Not necessarily in that order.
Although you can't blame a fellow for looking at it that way: cosmogenesis occurs 13.8 billion years ago; biogenesis 4 billion years ago; and anthropogenesis more or less yesterday (from the cosmic perspective).
This was the general template of my book: the idea was to tell the story of the cosmos from its material birth to its ego death, the latter in reference to the mystic, saint, or fully realized being -- one of those metacosmic vertical adventurers who makes the round trip back to the nonlocal source and ground, AKA Celestial Central.
Above we alluded to anthropogenesis, but what we're really curious about is "psychogenesis" or "pneumagenesis," i.e., soul and spirit, respectively. How on earth do they get here? And when? The soul leaves no fossils.
Ah, but it does: as we discussed in the book, there is a sudden flowering of human cultural artifacts -- soulprints -- beginning about 50,000 years ago, despite no change in man's outward form.
In short, there is no genetic account "for the great cultural leap forward," in which hominids go "from the mental capacities of ape-like creatures" to us: "The big puzzle in early human history is the lack of cultural artifacts" -- i.e., soulprints -- "that go back much further than 50,000 years."
Again, Homo erectus bumbled around for a million years, leaving nothing beyond a scattering of ambiguous "signs of primitive technological progress" such as sharpened rocks. Why are there no soulprints "if Homo erectus were fellow humans, made in the image of God"?
But quite suddenly we see an abundance of soulprints in the form of cave paintings, musical instruments, jewelry, burial of the dead, etc.
All the researchers who do not believe in man's possessing a spiritual soul, which is to say the vast majority, are puzzled as to what caused the indisputable leap forward in human cognition and technical activity.
The gap is obvious, and one side invokes Darwin to fill it, while the other invokes God. But no amount of genetic shuffling can account for a leap from the material to the immaterial.
In a sense, we're talking about a kind of "transubstantiation," in which the outward appearance looks the same but the invisible substance undergoes a dramatic change. In other words, humans look more or less the same for perhaps one or two million years before there is a change in the substance that accounts for the sudden cultural flowering of 50 to 100,000 years ago.
This substance is "human nature," which is created ex nihilo by God. Absent such a transubstantiation, how could mere Darwinian man ever know the truth of man (or of anything else)? Darwin, of course, had his doubts:
With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Four words:
"If at bottom we are nothing but chemical soup, how can we possibly think we can come to real knowledge of anything? (Hilbert). At the same time, why is it "horrid" to think we can't? It's horrid because one consequence of the transubstantiation referenced above is that man becomes a knower, made to know truth.
Supposing Darwinism is true, how could Darwin know it without being a great exception to Darwinism?
Must be because the Cosmos itself is an open system, a hierarchy of vertical causes. This being the case, the soul comes from the top down, not the bottom up, because that's impossible.
About our open cosmos, I'm reading another book by Wolfgang Smith called Theistic Evolution: The Teilhardian Heresy, in which he quotes Huston Smith to the effect that "The modern West is the first society to view the physical world as a closed system."
I think with this one neat trick -- recognizing the open cosmos and its vertical structure -- we eliminate a host of absurdities, aporias, and intellectual nul de slacks that can never be resolved on their own level. Nor does it displace the horizontal, rather, complements it. It is simply the larger metaphysic in which physics -- and all other disciplines -- is situated.
Much more to go, but we're out of time.
7 comments:
Think Darwin would agree with those last 5 paragraphs? I'm guessing yes. If not, what would he say is wrong with them?
"The modern West is the first society to view the physical world as a closed system."
Early this morning we were watching a documentary of imagery from the surface of Mars. What's striking is how familiar the terrain seems, except for the utter absence of anything resembling life. Truly, it is a landscape which perfectly expresses a closed system, except of course for the robots now sporadically trekking across the surface. Whether there was ever any life there, we still don't know, but there was certainly water. Lacking an adequate magnetic shield, however, solar winds and radiation essentially blasted it all away over time.
I can't help thinking something similar could happen here, if we ever reached a point where mankind collectively and earnestly bought into the idea that there is nothing more than this.
In other news, this is a great site for keeping track of fires if you don't have it already: https://app.watchduty.org/
Don't know how it is in your neighborhood, but the wind has been insane out here. I'm actually grateful now that we had the big fires out here earlier this year, there isn't as much left to burn.
I evacuated five years ago and couldn't get back in for at least a week. I won't be fooled this time! Although when they shut off the electricity & gas it kind of forces you out anyway.
We finally got solar panels installed, and running properly only just last week. If the grid goes down, we might still be able to have power for a while. Assuming the panels don't blow away. By the sounds of it one almost lifted off about an hour ago, so we'll see just how well these things stand up to the winds...
Steve, good question. I vouschafe Darwin would have reached into his dark pantry, extracted a bottle of good Port, dispensed a round, and called out "Let us drink to it." But inside, Charles saying "Me thinketh not." And what would be wrong?
Allow me to spew:
From the post: ""If at bottom we are nothing but chemical soup, how can we possibly think we can come to real knowledge of anything?"
To which in reply we imagine a voice booming out "What, now you don't like my chemical soup? What's wrong with it?"
So what is wrong with the chemical soup? Why is it described as "nothing but?" There is a deep seated, but entirely unwarranted, disdain of matter in many spiritual circles. This attitude has to be dispelled.
Matter is holy. It is the very tissue of the living God. Chemicals are joyous and priceless creations we should revere and love with all our hearts.
But since we are souls, we have a species of super-egotism. The rarified self absorption of the soul, in relation to spirit. What, matter? Chemical soup? Yuck.
But who knows with what frequency of joy the atom of oxygen or of carbon vibrates at, what secret soul-stuff in involuted into the grouping of exuberant indeterminate particles. Holy, holy, holy. "This is my body, which I give for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins," intones the booming voice.
A few paragraphs later in the post, an opinion is offered that soul cannot come from matter. But amen I say, neither can matter come from the soul. Contemplate.
How now, all and sundry. And thank you all for existing.
Trench
We living things indulge in a pervasive chauvinism which equates life with all things fine and worthwhile, and the lifeless place as dull, drab, an empty waste without value. But what if lifeless Mars, with its stark ocher landscapes, was found dramatic and pleasing to the eye of its maker? And loved by Him despite harboring not a speck of life? What then would we say? Contemplate.
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