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.