Distasteful...The Implications Of Evolution Before The Fall

Faith & Science Conversation
21

@J.E.S you say that somebody claims there is no sentience before The Fall. You are the only one I know to have made that claim.

The possible version which I know has been made is that before Adam there was no moral agency.

With Moral Agency comes the potential for error.

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@gbrooks9
I get it now…
I was coming from the idea that those of you who espouse the EC view do not believe in a literal Adam and Eve…Want me to change it?

23

As is often the result when we group people together artificially, there are a variety of opinions on this issue. It is fair to say “many” EC proponents do not believe in a literal Adam and Eve, but it is entirely possible that a literal Adam and Eve existed among other humans.

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@cwhenderson
I’m having a pretty hard time pinning down the EC codified beliefs about most things discussed here.

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I don’t think there ARE any “codified” beliefs. There are wide ranges of opinions on many different issues.

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26

@cwhenderson
That’s another “problem” with online debate forums. Chances are, several people could “hold the EC view” and disagree with each other on other, VERY IMPORTANT issues.

27

Biologos is pretty much a big tent type organization, and it’s core beliefs are written on this site. Discussion forums by their very nature are more open to varies beliefs, otherwise it would just be s bunch of people sitting around telling each other how right they are.

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28

Are you certain that that is not what it actually is?
or,
Is it possible for me to convince you that my beliefs are correct?

29

It is certainly true that most of us here are inclined to accept scientific knowledge as reliable. If someone had some SCIENTIFIC evidence contrary to the consensus opinions here, I’ll bet you could get some people willing to listen and discuss.

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30

@cwhenderson
Here is one thing that confuses me:
What are your criteria for determining if a specific evidence is “scientific” or otherwise?

31

I’m not an archaeologist, so I can only say what I would accept as sufficient scientific evidence for an artifact:

  1. Is the particular artifact accepted by a considerable number of professionals in the field? (a majority would be preferable, but I would settle for a reasonable minority for me to at least consider)
  2. Is an artifact available for further scientific scrutiny and analysis?
  3. Were the circumstances of collection consistent with acceptable practices in a particular field? (I imagine this could be difficult for some artifacts, but have ANY of the Ica stones been collected in a standard, accepted fashion?)

Those would at least be some good starting points for me, but I’m sure others could be added.

32

I thought sentience was perception ability related to the capacity to feel pain or suffer. So in the animal rights movement, some people who are vegetarian for moral reasons accept eating shellfish because they are not sentient and are supposedly not neurologically developed enough to suffer when they are killed for food. It may be a slippery term that is used differently in different domains. Maybe you are talking about human consciousness or mind or some other thing that is held up as indicative of human uniqueness.

33

Indeed! Consider that it was “not good” for Adam to be alone. That there was not-good-ness before the reign of Sin and Death (to borrow St. Paul’s language) and during the time of humanity’s original righteousness is worth noting.

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34

Note, please don’t take the first paragraph seriously. I’m keeping it to show my thought process, but it’s not entirely correct. @Christy was more correct about the definition of sentience than I was. I was confused with sapience.

I thought sentient simply meant “self aware.” Sentient organisms are cognitively capable of recognizing themselves as separate entities. A sentient organism is capable of having the understanding that itself is an individual, different from the environment and other members of the same species. Dolphins will recognize themselves in mirrors and will even give themselves names. They are sentient: capable of knowing that they are a living individual. As pleasing as it is, I don’t think @Christy’s definition is entirely correct… That’s my understanding, let’s see what it actually means!

Well, I was wrong. Sentient is defined as “capable of feeling and perceiving things.” I was confused with sapience, which means what I tried to define sentience as in the above paragraph.

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@J.E.S

Some of us see a literal Adam. Some do not. It has nothing to do with intelligence or sentience.

I see Adam as a figurative example of how there is always a “first one” … and in this case, out of an old and large hominid population, there would always be a hominid that God either has made into his “First Moral Agent” …

or…

Who He Recognizes as the first competent Moral Agent.

This is who Adam is in the story …

So… you have just a few things to change:

  1. Literal? Some do, some don’t.
  2. It isn’t sentience or intelligence, it’s Moral Agency - - the ability to make a choice on good and evil.
36

That it follows the scientific method.

One important criterion is that results should be reproducible. This does not mean that you do everything end to end in a lab, but that the evidence comes from multiple studies by multiple different teams. For example, a hypothesis that works in the Grand Canyon must also work in the Scottish Highlands and the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa, where appropriate.

It’s basically the scientific version of the Biblical principle of two or three witnesses.

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37

As was stated earlier there are a variety of views. I believe in EC and also in an historic Adam and Eve. My pure speculation (upon which I don’t exercise many CPU cycles–like the early church I consider who a more important theological question than when and how) would be a kind of ensoulment view–which at least solves the problem that no YEC has ever solved to any level of satisfaction–where did those mates for the sons of Adam and Eve come from?

But that’s beside the point. ECs are too varied to pigeon hole. They include near deists to Catholics to conservative evangelicals to Muslims. And lots more.

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38

[quote=“gbrooks9, post:14, topic:36407”]
He lost immortality because he lost access to the tree of life. He was just as capable of immortality as ever … as long as he could eat of the tree of life. God says this himself!
[/quote].
I guess there are still people looking for a physical tree in a garden who’s physical fruit they could eat to gain everlasting life, unable to see that fruit nailed to that tree.
I see the expulsion from the garden as a measure to create the distance given to Adam and Eve, so they could make a conscious return instead of behaving like nothing has changed

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39

To call evidence scientific is a bit of a red herring. There are different forms of evidence which can all be assessed for their validity. Testimonial evidence is as important as observational evidence as well as evidence derived from reasoning. Material evidence can be subjected to scientific analysis but all evidence should be subject to rational analysis about its context. Experimental evidence allows one to recreate observational evidence to a limit but one has to be aware that experimental evidence is only proof when it falsifies a predicted outcome.

40

I have no problem with that interpretation, @marvin

What I have problem with are those who think that Adam’s mortality was biologicaly or metaphysically triggered by his sin. God makes it clear that if he ate from the Tree of Life, even as a sinner he would be immortal.