On the other side of his literary patch, Zimmerman\u2019s text flows like water to the ocean of \u201cChrist the Pantokrator\u201d.\u00a0 He wrote not a word about Adam and Eve setting the stage for the extinction of the Neanderthal, colonizing all the temperate continents (driving many species of large mammals to extinction in the process), and the so-called \u201cPaleolithic Revolution\u201d (in killing potential, especially with the invention of the bow and arrow) that his synthesis implies.\u00a0 These ideas were \u201cin the air\u201d back in the 1980s and 1990s, the time of writing.\u00a0 Why ignore them?<\/p>\n
Perhaps, the Religion of Progressivism was already busy marketing the sin of this image of \u201cAdam and Eve as the first of our species\u201d: Man the Hunter, the Oppressor of Nature, Who Dominated Women, the One Who Killed the Neanderthal, Who Drove Animals to Extinction, Who Could Not Be Stopped.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, they also made great art that we can intuitively identify with, like the Lascaux cave paintings.<\/p>\n
The idea of \u201cwhat went wrong\u201d between the Progressive and the Christian perspectives cannot be more different.\u00a0 For the Progressive, \u201cman\u201d was, and still is, a destructive automaton (solution: control).\u00a0 For the Christian, \u201cman\u201d was, and still is, the locus of choosing (solution: liberation).<\/p>\n
Naturally, Adam and Eve chose wrong.\u00a0 Zimmerman quoted the Catechism (of the Catholic Church, hereafter CCC) in this regard at the end of Chapter 5:\u00a0 (Point 387) … Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God, we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, and so forth.\u00a0 Only in the knowledge of God\u2019s plan for humans can we grasp that sin is an abuse of freedom that God gives to created persons \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 the freedom to do what humans were created to do.\u00a0 So Adam and Eve\u2019s wrong choice had consequences.\u00a0 We (their descendants) could not do what we were created to do.\u00a0 At least, not well.\u00a0 So we substituted whatever we imagined \u201cwhat we were created to do\u201d.\u00a0 For example, the Progressives were created to control the destructive automatons. \u00a0In this commitment, they take their version of Original Sin more seriously than Christians do their version. \u00a0Unfortunately, like all other group-thinkers who fashion that they can outfox the fox, er, out-serpent the serpent, they will not do it well.\u00a0 After all, the Progressives are destructive automatons, too.<\/p>\n
The expulsion from Eden (which Zimmerman describes in Chapter 6) drew a veil.\u00a0 Once outside the garden, Adam and Eve were free to do whatever they imagined that they were created to do.<\/p>\n
No doubt they looked back \u2013 at that weird flaming sword \u2013 and thought: What the hell happened to us?<\/p>\n
There is immediacy to this question.\u00a0 My guess is that if Adam and Eve were the first humans, then after 200,000 years, or 10,000 generations, that immediacy would be lost.\u00a0 We would be used to our sinfulness.\u00a0 The only solution would be control, in the same way that the domestic dog requires a leash.\u00a0 In short, if Adam and Eve are to be located deep in the Paleolithic timeframe, then the Progressives are divinely inspired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the other side of his literary patch, Zimmerman\u2019s text flows like water to the ocean of \u201cChrist the Pantokrator\u201d.\u00a0 He wrote not a word about Adam and Eve setting the stage for the extinction of the Neanderthal, colonizing all the temperate continents (driving many species of large mammals to extinction in the process), and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-science-of-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\n