Tehological difficulty

[dreamer_easy]

I like the typo above so much, I'm keeping it. It perfectly describes my hopeful ignorance.

New Scientist quotes a display at the Creationist museum in Arkansaw, which shows Adam, Eve, and a vegetarian T. rex: "They lived together without fear, for there was no death yet."

What was God using for compost? I'm not being flippant: the more I think about it, the deeper this question becomes.

Lloyd mentioned that the doctrine of Original Sin was developed by St Augustine in the first century CE, which means it post-dates the story of the Fall by centuries. Again, I'm fascinated by the fact that religious ideas, even absolutely familiar ones, are innovations - someone has to think of them in the first place.

(As always, rude comments about the Bible and Christianity make me antsy, so please don't. :-)

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Adam, Eve, and a vegetarian T. rex

That would be far less odd if I hadn't just watched the Sixth Doctor episode that ends with the Master, the Rani and a T Rex all stuck on board the Rani's TARDIS and hurtling off into deepest space.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

*DIZ*

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

Again, I'm fascinated by the fact that religious ideas, even absolutely familiar ones, are innovations - someone has to think of them in the first place.

Yeah, that's an odd thing to conceptualise. "But ... it's always been that way!"

But - when you think that these innovations might be taking place of a couple of generations, it's easy to see how they might go from "stray thought" to "interesting idea" to "it's what my dad told me" to "dogma."

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

Lloyd mentioned that the doctrine of Original Sin was developed by St Augustine in the first century CE, which means it post-dates the story of the Fall by centuries.

Innnnnteresting. Very interesting.

It also post-dates Christ himself. And this explains a LOT.

Specifically, it explains why so many theoretically Christian sects have as part of the basis of their philosophy the idea that Humanity is innately sinful - that we are sinners from birth, and must make up for that with good works. Despite the whole thing about Christ's death and resurrection having been supposed to remove that condition from us. Every time I hear one of these people talk, I have to keep myself from asking, "What, so Christ came down and died to save us from that sin, and it didn't work?". (For some reason, that seems to upset them.)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I think the idea is that you have to personally accept Christ's sacrifice for it to work on your behalf.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's one popular version. There are some others kicking around.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

Saint Augustine was a very naughty boy, living a life of licentious and debauchery up until his conversion. In fact he was reluctant to give up his life of pleasure, hence his prayer, "Give me chastity and contenticy, but do not give it yet". I always thought that his emphasis on Original sin and his rejection of pleasure (bodily or otherwise) was an extreme reaction to his fun loving youth. Unfortunately, other people liked the idea, and the rest of Western civilisation, and especially women, has had to suffer for Augustine's self-loathing.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Blimey, what does this say about Zoroaster? ;-)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"Lloyd mentioned that the doctrine of Original Sin was developed by St Augustine in the first century CE, which means it post-dates the story of the Fall by centuries."

Hrmmm... I think that statement needs clarifying or unpacking somewhat. "Developed" is a good choice of word, in the sense of "developed further" or "refined".

There are lots of slightly different versions of "the doctrine of Original Sin", as there are with any doctrine, but Augustine's is basically the standard adopted by the mainstream church for centuries afterward, by Luther, and so on. Augustine may have been the first to write out a doctrine that had the words "Original Sin" on the page and hooked together all the Bible refs that are commonly seen as elements of that doctrine - i.e. the first to set out the doctrine in a documentary form that the church could adopt as definitive - but the core ideas are scattered throughout the Bible, and the gist of the doctrine itself is sketched out several times by Paul in his epistles, in a way that suggests he's only reminding the readers of something he expects them to already be familiar with, as a preamble to explaining how Christ resolves the problem.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Digging around... Apparently it was Tertullian who coined the phase "Originbal Sin", some time before Augustine.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Yes. Thank you for saving me the trouble of trying to type all that out with one hand. :)

Compost? *is confused*

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

If there was no death, what was the soil made from?

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Dirt, with the necessary balance of mineral and biological components to sustain plant life? Surely a God who could create a whole planet would be able to create nutritive soil for the plants to feed on.

However, given that Adam was told to tend the garden and that it was all right for him to eat of the fruit of the trees and so on, vegetative death very well may have occurred before the Fall. Since plants presumably lack self-awareness, a soul or a spirit, there would be nothing "evil" in them going through a normal cycle of growth, including death -- or perhaps just the decay of bits and pieces that got harvested or pruned or otherwise fell off.

I bet earthworms were kind of awesome before the Fall, too.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course *slaps forehead* fallen leaves and fruit.

I bet earthworms were kind of awesome before the Fall, too

*grin* Maybe the serpent was actually one waaaaay subtil earthworm.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

A verray parfit subtil earthworm. With wings. And legs. And sparkly colourful scales. Or something.

Also, much love for your "nose" icon.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I've just discovered his hands, too.

I thought of making another comedy GIF of the earthworm, by turning the green leggy snake pink, but then considered what this might look like. I hope I never find it in my compost bin, anyway.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Blimey, have a look at this. (Haven't read it in detail myself yet.)

I wonder if Paul expected his readers to be familiar with the idea via Plato? Jewish tradition doesn't seem to include the concept.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"Blimey, have a look at this. (Haven't read it in detail myself yet.)

I wonder if Paul expected his readers to be familiar with the idea via Plato?..."

That document concerns the argument that blew up on the topic at the time of the reformation. You may not have heard, but lots of elements of Catholic tradition were, um, "re-appraised" around that time... =:o} (There bangs and flashes and beheadings involved! Some should make a movie...) And just as people today draw analogies from subatomic physics to explain the trinity, so people back them drew on Plato and the other philosophical currency of their time to make their points. Plato and other ancient philosophers had a big influence on Renaissance thinking, but an understanding of Plato was by no means necessary to formulate, or be aware of and understand, the idea of Original Sin.

"Jewish tradition doesn't seem to include the concept."

My understanding is that the concept was at least well known to 1st CE Judaism, regardless of whether it was established tradition. But I'll admit I can't point to sources - it's 20 years since I last studied any of this. Maybe Paul expected his readers to be aware of it because it had recently become the hot topic of the day? I dunno. That seems to be the line taken by this Catholic commentary (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11312a.htm) (see section IV - Original Sin in Tradition).

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

people today draw analogies from subatomic physics to explain the trinity

!

"In the name of the Up Quark, and the Down Quark, and the other Down Quark..." ?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"It's a wave whenever you you ask it wave-ish questions, and it's a particle whenever you ask it particle-ish questions, so it seems to be everything a wave should be and everything a particle should be both at the same time. But just one thing can't be both things. And it's definitely all one thing, but it's both things. And Jesus is a bit like that. See?"

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Well, to use one example, it's certainly possible to take David's "I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" as an OT reference to original sin, and some people (mostly Christians) do. It's also possible, however, to read it as mere guilt-ridden hyperbole -- David being so ashamed of himself that he imagines himself to have been sinful from conception even though this isn't actually the case. I believe the latter would be more in line with modern Judaic thought.

And now I'm all curious about the ancient rabbinical commentaries on that verse, and what they might have had to say. Hmmm...

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I'm having a poke around the Wiki entries on the subject, and I've confused two different ideas in my mind - the Fall, and inherited guilt. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all trace the world's woes to the Fall, but different denominations within each take different views on the inheritance of guilt, and the punishment of that guilt, which is what I'm really talking about. That a newborn child deserves eternal torture is one of the great and obvious absurdities of religious doctrine, and according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia online, that was an innovation of Augustine. (I don't know how widely that absurdity is actually believed.)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Ah! Well the idea of hell as eternal torture *for humans* (rather than for Satan) is not that strongly based in scripture anyway... Whole different can of worms... =:o} (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell, in particular "Origins")

My view: Rubbish has to be got rid of. Dynamic, parasitic rubbish that has a tendency to infect the non-rubbish around it has to be got rid of pretty decisively. Problem: Humans are born infected with rubbish. The challenge is to extricate the human from the rubbish before the later has to be thrown on the fire. Sometimes that's quick and easy; sometimes it takes years of careful surgery; sometimes the human just refuses to let it ever happen at all. A lot depends on how long the human has been living with their particular parasite and how much they've come to regard it part of themselves, rather than as something that can and should be got rid of. (cf "I am a cancer sufferer. That's my life now. I've forgotten how to be anything else.") And a lot depends on how much they trust the surgeon.

N.B. the purpose of throwing rubbish on a fire (such as was done by tipping it into Gehenna) is to *destroy* it, not to leave it squirming around for ever more. It's the fires of hell that are eternal, not the process/experience of burning in said fires.

[jenavira.livejournal.com]

In my Class Of Amazing ("Modern Myth-Making," booklist is mostly mythology and cyberpunk) last week, we were talking about how from a Jewish perspective, the Expulsion from Eden isn't necessarily a punishment, and trying to figure out how exactly that works. (We're reading the King James translation, so there are probably a few problems there. But still.) It's mind-boggling how hard it is to change the way you think about stories like that, even if you're not a devout Christian, if you learned about them first in a particular way.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"Again, I'm fascinated by the fact that religious ideas, even absolutely familiar ones, are innovations - someone has to think of them in the first place."

In quibbling over the "ancestry" of the idea of Original Sin, I've kind of buried your point, for which I apologise. Yes, regardless of whether one takes a given doctrine as being devised by humans or revealed by God, the fact is there's always, somewhere or other, a first human being to grok it, who may or may not be the first human being to mention it to somebody else, or the first to write it down, or the first to preach it from a pulpit, or the first to spot an enlightening connection with some other doctrine... And their can be parallel invention, or parallel revelation, or a mixture of both, so that one person hits on the idea by reading a passage of scripture, while another hits on the same idea by reading Plato or Ptolemy or Pratchett, or somebody else beginning with P, and only then starts researching what scripture has to say on the subject.

In other words, doctrine evolves... =;o}

[matthewwolff.livejournal.com]

New Scientist quotes a display at the Creationist museum in Arkansaw, which shows Adam, Eve, and a vegetarian T. rex: "They lived together without fear, for there was no death yet."

That T. rex had some friggin big teeth for being a vegetarian.....