08/5/22

Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” (Part 18 of 22)

0157 What is proposition eighteen?

Jesus is the cornerstone of God’s plan.

The issue is not only order and disorder.

The issue is also truth and deception.

Accountability results in order.

Accountability demands truth.

0158 Jesus is crucified by a Roman regime fixated on order and a Jewish regime fixated on its ownership of the “truth”. Pontius Pilate testifies to the Roman fixation by placing a placard on the cross, saying, “King of the Jews”. The Jewish religious elite testify to their fixation by complaining that the placard should read, “He says that he is the king of the Jews”.

0159 It is no irony that Walton follows with a discussion of the Tower of Babel.

The Tower of Babel paints a picture of the end of a cycle of settling, gaming, and going insane. The city is settled. It is so rich that it is full of games. Lots of people make their living using speech-alone talk. They hit upon a vision. The city drains its finances in the single-minded pursuit of making a name for itself.

They start of build a ziggurat, a tower to the heavens. This requires experts. The experts are so specialized that one specialty does not really understand what the other specialties are doing. On top of that, the planners speak one tongue and the laborers speak another. Imagine the graft! The project ends in disaster. The elites do not think that they will be held accountable. Eventually, they are, especially when God says, “Enough”.

0160 Surely, this sounds familiar to Americans in 2022.

0161 In the telling, Walton makes a notable connection. The ziggurat is designed to allow the city deity to descend from the heavens to the earth. The city god descends down the ziggurat then enters the adjacent temple. Often, the temple has a garden.

So, the ziggurat is the stairway down to the city god’s little Eden, the center of order of the entire urban region.

0162 Clearly, these are the plans of people, not of God.

The confounding of the languages turns out to be God’s response.

08/4/22

Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” (Part 19 of 22)

0163 What is proposition nineteen?

Paul does not mention Adam in terms of human origins in his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians. He is interested in the effect of sin on the cosmos, as well as on humanity.

0164 Certain questions arise when we read Paul in our age of modern science. We are curious about Adam as a source, a literal founder, and how his founding entangles all of us.

0165 If Adam is a founder, then what does Adam find?

Adam finds that he is held into account for his deeds.

This keys into the hypothesis of the first singularity, as shown below.

Figure 34

0166 If Paul does not know about the first singularity, then what is Paul talking about?

Walton hands the question to N.T. Wright, a scholar studying the words of Paul for a very long time.

0167 Wright writes that Adam has a vocation. God calls Adam to do something. The Garden of Eden is sacred space. Adam is to minister to the garden. So is Eve. The Garden is God’s kingdom.

0168 To me, Genesis 2.4-3 is not about creating humans per se. It is about creating humans anew. Adam and Eve are literally born again, as far as human evolution goes.

Wright illuminates core questions in the scientific hypothesis of the first singularity (even though he is not aware of the hypothesis at the time of writing).

0169 The Ubaid is the first culture to practice speech-alone talk. It expects to live like the surrounding cultures, which practice hand-speech talk. They do not know that speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity. They just muddle along with spontaneous manifestations of greater and greater labor and social specializations.

The problem?

Each specialization takes on a life and a “language” of its own. Each specialization orders work and society in its own way. Ubaid folk try to maintain their traditions, but they are constantly faced with spontaneous innovations and changes.

0170 Ubaid folk are challenged, over and over again, with two questions. How do we establish and maintain order? What is real and what is not real? Like the people of the Ubaid, Adam and Eve have no clue as to what they are up against.

08/3/22

Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” (Part 20 of 22)

0171 Wright asks, “What is Adam’s vocation?”

Wright’s answer plays on the image of God mentioned in the Creation Story.

He writes (more or less, “Adam’s vocation is to be an angled mirror, reflecting God’s wise order into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to the Creator.” (See page 175.)

0172 Ironically, this is what Jesus does, in ways that no one anticipated. Substitute the word, “truth”, for “praises”.

0173 Indeed, this is a vocation for all Christians, as they are drawn into conflicts with those who are convinced that they have solutions to the challenges of order and reality.

The challenges, from the viewpoint of the hypothesis of the first singularity, come from the proposed solutions. Speech-alone words (the declared reality) are used to create the artifacts (the order) that validate the speech-alone words (the declared reality).

Initially, everyone is on board with the declared reality and the artifacts that validate them. Then, some start gaming the system by manipulating the order. Others justify the manipulations by redefining the technical meanings of the declared reality. They fudge the truth. Afterwards, artifacts validate a distorted order that depends on experts configuring technical meanings. Then, an event similar to the end of the Tower of Babel occurs.

0174 One of vocations of Israel is to rescue the human race and get God’s creational project back on track. (See pages 176-177.)

0175 The problem?

Who is going to mirror the heavenly order down to earth? Who is going to mirror the mundane truth up to heaven? The prophets try. The prophets are met with resistance, by an establishment interested in manipulating order and reality. The establishment is full of mirrors. Oh, I should not forget the smoke. Smoke and mirrors.

0176 This is where Jesus comes into the picture. Man is created in the image of God. Jesus calls himself, “The Son of Man.”

If Adam is supposed to reflect the divine order to earth and reflect the mundane truth to God, then he fails. Jesus succeeds where Adam falls.

In this, Paul calls us to redemption in Christ.

08/2/22

Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” (Part 21 of 22)

0177 Proposition 20?

It is not essential that all people descend from Adam and Eve.

Nor is it esse_tial.

0178 However, there is more to say about this proposition.

Here is a picture of the Fall and Aristotle’s hylomorphe.

0179 This hylomorphe describes a noumenon.

Science investigates phenomena, the observable and measurable facets of a noumenon. These facets must be material. Otherwise, how would scientists observe and measure them?

The Positivist’s judgment contains an apparent contradiction in what it regards as what is. A noumenon cannot be objectified as its phenomena. What does this mean? On one hand, given a suite of phenomena, one cannot readily tell what the noumenon is. On the other hand, given a noumenon, its phenomena are readily identified through observations and measurements.

In other words, an easily recognizable noumenon invites scientific inquiry into its phenomena.

0180 Consequently, proposition 20 indicates that the failure of one particular model should not stop scientific inquiry into the phenomena of the noumenon described in the doctrine of Original Sin.

0181 The phenomena are obvious. Fallen humans have many… shall I say… counterproductive tendencies, including trends to settlement, gaming the present order for advantage, then manipulating truth in order to justify our advantages, then losing the original settled order on unsuccessful solutions to the contradictions that we introduced in our pursuits of advantage.

0182 Now, direct descent from Adam and Eve is Augustine’s clever model. It accounts for the data. But, because this model is scientific, it can be debunked. Plus, it has been debunked by the laboratory-based discipline of genetics.

If Augustine were still around, he would propose other models, such as the social milieu model proposed in the 7700s (U0′) by Piet Schoonenberg, S.J.

The hypothesis of the first singularity features a model that says, “When humans first appear in the fossil record, they practice hand-speech talk, because speech is added to hand talk during our speciation. Then, 200,000 years later, when the Persian Gulf fills, the rising waters force two hand-speech talking cultures into the same territory, resulting in a fusion of the two cultures, as well as a new language, the Sumerian. The Sumerian language is a creole. This creole is the first example of speech-alone talk. It lacks the hand-talk component.

“As it turns out, the semiotic differences between speech-alone and hand-speech talk are so significant that speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity, while hand-speech talk does not. This explains why the first civilization arises from the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia. Plus, this explains why all of us are entangled with the Ubaid. All civilizations in our current Lebenswelt practice speech-alone talk.”

0183 Here is an alternate Augustine model for the phenomena of the noumenon of Original Sin.

Original Sin is an easily recognizable noumenon.

This noumenon invites scientific inquiry into its phenomena.

0184 The hypothesis of the first singularity is a more plausible natural science model than Augustine’s model of descent from Adam and Eve.

Plus, the natural science model (based on the realness of semiotics) somehow changes our appreciation of the noumenon, the thing itself.

If the natural science model becomes what the noumenon must be, then a novel suite of social sciences are born, encompassing both psychology and sociology.

0185 Here is a picture.

0186 To appreciate this argument, consider articles in the series, Phenomenology and the Positivist Intellect, available at smashwords and other e-book vendors.

08/1/22

Looking at John Walton’s Book (2015) “The Lost World of Adam and Eve” (Part 22 of 22)

0187 Proposition twenty-one?

Humans can be viewed as a distinct creation and a special creation of Ged, even if there is continuity, as far as genetics and natural history are concerned.

0188 However, there is a twist in human evolution.

The twist does not alter our genetic make-up.

The twist does not involve any phenotypic alteration.

The twist involves an immaterial change in cultural evolution.

The semiotics of speech-alone and hand-speech talk are radically different.

0189 Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0190 John Walton writes, in 2015, without knowing about Razie Mah’s three masterworks. All are available as smashwords and other e-book venues.

The Human Niche covers the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

An Archaeology of the Fall dramatically renders the first singularity.

How to Define The Word “Religion” confronts the nature of our current Lebenswelt.

0191 Every proposition in The Lost World of Adam and Eve is touched upon by these three scientific works.

Walton’s excellent book is published in the twilight of the Age of Ideas.

All the material that he covers asks to be re-articulated, in order to move into the dawning Age of Triadic Relations.

0192 My thanks to John Walton (and collaborator, N.T. Wright) for their engaging effort. The science has changed. It is time to put pen to paper, again.

07/29/22

Looking at Matthew Crawford’s Essay (2022) “Covid was Liberalism’s Endgame” (Part 1 of 10)

0001 Matthew B. Crawford, at University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, publishes an essay at the website, UnHerd, on May 21, 2022. The website is worth investigating. Crawford is worth reading.

0002 But, that is not my only motive for this sequence of blogs.

It turns out that well-organized writers provide excellent material for triadic diagrams. These blogs aim re-articulate Crawford’s argument, following the technique of association and implication. The method is the same as with the other blog this month, concerning Vigano’s speech on how Vatican II serves the agenda of the Great Reset crowd.

0003 The title of Crawford’s essay is displayed in the header. The subtitle reveals the nature of the endgame. Liberal individualism has an innate tendency towards authoritarianism. That tendency manifests as real behavior.

0004 What is the real behavior?

Italian Giorgio Agamben (b. 1942) captures its essence with the political philosophical… or is it theological?.. label, “state of exception”. During the past eighty years, emergency declarations become more and more the norm. An emergency declaration inaugurates a state of exception and provides cover for top-down programs of social transformation.

0005 What do emergency-justified “liberal” projects aim to accomplish?

The core of the “liberal” regime is both political and anthropological: to remake humans.So, the answer depends on the meaning of “make”.

07/29/22

Looking at Matthew Crawford’s Essay (2022) “Covid Was Liberalism’s Endgame” (Part 2 of 10)

0006 How are humans to be reconfigured?

Two key political philosophers articulate two visions.

0008 John Locke (1632-1704 AD) regards humans as self-governing creatures. Humans are endowed with reason. Commonsense allows us to rule ourselves. Democracy is the mode of government most suitable for reasonable citizens.

Liberals remake humans by changing their votes.

Locke’s position may be re-articulated as a nested form. A nested form? See A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

Here is the nested form. The normal context of human nature₃ brings the actuality of commonsense₂ into relation with the potential of a form of governance suited for self-governing people₁. Democracy₁ labels that potential₁. Democracy₁ is the potential of a state arising from self-governing people₁.

Here is a diagram.

0009 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679 AD) claims that each human is vulnerable, especially in regards to other humans. Every person is vulnerable to the ambitions of other people. We need a state to protect us (from one another).

Liberals remake humans asking the government to protect them from harm.

Hobbes’s position may be re-articulated as a nested form.

The normal context of the state of nature₃ brings the vulnerability of each person (especially with respect to other people)₂ into relation with the possibility that the state will protect us (from ourselves)₁. Hobbes has a label for a form of governance that manifests the potential of protecting us from one another. He calls it₁ “leviathan”. Leviathan₁ is the potential of a state capable of protecting us (from one another)₁.

Here is a picture.

0010 From its inception, the liberal civic religion holds both Locke’s and Hobbes’s positions as a mysterious union. Of course, this union is filled with contradictions that cannot be resolved. But, that is the nature of mystery.

What is a mystery?The chapter on message, in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”, describes a relational structure corresponding to mystery. An intersection of two nested forms portrays a mystery.

07/28/22

Looking at Matthew Crawford’s Essay (2022) “Covid Was Liberalism’s Endgame” (Part 3 of 10)

0011 What is the relation between the following two nested forms?

Remember that democracy₁ is the potential of a state arising from self-governing people₁ and leviathan₁ is the potential of a state capable of protecting us (from one another)₁.

0012 Enlightenment liberals know that each nested form does not emerge from and situate the other.

The normal contexts are different. For example, the word, “nature”, in the two normal contexts, has different meanings, presences and messages.

Similarly, the potentials are different.

For example, the second amendment of the original American Constitution says that all citizens can own and carry guns.

On the one hand, any rational person has the right to defend “himself”, especially against those who would take “his” property (such as a zealous government official). That’s democratic.

On the other hand, a zealous government official may be commissioned to protect “vulnerable persons”. Vulnerable persons may be conditioned to fear people carrying guns. The self-acknowledged vulnerable folk may demand that the zealous government official take the guns (property) away from other citizens. That’s leviathan.

The Constitution rules in favor of democracy.

0013 So, how do the two nested forms relate to one another?

Enlightenment liberals know that both nested forms constitute a single, contradiction-ridden entity. I call this actuality_2′, “the individual”.

The individual_2′ is an actuality that is constituted by the intersection of two nested forms. The intersection binds two independent actualities. According to the masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”, intersections associate to the message underlying the word. Intersections are mysteries.

0014 The construction may be also be portrayed in the following fashion.

Now, that looks like an intersection.

This diagram conveys the mystery underlying the liberal civic religion, which accompanies the spread of democracy in the modern Age of Ideas.

07/28/22

Looking at Matthew Crawford’s Essay (2022) “Covid Was Liberalism’s Endgame” (Part 4 of 10)

0015 Usually, an intersection serves as an actuality₂ in a category-based nested form.

Here is a picture.

0016 But, according to the chapter on presence in the e-book, How To Define The Word “Religion”, the individual in community_A belongs to firstness in the following undifferentiated nested form. Each element in the figure below designates an interscope (a nested form composed of nested forms).

Yes, the mystery of liberalism_2′ applies to the tier related to firstness_A. It_2′ resonates with the actualities contained in the interscope for the individual in community_A. The comparison will be further developed, later.

0017 Since the liberal tradition is a civic religion, liberalism also belongs to the society_C tier.

The society_C tier contains two types of religion, ones above the sovereign_bC (suprasovereign_cC) and those below the sovereign_bC (infrasovereign_aC).

The three levels of the society_C tier are (from top to bottom) suprasovereign_cC, sovereign_bC and infrasovereign_aC.

In comparison, for the individual in community_A tier, the three levels are judgment_cA, perceptions and phantasms_bA, and sensations, decodings, impressions and feelings_aA.

“Decodings” convert what someone speaks into a meaning, presence and message underlying the statement.

0018 I offer this comparison because liberalism is a religion on the society_C tier. Yet, a core mystery of liberalismcoincides with the virtual nested form, in the realm of actuality, for the individual in community_A tier.

So, allow me to juxtapose the virtual nested forms in the realm of actuality, for both the society_C and individual in community_A tiers.

0019 So, the question arises, “Is liberalism a suprasovereign or an infrasovereign religion?”

This answer is both. Liberalism consists of many different institutions_3aC, striving to remake humanity_1aC, according to diverse organizational objectives_2cC. The variety of causes is enormous, from teaching people proper manners to ending human trafficking. These causes appeal to the commonsense_2V and the awareness of vulnerability_2H characterizing individuals_2′.

Only fools have no commonsense_2V. Only sociopaths have no awareness of vulnerability_2H.

So all liberal institutions, appealing to anyone who is not a fool or a sociopath, share a relational object_2cC, the mysterious intersection of Locke’s and Hobbes’s nested forms.

Furthermore, this relational object_2cC, is an actuality that associates to the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality for the individual in community_A tier.

07/27/22

Looking at Matthew Crawford’s Essay (2022) “Covid Was Liberalism’s Endgame” (Part 5 of 10)

0020 Remember, the technical definitions of democracy_1V(2cC) and leviathan_1H(2cC) are:

Democracy_1V(2cC) is the potential of self-governance or the potential of a state arising from the cooperation of self-governing people. Another way to describe this term is the potential of being sensible_1V(2cc). Only fools are not reasonable.

Leviathan_1H(2cC) is the potential of a state that will protect us (from one another). Another way to describe this term is the potential of feelings of security_1H(2cc). Only sociopaths dismiss such feelings.

0021 We thought-align to the liberal object^rel_2cC by applying commonsense_2V and being aware of our vulnerabilities_2H. In doing so, we embrace the technical definitions of both democracy_1V(2cC) and leviathan_1H(2cC).

0022 With this denkalignment in mind, Crawford raises the question (more or less), “How stable is the individual?”

0023 The individual_2cC is the object that brings the modern nation state into relation. Liberalism stands at the heart of every legitimate nation-state.

Liberal policies operate in the arena of leviathan_1V. These policies must gain the assent in a democracy_1H.

Liberal agendas touch base with feelings of peace and security_1V. Peace and security provide motives for adopting a particular policy. These agendas must be reasonable and sensible_1H. They must not defy commonsense_2V.

0024 For example, the liberal civil rights movement in the USA during the 1950s and 1960s demand that the leviathan (the courts) overturn discriminatory laws (“Jim Crow”) in southeastern states. Protests peacefully threaten civic order_1H. The liberal civil-rights movement appeals to commonsense_1V and Christian values.

0025 Christian values?

The concept of the individual is conceived within the womb of the Christian tradition. The Church gives birth to the individual. Through the sacraments, an individual can come into mystical union with the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah. The Church delivers a template for commonsense action and for peace of heart in the political realm. But, it cannot impose its template. The leviathan can.

The liberal civil rights movement says, “According to commonsense and Christian values, every person, even the descendants of slaves, are individuals (hence, citizens).”

0026 The liberal civil-rights movement also relies on legal warfare that challenges the so-called “Jim Crow Laws”, supports legislation to assure civil rights in federal jurisdictions and undermines apparently “unequal” separate educational institutions.

0027 The civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s succeeds in implementing its organizational objective_2aC and remakes humans, that is, re-orients individuals in community_A.

The concept of the individual, liberalism’s relational object_2cC remains intact as individuals in community_A change alignment on the content, situation and perception levels.

Here is a liberal movement that successfully remade humans by changing individual hearts and minds.

0028 Unfortunately, the use of lawfare, short for “legal warfare”, during the civil-rights movement, calls the stability of the individual_2cC into question.

Subsequent movements follow under the banner of “civil-rights”. None carry the same legitimacy. Each defies commonsense_1V. The federal government gains in scope and power, promising to reduce the vulnerability of its citizens to a diverse range of threats, from industrial pollution, to financial distress, to systemic discrimination, to lack of “equity, and to more and more, until finally, to the sudden appearance of a novel coronavirus that can be “diagnosed” by a newly marketed polymerase chain reaction test (that, everyone learns later, also tests positive for influenza).

0029 The leviathan’s response to the last threat, according to Crawford, unravels the mystery.