Unwittingly, Zimmerman may have introduced to us a thesis that a certain type of madness is equivalent to the consequences of Original Sin.  The person who is crazy but has a perfectly functioning reptilian brain has the nested characteristics of the person fried on Original Sin: A sense of invulnerability, wayward members, shamelessness & pride(naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, & addiction(maintenance of consciousness, physical performance & mood)) parallels neocortex(midbrain(brainstem)).

Even more unwittingly, this implied thesis presents the “reptilian brain” as the only intact feature, thus providing an aesthetic “concatenation” to the “serpent” in the Story of Adam and Eve.  In An Archaeology of the Fall, one of the characters put on the costume of the “serpent”, so that, when Eve spoke, her doubt came alive.  In a sense, the character acted as a reptilian brain supporting a human brain acting as a wayward member and exhibiting a sense of invulnerability, shamelessness & pride and playing on Eve’s mammalian brain’s naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, and addictive thoughts.

Note the implied relation, using the terms of the triune brain: A neocortex without a midbrain interpellates the midbrain of the unprepared recipient, who then senses through her brainstem that some reasoning of her own neocortex has come alive (not all of it, mind you, but the reasoning that resonates with the interpellation), so she reacts to the originating neocortex as if it were a real entity, and adopts its point of view, thus bringing her midbrain and neocortex into alignment (some sort of positive feedback loop).

The alignment is then destroyed by its own beautiful, sublime and monstrous unintended consequences.

Or maybe we can put the implied relation in terms of Augustine and non-Augustine:  An entity, the serpent, exhibiting a sense of invulnerability, inappropriateness, shamelessness and pride appeals to the naiveté, concupiscence, dissociation from law, and addictive thoughts of Eve who (while maintaining consciousness, physical performance and mood) chooses to eat the fruit, as does Adam.

Then they feel the consequences: a sense of vulnerability, loss of control to the passions, shamefulness, and humiliation.   They realize that they are naked.

So we may ask: Is this implied relation one of the necessary features of Original Sin?

If so, then Original Sin – the propensity to “madness that entertains the possibility of rebellion from God” – is a nested relation that mimics the structure of the triune brain, neocortex(midbrain(brainstem)), and can be described as “whatever Augustine said”(“whatever those who did not agree with Augustine said”(the natural functionality of the human body)) or perhaps, pride(concupiscence(life)).

To envision one primordial image of Original Sin, imagine substituting the word “death” for “life” in the last nested heirarchy.  The consequences of Original Sin become apparent once the word “life” has been erased, at the moment that the word “death” is written.