0088 There are two creation stores in Genesis.

Genesis One portrays the creation of the tent (or temple) of the heavens and the earth.  At the same time, using Peirce’s typology of signs, the six days of creation are signs of corresponding evolutionary epochs.

Genesis 2.4 introduces the stories of Adam and Eve.  These stories are fairy tales, concerning two figures living near the start of the Ubaid.  Adam and Eve are the parents, not of all humanity, but the lineage of Seth.  Noah is born in the lineage of Seth.  Abraham is born into the lineage of Noah.  Moses is born in the lineage of Abraham.  David is anointed king over the people who followed Moses.  Jesus is born into the lineage of David.

0089 Remember the Greimas square?

Here is the Greimas square for the map of the Nile, imaginatively relabeled with a pencil.

0090 The waterfall is an imaginary construct, marking the location of a series of unnavigable rapids.   It is the focal term (A).

The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is clearly manifest in the archaeological record by 5800BC.  That is 7800 years ago.  I denote this year as 0 Ubaid Zero Prime, that is, 0 U0′ (spoken, “Zero Uh-Oh Prime”).

Uh-oh Prime?

0091 Imagine going over a waterfall so tall that, by the time of landing, you do not remember that you went over some sort of edge, long long ago.

Yes, that sounds like 0 U0′.

0092 Perhaps, I can picture a series of rapids, where each rapid is so turbulent that one hardly remembers the previous one.  Or maybe, one remembers only half of the previous turbulence.  After four rapids, each lasting around two-hundred and forty-eight years, one remembers only one-sixteenth of the first rapid.  After another seven-hundred and fifty years, one remembers less that one percent of the original rapid.  Perhaps, people only remember the first rapid as some sort of fairy tale.

0093 The Ubaid nominally starts at 0 U0′.

The next archaeological period, the Uruk, begins around 1800 U0′.

That corresponds to seven Plutonic years.

In each Plutonic year, civilization emerges, grows, matures, becomes feeble, and descends into the underworld.

Recall, only a single Plutonic year describes the rise, growth, maturity, corruption and self-destruction of the United States of America, from 1776 to 2024.

Imagine such change seven times over.

Who could remember?

0094 The lowlands of DeNial (B) contrast with these rapids.  The lowlands hit their stride in the Uruk.

The Uruk expands, in an organized fashion, into territories occupied by other Neolithic cultures.  Uruk invents the pottery wheel, then the cart wheel.  Uruk domesticates the donkey.  Uruk invents writing.  Uruk conducts long-distance trade, which is very different from traditional down-the-line exchange.  Uruk builds towns.  Uruk sends emissaries to distant lands.  Uruk demands corvee labor and compensates with rations using standardized bowls.

Neighboring hand-speech talking cultures do what every culture does when exposed to a budding civilization with wealth and power.  They mimic their neighbor.  They drop the hand-talk component of their hand-speech talk.  They adopt speech-alone talk.  Then, they too, begin to forget the time-less world of hand-speech talk.  Why?  Speech-alone talk and hand-speech talk have radically different semiotic properties.

0095 Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic.  Spoken words can label anything.  On the map, I write the name of the river, running through Egypt, on its way to the Mediterranean, where history begins.  I write the name, “DeNial”.  Sure, it is a joke, of some sort.  At the same time, the label shows that any spoken word can be placed anywhere, even on a map of a river, when the official name is different.  Yes, we pretend that our spoken words are full of meaning, presence and message, when they really only placeholders in two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole and langue.  Spoken words fill empty slots in a network of empty slots.

Isn’t that what the structuralists have been telling the modern West for the past century?

0096 The uplands of De Nile (C) speak against the lowlands of DeNial (B).

Hand-speech talk pictures and points to its referents.  So, the referent exists and the gestural-word pictures or points to the referent.  Symbolic operations enter the picture only because one manual-brachial word gesture must be sufficiently distinct as to not be confused with other manual-brachial word gestures.  Symbols have that character.  Each symbol is distinct.  Distinctiveness allows speed in communication.  Manual-brachial word gestures, even though grounded in the sign-qualities of icons and indexes, are sufficiently symbolic as to support symbolic operations, otherwise known as grammar.  

Hand-speech talk is fully linguistic.  Hand-speech talk is grounded in the natural sign-qualities of icons and indexes. Hand talk has trained us to expect that our words refer to real things, not abstractions or made-up realities.  We innately expect our words to refer to things and states of things.

0097 The river of time (D) contrasts with the uplands of De Nile (C), because it includes that short river running through the lowlands (B), just beyond the falls (A).  As far as human evolution goes, De Nile (C) runs for millions of years while the entire river (D) runs only 7800 years longer.  All written history occurs within that short period of 7800 years.  Everyone who we know, as historical figures, live in our current Lebenswelt (B).

0098 Here is a picture of the Greimas square for the waterfall, in terms of Earth years.

0127 The author does not grasp the potential of his own hypothesis, that God labels Adam and Eve as “Image Bearers of God” and the label stands at the start of all humankind in our current Lebenswelt.

Indeed, he immediately stumbles into the fool’s errand that says, “Labels are really important.”

0128 Well, I admit the point.  Realistic labels are important if I want to get anything technical accomplished, including floccinaucinihilipilification.  But, spoken words do not reliably generate realistic labels.

Consider the testimony of the World Economic Forum-promoted author, Noah Harari, who claims that humans are able to succeed more than other animals because humans are able to invent fictional beings, like “images” and “God”, to get others to buy into a deception and thereby bind them to cooperate on complex tasks.

Or, consider the testimony of the serpent in the garden, who says (more or less), “Everything I say is technically correct, and is designed to deceive you into believing that this fruit is intelligence incarnate, because I am convinced that you are that stupid.”

0129 To make a long story short, the hypothesis of the first singularity highlights the word-play that dwells within the stories of Adam and Eve as well as our everyday civilized lives.  The hypothesis places the stories of Adam and Eve at the start one of the world’s first civilizations, and conveys the message that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Loke’s hypothesis of God naming Adam and Eve, “Image-Bearers of God”, complements the hypothesis of the first singularity because it attaches labels onto these fairy-tale figures, so that Adam and Eve can be the founders of all humans who receive this label, by way of all sorts of non-genetic mechanisms, such as being born into a civilization practicing speech-alone talk.

0130 In section 5.6, Loke defends Traducianism.

The doctrine of Traducianism explains the passage of original sin… or is it original guilt?… from Adam to all subsequent humanity.  It assumes that Adam and Eve are literally the father and mother of all humanity. So, the mechanism of transfer may be called, “genetic”.

The theological implications of the scientific hypothesis of the first singularity offers an alternative mechanism.  Original sin, the condition of the loss of original justice, passes to anyone who is born in a civilized world, practicing speech-alone talk.  The mechanism of transfer is not “genetic”.  It is “unavoidable”, because every civilization practices speech-alone talk from its inception.

0125 Indeed, the hypothesis of the first singularity accounts for the impression that Adam and Eve are the first humans,because they are fairy tale figures associated to the foundation of the first culture to practice speech-alone talk, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, round about 0 U0′.

Yes, I am back to uh-oh prime.

0131 The Uruk archaeological period starts 1800 U0′, after seven Plutonic years.

The Sumerian Dynastic, officially labeled “civilization”, starts around 2800 U0′, after four more Plutonic years.

0132 For southern Mesopotamia, only 11 Plutonic years pass when going from zero to full civilization.  By the time that the Sumerian Dynastic starts, speech-alone talk extends from the eastern coast of China to the western edge of the Mediterranean to the northern steppes of Russia.

How do I know this?

Speech-alone talk is the third technology of the intellect (the first is hand-talk and the second is hand-speech talk) adopted by the Homo genus.  Speech-alone talk has radically different semiotic qualities than hand and hand-speech talk.  These novel semiotic qualities promote unconstrained social complexity, including civilization.

See chapter five of An Archaeology of the Fall.

0133 Speech-alone talk spreads from the Ubaid to surrounding hand-speech talking cultures.  Exposure to speech-alone talk initiates a cultural process where the hand-component of hand-speech is valued less and less until the people practice speech-alone talk.  No doubt, the shamans of old warn of the dangers.  But, who are they to impede progress towards increasing wealth and power?

0134 The stories of Adam and Eve bear witness.  All the non-Biblical written origin stories of the ancient Near East also bear witness.  Humans are recent creations.  None of the storytellers can imagine a world full of humans before the beginning described in their origin stories.  No one can discern the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  

In the first chapter of Genesis, humans are created in the image of God.  In the Adam and Eve stories, they are endowed with the title, “Image Bearer of God”.  Well, the title is not explicitly bestowed.  Rather, the couple mechanically fashioned, by God, each in a different style, which comes pretty close to an explicit declaration.  And, what do they do?  They tarnish the image.  They devalue the brand.

How great their fall.

0135 If the doctrine of Traducianism no longer applies, due to coincidence of the stories of Adam and Eve and the first singularity, what use is it?

It is an excellent example of how we, in our current Lebenswelt, use explicit abstraction in order to construct internally consistent cognitive structures.  One could call these structures, langue.

0136 I will use Loke’s discussion of Traducianism in section 5.7 to construct a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms.  The three-level interscope is developed in A Primer on Sensible and Social Constructionand A Primer on the Category-based Nested Form, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0137 Here is a picture of the general structure of a category-based nested form.

0138 First, if Adam and Eve are the first humans who are labeled, “Image Bearers of God”, then they ought to be the original pair.

Genetic research into human chromosomes detail two DNA-bearing structures specific to male and female.  These are the Y chromosome, for males, and mitochondrial DNA, for females.  As it turns out, both structures trace back to specific individuals (one male and one female) living hundreds of thousands of years ago.  These independent discoveries are described in popularizing articles, with titles such as “The Y-chromosomal Adam” and “The Mitochondrial Eve”.

0139 So, Adam and Eve, the Y-chromosome originator and the mitochondrial-DNA originator, donate the foundational sperm and egg for all humanity.  Sperm and egg₂ are real elements.  They correspond to actuality₂ in a category-based nested form.

According to biology, sperm and egg meet in the uterus.  The uterus₃ corresponds to the normal context₃.  The potential₁concerns conception₁.

0140 Here is a picture of the resulting category-based nested form.

0141 Hmmm.  I suppose that a bold and disconcerting portrayal of human biology is built into the Traducian doctrine.  Yep, that is the situation alright.  Adam goes with the sperm.  Eve goes with the egg.

0142 Now, I wonder, “What does this have to do with Loke’s hypothesis that God labels Adam and Eve as Image Bearers of God?“

0143 Well, the Traducian doctrine puts this rather clinical situation into perspective.  Theologians start by positing Aristotle’s substance dualism.  Another term for this dualism is “hylomorphism”.  Hylo is Greek for “matter”.  Morphe is Greek for “form”.  Aristotle’s hylomorphism is an example of Peirce’s category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  For nomenclature, I put the contiguity in brackets, as in the following figure.

I hope that this looks familiar.

0144 The category of secondness is the realm of actuality.

Next, theologians propose that soul and body correspond to matter and form.  The problem is that there are two configurations.  In one, the body is like material matter and the immaterial soul is like form.  In the other, the soul is like spiritual matter and the body is like material form.  In the first, the body gives substance to the soul.  In the second, the soul animates the body.

0145 Traducian doctrine puts the biological situation of the human into perspective using the second dyad.  The normal context follows the imagery of God breathing into Adam.  God brings His fashioned artifact to life.  This one living creature bears the stamp of God, “made by God”.  In a certain sense, the Father breathes meaning, presence and message into what He has fashioned from the earth.  Plus, do not forget that title.  Adam is an Image Bearer of God.

Here is a picture of the resulting nested form.

0146 This perspective coheres with the story of the creation of Adam.  Replace “soul” with “the breath of God”.  Replace “body” with an artifact fashioned from earth.

Indeed, the stories of Adam and Eve present the listener with the actuality₂ of God’s breath [animates] Adam, fashioned from the earth.  Christian theologians have placed this dyad_2c into a perspective-level normal context_3c and potential_1c in order to understand.

0147 So far, I have two levels to the Traducian doctrine.

0148 Both of these levels are explicit abstractions, drawing from the foundational stories of Adam and Eve.

The stories of Adam and Eve ask us to recognize a possibility.

These two levels of explicit abstraction arise from that possibility.

These two levels of abstraction tell us that Adam and Eve stand at the beginning of our current Lebenswelt.

0149 Except for the Creation Story, all other written origin stories of the ancient Near East concur with the stories of Adam and Eve.  All testify that humans are a recent creation.  Prior to 2023, no scientific hypothesis accounts for this testimony, except for the hypothesis of the first singularity.

Premodern Christian theologians know that Adam and Eve occupy the content level.  The question is how.  Saint Augustine proposes the normal context of Original Sin_3a.  Adam and Eve, in disobeying God’s command, are thrown onto their own devices.  Their reason is dulled.  They are tarnished Image Bearers of God.  And, that tarnish is experienced as disorienting waves of desire_1a.  

Cupid is the Roman god of desire.  He is perpetually adolescent.  He is the love-child of Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war.  Saint Augustine puts a label on our almost irresistible waves of desire_1a.  He calls them, con (with) cupi (Cupid) scence (being).  Concupiscence_1a is “being with Cupid”.  Cupid relishes having a good time.

0150 Original Sin_3a is the normal context.  Concupiscence is the potential_1a.

The question is, “How to label the actuality?”

Heaving bodies [substantiate] soulful emissions?

0151 I suppose modern society is no longer polite society.  No one really wants to discuss, much less apply an appropriate label, to the content-level actuality_2a virtually underlying the situation-level actuality of sperm [and] egg_2b.

Fortunately, the fairy tales of Adam and Eve provide a suitable label.  After Eve is introduced to Adam as his helper (think of the irony of that), Adam is overjoyed.  The storyteller then provides a commentary, explaining why a man and a woman get married.  The two become one flesh.

0152 Each of the terms in the content-level nested form is an explicit abstraction.

Yet, the result is a intuitively satisfying category-based nested form that says, “Even in marriage, concupiscence operates.  Even though the waters of baptism remove the stain of Original Sin, the potential for disorienting waves of desireremains.  Be on guard.  We can fall into temptation at any moment.”

0153 Original Sin_3a is the consequence of the Fall of Adam and Eve.  Original Sin_3a is a normal context for our current Lebenswelt.  If we are all subject to Original Sin because we are directly descended from Adam and Eve, then Traducianism explains how.

0154 Ironically, Augustine’s position, that we are all direct descendants of Adam and Eve, is a scientific (as well as theological) proposition.

Modern genetics proves Augustine’s proposition to be incorrect.

Yet, there is a certain honesty to the Traducian doctrine.

The doctrine offers a certain intellectual satisfaction.

And, this satisfaction tells us something about the character of our current Lebenswelt.

0155 Loke defends Traducianism, not because it is technically correct, but because it is beautiful.  It is internally coherent.  It is intellectually satisfying.  It offers a way to appreciate how Original Sin is propagated by our own desires (to propagate).  Who says that Saint Augustine doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Here is a picture of the content, situation and perspective levels of the doctrine.

0156 Genetics demonstrates that there is no originating pair.

Traducianism is dead.

Yet, Original Sin_3a still contextualizes the potential of concupiscence_1a.

Long live Traducianism.

0157 The hypothesis of the first singularity provides a scientific pathway that may replace the interscope of Traducianism.  Traducianism aims to explain how Adam’s Original Sin… or is it Original Guilt?.. is transferred from Adam and Eve to all humanity.  But, that is not all.  Clearly, the situation level of the Traducian doctrine contains pure biology.  The perspective and content levels allow us to understand human biology.

0158 Modern science establishes that a single breeding pair cannot be the genetic origin of all humans.  Hence, the grasping at straws in Loke’s formulation of Adam and Eve as the originators of contemporary Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA.

0159 Loke searches for an alternative and finds, in God’s assignment of the title, “Image Bearers of God”, to Adam and Eve, the potential for a non-genetic mechanism for the transfer of Original Sin.

At the same time, since the stories of Adam and Eve convey such a strong impression that they constitute the first humans, Loke is drawn back to the mechanism proposed so long ago by Saint Augustine.  We are literally the descendants of Adam and Eve and the mechanism starts with concupiscience_1a residing in the content-level potential of the Traducian interscope.

0160 With the aid of the category-based nested form, we may now appreciate the Traducian doctrine as an exemplar of explicit abstraction in our current Lebenswelt.  This doctrine presents a complete interscope.  Complete interscopes are intellectually satisfying.

In Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2017) Why Only Us?, Razie Mah proposes that langue (the mental system of differences that is arbitrarily related to parole, speech-alone talk) can be depicted as a three-level interscope, a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms.

In Razie Mah’s Blog, for April 2023, the posts titled, Looking at Gad Saad’s Book (2020) “The Parasitic Mind”, portray a complete interscope for the modern academic fad of “wokeness”.

0161 Here is how understanding works, as far as the category-based nested form is concerned.

Consider an actuality₂.  Understanding comes when the inquirer finds a normal context₃ and potential₁ for that actuality.  A filled-in category-based nested form conveys understanding.

The same statements apply to the three-level interscope.

When all the elements of a three-level interscope are filled in, then the inquirer understands the situation-level category-based nested form.

Whether the understanding is correct or honest, that is another matter.