Category Archives: An Archaeology of the Fall

04/13/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 9 of 15)

0048 What about the transition to our current Lebenswelt?

Is there a way that theological anthropology and the anthropology of civilized folk move together?

0049 Here is an interpretation of the Bible.

The fact that all written origin stories of the ancient Near East point to a recent creation of humans implies that the scribes and storytellers cannot see beyond a certain point in time, say 7821 years ago.  Adam and Eve are fairy tale figures standing at the portal of our current Lebenswelt.

0050 Here is a corresponding novel approach to evolutionary science.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  The transition is called the first singularity.  The first singularity begins with the appearance of the first speech-alone talking culture, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.  At this time, all other cultures practice hand-speech talk.

Hand-speech talk?

Speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species, Homo sapiens.

By the time the first singularity initiates, hand-speech talk has been practiced for 200,000 years.

The transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk is simple.  Drop the hand-component.  But no-one ever thinks of doing so, since hand talk grounds words in the natural sign qualities of icons and indexes.  Plus, humans have been enjoying hand-speech talk for countless generations.

0051 So how does the Ubaid culture do it?

By accident.  At the start of our current interglacial, the Persian Gulf is dry land, settled by two two unrelated hand-speech talking cultures, one land-loving Neolithic and one coast and river-loving Mesolithic. A significant and rapid rise of the sea marks the start of our current interglacial.  The Persian Gulf fills with water, pushing the two cultures together.

The cultures join into one.  They develop a pidgin from the two very different languages.  After a few generations, the pidgin turns into a fully linguistic creole.  The hand-component of hand-speech talk is lost.  Sumerian is the first speech-alone language.

Sumerian is a linguistic isolate.  It is unrelated to any family of spoken languages.

0052 The semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk are very different from hand-speech talk.  Hand-speech talk facilitates constrained social complexity.  Speech-alone talk fosters unconstrained complexity.

That is the science in a nutshell.

0053 Three series are devoted to the first singularity at the smashwords website.

The most direct is Crystallizations of the Fall, containing two articles: The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace, plus Comments on Original Death and Original Sin: Romans 5:12-19.  Skeptical science types should start here.

The most accessible is A Course on An Archaeology of the Fall, containing the namesake masterwork and an instructor’s guide.  Accompanying literature includes the early chapters of Genesis, chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Romans and Sura 5.  This is the best path for students and teachers.  This course is designed as a seminar.  Read and discuss.

Implications and further commentaries are located in the series Reverberations of the Fall.  Theologians should consider this series first.  Original sin is relevant, again.  But, here, I am getting ahead of myself.

04/12/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 10 of 15)

0054 So far, The Human Niche covers the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

An Archaeology of the Fall covers the first singularity.

In both these exercises, theological and biological anthropology move together, without violating the Positivist’s construction of what is.

What about our current Lebenswelt?

The first singularity initiates our current Lebenswelt.

Speech-alone talk spreads, through mimesis, to adjacent hand-speech talking cultures, on the basis of marginal differences of wealth and power.

0055 Why is the Ubaid wealthier and more powerful than surrounding hand-speech talking cultures?

Speech-alone talk works on symbols, while hand-speech relies on icons and indexes (even though language itself consists in two related systems of differences, that is, symbolic orders).  Speech-alone talk can name parts, irrespective of wholes.  In hand-speech talk, a part may name the whole.  Consequently, speech-alone talk facilitates specialized languages, which supports labor and social specialization.

The Ubaid has more wealth and power because it is further along a path of labor and social specialization.

0056 But, isn’t there a problem with speech-alone words that is not present in hand-speech talk?

Yes, in hand-speech talk, the gesture-word pictures or points to its referent.  So, of course, the word and referent go together.

In speech-alone talk, we innately anticipate that a spoken word pictures or points to its referent.  But, a speech act does not picture or point to anything.

What happens next?

We project meaning, presence and message into a spoken word.  Then, we construct an artifact that serves as a referent and validates the projected meaning, presence and message.  As long as the projection-validation works, the artifact is salient, and serves as a referent.

0057 Perhaps, the reader sees a problem with this arrangement.

Indeed, Augustine’s depiction of original sin only scratches the surface of the fallen character of our current Lebenswelt.  Some Reformed traditions have a more precise term: total depravity.

If a person is able to construct an artifact that validates the meaning, presence and message that “he” projects onto a spoken word, then what is to stop “him” from um… creating and taking advantage of a situation?

Welcome to our current Lebenswelt, where our own spoken words allow us to name our own “realities”.

0058 Here is another pairing of Biblical interpretations and a new approach to the human sciences.

04/11/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 11 of 15)

0059 Our current world is fallen, yet civilization constantly rises from the ashes of prior self-destructions.

The Bible depicts a cycle of formation, deformation, and reformation.

A new approach to the psychological and the social sciences ought to move in tandem with Biblical interpretation.

0060 Some evolutionary psychologists already stumble in this direction.

For example, today, people are fat, lazy and addicted to sugar.

Is the problem that our ancestors adapt to a world filled with fat-burning, strenuous and sugar-demanding activities?

No, with the benefits of civilization, the pressure is off.  We can afford to slow down, take rests and eat desserts.  The problem is our current Lebenswelt.

0061 When anyone asks me what I’m doing, I say, “I’m working.”

But, I’m really eating candy.

Yes, I project meaning, presence and message into the word, “work”.

And, my projection is paying off.

My own spoken words create an artifact that justifies my sloth, plus a little extra.

Fat, that is.

0062 Spoken words stimulate the production of artifacts that appear to validate the meaning, presence and message of spoken words.

Doesn’t that sound scientific?

The motif is so versatile.

Augustine proposes that the disorder caused by Adam’s rebellion resides in our privy parts.

Surely, he is on track.

What better incentive to manipulate meaning, presence and message, than to generate artifacts in the service of one’s privy parts?

The current Zeitgeist says, “It’s only natural.”

Augustine’s concept of concupiscence sounds like an orientation that postmoderns want to speak about… er… manage.

04/9/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 12 of 15)

0063 What about the disciplines of modern psychology and sociology?

Do they labor as word-smiths, hammering out the spoken words that will address the tsunami of concupiscence-related disorders that currently plague modern society, or do they construct spoken words that thwart an evangelical’s desire to hear a sermon on Original Sin?

After all, lectures on concupiscence are not justified in a Zeitgeist where concupiscence is labeled “natural”.

0064 Surely, secular experts justify various features of our current Zeitgeist… er… regime, just like they previously (and maybe still do) labored to account for various flavors of mercantilism, various strains of fascism, and various manifestations of communism.

These ideologies all build on foundations of spoken words, specialized disciplinary languages fashioned by academically certified agents.

0065 Spoken words can (somehow) create the artifacts that validate spoken words.

The best way to make that happen is with sovereign power.

Spoken words can generate the righteousness underlying an organizational objective that will allow me (and my fellow travelers) to demand sovereign action.  Then, the state implements my organizational objective, thereby validating the righteousness that my spoken words advocated.

Try to get around that.

0066 An example?

May I call the current regime: “big government (il)liberalism”?

Some would call it, “the administrative state”.

Big government (il)liberalism is the latest sovereign solution to the nasty consequences of an enlightened disposition, declaring, “Concupiscence is okay, because it is natural.”

“Tolerance” is key.

Big government experts must be tolerant in order to better manage the citizen’s natural proclivities.

0067 So, the word, “liberal” has been perverted from a focus on freedom and responsibility to a fixation on nonjudgment.

The prefix, (il), celebrates this inversion, because managing citizens is the negation of serving them.

0068 Isn’t that what the word, “government”, ought to mean?

If the citizens are going to do what’s natural, then someone must clean up the mess.  What does that mean?  Someone must control the citizens, in order to ameliorate the mess that they would produce, if left to their own natures.

Er… not someone, something.  Something big.

0069 In a world where government is omnipresent, the message comes across loud and clear.

Look at your television and listen to the talking heads.

We are here to justify your concupiscence.

We are here to manage the consequences.

Please comply with current directives.

04/6/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 14 of 15)

0074 Jeff Hardin calls for theological interpretation of the Bible and scientific inquiry into human evolution to move in tandem.

In doing so, he unknowingly struggles with the Positivist judgment and offers us a post-Positivist alternative.

Here is a picture.

0075 If Hardin’s appeal prevails, then the metaphysics of the Bible offers a noumenon that supports phenomena studied in the human sciences.

Clearly, phenomena alone are insufficient to reveal our particular noumenon.  How can changes in settlement patterns, innovation, and all the other little clues to the potentiation of unconstrained social complexity, produce a revelation that humanity is a recent creation by the divine?

Once the thing itself is intimated by the written origin stories of the ancient Near East, particularly the Biblical stories in Genesis, the human imagination may find a path to the hypothesis of the first singularity.

The noumenon, the thing itself, is necessary in order for there to be phenomena, observable and measurable facets.  Yet, the noumenon cannot be objectified by its phenomena.

For centuries, empirical scientists ignore the noumenon and treat it as an impediment to their struggle for scientific results.  That attitude continues to pervade the modern disciplines of anthropology, psychology and sociology.  But, it cannot hold.

0076 Why?

Humans innately recognize noumena as sources of signification.

Our lineage adapts into the niche of triadic relations, which includes signs, mediations, judgments and category-based nested forms.

0077 Then, our Lebenswelt changes.  We forget who we were.  We fashion fairy tales of who we are.  These fairy tales include public mythologies of the ancient Near East, written in cuneiform on clay tablets that are preserved in burnt ruins of long forgotten capitals.  These public mythologies agree with the stories of Adam and Eve in the Bible.  Humans are recently manufactured by the spiritual realm.

Here is a noumenon that cannot be objectified by its phenomena.

Yet, phenomena exist only because of their noumenon.

The noumenon and its phenomena both point to a recent prehistoric change from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.

0078 The rule of the positivist intellect cannot contain the human sciences.

Theology and the human sciences must move in tandem.

04/5/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 15 of 15)

0079 Jeff Harden follows his appeal with summaries of faithful Christian approaches to human origins.  These approaches include models of existential recapitulation, of protohistory, of representative ancient ancestors, of recently, elected representatives and of genealogies, as opposed to genetics.

None of these are adequate.

0080 Why?

They do not fit the fairy tales about Adam and Eve.

0076 In this look at Hardin’s article, another option appears.  It appears as a mirror image of his opening question.  It asks, “Why doesn’t evolutionary science recognize a twist in human evolution?”

The answer wonders, “Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?“

The hypothesis of the first singularity is a scientific mechanism that works as an adjunct to theological formulations.

Indeed, we come to a new age of understanding, which the late John Deely, calls “The Age of Triadic Relations”.

0077 Here is a picture of three masterworks and their corresponding periods in human evolution.

0078 My thanks to Jeff Hardin, Chair, Biologos Board of Directors, for his mind-opening essay.

03/13/21

Looking at Daniel Turbon’s Article (2020) “…Human Being in Evolution” (Part 11 of 11)

0051 Once human evolution2a is ordered by an appreciation of how our origins are potentiated by the realness of triadic relations2b, a very surprising realization occurs.

Human evolution comes with a twist.

0052 What does that mean?

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The realization is dramatized in An Archaeology of the Fall.

The implications are discussed in Comments on Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution”, Comments on Five Views in the Book (2020) “Original Sin and Evolution” and Comments on James DeFrancisco’s Essay “Original Sin and Ancestral Sin”.  All are available at smashwords.

0053 At this moment, Daniel Turbon does not know.

At this moment, the journal, Scientia and Fides, does not know.

0054 There is something distinctively human in that.

Perhaps, that is what makes the comedy divine.

01/27/21

Evolution and the Fall (Part 1)

0001 In the December 2018 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Amos Yong reviews the compilation, Evolution and the Fall, edited by William T. Cavanaugh and James K. A. Smith (2017, Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, ISBN: 9780802873798).

0002 The book is the product of a three year initiative asking the following if-then question:

(A) If humanity emerges from nonhuman primates, as suggested by genetic, natural historical and archaeological evidence…

(B) …then what are the implications for Christian theology’s traditional account of origins, especially the origin of humanity (B1) and of sin (B2)?

0003 To this question, I attend.

0004 First, the masterwork, The Human Niche, proposes that the ultimate human niche is the potential of triadic relations (B1).  Triadic relations are independent of genes and the environment of evolutionary adaptation.  Even though these play roles in the actualization of triadic relations, they do not alter the nature of the relations (A).

Triadic relations explain why archaeological evidence exists in the first place (B1, A).  Physical evidences are signs of human evolution, to the beholders, that is, ourselves.  Obviously, we are adapted to look for and to participate in sign-processes.  Signs are one type of triadic relation.

0005 Second, the masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall, dramatizes the coming to awareness of a recent twist in human evolution (B1 and B2).  Our current Lebenswelt is not the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  I call the transition: the first singularity.  The first singularity begins around 7821 years ago.  It leaves a fairy tale trace.

0006 The hypothesis of the first singularity (B1 and B2) raises novel questions concerning our current living world (B2).  What is this the nature of our current Lebenswelt (B2)?

01/26/21

Evolution and the Fall (Part 2)

0007 Ours is a world where we project meanings, presences and messages into our spoken words, then construct artifacts to validate them (B2).  The artifact validates our projection, even in the face of unintended consequences.  One result is that spoken words, which are at first not deceptive, become deceptive, then wreak havoc until they are reformed.

Does that sound vaguely Biblical?

0008 An example is offered in the masterwork, How to Define the Word “Religion”.

0009 During and after the Reformation, the word, “religion”, labels Christian factions, vying for sovereign power in order to implement their organizational objectives.  The factions stand as artifacts that validate the term.  The terminology has consequences.  Enlightenment constitutions, especially the American, explicitly forbid the federal government from establishing a religion.

0010 The problem?

During the Enlightenment of the 18th century, and during the subsequent two centuries, new social noumena appear, claiming to be “not religious”.  The word, “secular”, is coined in the mid-1800s as a label.

What does it mean to identify oneself or one’s institution as “not religious”?

Well, it must mean that the entity does not belong to a Christian faction.

0011 The problem?

These “not religious” individuals (thinkers, leaders and supporters), societies (institutions) and movements (widespread affiliations) behave precisely in the same way that Christian factions do after the Reformation. They engage in social construction (meaning). They seek sovereign power in order to implement their organizational objectives (presence). Their righteousness contains inherent contradictions that cannot be resolved (message).

Indeed, modern “secular” individuals, institutions and movements meet the criteria that defines the term, “religion”, according to the above masterwork.

0012 The problem?

The US federal government has established a religion, contrary to the first amendment of its constitution.

It so happens, that the religion is not a “religion” (a Christian faction).

01/25/21

Evolution and the Fall (Part 3)

0013 What does the strange, historic reversal of the term, “religion” imply?

0014 The term is formed, deformed, and now, reformed.

0015 At first, the term is validated by the presence of Christian factions, vying for sovereign power.

Then, the term is exploited by “not religious” individuals, institutions and mass movements.  By identifying as “not religious”, theoreticians, organizations and broadcasters find that they can attain sovereign power in order to implement their own organizational objectives.  After all, they technically fulfill the Enlightenment mandate that sovereign states should not be in the business of establishing “religions” (Christian factions).

As a bonus, their competitors, Christian factions, cannot compete.

0016 Exploitation deforms the word “religion”, because “not religious” individuals, institutions and movements operate in precisely the same way as Christian factions during and after the Reformation, only with better technology. 

0017 The masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”, serves as a corrective to this deformation.  The current use of the word, “not religious”, is radically deceptive (B2), accounting for the application of the word, “secretive”, as an adjective, to secular individuals, societies and even, mass movements.

Do they know what they are doing?

Most “not religious” participants in mass movements think that their opponents are “religious”.  They are.  Yet, these same participants cannot recognize that their own stance is deeply religious, as defined by the masterwork.  The “not religious” are religious, too.  They revel in their own righteousness.

Hence, blatant hypocrisy defines our current times.

0018 In the ancient world, this type of impasse seizes a city or a region and brings it into memetic crisis (see Rene Girard in this regard).  The Bible describes the historical arc of Israel in roughly these terms.  The question revolves around the nature of God’s covenant with Israel.  God’s covenant is formed, deformed then reformed.

Plus, the path is not smooth.  God is at work throughout the Bible.  So are we.

0019 For two thousand years, Christians contemplate how Adam’s rebellion influences us (B2).  The doctrine of Original Sin characterizes a foundational feature of our current Lebenswelt.  We are fallen, then we figure out a truth, then we exploit that truth with a deceptive turn, and we fall again.  Sometimes, with God’s assistance, we figure out our mistake and reform.

Concupiscence is more than our desire to bathe our own corporeal dispositions with the waters of righteousness.  It is also our desire to inflame our spiritual dispositions with the fire of righteousness.  The Reformation term, “total depravity”, captures the way that we claim to define what righteousness is, rather than God.

0020 Isn’t that what Eve does, just before she plucks the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?