Status Updates From The Emergence of Sin: The C...

Seneca writes, “The very soil was more productive when untilled, and yielded more then enough for peoples who refrained from despoiling one another.” p. 120

One remembers the “great symbiosis”: the ancient pagan state of affairs in which gods needed humans as much as vice versa, because the sacrifices humans made actually sustained them and made them more powerful. In return gods then bestowed whatever blessings humans needed to flourish- crop yield, fertility, victory in battle, etc.

This so reminds me of Gaiman’s depiction in American Gods. The old gods are weak and starved because the communities that brought them over have ceased worshipping them, giving their devotion instead to Media, Wealth, and Beauty which as a result are physically stronger, better dressed, better organized and live in more opulence.

“Sin not only gains power over people’s lives through their cooperation, but also, Sin depends ontologically on the is cooperation, as Sin’s supervenience base consists precisely of this cooperation.” p. 111

Concerning Romans 1: “We are the authors of our own tragedy, demiurges of a slavemaster that holds us in bondage. The turn to idolatry is, in a certain sense, ironically successful. The story of the advent of idolatry is the story of the creation of a real, superhuman power that truly does exercise dominion over its human subjects.” p. 108

If social persons are metaphorical, then so are individual humans persons.

IOW, people sin, and then Sin comes into the world as a result, constraining them to sin more, in ways that provide for the ongoing existence and nurture of Sin. In all this Sin is said to have a singular mind and intention in the exact same way individual humans do. Critiques of this idea backfire and undo the ontic distinction of the individual person as well.

Paraphrasing the conclusion to ch.3: The reality of social organisms is no less literal than human persons. Thus Sin can be said to exist as a superorganism that supervenes on the choices and structures created by individual persons. This social organism of Sin then exerts downward causation on individuals, coercing behaviors and erecting boundaries and defining goals and methods for them.

“..the social is both a biological and a psychological entity of a new species.” p. 98

“Mythological entities are (at least minimally) subjective selves. They preform cognitive functions. They are intentional subjects. Indeed their cognition exercises downward causation upon the superorganisms from which they emerge…” p. 98

“Either the social is real or the individual is not. Ontological individualism is incoherent.” p. 96

biological:psychological::psychological:sociological

“…scientific facts have social histories.” p. 92