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

Faith & Science Conversation
1184

What’s universally moral about kosher, capital punishment and the Sabbath?

1185

That is superb. There’s hope for us yet, even if the cosmos is truly all.

1186

By “universally moral” I intend principles like the following two ones, proclaimed by God at the beginning, when “God made mankind in the image of God”:

Genesis 9:5-6
5 And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being. 6 Whoever sheds human blood, shall have his blood shed by man; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

Matthew 19: 4-6
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

1187

So, again, capital punishment for murder, and no divorce for heterosexuals. These are universal morals.

1188

This is exactly the point!

To be properly understood and fairly enforced, the law has to be written. If it is not written, interpretations according to particular interests of mighty individuals or groups become commonplace.

You can speculate that before the appearance of writing (5,300 BP) there was “social morality” that “was passed down orally, from one generation to the next, via the elders of the tribe”. But you have no physical evidence that this morality was basically different from the “evolved in-group morality” we find in chimps and bonobos.

The first Cuneiform tablets keep track of contracts and registers. They provide physical evidence about accountability relationship and sense of justice beyond in-group morality . From this I infer that the universal prohibition of homicide according to Genesis 9:3-6 could be understood and the creation of man in the image of God had already occurred. Again you can speculate about orally maintained morality before Cuneiform, but you cannot exclude that it was merely in-group morality evolved by multilevel natural selection.

Undoubtedly. But from this fact you cannot infer that this was also the case before 5,300 BP. You cannot prove that this “highly developed morality” goes back to times before this date, i.e.: when Homo sapiens became humankind in the image of God.

My view is that the basic truths and moral principles contained in Genesis 1-9 are human universal: They are revealed by God to all peoples on Earth at the moment referred to in Genesis 9:3-6, and belong to the conscious and unconscious collective mind of humankind. The highly developed morality (it may even be very similar to the 10 Commandments) we find in non-literate tribal people in the New World and today originates from this primeval universal revelation.

Notice also that from 5,300 BP onward all Homo sapiens living on earth are human persons in the image of God. This means that all Native tribes in the New World and even uncontacted peoples today should be consider to be in the image of God not because they use written language or behave according to the 10 Commandments, but because they are anatomically modern humans .

1189

What are they again?

1190

The “evolved bottom-up morality” we find in animals is the basis for our “God given universal morality”. Apes possess the “basic building blocks” for morality, those “seeds of morality” that flowered in humans evolving from ape-like ancestors. Evolution does certainly involve empathy, altruism, and glorious aspects as for instance love, gestation, and parental care.

On the other hand, selective pressure leads also to infanticide in different species. In particular, male lions kill young cubs of other males to the aim of impregnating the females. Chimps, males but also females, and orangutans can engage in murder and infanticide as part of adaptive reproductive strategies.

Such a behaviour among humans is condemned as murder by Genesis 9:3-6, independently of how mighty is the killing individual or group. Accordingly, infanticide should not simply be qualified as “one among other outcomes of Darwinian natural selection”. Thus, the universal prohibition of homicide, and especially the Golden Rule as formulated by Jesus Christ (Matthew 7:12) go beyond in-group morality of chimps.

Similarly, the promiscuous sexual behavior of chimps and even more that of bonobos cannot be considered the basis for a human morality according to the indissolubility of marriage as taught in Genesis (2:24), and by Jesus Christ (Matthew 19:3-12; Mark 10:2-12). The indissolubility of marriage is clearly considered by Jesus Christ to be God’s commandment for the whole humankind in the beginning, and in this sense is a human universal that can hardly be evolved from a bonobos-like orgiastic morality.

1191

Antoine, do you deny (or ignore) the evidence presented by Ian Tattersall of the valuable grave goods in Cro-Magnon burials? It is orders of magnitude more convincing of a belief in an afterlife than any evidence for this kind of moral basis found with chimps and bonobos (no purposeful burials)–more so than the flower pollen in the Neanderthal burials in the MidEast. There is little doubt that elephants mourn their dead, but it remains speculative that such mourning directly affects the behavior of living survivors.
Al Leo

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1192

We’re not descended from bonobos and therefore unfortunately haven’t inherited that distinctive, charming behavioural trait.

And whatever you do, don’t get married. Unless you’re gay.

1193

Albert, me too like this Teilhard’s statement.
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa expresses a similar idea in his magnificent homily for Good Friday in St. Peter at the Vatican:

“The cross of Christ has changed the meaning of pain and human suffering—of every kind of suffering, physical and moral. It is no longer punishment, a curse. It was redeemed at its root when the Son of God took it upon himself. What is the surest proof that the drink someone offers you is not poisoned? It is if that person drinks from the same cup before you do. This is what God has done: on the cross he drank, in front of the whole world, the cup of pain down to its dregs. This is how he showed us it is not poisoned, but that there is a pearl at the bottom of this chalice.” (Fr. Cantalamessa’s homily for Good Friday 2020).

The sort of “inaccuracy” in Teilhard’s view I refer to is rather the following:

“Original sin is the necessary reaction of the finite to the creative act… It is the “other side” of the whole creative process. The properly human fall is the more or less collective and perennial actuation in the human race of that “forma peccati” that was inherent in the entire universe well before the appearance of man… Strictly speaking, there is no Adam. Under this name is hidden the universal and infrangible law of reversion or perversion. (Evil is) the ransom of progress.”

Nothing against Teilhard’s view regarding Adam as a symbol that all men are marked by original sin the very instant they come into existence as members of mankind.

However, Teilhard also suggests that:

Men are NOT marked by original sin because of some aboriginal sin of a primitive Adam. Men are marked by original sin because this is the cosmic condition of a world in evolution.

This last statement is in my view inaccurate as it sees incompatibility where there is none:

The cosmic condition of a world in evolution is that of decay, cruelty, and death because God wanted such an environment for possible future sinners: on the one hand to facilitate our come back to God’s love by letting us experience our limits; on the other hand as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives.

1194

If I understand well you are claiming that regarding behavioural evolution as primate culture, “maybe we’re the missing link on the way to bonobos”, aren’t you?

1195

How do you understand that? When I say the exact opposite?

1196

Excellent Marvin!

The basic tenet of quantum physics is:

Not all what matters for physical phenomena is contained in space-time.

So in the ordinary world we live in there is always possibility for God to intervene without invoking “an act of magic”.

The expression “purely physical limits of evolution” may be tricky since influences coming from outside the space-time (and in particular spiritual agency by God, angels, human free will) happen within the “physical limits of the ordinary world”.

I would rather say “those who try to explain evolution by purely material causality within space-time are suffering from the flat earth thinking in the respect of understanding reality”.

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1197

In a general outlook, the divine energies discussed by Palamas IMO may be a fruitful source in contemplating the creative aspects of the created universe. I am trying to obtain a deeper understanding of this doctrine within the current view of the quantum world. St Palamas presented his doctrine many centuries ago before the physical sciences developed as they have.

1198

This sounds quite intriguing and stimulating!
Could you please share with us some of your emerging insights?
In which basic aspects do you think St Palamas’ doctrine fits the quantum?

1199

I disagree with the idea of “divine energies”. Energy is a created physical property. God is not physical in any sense but totally spiritual.
I would say that God created the physical realm when God upheld the relevant information in the Divine Consciousness. That information is in the non-physical realm that we may call the Mind of God. So that information given meaning / rules then gives rise to the physical or matter.
I can give you my understanding. I believe that we see evidence of the above explanation I have given in the two slit experiment. A lot of people are trying to say that consciousness makes the difference or that the measuring apparatus disturbs the system so that the interference pattern is replaced by two patches of dots. But there is another explanation.
By setting up a measuring device to see an electron go through one or other slit, we are setting a directive to the Universe to see individual electrons. This means we are affecting the information in The Mind of God, which we can modify because we are co-creators and we are given free will, the ability to make choices. So the information governing the physical nature is altered hence we see the two patches of dots. When we set up the two slits and fire electrons, one by one, we are setting a directive to see the electron go through two slits. Hence we see the interference pattern when the electron, in a wave form or some sort of form that can go through two slits at once.

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1200

Antoine, I wonder how much you would object to my replacing the word “inaccuracy” in your quote above with the word, “obfuscation”.. If my history is correct, Teilhard’s teaching was considered so unorthodox by the Vatican that they sent him from France to China where he could do less harm. He must have received some sort of warning that any of his future writings would be closely scrutinized to see if they merited inclusion on the Index of Forbidden Books. I confess that my lack of familiarity with the French language forces me to depend upon translations, but, for the most part, I believe the essence of his thought came through to me. Not so for some important passages, however. I’ve always thought that these instances were examples of Teilhard giving himself some “wriggle room” from Vatican punishment.

Your thoughts? Is that possible?
Al Leo

1201

Is that so? Who said that? Any of these c 224 quantum physicists?

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1202

Antoine, I am speculating and not proposing anything concrete. The distinction between the essense and energies is discussed extensively - uncreated nature of the Light of Tabor was formulated in the 14th century by Gregory Palamas defending the mystical practices of Hesychasm. St Chrysostom discusses these matters also - my interest is to ask questions related to the uncertainty of QM and the theological doctrine that God sustains His creation. We cannot know the essence but biblically human senses have responded to the uncreated energies.

Could this take us to an interface between the energies sustaining and the measurable quantum world?

1203

If I want magic I play Skyrim.