What is it to be human?

@fmf said
But "unique" isn't the only word I used to explain myself. I used it in some sentences in conjunction with other words. Why are you talking about "dogs"?

Because nothing you have said beyond the part you cannot answer is meaningful to human life alone. All other life is unique, nothing special about that its all like that common among every lifeform there is. If you removed the word human from your text no one would know what you were talking about, could have been kittens.

@kellyjay said
What sets us apart from all other life?

Our capacity for projecting ourselves in abstract ways and affecting people and also our capacity to be affected and influenced and shaped by the abstractions projected by other people;

our ability to remember, learn and adapt to these interactions [i.e. our personal narrative that each of us, individually and exclusively, has access to;

and our ability to form a moral compass based on all this in order to govern our interactions with others.

This stuff is what sets us apart from all other life.

@kellyjay said
Because nothing you have said beyond the part you cannot answer is meaningful to human life alone.

I disagree. The things I have mentioned are fundamental to human life and are meaningful to - or create meaning for - every human being.

@kellyjay said
I find limitless personal moral compasses one of the most dangerous things ever said about human life, and that isn't a "could be" statement!

"Limitless" in what way?

Moral compasses are the product of our hard wiring in tandem with our experiences.

@kellyjay said
What sets us apart from all other life?
The one thing I thought you said that did, you cannot talk to.
If all you got is we are different and all other life is too, is that worth saying?

If there is a creator being then we presumably have in common with all life forms that we were created by it/him. I don't have any problem seeing what sets us apart from all other life; if you do have a problem with that, I am not sure what I can say to you.

@kellyjay said
I think we are all unique, but so is every other lifeform, dogs are unique from one another.

I will post my stab at an answer to question again here:

I think our humanity ~ whether we be theists or atheists ~ draws on the fact we are evidently endowed with a capacity for projecting ourselves in abstract ways and also we are affected and influenced and shaped by the abstract projections of other people.

Added to this, we clearly have individual spirits ~ perhaps the same thing that most religionists refer to as a "soul" although they see it differently from a non-believer and non-superstitious person like me ~ which comprise personality, uniqueness, relationships, and other abstract aspects all bound together in the singular personal narrative that each of us accumulates as we live our lives.

Therefore, I see our humanity – and perhaps even the ‘purpose’ of being humans, at least for me – as being about loving and being loved and learning and helping others to learn about our species and our world in the time we have before we die and cease to exist. That’s our common humanity, I’d say.

If you think all that could just as well be about dogs as it could be about humans, then I am truly stumped.

@secondson said
When I call you a liar, I'll say you're a liar.

You said you didnt believe me when I said I believed in the bodily risen Christ. That’s the same as calling me a liar.

@secondson said
And neither is your penchant for skirting the discussion with deflections like the one above.

There is nothing to “deflect”, all you are doing is restating the words in the text and berating me for not taking them literally, this is not debating Jospehw.

@philokalia said
Yiu mean your approach to the concept that man is created in the image of God?

No I don’t mean that all.

@secondson said
Exactly. Divegeester makes an assertion without a proof text, and then continuously reasserts the idea as though it's true just because you're either too stupid to understand it or he thinks he's more spiritually mature, or both.

Like the proof texts you provided that refuted his idea that only Adam was created in God's image. What does that make the rest of humanity, chopped liver?

What assertion have I made that is not supported by biblical text?

@kellyjay said
He has been doing this for years.

FMF posts on target with laser focus every single time.

Siding with the racist philokalia who actually does post in a “spray and pray” manner just makes you look weak and peevish, as well as dishonest.

@kellyjay said
Zzzzzz

More powerful stuff from you.

@secondson said
Well, I guess what you said in your last two posts above makes sense. I made, this post makes 37 I think, posts all day. Maybe two hours of total time posting spread out over a twelve hour period.

I counted your forum posts and the total was 96 up to this point today.

Sometimes you were making a post about every three minutes. You took about a six hour break at one p ...[text shortened]... arget date to start the race to get as many posters going at once.

Time for me to get some sleep.

I think if you had more to say which contributed to the discourse you would post more. Flinging insult around and calling people heretics and fake Christians dilutes the already meagre contribution you make here.

@kellyjay said
He attempts to accuse people of not responding to a specific post. If he actually cared about a point, he could just repeat the point informing who he was talking to that it was missed. You can find him and another here doing the same thing, accusing others of dodging while never simply repeating a missed point. More about screwing with people than real conversations.

I follow most of your exchanges and it is amusing to watch you drift along coughing up your dogma furballs spouting your opinion, claiming your opinion doesn’t matter, inferring all your posts are “truth”, dodging direct questions with waffle and then pretending all blinky-eyed that you don’t know where the post was that you didn’t answer.

@kellyjay said
What one on page 2?

There you go..

Lol.