I’m going strictly by what the story says. It says God said everything in creation was ‘good’. And just before he had commanded humans to “be fruitful/multiply”, “fill/subdue the earth”. Commands that take generations to realize and they stayed on course and remained ‘good’. Then, in the next chapter, Adam, generation 0, doesn’t.
I can only go by what it says. As to why, I can only really speculate, which of course I do …
I think you are conflating free will with range of choice. The social - political intrigue and machinations which might be a path to power in Rome simply is not available in the same way in a hunter - gatherer society.
That’s not entirely accurate. Free will makes defying God possible, but it also makes so much more possible.
We can simply look at the progression through the choices “we” make, and the progression through the choices “indigenous people” make and see a dramatic divergence. There is no ‘progression/evolution/alteration’ made through “indigenous people” decisions. They stay in their lane, so to speak. “We” don’t.
Rome only became that environment through the shift in behavior that indicates free will. Without it, that environment never develops. With it, it develops every time.
Isn’t this the kind of thinking that leads to racism or culturalism?
We see indigenous people as having a more limited repertoire of available choices. But they probably see us as having a more limited set of choices. There are choices available to us that are not visible to indigenous people. And there are choices available to indigenous people that are not visible to us.
Yeah, it’s difficult to discuss this topic at all without butting up against racism/culturalism concerns. But I think it’s important in the interest of truly understanding human history and social evolution to be analytical in our observations. We can maintain respect for the people we’re speaking of while remaining true to the data.
Yes, indigenous people have more limited choices because they do not create the same environment that then creates a broader repertoire of available choices. The options are created by the social/behavioral patterns playing out.
Remembering back to elementary school, where we learned about indigenous people. And sure, we see them as having less choices. But my teacher noted how skillful they were at tracking (following animal trails, for example). And isn’t that an example where they are making choices that are not visible to us?
We judge others by the type of life that we live. But we are unaware of the more subtle aspects of the kind of life that they have.
We have the perfect control set in this big experiment. Indigenous people represent the “image of God”. And yes, they have proven quite capable. Well beyond hunting and gathering. There were large highly populated organized farming communities that existed for centuries without a shred of class stratification or any of the other tell-tale signs.
All throughout history there’s evidence that Gen1 humans are entirely capable. In fact, as I’ve tried to show, mere contact with the other type, call them Gen2 humans, coaxes the very same behaviors out of them and they become like Gen2. The capability is there. It’s the inherent ‘selfishness’ that Gen2 humans brought to the table that’s stirring everything up. Gen1 humans were doing just fine, and would have continued to do so.
This all sounds a bit too 19th-century “noble savage” to me.
My sense is that a lot of non-hierarchical interpretations of Neolithic societies in Europe, for example, are being heavily questioned now. Were communal tombs for the whole community, or are the collections in them closely related enough to suggest an elite class? Do communal burials, in any event, necessarily mean egalitarian living? And non-hierarchical doesn’t imply a kind and loving social situation – anyone familiar with the dynamics of small groups can see that. I suspect that the model of small society is more Heathers than Shang-Ri-La.
And even now those modern hunter-gatherer holdouts are liable to be a bit of a tabula rasa onto which social anthropologists can write their notions of an ideal society – I am reminded of the fascinating story of “The Gentle Tasaday.”
There’s always going to be blind spots there in the early phases. Not much to go on. But in the later phases, especially after farming allowed settling, like in the highly populated communities I mentioned above, here you’ve got much more beyond burial sites to go on. They constructed homes for each family. Each home the same in size and consisting of all the same amenities.
Then, to the contrary, in places like Sumer, their communities were organized around a central temple where the elites lived and the domiciles were built around the temple for the lower class to work the fields and provide for the temple.
You get into a lot of gray areas in the early phases, but the mark of free will is fairly apparent. Especially since it so often also brings with it a system of writing.
Not really. None of that has anything to do with free will versus determinism.
It does. It’s not immediately apparent, admittedly, but it remains consistent and in line.
No, it really doesn’t. The difficulty is that free will is not observable. To establish that events on nondeterministic you actually need to show something you cannot show without access to something on the order of an alternate universe. Now, as has been pointed out by others, even that would not mean that the contingencies observed would correspond to what we call “free will,” but it would at least demonstrate the possibility that something like that could explain it.
I think that you’re simply confusing the issue by using “free will” to mean something entirely different from any accepted meaning of the term. You really need a new term for whatever it is you’re trying to describe, because the free will/determinism thing is not itself observable and has nothing to do with such things as the rise of writing, which is equally consistent with determinism and non-determinism.
That is more reasonable. It is an anticolonialist reading of the fall that some scholars would support. Just:
Drop the claims about recent people groups not being connected to AE.
Drop the language of Free Will, which everyone takes to means something you may not mean.
If you do those two things, I can even point you to theologians that have work that makes far more coherent sense of your position.
I appreciate it. Coherency would be nice. #1 is fine, but one appeal for #2 …
Free will really is the most apt description. It is one and the same with the standard definition/understanding of free will, only put into the context of the Genesis story.
This is a new approach I’m trying on. I think it’ll make things more clear.
Yeah, I saw that the first time you posted it. But the second has no relation to the first at all, and it’s a very, very poor use of the term “free will” as it has no relation to the ordinary meaning of those words (nor is it “the Genesis one”). But neither of these things – the actual “free will” concept nor the thing that isn’t free will but which you have decided to conflate with free will – is observable,. As a result, these concepts can be employed to analyze exactly nothing.
Bear in mind that smooshing different definitions for the same term into a discussion is a mess. It will lead you to sloppy thinking, because when one has two entirely separate definitions for the same word it provides a trailer-hitch for fitting notions about the one to the other by the accident of verbal identity. It’s best never to do this.
It’s the same meaning. Same thing. It means exactly what the ordinary meaning of those words mean. Only in relation to Genesis, the story actually tells the ‘determined’/natural law’ side of the story alongside the free will side. Both free will and determinism are characters. It’s observable in that way.
Then, laying the events of the Genesis story along side the picture of the same region/timeframe we’ve constructed through modern knowledge, yields clarity through context. Like this.
And it’s yielded results for me. I used this model to predict and identify and define the behavior change I’m pointing to as the ‘observable’ element of free will at work in the real world just as described in the story.
This totally false. If you just stop pressing this with so much tenacity, we could give you better language and actually theological work that supports you, but with infinitely better language.
I’m open to suggestions. But I’m not sure why I’d not use a concept/idea by name to associate the same with the story. That’s how it’s known theologically as far as the biblical story is concerned, and that’s how it’s known philosophically. As confusing as it seems now, I feel calling it something else would only confuse it more.
Is it inaccurate to say that in a theological context ‘free will’ is the agency humans have to act as they wish? And isn’t that the same capability that makes sin and behaving contrary to God’s will possible? Is God’s will not one and the same as natural law in the context of the story? And is natural law not the agent that determines ‘determinism’ in the philosophical context? Am I the only one seeing the parallel?
I think it’s clear to everyone here that it doesn’t. The only question is why that’s not clear to you.
Sloppy thinking will lead to sloppy answers to sloppy questions.