tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8523387783776949956.post3107602728139635283..comments2023-07-11T04:56:18.300-07:00Comments on God and Gum Nuts: Polar bears and sinAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03059054907843482358noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8523387783776949956.post-74117369485728088912011-08-09T16:33:14.649-07:002011-08-09T16:33:14.649-07:00Thanks for your comments, Byron. And thanks for sh...Thanks for your comments, Byron. And thanks for sharing the figures about polar bears. I didn't know that so many polar bears were shot or poisoned by humans.<br /><br />I think whether we consider something a tragedy has a lot to do with the media. If it's on the news, it's a tragedy. And if it's not on the news, quite often we don't even know about it. And of course, there usually has to be something new to make it to the news.<br /><br />So what we think of tragedies are often one-off events. But the real tragedies can be those things that happen all the time - and are far too commonplace to even bother reporting. And I'm not sure that's even a human/animal divide. A beached whale can be considered a tragedy. People living within clean running water is not. Although I do agree that we're more likely to consider something a tragedy if there's a human involved. And it's often what we do to animals that is commonplace.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03059054907843482358noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8523387783776949956.post-36695566192789114092011-08-09T07:05:35.143-07:002011-08-09T07:05:35.143-07:00Thanks for this reflection Liz.
What percentage o...Thanks for this reflection Liz.<br /><br />What percentage of the human population are mauled by polar bears each year? (A: something like 0.000000015%) What percentage of the polar bear population are shot or poisoned by humans each year? (A: about 3-5%, that is, 200-300 million times as many, proportionally). What percentage die of starvation/drowning/failure to thrive or some other cause linked to the destruction of their habitat? (A: unknown, but it is highly likely to be rising.) Horatio Chapple's death is a tragedy. But I don't think Christians can limit our understanding of tragedy to the human world. You are right to discuss such things using the language of sin.byron smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17938334606675769903noreply@blogger.com