I'm saying that the rise of reason in humans marks the beginning of our ability to sin.? I'm not saying that reason is sin.? I'm saying you have to be able to reason to be able to sin.?
I also say that reason in humans marks the beginning of our capacity to symbolize God within our minds.? The emergence of reason in humans marks not only the beginning of our ability to sin, but also marks the beginning of our creation in the image of God.? I think the Fall of Man in Genesis does a beautiful job of boiling down this 10 million year process into something that humans could sink their rational teeth into for over 5000 years now.? But to imagine that our powers of reason are not inherently and fundamentally tied to sin is flat out irrational.? Our rational powers have produced the means of not only our own annihilation, but that of virtually every living thing on the planet.
I also posit that instincts have evolved in accelerated lockstep with the emergence of reason in humans and are promoted in the Bible at every turn over various self-interested rational tactics.? Desire becomes ambition only when we gained the ability to rationally simulate the future in our minds.? I say that ambition is not a rational conclusion so much as it is a highly sophisticated instinct that has evolved from pure desire on the back of our reason.?
Ambition is an instinct that can drive us to either rationally plan our lives in the long-term interests of everybody we can think of, or it can drive us to plan our lives to excel at the expense anyone who gets in our way.? The difference is ultimately determined not by rational assessment, but by fealty to an even more sophisticated sense (more evolved instinct) of what is right and wrong.? It's like art or pornography.? You cannot rationally define what they are and what they aren't, but you can know them when you see them just as easily as you know the difference between two colors.
The ability to sense the ultimate authority beyond all rational conclusions is our most highly evolved instinct: our faith. As long as we maintain that instinct and subjugate our reason at all points to that greater truth (faith in God) then our reason can be free of sin.? Otherwise sin is the inevitable decay of reason into self-interest (survival of the self over survival of the species).? Issues like purpose and goodness (and yes, evil) and grace and faith and forgiveness and love and humility and tolerance and gratitude are not rational conclusions of the individual's mind.? They are profoundly evolved instincts naturally selected by Creation (the hand of God) to preserve the integrity of species over the self-interested assaults each and every one of our powers of reason.?
Whether they are maintained in our future is not only a Christian imperative for each of us to pursue, I say its also a matter of the survival of the species.? I say that if the human belief in God is allowed to be whittled away by the notion that science is sufficient to the task of our own evolution then we are doomed as a species.? Genetic engineering is right around the corner.? You give a bunch of scientist full reign to tailor our genes and what neurological trait do you think they will advance first?? Faith or reason??
-Mike (Friend of ASA www.thegodofreason.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
To: mlucid@aol.com
Cc: dfsiemensjr@juno.com; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 2:47 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] Historical Theology and Current Theology re: Original Sin & Monogenism
Mike said:? Original sin is the rise of reason in humans.? (can I get an a-men?)
No amen from me.? I can't see how "reason" is sinful.? We are reasoning right now as we discuss this -- are we sinning?? Scripture, I think, generally assumes reason is a good thing -- see, e.g., Luke's introduction to his gospel -- though of course scripture presents natural reason as
corrupted by sin.? The Christian tradition also overwhelmingly sees reason, in proper relation to faith, as a good thing -- "faith seeking understanding."? Moreover, the Christian notion of reason provide the epistemological support for the very science on which you rely to equate the rise of reason with sin.? God is a God of order and the contingent order of creation provides the basis for our reasoned investigation of it.? The exercise of reason, in proper relation to faith, is a redemptive act that reflects the image of God.
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On Nov 24, 2007 1:50 PM, <mlucid@aol.com> wrote:
The story of the Fall of Man is the story of the rise of reason (fruit of the tree of knowledge) in modern humans.? Evolution allowed instinct to naturally select in our ancestors for 300 million years purely under the auspices of Creations
' (God's) demands.? We did what we felt like doing and lived or died for the privilege. Once the conditioned response became dominant over the pure stimulus response (reason over instinct) we began to be able to ignore our eo
ns-old behavioral guide and choose do what our conditioning told us could happen instead.
Free will is not the myriad rational options we have, free will is the option to ignore our feelings and instincts to further our own survival with our thinking.? We could ignore our profound instinctive fear by joining with several of our fellow humans and facing down a large predator or we could ignore our instinct to preserve our species and kill another tribe member for his food or his mate.? The Fall of man is the rise of the ego is the rise of reason in humans.? The ability to think is the ability to sin.? Original sin is the rise of reason in humans.? (can I get an a-men?)
-Mike (Friend of ASA www.thegodofreason.com)
-----Original Message-----
From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
To: philtill@aol.com
Cc: dopderbeck@gmail.com; asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 9:28 pm
Subject: Re: [asa] Historical Theology and Current Theology re: Original Sin & Monogenism
There are several questions involved. First, are we guilty because Adam sinned and his condemnation comes down to us? Is the story of the Fall an explanation for the state we are in, imperfect morally? Are the second and third chapters of Genesis history? The first chapter obviously cannot be, for it reflects the solid firmament on which sun, moon and stars were stuck, with water above them. Also, the order of events in the first two chapters do not match.
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As Dick pointed out, the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 have their counterpart in Numbers 13:33. Are they the same? I note that "sons of God" elsewhere refers to the righteous. Is this merely a matter of hybrid vigor or something similar?
?
I recently saw a report that part of the Neanderthal genome was sequenced, including specifically the gene for hair color. There was a coding that would have produced blonde hair, but it was not the same mutation found in current blondes. So blonde hair today cannot be the result of matings between modern man and Neanderthals. Other analyses have discovered the identical virus genes incorporated into the genomes of both man and chimp.
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These, and many other matters, need to be addressed in the process of developing a theology in this century. However, the field has been preempted by those who declare that they do not interpret the scriptures, but just read them as they stand. Similarly, neither you nor I have any presuppositions. ;-)
Dave (ASA)
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On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:34:47 -0500 philtill@aol.com writes:
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But of course that person wasn't the only person alive at the time, nor was he the only person from that time who contributed genes to the human population.
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But would that really affect the transmission of original sin through the lines that _are_ fallen (in particular through the paternal line)?????
More generally, how pristine does the boundary have to be between human and non-human?? There is that passage where the "sons of God" had children through the "daughters of men."? I have to believe this is a reference to fallen angelic beings (like Mesopotamian gods)?since it produced supernatural results.? (Otherwise the context becomes internally non-sensical.)? In that case God destroyed the offspring, perhaps implying they were not human (???).? But if non-humans had indeed intermarried with humans, then that shows such intermarriage is at least possible in a biblical theology.? So we don't have to expect a completely pristine situation in defining the biological boundaries between human and non-human, imago dei or not, fallen or not.
Other thought experiments:? If I have 100% natural human DNA, then am I more in God's image than someone who was conceived with an engineered gene to prevent some disease?? What are the limits on who is human and who is non-human as increasing quantities of the DNA are artificially engineered or spliced in from other sources?? We now?have the technology to upset monogenesis artificially, regardless of what happened in the ancient past, and we can expect to see it being used very soon.? Will the fallenness of mankind not be transmitted to someone who has artificially engineered genes, and is therefore not in the monogenetic "family"?
Also, what if Neanderthals had intermarried with humans -- were the offspring?human or non-human?? Or what if a retrovirus got spliced into our DNA -- are we now part virus instead of fully human and therefore not completely in God's image?
I have to believe the pristine boundaries around imago dei and fallenness are spiritual and not biological.? I think the same goes for salvation -- we may backslide, repent imperfectly, and have a belief loaded with doubt, but our spiritual re-birth is something that has either occured or not and God knows who are his.??Since the?spiritual re-birth is not physical, then fallenness and being in God's image should likewise not be physical, right?? Therefore, we needn't necessarily expect pristine biological boundaries around these things.? So if we discover the biological boundaries were not pristine way back 100,000 years before Moses wrote Genesis, then would that really upset the essentials of the faith?
Phil
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