Would you say that a man's humanity is based on empathy to other living beings, or a teaching from God?

Question

Not many other animals respond as a man does to other living things despite his position in the order of the food chain.

Answer 1

I can't exactly agree that humans generally have an empathy for other living things. We confine animals to zoos, grow them on farms, kill bugs in our homes, pull weeds, and sometimes even torture animals for the fun of it. On the other hand, we establish preserves for endangered animals, raise pets, nourish gardens, and help injured animals. But how do you define good?

Is good a human ideal, or does good mean simply not messing with nature? Is ensuring the survival of a species doomed to exctinction in the competition of life the right thing, or are we discounting the winner his due reward? Raising a pet is nice in that we provide for all of our pet's needs and take care of it, but these animals were bred for our happiness. They live for our entertainment.

My dog eats because we feed him, pees because we take him outside, sleeps because we turn off the lights. Perhaps ignorance is happiness, but to me that is scarier than death. Becoming a vegetable in a nursing home, alive and existing but unable to live my own life. In the end, I think that we are the same as any other animals. Of course we humans have humanity, it is the definition that encompasses our being. But I don't necessarily think that is a good thing in the views of other species. How many animals have we saved? How many have we enslaved for our advancement? How many have we killed off?

We, like all other animals, are individuals, and individual beings are inherently selfish in design. We are the only species to have moulded the world around us to our desires.

Answer 2

"Evil is the absence of empathy."
-some movie I saw once.

I don't think God had deigned to teach us anything. Some men have written things that many consider the word of God, but that's it.

Answer 3

Empathy is a feeling. We get the feeling but without an authority behind it, we ask ourselves why we should obey it. Only if God is behind it ought we obey it for otherwise, it is just some artifact from evolution that is trying to push us to sacrifice ourselves.

Answer 4

We are made in the image of God.

God is kind and compassionate.

Man can be kind and compassionate when it suits him.

God's kindness and compassion are infinite and perfectly just.

Man's kindness and compassion are finite and generally self centered.

Faith in God's provision for you allows you to go beyond what is man's general state of kindness and compassion.

Answer 5

Man's humanity is independant of teachings from 'God'.
Much of hunanity has, in the past and now, been Godless.

Answer 6

I would say it's based on the fact that we have a soul, and have the ability to know our creator. Those are the things that separate us from the rest of creation.

Answer 7

empathy to other living things.

Answer 8

both