There’s no need to ignore the good, only to note that no one always does good.
But if He killed off all the adults the babies would suffer even worse.
How about “original death”? That death would be the spiritual one Adam and Eve did to themselves, and such death leaves their descendants defenseless against selfishness and all its results.
From that one article I have to say I’m not impressed by the level of education; I got tired quickly of wincing at grammatical and other errors in the writing.
The majority of those involve aspects of life that cannot be avoided plus ritual violations. Really only two, possibly three, have to do with moral transgressions (leaving aside the term invented by rabbis).
BTW, it’s a bit of a late second-Temple (and later) list, to put it into perspective.
But that does leave a few terms to address.
If households are included, as was common in the ANE (cf. all of the males of Abraham’s household getting circumcised and thus becoming Abraham’s children), that can spread pretty fast.
OTOH mere mathematical models are useless because they run up against the barriers of geography and sociology: some populations are just separate, a fact that is still true today.
Perhaps the Christian adoption of the soul is more like a reinvention. Everything seems geared to the superiority and subsequent fallibility of humans.
Simplistic but true. It would seem to imply that God is less afraid of sin than Christians are.(taught to be).
This obsession with sin does Christianity no favours.
If sin separates us from God then there is no such thing as Original Death either. Like Sin it is or isn’t. Personification of any of it is pointless.
The ca[acity for sin comes from the capacity to choose between good and evil. At some point we attained that capacity. Genesis would suggest that Adam and Eve “stole” it (ate without permission,) but that seems unlikely in the long term. Maybe, figuratively God would have let them eat anyway, but wanted to prepare them better? If you must make the Garden some sort of reality! Whatever. Freedom of choice is a gift not a curse, but it comes with consequences. We should thank God He does not make us pay the full price for our mistakes instead of making a song and dance about it all.
Or borrowed them from their neighbors (there’s a fair number of cognates in there).
I am reminded of all the scholars who maintained that Hebrew was a divine language . . . right up until they started tripping over obvious borrowed and shared words.
Or a mix of the above. There’s a problem, after all, of lumping together items from a broad topic without asking whether and in what ways they really belong together: Consider that a wet dream resulted in impurity, as did so much as touching a woman one wasn’t related to.
Sin, death, forgiveness, punishment, Justice, they all exist, and are part of life, why would God not include them?
I am sorry but all this rubbish about Adam and Eve shows God in such a bad light I am amazed that anyone goes for it.
Fear of God and identifying Him (she / It) as needing perfection is a basic human concept that God has been trying to overthrow since time immemorial and clearly failing to do so. Why else would He forgive anything!
Christianity ends up as a glorified members only club.
I’m aware that is where an immortal soul comes from. This seems a common response but I don’t know why some Christians put so much stock in it. First, assuming its validity (but see below) something doesn’t have to be present in the OT for me to believe it. Similarly some might suggest there is barely a concept of heaven in there as well. As a Christian I consider the entire canon when forming opinions on what the Bible teaches. There isn’t the slightest hint the serpent is Satan in Genesis but clearly that is who the book of Revelation identifies it as. The New Testament also had no problem finding Jesus everywhere in the Old Testament. I work with the whole Bible. But our understanding of Judaism might be off. Per wiki, there is more debate on the idea of the soul (and even the afterlife) than we sometimes let on:
The scholarly consensus of the 20th century held that the canonical teaching of the Old Testament made no reference to an immortal soul independent of the body in at least its earlier periods.[33][34][35][36] A wide range of scholarly reference works consistently represent this view.[37][38][39][40][41] In recent times, an increasing number of scholars have dissented from this view.[3][42][43][44]According to Stephen Cook, scholars “now hotly debate the older, commonplace position that the idea of a soul, separable from the body, played little or no role in preexilic Israel” and that “recent approaches to Israelite religion that are increasingly informed by archaeological artifacts are defending the view that Israel’s beliefs in an afterlife were much more vibrant than many scholars have been willing to admit.”[45] Christopher Hays also concurs.[46]
Also, I do not subscribe to platonic dualism.
Sure, I am convinced humans require a rational soul and we are not solely reducible to materialism. This is based on metaphysics. Just as science and scripture inform how I view the world, metaphysics does as well.
That freedom sounds like a blessing rather than something I would blame God for. Not only did God give them preternatural gifts initially, he did not abandon humanity afterwards. After the fall…well… as Christians we know how the story ends. I see several instances of God’s mercy in the story as well.
And is there a Christian anywhere that doesn’t think humans have the capacity to sin? Do some of you think evolution and not God gives us the capacity to sin? Do we live, move and have our being in evolution? I am not sure where you are going with this.
Magic is a poor word choice. Since we believe souls are immaterial (and immortal), we believe God creates each soul for each person who lives. For us Catholics, that is at conception, when human life begins. God original ensouled two biological human animals. My model supposed he does the same for all children that stem from them afterwards possibly even during interbreeding. I do not claim to be able to prove every step. Just that there is a plausible way to preserve what we feel scripture teaches (Adam, Eve, Flood) with what we feel science teaches (no genetic first pair, biological humans spread far and wide) with what we feel metaphysics teaches (souls).
In Aristotelian and Thomist thought, they absolutely have souls. They have sensory souls which are material. They do not have an immaterial and immortal rational soul that allows humans to survive death. But an animal is certainly alive and different from a rock.
Vinnie
1 Like
gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
28
[Edited to be TASMANIA, not New Zealand]
is the only EXTREMELY isolated sub-group …. and even that doesn’t
preclude PROVIDENTIAL actions by the divine to put a storm-tossed boat on the
Island’s shore.
The “exponential” power of genealogical expansion is underestimated by laymen.
It only takes one or two fertile visitors to spread throughout the known world.
That’s what the book GAE contributes to the conversation.
G.Brooks
EDITED: Thanks to @Roy ‘s correction. I meant TASMANIA, not NEW ZEALAND!
Try telling a YEC that there are no souls. He or she will insist that the “core” person is
the part engaged in MORAL AGENCY and decision-making… whether it is called a
soul, or something else.
Well not for each person who lives. Just those that can draw a family tree that goes back to A&E. I suppose that excludes any step or adopted children brought into a family. And while the GAE theory could theoretically cover the current population (with a few miracles thrown in) we can’t know for sure. I really don’t like having to add undocumented miracles just to rescue a particular interpretation.
No just your interpretation of scripture. An interpretation that is human and fallible.
I feel confident all humans alive today are genealogical ancestors of A&E / N&Co. At any rate, if they are capable of complex abstract thought and language, rest assured in this framework they are fully human. And if they are not for whatever reason but any of their ancestors are, they are included.
If they do they do, if they don’t they don’t. Reality is the way it is. As far as we “can’t know for sure”, that sounds like young earth creationist ideology. I’m content with a reconciliation with what I think scripture teaches with what we know about the natural world. I don’t need to have proof of every step or every scriptural belief I hold. I personally haven’t come across any biological humans that don’t fit the metaphysical human bill. Have you? Even if you were to bring up someone severely mentally handicapped, if their parent is a full metaphysical human, so are they.
I have added no undocumented miracles. Nor am I sure why I would need them. Why couldn’t a family alive 50,000 years ago be the genealogical ancestors of all people alive today? That is more than adequate to deal with the Tasmania problem which is really the only difficulty. I have not even revised doctrines or made any wholesale changes to anything I don’t already believe (God gives souls, Genesis 1-11 is mythological, the rest of the Bible assumes a literal A&E and flood). As I quoted James Chastek from the Just Thomism blog:
“The revision that is called for is not a revision in doctrine but a move from the simplest set of facts congruent with a doctrine to a less simple set of facts congruent with the same doctrine.”
I am just doing what a lot of people don’t do and defining what makes the first human truly human or providing a starting point for humanity on the spectrum of evolution in light of non-material souls, abstract thought (and linguistic capacity to be honest). You also accept evolution. When do you think the first “human” created in God’s image was born? Where is the cutoff for when biological humans are capable of going to heaven? Many approach from the perspective of materialist science and genetics and reduce the totality of a human to what evolution says. I approach from a theological and metaphysical portrait of what makes a human human. That simply needs to be consistent with science but materialistic science cannot define the totality of a human person. Maybe some of us need to stop playing the atheists game?
You got me. My interpretation of scripture is my interpretation of scripture. ???
That is a very weird response. lts quite clear if you go back and read the whole paragraph my “we” is people who subscribe to my interpretation and believe in souls. I even said “we Catholics” and I noted in the beginning there are several reasonable positions to take on Adam and Eve. I also said we have plausible reasons to believe scripture teaches a literal Adam and Eve. I didn’t say scripture absolutely teaches this and anything else is anathema. That you would I’m mediately jump to the extremely trivial “that’s your interpretation” is a little mystifying to me. Every single one of us is offering our own fallible interpretation of scripture on this forum at all times and nothing more. Admittedly, some have done more research than others. But do you go this route with everyone else? Or does this reconciliation annoy you in some way? It reads like a YEC move to a scientist: “this is just your interpretation of reality. An interpretation that is human and fallible.”
Vinnie
1 Like
gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
34
Oh come now.
The role of Jesus is when atonement by his death becomes crucial. As I’ve pointed
out before, through Providential favoritism, computer simulations show that EVERYBODY
will qualify within 2000 years of Adam or of Noah - - including step or adopted children!
New Zealand is not a problem for GAE or similar metaphysical propagation models, because it wasn’t colonised until ~1300AD, by which time the colonists would have already been ‘infected’.
Tasmania is a problem, because it was colonised before 8000BC, and then isolated for several thousand years.
What is theoretically possible and what is reality are two separate issues.
Genetical analyses have shown that some exceptional persons left their genes into a large group of humans, like Genghis Khan. That is known because DNA reveals it.
Many genetical lines have been completely lost during history. If some genes have spread effectively, it means that they have replaced some other variants.
DNA analyses have not shown that we humans would have two or even a small group of common ancestors within the last 100k years. The analyses I remember have concluded that the number of humans did not drop below 10’000 and those calculations were about effective population size (IIRC).
So, theoretically possible but in reality, no data supporting anything like that.
Are you mixing up genetic and genealogical ancestors? We are not referring to Adam as a recent or even distant genealogical ancestor of all humans alive.
Do you think Luke traces a genealogical through Mary? Your statement applies to every harmonization possible and it doesn’t really say much because what matters is the reasons why we are harmonizing them.
We can have different kinds of concepts and interpretations. The source of the beliefs matters because that may tell if the interpretations come from a radically different belief system with teachings that are in conflict with the teachings of the biblical scriptures.
Different kinds of ‘soul’ concepts have been around for millennia, so it is possible that these have affected Hebrew thinking earlier than previously believed. For example, the ancient Egyptian worldview included a multi-part soul and afterlife for the soul. Yet, the different ‘soul’ concepts have not left signs to the Hebrew bible, at least not so much that it would be obvious. That tells something about how the writers were seeing the immortal ‘soul’ concept in relation to the other teachings.
Greek philosophy was a pagan philosophy that was radically different than the teachings that came from the traditional Hebrew background. The ‘fans’ of platonism in Alexandria attempted to combine the teachings of Plato with Hebrew traditions, which may have blurred the traditional teachings. The Greek translation Septuagint probably also mixed the worldviews by using such terms that had a different meaning in Greek philosophy,.like using the word ‘psykhe’ for the Hebrew word ‘nephesh’.
If Christians have differing opinions about ‘soul’ and related concepts, heaven, or snake/dragon characters in the scriptures, those are perhaps not fundamental core doctrines of Christianity. Important for some denominations, like RCC, but otherwise should not form fundamental divisions among believers.