the case of religion the belief that this life is only a probationary life before the eternal one that we will enjoy as Christians, also removes the sense of the temporary which activates our empathy.

So when somebody calls us secular humanists, they are not insulting us. They are recognizing how truly wonderful, and loving, and giving we human beings can be.

Oh, and we raise great kids too.

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