0202 The recap continues.

Here is another picture of confounding.

0203 Resolving the confounding in favor of the entanglement, results in the following hylomorphe.

0204 Now, the application, once again.

Before the advent of the mechanical philosophers in the 1600s, here is a diagram of the Christian thing.

0205 Once science is successfully born in the Christian West, questions arise.

In particular, the natural history of the Earth and excavations of ancient civilizations in the Near East and in Egypt suggest that Genesis 1-11 is well… not exactly what we imagined it to be.

What matter is entangled?

Modern discoveries in natural history and archaeology yield two types of insights.

One type of insight pertains to the Creation Story (primarily). This insight is the evolutionary record, including human evolution.  To date,  few evolutionary scientists theorize that human evolution comes with a twist.  Perhaps, one day, theory will change due to the hypothesis of the first singularity.

The other type of insight pertains (in different ways) to both the Creation Story (Genesis 1-2.3) and the Primeval History (Genesis 1-11).  The archaeology of the ancient Near East (ANE) shows that the five books of Moses are written in the milieu of the ANE.

0206 Can the confounding resolve in favor of entangled matter?

0207 If I were to label any element in the above figure as “the Lost World”, what would it be?

Of course, “the Lost World” labels the long forgotten civilizations of the ANE.  They are lost long before the kingdom of David.  Okay, make that the exile to Babylon.  Okay, one more adjustment.  They are lost before the return of Judah to build the second temple.

0208 What about the discoveries in natural history, geology and biology?  Do they constitute a lost world?

Well, the author basically says to anyone interested in that entanglement, “Get lost!”

From the point of view of someone in the ANE, the Creation Story (Genesis 1-2.3) depicts God establishing functionality… no, scratch that… order to nonorder.  The Creation Story is all about God bringing order out of nonorder through various stages.  God establishes the cosmion as His temple.  We are images of God because of our sensorium of transcendence, which no other creature has.  We sense God.  We witness signs of God.

0209 On the seventh day, God rests in his temple, which is the cosmion, perfused with signs of a Creator.

0210 And, then in Genesis 2.4, He orders a royal temple garden, so He can take walks.  The garden is a paradise of exotic flora and fauna.  The only things missing are those happy and hilarious images, with their sensoria of transcendence.  So, God repeats the script of intention, creation, blessing, plants for food, naming the animals, with a few changes in the recipe.  God fashions Adam and Eve according to His intention… to… you know… have someone to tend the royal gardens.

Adam is earthman.  Eve is his knockout helper.

0211 As it so happens, the most glorious botanical specimen in the garden gets planted right in the middle.  God issues a warning to Adam, “Do not eat the fruit of this tree, lest you die.”

Adam tells his helper, who immediately takes him literally and concludes that the fruit is poisonous.  It is so poisonous that if either Adam or she touches it…

“But you will not die.  Take a look.  The squirrels and birds eat the fruit.  They are not dying.  Obviously, God’s commandment does not make sense.”

0212 Indeed, God’s command sounds like so many proscriptive decrees currently on the law books.  They say, “Do not do this or that.”  Explanations are rarely given.  When they are, they don’t make sense.

0213 So, I ask, “What does die when Adam and Eve disobey God by eating the fruit from… the tree of wisdom… er… ‘cleverness’?”

0214 The scholastic, Thomas Aquinas, offers a reasonable guess.

Original justice dies.

Does that sound like Walton’s term, “order”?

Make a note of that.

0215 If Adam and Eve join the talking serpent in becoming clever little chaos agents, then what?  They take a bite from the fruit of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Does that allow them to make good choices, even when they are evil?

Let me ask that again.

0216 Can they explicitly label their evil choices, “good”?

Doesn’t that resonate with the late modern civilizational milieu of corporate media, political hacks and oligarchs galore?

Corporate media proclaims that the evil deeds of their benefactors are “good”.

0217 The serpent may now crawl on his belly.  Humans may strike at its head.  But, it can bite our heel, our “Achilles heel”, and inject a label that destroys order and introduces chaos.

We are now empowered to call evil, “good”.