you know, not your garden-variety "thank you" when some one opens the door for you. thats an obvious exchange. a tangible act of kindness is rewarded by a kind word. it makes sense. its natural. from an evolutionary perspective, my gratefulness keeps people liking me as opposed to killing me and ruining my chance at spreading my seed. its just like sooo obvious (in a valley-girl voice).
but what is curious is the more obscure kind of thankfulness. take thanksgiving day. people of all shapes and sizes and religions and lack thereof get together and proclaim a certain gratitude for things. i once asked such a mixed group about what they were thankful for. mostly they listed non-materialistic and noble things like health, family, children, freedom, love, friends, etc.
but then i asked them to whom were they thankful for all of this. at this the atheists began to feel as though they had been tricked. most declined to answer. a few stated "their lucky stars" or "good fortune" or "good luck"...
whats funny here is their answers now seem highly irrational. they are thankful to randomness or the odds or luck for their situation. does one feel "thankful" for randomness, i dont think so. i mean one day its heads the next its tails. thats how randomness is...i doesnt make sense to be grateful to it. it is like having gratitude to a non-entity.
here we can see that it actually seems more rational to be thankful to an entity or person or God than to some randomness. so here theists are behaving in a more rational way than their atheistic counterparts.
another point. why are people so readily able to detail things of which they are thankful? ask anyone and most will list something. is it natural to feel grateful for our state of being? to what benefit?
maybe its just the way we were created.
1 comment:
We are simply grateful that the damage inflicted upon us due to Murphy's Law is less than it otherwise could be.
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