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| The Anthropic Principle |
| Most Biblical scholars agree that the creation story
in the first chapter of Genesis is from a source very different from
the story in the next few chapters. In the first chapter human being
is created at the end, after everything else had been created. In
the second chapter we see that the plants and animals were created
after the human being was created. First and foremost this apparent
contradiction could be seen as a pointer that we must give importance
to the message of the Bible and not to the literal meaning of every
verse. Secondly we can take the first chapter as giving the chronological,
evolutionary sequence of creation and the second chapter pointing
out that God created everything, the universe, the plants and animals
for our sake, that we are at the center of creation - what some cosmologists
call the Anthropic Principle. The first few verses of the second chapter
seem to have been added to serve as a link between the two chapters,
the seventh day of creation, in continuation of the first six days
of the first chapter. It could be assumed that the Hebrew author of
the second chapter added the seventh day to the non-Hebrew story of
the six days to bring in the concept of Sabbath, the seventh holy
day. |
| The garden of Eden |
| And the Lord God formed man out of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and thus he became a living soul. |
| A potter or sculptor, has to work with great patience
and diligence, choosing the right type of the soil, mixing the correct
amount of water, making many a piece of art before he does his masterpiece.
Even so, the evolutionary process from biogenesis to the final product
- the masterpiece, the homo-sapiens - had taken long time and energy
in the hands of the Great Sculptor - the Greatest Artist. What God
fashioned out of the dust of the earth, the masterpiece, was the final
product of evolution, the homo that was still an animal. That animal
became man when He breathed the breath of life into him. In many parts
of the Bible, the words life and death are used in connection with
human beings to signify eternal life of the spirit or the soul. “He
who believes in me shall never die but shall have eternal life.”
“On the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil you shall die.” In this passage describing
the creation of man, ‘the breath of life’ that God breathed
into him is the soul. That act describes the special act of creation
of the soul, the creation of ‘man’. The soul is not the
product of evolution. Till this act our ancestor, the Homo-Erectus
or Homo-Habilis, Homo-Ergaster, whatever, was an animal, had animal
life, but not eternal life. With the creation of the soul, when the
‘breath of life’ was breathed into his nostrils, that
homo became Homo sapiens - that animal became human, spiritual life
of the immortal soul was added to the physical life of the mortal
body. |
| And the Lord God planted a garden; eastward
in Eden, and there He put man whom He had formed. |
| If we ask the question ‘eastward of where?’’,
the answer we could come up with is, ‘eastward of the potter’s
field, eastward of the sculpture garden, eastward of Africa’,
where for over 6 million years a unique process of evolution, from
a common primate or ape through various stages of bipedal hominids
towards humans had been going on. And it is only reasonable to assume
that the location of the garden, east of Africa could very well be
somewhere in Mesopotamia, not far from Jericho where the most ancient
signs of grain cultivation had been discovered. What we could assume
here is that the development of our earliest ancestor into a fully
human, with all the faculties of the soul such as free will and conscience
happened here in “the garden” |
| And out of the ground made the Lord God
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food;
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil. |
| Two things, more than anything else, that set humans
far apart from the animals are, the spiritual life and the ability
to distinguish and chose between good and evil. The garden where the
trees of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were
planted is the heart of man, his consciousness. The ‘tree of
life’ is the awareness of spiritual realities - of God, immortal
soul and eternal life - and the fruits of this tree are the spiritual
gifts, the food for the spirit, divine grace. The other ‘tree’
is the awareness of the existence of evil as a ‘hole’
in the fabric of goodness, goodness of love, contentment and selflessness.
The ‘trees that were pleasant to the sight’ could be considered
to represent the aesthetic sense, a third factor not found in the
animals. |
| And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,
of every tree in the garden you may freely eat. But of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat: for on the day
that you eat from it you shall die. |
| This commandment, written in the heart of man, gave
him responsibility for his actions, thereby introducing ‘free
will’ and conscience. The accompanying warning meant that if
ever he chose to disobey the dictate of his conscience he will fall
through the ‘hole’ out of the fabric of goodness, of grace,
of paradise. That would be the end of the life of grace, of joy, of
never ending peace and that would be also the beginning of the life
of misery. |
| How are we to understand the last few verses of the
second chapter? Animals and birds as partners for Adam? Woman made
out of the rib of man? Perhaps we can get three lessons, three messages,
from these. |
One: We are
at the center of creation - the Anthropic Principle. Everything
else, all animals and birds, even as rivers and plants, are made
for us |
| Two: Man should
live for his wife and children, not for material possessions or wealth.
In the early days of human existence, in the nomadic and pastoral
life style the riches of man were the domestic animals and fowls. |
| Three: Husband
and wife are not two separate entities; they are a single unity. They
are from the same stock; one flesh and blood. |
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