A.Suarez's Treatment on a Pope's Formulation for Original Sin's Transmission!

(Roger A. Sawtelle) #502

The challenge of earth is choosing faith over fear, love over hate, which is why the White House is a terrible example. In heaven that is not a problem. Evil is defeated so we can enjoy life and all its goodness forever.

(Antoine Suarez) #503

What you state here looks very much like Boltzmann’s view of thermodynamics (see Section X in this paper you already know). So you do justice to your name in this Forum!

Boltzmann description was still classical statistical mechanics. Which ingredients were lacking to have quantum mechanics? It is the word ‘random’ you introduce. In Boltzmann thermodynamics ‘random’ means inaccurate measurement of initial conditions by the experimenter, while ‘quantum randomness’ means impossibility of knowing such conditions by the experimenter even in principle.

‘Quantum randomness’ is a particular case of ‘free will’. This means: Behind the ‘random quantum events’ some (invisible) free will is acting from outside space-time, whose decisions are inaccessible to the experimenter before measurement.

Thus, if this free will behind quantum random processes wants it, you can get “lucky” enough, i.e. “throwing 1 million dices and having all of them land at 1”.

On the other hand, our brain is part of nature. If there were no randomness in nature our brain’s functioning would be completely predetermined and we couldn’t have freedom. Fortunately there is quantum randomness in our brain.

This makes it possible that you control the randomness in your brain through your free-will and bring about purposeful behavior. This is what happens when you are conscious and awake, and for instance write your smart comments. By contrast, while you are sleeping the neurons in your brain fire randomly to a great extent: During sleep your brain is really a quantum Boltzmann-Brain.

(Roger A. Sawtelle) #504

@AntoineSuarez
I would say that the problem with free will that you are pointing out is dualism. When one sets us a duality between free will and determinism, then you have a problem because free will and determinism are not opposites, but complementary.

The answer to dualism is triunity. Humans have free will because they have the choice between a whole spectrum of choices, not just two. There may be a right and a wrong, but usually there is no choice that has no negative aspect or no positive aspect. We are all sinners, but we are not all Hitlers.

The brain has the ability to compare multiple alternatives, which gives us freedom. The choice is not between Black and White which is no choice at all. The choice is in Whom does one trust?

In evolution variation is created by several factors. Mutations as random changes in DNA is only one of them. God gives us the ability to make a choice and by creating a diverse, triune reality. The free will is not absolute, but based on our ability to understand Reality and to make sound choice.

#505

But isn’t the only difference between classical and quantum statistical mechanics the fact that the randomness in classical is just a matter of not being able to measure/know all the variables with perfect precision while quantum random is truly random/stochastic (or controlled by the free will of God if your metaphyisical ideas are right)? That’s what I meant by saying that the dice were not truly random and just an analogy. What I wanted to know if the apparent predictability of macroscopic events is the result of random quantum events “averaging”.

#506

I’m working on that, I’m trying to gather the source material so I won’t misquote him, but I’ve been a little bit busy with work lately, sorry for the delay.

(Antoine Suarez) #507

In my view, this is one of three main differences. Another is the discreteness of space-time we have already referred to in previous posts. And the third is this:

In classical statistical mechanics (Boltzmann) there is no sharp limit to define irreversibility. Suppose an experimenter injects a gas into a box through an opening. During injection the concentration of gas molecules will be high in a little region around the opening. But once injection ends it will decrease and after a time become about the same all over the box. The probability P of having spontaneously all gas molecules around the opening again decreases with increasing number of molecules N: when N tends to infinity, P tends to 0. Nonetheless by putting work into the system the experimenter can revert the process (“play the movie backwards”) to concentrate again the gas around the opening, and eject it from the box.

By contrast, quantum mechanics assumes irreversibility and a sharp limit for defining it, although we don’t know today where this limit lays. This is the so called Measurement Problem, which is the big challenge unsolved to date.

This problem has many implications. One of them refers to the moment when the outcome of a quantum experiment happens and a result becomes available as detection.

Consider for instance single photons being detected in a photomultiplier: The absorption of the incoming photon by an electrode called cathode results in the emission of an electron, which then is multiplied by releasing further electrons in a chain of electrodes known as dynodes; the chain ends with an electrode called anode collecting a huge number of released electrons. So, this amplification triggers a current flowing from the anode that is capable of producing a registered result, i.e.: a count one can hear as a click or see in digital counter.

In this amplification chain there is a moment T when the process cannot longer be reverted by the experimenter to restore the original quantum state of the incoming photon. This moment T marks the time when the detection takes place.

John A. Wheeler has described this moment with the famous quotation:

“No elementary quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (‘observed’, ‘indelibly recorded’) phenomenon, ‘brought to a close’ by ‘an irreversible act of amplification’.”

The Measurement Problem refers to the fact that today we cannot say when and why this moment T takes place.

There are two main different Answers to this question:

The irreversible registration takes place

  1. at the moment when some experimenter observes and becomes aware of the outcome;

  2. somewhere in the apparatus, but the conditions defining T are related to the processes that happen in our brain when we consciously perceive a signal entering our senses.

I endorse Answer 2.

My answer is NO, and it follows from what I have previously said:

Note that you are introducing the concept of “macroscopic events” without definition.

So, when can an event be called “macroscopic”? We meet here again the Measurement Problem.

Accordingly we can answer:

The apparent predictability of “macroscopic events” is the result of the very process by which quantum experiments produce irreversibly registered outcomes that are accessible to our senses. After irreversible registration, we human experimenters are no longer capable of reproducing the original state because we can only act upon the system by means of operations within space-time: The outcome becomes a visible thing (for instance a blackening in a photographic plate or a mark printed on paper) whose trajectory is apparently predictable for us, that is we can predict it with probability near 1 (but never 1).

Quantum irreversibility has the noteworthy (but often overlooked) implication that we human experimenters cannot produce quantum superposition of “macroscopic objects” as for instance “Schrödinger cats” or “the sun dancing at 2 pm in the sky”. The “quantum esoteric” hype owes much of its success to the “Schrödinger cats”. One overlooks that such phenomena are in fact “miracles”, which can only be produced by someone acting into the system from outside space-time.

In a sense quantum irreversibility at detection is similar to the irreversibility of death: Something happens beyond our capabilities to repair.

I hope this is helpful and will be pleased providing further clarifications.

(Antoine Suarez) #508

Albert,

actually it was @gbrooks9 who began this thread. I thank you both for your always thoughtful comments.

The idea with the book is interesting: Do you have a suggestion for a publisher?:slightly_smiling_face:

Introducing the conditional “if necessary” you seem to suggest that the alternative case was also possible, the case where “it was NOT necessary send them help to overcome the innate selfishness of the evolutionary process, replacing it with love.”

In my view this amounts to say that an original state had been possible where humans were bestowed by God with capability of overcoming the innate selfishness inherent in the evolutionary process.

But then why could they not have been bestowed as well with capability “to overcome the bodily illnesses and suffering inherent in creation through evolution”?

(Albert Leo) #509

The context in which I used “if necessary” pertained to the possibility (even probability) that God has created other conscious life forms in this Universe through evolution, and that some of them are closer to being in His Image than we humans are. This seems more compatible with Teilhard’s concept of the entire Universe–not just this earth–being on the journey from Alpha to Omega. It also conforms to the concept that, in conceiving how a freely evolving Universe would develop, God would realize that his physical, observable presence would be required to guide some of these inevitable conscious creatures in the desired direction–thus, part of His nature would be that of Messiah, the universal Christ who was in existence before Time, before the Big Bang. This helps (but does not totally) explain how Jesus accepted the role of ‘Son of God the Father’ and could claim: "before Abraham was, I AM."
Al Leo

(Antoine Suarez) #510

Thanks for this Albert. I clarify my position:

In God’s mind the two histories are contained: The history where Adam (the first Image Bearer) sins and the alternative where Adam does not sin.

In both histories God foresees that His Son becomes flesh so that God’s Incarnation is the completion of Creation.

For the history where Adam sins God foresees that His incarnated Son acts as Savior as well.

In the history where Adam does not sin one can distinguish two main different histories:

  • Generations after Adam some other human sinned. Also here God foresees that His incarnated Son acts as Savior of humanity after the first sin.

  • No human sins: Here the Incarnation of God’s Son happens obviously at the end of time.

So, according to this position the incarnated God (John 1:14) is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End (Genesis 1:27; Revelation 22:13).

I would like to stress that I am not proposing “to construct a theology upon A Fall from innocence” but upon the following three Principles:

  1. God never violates the freedom of His creatures.

  2. God never is author of the sin.

  3. God always wants to redeem the sinners.

(Antoine Suarez) #511

I apologize for the delay in answering (I have been engaged in surfing “Flood-waves” in this other thread).

The main objection in these “responses” you refer to against the discreteness or granularity of space-time (i.e.: the claim that “the universe actually has minimum size for space and time intervals” or “space-time is pixelated”) is the following:

“However, the issue here is not the existence of smaller time and length scales, but the observability of them. Given current technology and knowledge, we have no way to actually probe that scale at all.
It should be very clear that the inability to probe a certain scale does not imply the non-existence of lower level structure. If that were the case then we would have concluded that atoms do not exist just over a century ago, contrary to what we know today.
The strongest conclusion that might be drawn is that space and time have a minimal observable resolution. The issue of whether time and space are actually discrete as suggested here, is by no means settled.”

The fallacy behind this argument consists in assuming that space-time can be actually continuum while observably discrete because of a “minimal observable resolution”.

Space-time is the realm of all what is observable. If something is not observable in principle, it does NOT exist in space-time at all. Accordingly, assuming that there is a “minimal observable resolution” is exactly the same as assuming that “space-time is actually discrete”.

Recently I have posted this video:

I am interested in your opinion, if you find time to watch it.

(Antoine Suarez) #512

In my view Alpha and Omega of the entire Universe is the Incarnated of God’s Son, Jesus Christ (Revelation 22:13): It is the Incarnation of God what was aimed by the Big Bang and the subsequent evolution.

In Genesis it is said for three times that “in the image of God has God made mankind” (Genesis 1:27; 5:1; 9:6).

Therefore by “making mankind in the image of God” God is designating the kind of body He prepares for His Son.

From this we are led to the conclusion:

If there are life forms being in the Image of God in other planets outside the Solar System, they necessarily are human ones.

(Randy) #513

Dr Suarez, I’m confused.
NT alludes to “form of a servant” in the terms of Christ’s taking it on.
Genesis uses a different word–image–which in ANE times alluded to a governing representative of the central king.
You are alluding to a governing representative, not a hominid carbon based life form (to take on Star Trek allusions), right?

Thank you!

(Antoine Suarez) #514

The Son of God is in the likeness of God and the genuine Image of God (Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3; 2 Corinthians 4:4).

“Making mankind in God’s image” (Genesis 1:27) means determining the body God wants for the Incarnation of His Son: God makes his Son in human likeness (Philippians 2:7) in order to make mankind in God’s likeness; it is by becoming Jesus Christ (embodied God) that humans and humanity becomes God’s body, and therefore in the Image of God.

So God’s Incarnation is the achievement of the whole Creation: It is the Incarnation of God what was aimed by the Big Bang and the subsequent evolution.

By “taking the human body” God also “takes the form of a servant”, as you rightly say:

“He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).

Humans sin because they delude themselves believing that God is power and glory, and then desire equality with God to use it to their own advantage. In the cross God hides His power and glory so that humans can only see what He actually is: love, and sinners are moved to freely love God.

(Antoine Suarez) #515

I fully agree to this.

This is the reason why I propose a Two-Phase-Creation narrative.

In the first phase God created a little population of Image Bearers bestowed with the Gift you refer to: capability for freely loving God. By this act God defines the kind of body His Son will take and thereby He defines Humanity as well: God’s choice founds the dignity of humanity, which implies that each Image Bearer has to respect any creature exhibiting a specific human body.

Some of these primeval Image Bearers (probably most of them but not necessarily all) “freely refused to cooperate” with God (as you rightly say). The so fallen population evolved to the situation referred to in Genesis 6:5-7, 11-12: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth [
] the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”

How could such an evil thing happen? Apparently because the sinners did not realize that God let them on earth to give them time to atone.

The Flood closes this first phase.

In the second phase God makes to Image Bearers all creatures sharing a human body. This is the moment referred to in Genesis 9:6 where God explicitly and solemnly enacts the prohibition of homicide. Furthermore God establishes an everlasting covenant with all humankind putting the rainbow as sign (Genesis 9: 8-17), which makes plain that God does not like to see wicked people die but wants them to turn from their wicked ways and live.

So the Flood reveals an important aspect in God’s strategy for Humanity:

He could very well have renounced to a Redemption plan, removing again and again the sinners from earth and letting here only sinless people who were not in need of Redemption.

However God in His love for Humanity preferred to redeem the sinners.

One could say that Genesis 1-2 is a “Creation narrative” while Genesis 6-9 is a “Recreation and Redemption” narrative:

The first Image Bearers (Genesis 1-2) were not in need of Redemption, while the new Image Bearers coming into existence after the Flood (Genesis 9) are in need of Redemption.

Christian theology is definitely not “constructed upon a Fall from innocence” but “upon Freedom and Redemption”.

(Antoine Suarez) #516

For the discussion on “original sin” we are sharing in this thread (I thank again to all contributors @gbrooks9, @Relates, @aleo, @randy, @BoltzmannBrain, @Bill_II, @Swamidass, @Jay313, @Reggie_O_Donoghue) it is worth referring to this recent remarkable Essay by Kathryn Applegate.

Kathryn endorses positions quite similar to those I have proposed in this thread, mainly the following ones:

"God revealed himself to Adam and Eve in an intimate way. A spiritual birth had taken place: for the first time they knew God and they knew God had a will and so did they. They were selves, free to obey or rebel. He gave them rules and consequences for breaking those rules. And they chose, in their freedom, to rebel.

They sensed that God was withholding something from them, and they rejected his right to do so. This was the first sin, the first transgression of the law of God. This first or “original” sin brought death in the form of alienation and eternal separation from God.—all of these we inherit from Adam [
]. Adam’s sin became our sin.

Hitting closer to home, Adam and Eve’s sin is my sin. When I read Genesis 3, the story we call the Fall (though the Bible never uses that term), my heart aches. It aches because this is my story: I am guilty for Eve’s sin, but also because I sin like Eve. [
] In my heart are pride and fear and lust and greed. [
] For all this and much more, I deserve the curse of death. God’s righteousness demands judgment, and it has come, but not on my head. It has come on the beautiful, bloodied head of Jesus.

It must be emphasized, though, that they wouldn’t be sole progenitors: there has never been a time in the past couple hundred thousand years when the human population was as small as two.

So if Adam is a “pattern of the one to come [Christ],” it seems to me that Adam’s sin does not necessarily depend on being passed down in some genetic or genealogical sense."

As a comparison I remind the following points I have supported in different posts:

  1. The first sinners (“Adam and Eve”) were created in the Image of God with capability to freely loving God.

  2. In this state of “original righteousness” (original Blessing) the first “Image Bearers” could master evolutionary selfish tendencies (lust, greed), did not experience moral evil (brokenness, guilt, shame, isolation), and were not submitted to the curse of death.

  3. However they were deluded by pride and freely rejected God transgressing His commandment; in doing so they committed the first sin in the history of humanity.

  4. Before this first sin Image Bearers were not in need of Redemption.

  5. After the first sin Image Bearers are generally in need of Redemption (“state of original sin”): The first sin of the first sinners (“Adam’s sin”) “became our sin” (as Kathryn states).

  6. In particular, the “state of original sin” means (in Kathryn’s wording) that “in my heart are pride and fear and lust and greed”, and “I deserve the curse of death”.

  7. The “state of original sin” (“Adam’s sin”) is passed down neither in genetic nor genealogical sense.

To this extent it seems that the agreement between Kathryn’s view and my view could not be greater. So is there any relevant difference between the two views?

I think the main difference is Kathryn’s claim that Adam and Eve’s sin becomes transmitted to their descendants because they “were to be the representatives of the whole human race”.

Adam and Eve were certainly “representatives” in the sense that they were “the ones in whom God’s purpose to make the whole world a place of delight and joy and order, eventually colonizing the whole creation, was to be taken forward” (N.T. Wright). However I do not share the idea that their sin becomes transmitted because of their vocation as “representatives”. My reason is the following:

Since the “representatives” Adam and Eve were free NOT to sin (otherwise God would have been the author of the sin), the possibility that they did not sin was a real one in God’s mind. Therefore theology to be serious has to consider also the possible history in which generations may have passed before the arrival of the first sin. And in such a scenario the first sin would not have been the sin of “the representatives of the whole human race”. Should we then conclude that in such a case the “first sin” would not have passed down to the sinner’s descendants? This sounds rather awkward because then there would have been two groups on earth: people in-need-of-Redemption and people not-in-need-of-Redemption.

The solution I have proposed in this thread is as follows:

Even if the first sin is not the sin of the first humans to whom “God revealed himself in an intimate way”, the consequences of this transgression (“the state of original sin”) would pass down to all human persons coming into existence after the first sin, so that all are generally in need of Redemption. As I have repeatedly said, in favor of this view I invoke Romans 11:32.

(George Brooks) #517

I think this is actually an inaccurate statement.

The only sense of how it could have been passed down is Genealogical 
 or not at all (excluding the final option that God “installs” the Sin-in-Question onto the Souls of whomever he wants to have it).

Soul Progenitorship is not the only way to be descended from a Great, Great-to-the-1000th Grand Father.

It can be SHARED Progenitorship
 where more than one mating pair has a slice of one’s genealogical heritage!

As long as the property in question is “dominant” instead of recessive, then no matter how many other “mating pairs” there may be who are in your family tree - - you are still the great-great-to-the-Nth-Grandson (or -Granddaughter) of Adam and Eve 
 in the midst of 10,000 other humans alive at the time of Adam & Eve’s first mating.

(Jay Johnson) #518

If you are positing that this state of original righteousness existed prior to Adam’s fall from grace around 4000 B.C. (or any other relatively recent date), then I have to say that common sense and experience tell me otherwise. Essentially, you are proposing that for several hundred millennia, no human being experience guilt, shame, or isolation, and they had no trouble overcoming lust and greed. If human society was in such great shape prior to Adam, why would God introduce Adam into the equation? In effect, that makes Christ the solution to a problem that God himself created, which makes no sense.

(Roger A. Sawtelle) #519

@aleo @AntoineSuarez

(Albert Leo) #520

Antoine, I have profited greatly from your posts and the comparison of your views with @Kathryn_Applegate, @gbrooks9, and others both more conservative and more progressive. Some, like yourself, seem open to some of the views I associate with the concept of the replacing of Original Sin by Original Blessing–but not to the extent that Teilhard or Mathew Fox envisioned. As I see it, the problems in acceptance of my views revolve around timing and God’s responsibility for the existence of Sin in this world.

So the Original Blessing that I envision was NOT a completed Gift of an intimate knowledge of God’s goodness, but merely the ‘programming’ of the Homo sapiens brain in such a way that humans, with effort, could attain that knowledge over a span of time, [and probably over generations] to become Image Bearer(s). In other words, there was no point in time that a human (or a pair) attained any such state of perfection and then fell from it.

Setting morality aside, there is no doubting the fact that evolution provides a marvelous power to create variety and complexity over the billions of years that led up to Homo sapiens some 200,000 yrs. ago. (As seen in Job, If was OK with God, it need not seem perfect to us.) The Great Leap Forward, that lead to human culture (art, language, music, science) did not immediately produce an understanding of the God that was responsible for the universe. Part of that journey towards understanding and covenanting with our Creator is related in ANE mythology and in Genesis. Since the GLF humans have known: 1) they are gifted above other forms of life and are in a position to dominate it; and yet, 2) they have a flawed nature and must struggle against selfishness and lust for power to achieve some spiritual potential beyond mere survival to the point they could procreate their kind.

Choosing to lead a truly moral life often seems to conflict with leading a life that maximizes happiness and pleasure for the individual. We Christians believe that God willingly became incarnate to show us the way we humans can please Him the most by working to establish His Kingdom on this Earth.

The only way I can justify posting these unorthodox views on BioLogos is that some evangelically inclined parents may see their children forsaking orthodox Scripture because they have chosen a career in science and see an irresolvable conflict, and thereby fear for their immortal souls. My experience shows (to me at least) that science can actually lead to deeper understanding of a loving Creator and how Jesus is truly my Savior.
Al Leo

(Antoine Suarez) #521

George, your statement I have set in bold is important: it highlights why the assumption of a “state of Original Righteousness” is crucial to a coherent theory about “Original sin” and Christian faith.

The “state of Original Righteousness or Grace” means that God endowed the first Image Bearers with spiritual capabilities strong enough to master selfish evolutionary tendencies (lust, greed, trickery). This way God granted these humans with the highest possible degree of free will (“They were selves, free to obey or rebel”, with words of @Kathryn_Applegate): They could be led into temptation to reject God’s love only by pride.

This “state of Original Grace” went lost with “Adam’s sin” (in the sense of “the first sin in human history”).

The Christian teaching about “the transmission of state of Original Sin” means nothing other than “the lack of Original Grace” is passed down to all Image Bearers coming into existence after “Adam’s sin”.

In this sense I claim (with @Kathryn_Applegate): “Adam’s sin became our sin.”

Now you seem to object:
Since it is God who creates souls in “lack of Original Grace”, one can consider that He “installs” Sin onto the souls of the Image Bearers He creates after “Adam’s sin”.

My answer:
God creates Image Bearers in “the state of Original Sin” (“lack of Original Grace”) for the sake of Redemption: “God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” (Romans 11:32)

Accordingly “the state of Original Sin” is a “Happy Fault”: The first human sinner is the cause of the “Fault”. And God’s mercy causes this Fault to be “Happy”.

I paraphrase this important conclusion with your words:

Who “installs” the Sin onto the Souls is “the first human sinner” whoever he/she was. And since my first sin could in principle have been the first sin of humanity, I can also somewhat say (paraphrasing @Kathryn_Applegate) that “I am guilty for the state of Original Sin because I sin like Adam”.

I would be nice to know whether @Kathryn_Applegate herself agrees to the precedent view. In any case it seems to me important to clarify that “Adam’s sin” is passed down not because he was “the Representative” of humanity but because he was the “first human sinner” and thereby “prompted” God’s plan for Redemption as described in Romans 11:32.

Let me also add a philosophical precision I have already submitted in a previous post (you liked!):

The capacity to sin in each human person emerges at the very moment of her generation by God, that is, the instant when God creates a spiritual principle (“soul”) to animate a piece of “flesh” (biological stuff originating through evolution) and a human personal body appears.

At the instant the “soul” starts animating the biological stuff, the evolutionary “frailty of the flesh” and “selfish tendencies” become spiritual vulnerability to sin (“concupiscence”, in the sense of 1 John 2:16). The “neuro-psychological weakness of the human body” results from the weakness of the “soul” (intellect and will) to master the “evolutionary background” and handle according to the principle of love. But we do NOT sin because of this weakness (otherwise God would be the author of sin, what is absurd), but because we freely decide to sin, tempted by “selfish evolutionary tendencies” (1 John 2:16).

Accordingly, what is passed on genetically is the “selfish evolutionary background”, the “spiritual vulnerability to sin” emerges at the very moment of the generation of the person.

In this sense “vulnerability to sin” is nothing other than the state of “lack of Original Grace” or “need of Redemption” (the so called “state of original sin”). Hence, the “original sin’s transmission” does NOT happen genetically, it happens at generation.

Once again, to formulate well and accurately the meaning of “the state of Original Sin” the following assumption is key:

Before the first sin was committed, God empowered the human “souls” (i.e.: “personal bodies”) with so called “original Grace” so that temptation could only be of spiritual origin, and sin could only be sin of pride.

I post here what I have commented to Joshua (@Swamidass):

The following Principles seem relevant to this discussion:

  1. Image Bearer means “Capable of freely loving God”. And this implies capability of transgression as well.

  2. The state of original righteousness (i.e. absence of state of original sin) lasts as long as there is no transgression.

If we acknowledge these Principles 1 and 2, then we are led to the following scenario:

In the beginning there are Image Bearers only in the Garden. “Those outside the Garden” are not Image Bearers and consequently are neither in state of original righteousness nor original sin. Sanctity of marriage requires that if “one of those outside the Garden” enters the Garden and comes in contact with Image Bearers, then he/she becomes immediately Image Bearer as well.

When the first transgression arrives in the garden, some Image Bearers are involved in it (“the sinners”) and some not (“the righteous”).

At this moment the following further Principle 3 plays a role:

  1. For the sake of Redemption it is not fitting that these two groups (‘sinners’ and ‘righteous’) coexist on earth (Romans 11:32).

Thus, if one keeps to Principles 1-3 one is led to conclude:

  • After the first transgression the righteous (if any) are taken by God into heaven.

  • The genetic descendants of the sinners come into existence sharing the “state of original sin”.

  • At some time T God makes “all those outside the Garden” in His Image but sharing the state of original sin; since this time T all humans on earth are Image Bearers.

In summary:

Principles 1-3 entail that “the state of Original Sin” is NOT passed down by “genealogical heritage” or “SHARED Progenitorship”.

The models “Genealogical Adam” (@Swamidass) and “Adam as Representative” (@Kathryn_Applegate ) both imply either “Coexistence on Earth of people who are in need of Redemption and people who are NOT in such a need” or “lateral transmission of sin from sinners to innocents by sort of spiritual contamination”. It is by trying to avoid these “oddities” that I came to my proposal of Transmission at generation. In any case I think the three models share many and important features in common, which may help to lay the groundwork for a large consensus among Christian scientists.

Regarding the “de novo Creation of Adam” I share Kathryn’s view that this hypothesis is not different from “one that supposes we were all created de novo five minutes ago, with implanted memories of our childhoods and what we ate for breakfast”. If you acknowledge quantization of space-time then the whole universe can be considered created de novo with each quantum jump of time: “Each Instant of Time a New Universe”.