Plato's Playground
You will find Christians who take literally the idea that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Your creationists believe this. You will also find Christians who will argue over a single word in the Bible in English without knowledge or reference to the original Greek, Hebrew, Akkadian, or Sumerian cuneiform (the first form of syllabic writing, which would have been known to Abram--Abraham).
Personally I embrace the theodicy that Adam and Eve were not the first humans, but rather the first humans with a soul, and the first to recognize God. I do not take this passage of Genesis literally. I believe it is our soul, the immaterial part of our humanity, that is in the image and likeness of God. We participate with Him in Being.
All men throughout history have given expression to their spirituality in a quest for God. "Through religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being." (Catechism of the Catholic Church I:2
The Catechism goes on to say in II:33 with regard to the human person: "With his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the 'seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material,' can have its origin only in God."
In other words, what we share with God is Being--without origin or end.
Of course, as an atheist, you'll likely disagree. But I'm okay with that. I'm just trying to explain my perspective.
Uh, that's supposed to be an 8, not a smiley with sunglasses. (twitch)
Personally I embrace the theodicy that Adam and Eve were not the first humans, but rather the first humans with a soul . . .
I don't think that's a technically correct use of the term theodicy, but we'll get to theodicy later. Meanwhile, I find that a curious idea. You are saying that humans existed for - well, if we take the usual analysis of biblical chronology, it would have been something like 400,000 years if we are talking anatomically modern people -- without "souls," and then God decided to give souls to two of them? So they must have existed among a whole soulless population. And then what happened? Did all the children born from then on have souls, or only Adam and Eve's descendants? If so, what happened to the people who were not their descendants? Did they die out, or are they still among us?
Have you thought all this through?
The notion of "soul" is deeply embedded in our culture, but I see no logical reason to believe in it. We appear to be biological mechanisms operating from biochemical processes. The only reason to postulate the existence of a soul is the hope for something, anything to live after death.
You know Cervantes, it's that bulldog quality about you I like. But maybe I should just stick to discussing Celebrex or Bush's foreign policy--you know stuff we agree on.
Anyway, you did want a dialogue, right? I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just offering a suggestion, as you say.
The way I use the term theodicy: when a theist attempts to explain something, such as "whence evil?" or "whence evolution?" he is creating a theodicy. And a theist may, in fact, want to have a theodicy to reconcile such things.
Did I think this through? That's insulting. No wonder you don't have any theists who want to comment or contribute here. You just give off these, "I'm going to mock you to within an inch of your life" vibes.
It's not science, okay? Quit being so literal minded. I've already explained to you that I don't take the Bible literally--especially with regard to pre-history.
This theodicy illuminates the analogy of the Biblical creation story. It is intended to be analogous to evolution. "You are saying that humans existed for - well, if we take the usual analysis of biblical chronology, it would have been something like 400,000 years if we are talking anatomically modern people -- without "souls," and then God decided to give souls to two of them?" I'm not saying that at all. Adam and Eve are representative of all humans. Just as Cain is representative of all farmers and Abel representative of all herders. I don't think of Adam and Eve as individuals, but rather the first anatomically modern people (or group of people) to grasp the moral concepts of "good" and "bad."
I don't want to dicuss this with you anymore. It's not a dialogue, or an attempt to understand people of faith; it's an argument that you are determined to win.
So, you know, whatever. You win. Have fun with it. Cant' wait to see what you make of Adam living to be 930 years old.
Cervantes,
I’m finding it hard to understand your reason for writing out the text of the Bible, verse by verse, here in your blog. Could you explain where you are going with this? What’s the purpose?
If I wanted to study the HIPAA regulation, understand the Healthy People 2010 objectives, or learn how to make a particular recipe, it would not make much sense for me to start questionning after the first line (although I know people who do). People can argue ad nauseum about the immunization objectives of HP2010, and it may never make sense until a person has read, or at least honestly tried to understand, the entire document.
At the very least, it would simply be helpful to know your purpose in posting these Bible verses. What kind of dialogue are you hoping for?
By the way, I really like the Peacemaker story. I have some very good First Nations friends with similar stories as this.
Well, first of all Missy, I'm not being hostile, I'm just asking you to further explain your thinking. I wasn't sure I understood it fully, so I was inviting you to expand on what you had said. In asking you if you had thought it through, I didn't think I was implying that you hadn't, I was just asking. Your answer is much more understandable to me than your original comment. That's what I wanted.
NC, my project is to actually read the whole Bible, from beginning to end, in order, and discuss it with whoever is interested. Obviously, I have my own point of view. I'm a humanist, and I view it as a historical and literary artifact. It isn't sacred or holy to me, but it's of great cultural importance. Others who read and comment here may see it from a different point of view. I'm interested in hearing from them.
As I have also said, it is a basic principle of this blog that no one point of view rules. Religious believers who want to have top level posting privileges here are invited to apply. Missy, you can post here if you want. Just let me know. NC, I don't know a lot about what you have to say at this point, but if you have a use for top level posting here, tell me about it.
Richard Elliott Friedman (Who Wrote the Bible?) makes the interesting point that Genesis 1 is going to create some interesting interpretive problems when you get to Genesis 3:
"The meaning of 'in the image of God' is uncertain. Does it mean a physical image--that God has a face and body like ours? or a spiritual image? or an intellectual image? Whatever it means, though, we can say, at minimum, that the Bible pictures humans as participating in the divine in some way that an animal does not. There is something of God in humans. . . . [In Genesis 3] the humans are prohibited from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. The snake leads them to eat it anyway. What does the snake say that brings humans to do this? He tells the woman that if they eat from the tree, 'you will be like God. . .'"
Friedman's historical thesis is that part of the problem here is that Genesis 1 was not written by the author of Genesis 3, but that "the redactor" who assembled what is now the book of Genesis decided not to edit to resolve the apparent conflict (man is made in the image of God, it is a sin to wish to be like God) either for theological reasons (it's a mystery, get used to the idea; or perhaps "in the image of" and "like" had distinct colloquial meanings we can no longer recapture) or because both competing traditions (man is like God, man may not be like God) were too engrained in ancient Hebrew culture to allow the redactor to "get away with" snipping one out to render the whole text coherent. (This issue obviously comes up over and over again throughout the Bible as a whole.)
And when you get all the way to Exodus and find out that you will be prohibited under pain of God's eternal wrath from making things which are images of God, you have yet another head-spinning twist on the problem of the relationship between the thing and its image. (Friedman, btw, thinks Exodus is written by yet a third writer.)
All this certainly creates problems for literalists; it also creates problems for metaphorists. My own favorite take on the situation is to meditate on the history and various culturally-loaded meanings of the word "iconoclast" (one who destroys icons, or "prohibited" religious images, thus a fundamentalist purist, now morphed into its current meaning of open-minded radical sacred-cow killer).
Sorry for being so thin skinned.
I will seriously consider your offer to post here.
And Tanta makes an excellent point about the multiple writers of the Bible. You are about to come upon the second story of creation, and it is fairly easy to identify the sudden change in style, not to mention the different order of events.
Were you aware that most Biblical scholars believe the first story of creation was written by a woman?
No, I didn't know that Missy. My understanding is that Genesis is a record of a long oral tradition, so I suppose what that would mean is that it is a tradition that came down through women, as opposed to the formal priestly traditions that make up some parts of the Pentateuch.
Those are interesting points Tanta - I had already noticed something like that, but what you have to add will help me formulate those thoughts more clearly.
A decent on line source:
http://www.straightdope.com/mail...ag/
mbible1.html
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