Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

>Preston said: The trouble I see with this is, what of the people,
>say, 3000 years ago, who were not direct descendents of this
>supposedly theologically important pair who lived 6000 years ago?
>
>I respond: I don't see why they couldn't be. I also don't see why
>6000 years ago is the magic date (could be farther back).
>
>David W. Opderbeck
>Associate Professor of Law
>Seton Hall University Law School
>Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
>

O.k. maybe they could be. But does it really make sense to think that
a sense of conscience was passed on in a descendancy relationship?

If it was, it has to mean that at some times shortly after the pair
lived, morally and spiritually responsible people were living among,
and in many cases closely related to, people who were not directly
descended from the special pair, and hence were not morally and
spiritually responsible. This is a 2-tiered society with a vengeance.

Is it o.k. for the Adamic people to enslave the non-Adamic people?
After all the non-Adamic people, on this view, would just be very
advanced animals. Could they be kept in zoos and studied the way we
study chimps? Should they be excluded from being tribal elders? They
have no real conscience, so shouldn't they be excluded?

These things are an inevitable consequence of thinking that the
status of being fully human is passed on by descendency, unless there
is a bottleneck of 2, and everyone around is Adamic. Even the
presence of non-Adamic tribes, say Neandertals, raises the problem.
They are going to encounter each other.

The problem is very similar to what developed in New England when
they decided that they were obliged to, or even could, figure out who
was elect and who wasn't. They weren't looking for a descendency
relationship (although some Calvinists toyed with that idea until the
absurdities were pointed out to them), but just the idea that there
were two kinds of people around and that the differences are
immutable (you either are elect or you aren't - you either are Adamic
or you aren't) creates a big problem. If you say, "We must not try to
guess who is elect/Adamic!" you still secretly will. You won't be
able to help it.

You may say, they weren't aware of the distinction, so they didn't
have to make any decisions. This might mean that everyone looked like
they had a conscience or a spiritual capacity, but only some really
did. But wouldn't such a profound difference make a difference in
behavior that would become apparent, if only the propensity for
saying, "You shouldn't have done that to me! That's wrong!"?

I just don't see how it can make any sense or fit the facts.

A few possible "solutions":

1. A & E (not S.) were representatives and the result of their garden
encounter was passed on to everyone else instantly as it happened.
Sort of a giant communal inverted Vulcan mind wipe.

2. Everyone alive at a particular time had their own garden
experience and all sinned.

3. There really was a bottleneck of 2. It had to happen well over
100,000 years ago.

I don't find any of these very plausible or scientifically or
archeologically or historically defensible.

Current ruminations of a complete amateur (if not idiot):

Maybe real moral capacity arrives in individual people at particular
times through the ages as the Holy Spirit reveals to that person that
the world contains good gifts and that some particular thing is good
and desirable, yet forbidden for now, and the person always takes it
anyway, and the Adam and Eve parts are really two aspects of human
nature. And remorse and loss and hardship and violence and hope and
grace and a long process of suffering and believing and failing and
learning always follow.

And maybe the question isn't, when did humans acquire the capacity to
make moral choices and thus get to heaven (anyone who has some
spiritual awareness AND has just spent thousands of dollars
unsuccessfully trying to save a couple of puppies from viruses (as
some people close to me have), KNOWS that all dogs and other
creatures that suffer without any choice in the matter go to heaven.

Maybe the question is, when does someone acquire enough "knowledge"
and enough certainty about some version of "the Truth" for it to be
possible if they go on and on and on focusing on other people's sins,
intellectual failings, political failings, etc., and not at all on
their own, that they finally kill the last bit of love in themself,
and God has to give up on them.

Isn't it curious that it says, "Through ONE MAN sin entered the
world," when the story seems to say it was one woman, or one couple?"
Maybe the one man (or woman) is each of us.

We have met the enemy, and he is me. (And the congregation said, "Amen!)

But I haven't been to seminary, so there's no reason for anyone to
take any of this seriously. :)

(Can we mail each other a beer? I guess the post office would object.)

Preston

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Received on Sat Feb 28 18:36:34 2009