I do think of it as a disease but not a physical disease. A physical disease would indicate a medical solution and Christianity would and should then be quickly dismissed as bad primitive medicine.
I do think of it as a disease but not a physical disease. A physical disease would indicate a medical solution.
I agree, it’s not a physical disease. It’s a spiritual disease. But we are not just physical creatures. We are also spiritual creatures, intimately entwined with our physical bodies. So we inherit both physical and spiritual characteristics from our ancestors.
Thanks, Christy. It sounds like Swamidass’s idea of a recent special creation of Adam and Eve whose descendants interbred with the previous human population is an acceptable view within EC. Yes?
As far as I know, BioLogos has always said genealogical Adam is compatible with EC. It is Joshua who has claimed it is not. He has posted plenty about why he thinks this over at Peaceful Science.
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First, let me point out to make things clear that you have shifted the discussion to ONE point in my response. So I am wary of this as a tactic for distorting the whole discussion.
Yes and no… the “devil” is in the details. Genetics is chemistry and physical properties only. There is nothing spiritual about it. And nothing you have said changes the fact that a genetic problem indicates a medical solution which renders Christianity irrelevant. Our physical and spiritual are not in any measurable way “entwined” and certainly not in a way that anything spiritual is transmitted via DNA. That is the kind of nonsense that identifies race, sex, and handicaps with spiritual flaws and as something deserved by ancestral wrong doing – a miserable excuse for the abuse of others.
Furthermore our inheritance from our ancestors is not exclusive to genetic descent. We have both genetic and memetic (cultural) inheritances from our ancestors and both are physical not spiritual. Our memetic inheritance is indeed contaminated with the self-destructive habits of sin. We also inherit culpability simply by being benefactors of the wrongs done in the past even when there is no genetic or cultural connection.
Yes sin is a spiritual “disease” (metaphor obviously) but all things spiritual are acquired by choice not by any external agent.
I’ve had my own run-ins with Swamidass, so I find it easy to believe you.
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Hi Mitchell,
I think C.S. Lewis described rather acutely the spiritual condition that we human beings are presently in. I think it’s clear that it is more than just physical or cultural:
"“This [first] sin has been described by Saint Augustine as the result of Pride, of the movement whereby a creature (that is, an essentially dependent being whose principle of existence lies not in itself but in another) tries to set up on its own, to exist for itself. Such a sin requires no complex social conditions, no extended experience, no great intellectual development. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it. This sin is committed daily by young children and ignorant peasants as well as by sophisticated persons, by solitaries no less than by those who live in society: it is the fall in every individual life, and in each day of each individual life, the basic sin behind all particular sins: at this very moment you and I are either committing it, or about to commit it, or repenting it. We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God’s feet; before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God’s share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of ‘our own’ pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be ‘our own’. A man starts a new job with a sense of vocation and perhaps, for the first week still keeps the discharge of the vocation as his end, taking the pleasures and pains from God’s hand, as they come, as ‘accidents’. But in the second week he is beginning to ‘know the ropes’: by the third, he has quarried out of the total job his own plan for himself within that job, and when he can pursue this he feels that he is getting no more than his rights, and, when he cannot, that he is being interfered with. A lover, in obedience to a quite uncalculating impulse, which may be full of good will as well as of desire and need not be forgetful of God, embraces his beloved, and then, quite innocently, experiences a thrill of sexual pleasure; but the second embrace may have that pleasure in view, may be a means to an end, may be the first downward step towards the state of regarding a fellow creature as a thing, as a machine to be used for his pleasure. Thus the bloom of innocence, the element of obedience and the readiness to take what comes is rubbed off every activity. Thoughts undertaken for God’s sake - like that on which we are engaged at the moment - are continued as if they were an end in themselves, and then as if our pleasure in thinking were the end, and finally as if our pride or celebrity were the end. Thus all day long, and all the days of our life, we are sliding, slipping, falling away - as if God were, to our present consciousness, a smooth inclined plane on which there is no resting. And indeed we are now of such a nature that we must slip off, and the sin, because it is unavoidable, may be venial [excusable].” (The Problem of Pain, “The Fall of Man.” (pp.63-64)
As usual, I like the things C.S. Lewis has to say, and not so much what Augustine has to say. Pride is not so much a sin but a matter of balance. We should have enough pride to do our work well, but not so much that we disregard the well being of others. Nor do I think sin has anything to do with failing to make our thoughts and actions revolve around God 24-7. Frankly I think God obsession can be likened a lot to lip service, and sucking up, which is more about manipulation than anything else, and what I see in the Bible is God’s contempt for this. To be sure, an excessive obsession with self, can also be a problem. So it is likely that this is a matter of balance. In more generality, sin consists of habits which are self-destructive because they work against the very process of life to learn and grow. I think that substance abuse is one of the best examples which is a good analogy for all of sin, because in that one you can see the destructive nature quite clear as it tears down a person’s free will, heart, potential, relationships, and frankly everything good both within themselves and in their life.
As for this… it is just as I feared that in this tactic of responding to 1 point of my previous post you have turned the whole thing around backwards to misrepresent me utterly. So, it is time to remind everyone what this is REALLY about. The one point he responded to was the following
And in explaining why, I said that genetics would point to a physical disease which would indicate a medical solution and thus Christianity would and should be quickly dismissed as bad primitive medicine.
But perhaps a way to clarify some of our difficulties is to point out that while we agree that sin is a spiritual disease, we certainly differ in the details of what this means. I think it is a spiritual disease only because of the spiritual effect not because of some mysterious unknown magical cause. The cause is not mysterious in the slightest. The cause are choices which become destructive habits of thought and action. For example, let’s go to one of the earliest sins in the history that Bible tells about: murder. And the first time was Cain killing his brother Able because God had regard for Abel’s offering and not for Cain’s offering. Like most reasons for murder this is pretty pathetic and as a solution to a problem it is self-destructive in the extreme. Instead of seeking change in the way that God recommends, Cain erases his brother. Soon this bad habit becomes a raging disease as Cain’s descendant Lamech adopts murder as a philosophy of life. In this way mankind goes to hell in a hand basket rather quickly.
adam emerged in history at that moment when a human being was first capable of forming, however dimly, the thought “God.”
Absolutely. This was the dawn of Consciousness. The Ape becoming Human. The Ape eating of the Tree of Knowledge as the Original Sin. The abiltiy to disobey is the Original Sin. With our Consciousness we were able to overcome our instincts and behave ‘rationally’ and as individuals. Individualism is the separation from God (All of God’s creation).
So after being separate from any knowledge of God, the first thought about God was the sin that separated us from God? We were individuals on our own, but then we realized we were individuals and stuck with our own originality?
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The moment your self-awareness has developed to a degree it realizes it disobeys is the moment you commit your first Sin.
This self-awareness not only takes place in children it has also taken place in human evolution.
See how an human embryo develops from zygote to fish to amphibian to mammal to homosapien.
Our brain (consciousness) has followed the same evolutionary path: from Apes to Humans. (Embryo to Adult Human).
Somwhat off, from my thoughts. I hold that unless God gives one the thought about God, one will never come up with the thought of God on their own. We will never evolve into a situation where God is a reality. I understand the need to not put the burden on God, but that is the way God works. God does not bring the knowledge of sin, although, we will never measure up to God. If you accept evolution, as pointed out, will never get us to God’s image, unless God steps into the process. Created in God’s image does not change that, leading to the neccessity of evolution to begin with. We are no longer in God’s image. That is the sticking point. Becoming self aware and even aware of God is not obtaining God’s image. God gave us the image and God took it away. We will still offer up blessing and honor to God.
Sin comes because we reject God and turn our back from God to our own works and understanding. So yes; meeting God, and knowing God; gives us the choice between God and sin, but God brought the choice, not the sin. Sin was the result of rejecting God.
We are arguing the same case here: you say reject God. I say disobey God. Which effectively mean the same thing.
The Priestly author of Genesis appears to look back to an ideal past in which mankind lived at peace both with itself and with the animal kingdom, and which could be re-achieved through a proper sacrificial life in harmony with God.[68]
It is my belief that we will not find God until we have restored the natural order on earth. That means stop polluting the planet and destroying forests and wildlife.
This means first adopting a vegetarian diet and getting rid of all livestock. Give the pasture lands back to nature. Let the forests restore themselves. Let us be responsible stewards of nature and restore the Garden of Eden. The garden, God had created for us.
I think that history has pointed out that men have tried in vain to search for God. God gives humans opportunities to find God, but it seems those opportunities do not measure up to what we want. We want philosophy, religion, and self government. Those are all well and good for our own selfish desires. I doubt they even begin to measure up to what God actually demands to find God.
That is very true. Because they/we have a false concept of God. God is within you. You have the essence of God. God is not an exterior force it is your higher consciousness. But because we put our higher consciousness in service of our Ego ( the natural force of all life) we are destroying our environment.
So, what is true? We are searching for something we will never gain, or we will never gain God, because no such being exist? If God is in us, and we are searching, evidently we have failed ourselves, and God has failed us.
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God exists and we will gain Him in self-denial. This will accomplish the restoration of the Garden of Eden; discovering of God within us; release of the Soul upon death.
In the Babylonian myth man was created from the blood of a sacrificed God, not an ape:
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IMHO this is another way of expressing the reality of Teilhard’s concept that humans have 'one foot in the Biosphere and the other in the Noosphere’–and we will have one Devil of a time constructing a Christian Faith to discern a clear path forward without dishonoring what has served us well in the past.
Al Leo
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