I don't see how the Fall has anything to do with morality, especially since it is an amoral fall. As the mythic Fall is presented, creatures who had no notion of good/bad were severely punished for disobeying a creator-god -- but that disobedience could not have been "bad" in human terms, only in the eyes of a divinity with the power to make such judgments. Kind of like me saying that my dog Otis is a "bad" dog because he messes up the blinds to look out the window.
My disagreement with the Fall is not meant to suggest I believe in the perfection of humans. The saying for me is I'm Okay, You're Okay. I accept that I have my imperfections and that you have yours, but we are both valuable human beings who shouldn't set out to harm one another. If we set out to harm one another, then we should be stopped (the basics of my morality: first, do no harm).
Such notions of good/bad, like my “do no harm,” are created by the societies to which we belong as well as by our internal compasses. Each of us has a compass – call it our conscience or soul or whatever – which leads us down what we each consider to be a moral pathway. Many of us wouldn't like to follow the compasses of others (I, for instance, would never condemn a woman for expressing sexual desire), while many others would not to follow our compasses (many want morally to include a lockdown of female sexual desire outside of marriage, for instance – hence the very idea of a “slut”). Now the idea of where those compasses come from would be interesting to discuss -- the easy answer is to throw them back outside ourselves (to a divine being like the Holy Spirit, for instance).
As far as perfection goes as an ideal, I think the Buddhist faith has a better handle on it than Calvinist Christianity. Perfection is not something humans fell from, it is something humans should reach toward. According to Calvinist dogma, humans can never hope to be perfect again without divine intervention. According to Buddhist dogma, humans can individually strive for perfection, but only by denying their innate humanness. I don't personally like either approach, but at least the Buddhist gives one a reason to strive to be better -- an internal reason, I should say, since I look at external morality (God's rules, human laws, etc.) as false reasons for moral behavior: I want to avoid getting caught breaking most of these rules/laws, but I do not accept that any which are not internally evident as actual morality.
--------
Many see eternity as some continuation of time as we experience it today. I see eternity as the absence of all time. The Eternal Now. There is nothing you have been and nothing you will be. There is only Now -- no other time can ever exist. As such, I find meaning in the Now without recourse to something that might come during some time we call the future. Time is, after all, an illusion.
And how could you as a being be anything but eternal? Your elementary particles have always been and will always be. You will always be in some fashion. But many people look for a continuation of the conscious mind -- I don't know of any major religion, including Christianity, that offers that; the Greeks used to offer it, as did many Native American religions. But for Christians consciousness is mere fleeting electric impulses in the brain, right? And what of the soul? It is indeterminate, but I think we would agree that it isn't the mind -- it doesn't have the same wants or needs as the mind. For instance, Wesley’s daughters may be very important to mind; they are certainly important on an animal level (reproduction and all); however, to his soul they are as nothing, right? The soul is void of such human connections, isn't it? And as so, isn't the soul better understood as an expression of stardust trying to discover a purpose for its existence than as a continuation of any human personality? (Babylon 5 -- the most religious of all TV shows; watch it).
I guess, first, I am not sure where you go to get your information about Christianity. What you say concerning the soul, for example, is totally foreign to me. My soul is writing to you right now, using my body (esp. my mind and fingers).
ReplyDeleteInteresting what you say about time. I do understand some of the distortions in time created by speed, etc., but saying time is a illusion appears unhelpful. It is true that there was a "now" when I could talk with my grandfather whilst he sat Wilkesboro, but that is not the "now" when I wrote these words. I don't believe I have perceived falsely that grandpa was in Wilkesboro but now is not. Would that now have been the past? Did you not write about an uncle who was? I guess you will need to unpack the illusion of time more.
The "Fall" of mankind is anytime we put ourselves and this creation as "ultimate," when it is God that should be our only ultimate. Therefore, the story of the Fall does illustration immorality. Even religion and seeking to become perfect human beings, if done outside the purpose of glorifying God, is immoral.
BTW: The morality of "I'm OK, You're OK" and the morality of "Do no harm" can contradict one another.
The compass is really, really interesting, and useful. For my part, I can't claim any responsibility for having it.
Talk later,