Normally I try to receive permission before posting emails but one takes liberties with blog friends. Steven Riddle is an expert on things paleo, so I asked him about reconciling this quote I happened across a while ago (didn't save the author's name):
"Augustine seems to be the first observer, at least in writing, to have noticed the greed, jealousy, and rage of which the human infant is capable. By pointing out the survival advantages of the infant's relentless self-interest, Mr. Miceli raises a central dilemma that has yet to be addressed by contemporary theology in dealing with original sin: how do we reconcile evolution with Genesis? If these behaviors are not only advantageous but evolutionarily essential, how can they be regarded as products of sin, which entered history only at the moment of our First Parents and which in any event must be eschewed? This question, in essence, constitutes Nietzche's central objection to Christian ethics..."To which he offered a helpful answer, excerpted partially here:
My answer is that Augustine placed adult interpretations on infant behaviors--he saw rage--was it hunger? He saw jealousy--what was it really? Having a child really changed my perspective on what children are feeling with respect to adults. My little boy spent much of the years from 1-4 in a world with which I had remarkably little contact or understanding. The state of being simply isn't the same. Rage isn't anger at this age it is pain inside, etc. In other words, this is one of those places that I think Augustine was just plain wrong...[But] if I grant that Augustine is right, it still poses no problem for me because somewhere along the line God did intervene and made human beings of an entirely different order of creation than all the rest [since] human beings are the only animals that can choose consistently to act contrary to their own natures.
No comments:
Post a Comment