All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

9/12/2014

Thought Experiment

I'd like everyone to try a thought experiment.

For purposes of this experiment we have to go back in time to the Garden of Eden.  We are assuming that there are only three kinds of beings (lower animals are not 'beings').  The first being is God.  The second are angelic creatures (faithful or fallen).  The third is mankind.  In the subset of mankind there are two and only two creatures Adam and Eve.

For our purposes Adam and Eve have not fallen or sinned yet. 

Given:
  • Adam and Eve are able to be in the presence of God and speak/interact with Him
  • Adam and Eve are able to be in the presence of angelic creatures and speak/interact with them
  • Adam and Eve are cloaked in shekinah
  • Adam and Eve do not have to contend with death or a known limit to their life span
  • Adam was given dominion/authority over creation
  • There are only three commandments to which Adam is subject, two positive and one negative:
    • Tend the garden
    • Produce offspring
    • Don't eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
Prove:
  • Adam was restricted to a 3 dimensional reality
Since we have no way of knowing when Adam and Eve sinned we cannot know exactly how long they lived in the Garden.  Presumably Adam sinned sometime between his creation and his 130th year since that is the age we are given for the birth of his son.  We don't know how long he lived in a sinless state or exactly what that state was like.  What we do know is that there is a provision for marking time days/seasons/years but time itself has no real meaning if life is limitless.

Mankind currently exists and is limited inside three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.  Does it follow that we always have been limited in this way?

Please weigh in with your position even if you don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve.  It's an experiment in thought, not empirical data.  FWIW, I'm assuming that our universe exists in a 10 dimensional reality.

30 comments:

  1. Boy do you ever come up with the whoppers Res. THAT is why I visit your little blog home. The really big ideas.

    I am going to assume your question means was Adam restricted to the Garden, or did he get to go to Heaven to visit God?

    I don't believe that Adam went to Heaven. It says in Genesis that God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden as He taught them, not that they went up to Heaven for their visits.

    As for Adam given dominion over creation, he may very well have been given a special gift of being able to interact with all the creatures, a la Dr. Doolittle.

    Honestly, I don't believe we will find out all the details about how Adam's life went until the Kingdom is set up and the Millennium has started. Sure is fun to speculate and posit on things that makes one think though.

    I think that there was much, much more involved with the Garden of Eden than the Bible tells us. I also believe that Adam was being tested while in the Garden and he failed.

    If he had only thrown the fruit on the ground and given Eve a good paddling over his knee, life would be very different. I believe that God would have forgiven Adam, but I don't know what He would have done to punish Eve.

    The stakes were/are very high, and God doesn't just give high value rewards and promises to mortals until He is convinced that they will stay on the right track.

    It would not surprise me to find out that God only turned the carnivores that way after the Fall of Adam.
    The passage referring to "the lion lying down with the lamb" I suspect is how life in the Garden originally was what God intended for mankind.

    The end times and Judgment Day are God's reset to clean it all up and get things back to how it originally was.
    At least, that is just my opinion of why events will be moving the way they are going, a massive cleanup of filth and corruption, and a gigantic reset.

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  2. One other thought. I have often wondered if that passage in the Bible about "better for a man to live on a rooftop than in a home with a contentious woman" came from Eve giving Adam decades of marital misery for getting them kicked out of the Garden.

    It could not have been a very happy marriage between the two of them. I hope it was, but based on what we know of behavior of women and men, it just makes me wonder sometimes.

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  3. Anonymous12:03 PM

    If you were busy defending your kids from wolves or raiding Vikings, or had to till the soil with a pointy stick for your food, you wouldn't have time for stuff like this.

    --Hale

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  4. Res Ipsa1:09 PM

    I've been working a lot of OT, but I always have time to think. Besides you stole my idea about comparing Hitler and Bush, except I was going to do Hitler and Obama.

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  5. Anonymous1:43 PM

    a good paddling over his knee, life would be very different.

    True in most marriages

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  6. Anonymous1:43 PM

    a good paddling over his knee, life would be very different.

    True in most marriages

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  7. Res Ipsa5:53 PM

    WB,

    You are correct about the formatting. Has anyone told you that you missed your calling as a English teacher?

    I'm at work so I'll have to get to these a bit at a time.

    1. You are correct concerning the accurate reading of Gen and the dominion. I was using the word "creation" to refer to Adam's world which was inappropriate considering the mega-implications of a post on dimensional issues. In my defense the phrase "all over creation" is generally held to be global and not intergalactic. It was in this sense that I was using the word.

    More to come.

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  8. WaterBoy6:23 PM

    I am nothing if not a pedant. :)

    And that would be Universal, rather than Intergalactic.

    (See? I told you.)

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  9. Res Ipsa6:39 PM

    if there is Biblical support for dimensions beyond these, I should like to see it.

    I didn't try to look up links because the work of these two men is beyond the scope of my post, and to a certain extent your question. Rabbi's Nachman and Maimonides are credited with postulating 10 dimensions from their exegetical study of the Torah circa 1200 AD.

    Some verses to consider:

    Isaiah 34:4
    And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

    Isaiah 64:1 speaks of tearing or rending the heavens.

    Point: If the heavens can be torn like a garment or rolled up like a scroll there must be some dimension into which they are rolled/torn. You can have a go at this line of thought inductively or deductively. I realize that this requires a literalist perspective. Even if you don't ultimately agree it is a interesting possibility.

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  10. Res Ipsa7:18 PM

    * I'm not entirely convinced of the absence of all death before the Fall

    Two points:

    1. Gen 1:29 states that plants were given for food, so what we know as carnivores would have been eating plants pre-sin. Or possibly the word "death" may only apply to humans.

    2. I accept that Romans 5:12 teaches that death entered the world via sin: Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—13 for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

    I realize that both points are not accepted by day-age creationists or evolutionists. However if true it would seem to indicate that Adam sinned fairly early on during his tenure in the garden.

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  11. Res Ipsa8:06 PM

    There is a reasonable dispute here as to how much work this actually required.

    I agree and would go farther. I would say that there is a reasonable dispute as to what methods were available to Adam. Unlike the evolutionary perspective a creationist is free to believe that everything started out perfectly. That means Adam's mind was a good as a human mind could get. He was intelligent and capable of design and creativity to accomplish his goals. If we were to encounter Adam today we might think of him as some sort of super human due to his superiority in health, intelligence, physical appearance etc. If Adam possessed intelligence and language skills given to him by God and had no sin hampering his ability to utilize those skills he was likely far ahead of modern man in everyway including his ability to conceive, design and produce. I think its also safe to say that he was also able to do and ASK to have things done.

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  12. Res Ipsa8:18 PM

    Susan,

    I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I posted and ran out to do errands before going to work.

    I am going to assume your question means was Adam restricted to the Garden, or did he get to go to Heaven to visit God?

    I guess that's one way to take it. I was thinking in more broad terms. Adam and Eve could see God. When Moses asked God for permission to see Him to His face he was denied. Adam and Eve KNEW God. I believe they experienced the shekinah to a degree that Moses did not. I think that there was something distinctly different about their physical makeup pre-sin.

    After the resurrection Jesus had a different kind of body. We are told we will have a body "like His". I suspect that we will be able to do and experience things on a much different level after we are given our new bodies. We won't hunger, or thirst or be married in the new bodies. I wonder how much the new bodies will resemble the original model.

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  13. Res Ipsa8:29 PM

    WB,

    I read the link to Dr Howe's paper you provided. I am functionally illiterate when it comes to understanding the ancient languages of Greek and Hebrew so I must leave the accuracy of the paper to someone more expert (Rabbi B for instance) than I. Conceptually I don't see anything wrong with what Dr. Howe is saying. It actually makes a great deal of sense to me on a "big picture" level. My initial gut reaction to the information is that he is correct in his premise.

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  14. WaterBoy8:44 PM

    RE: Two points

    "1. Gen 1:29 states that plants were given for food"

    (Actually, Gen 1:30 but not bad if you're going from memory. I'm actually having to look stuff up.)

    Digestion works via the breakdown of food through the actions of microorganisms in the digestive system (this would be the same for animals eating plants, too). That microorganisms existed internally would allow for the possibility that they existed externally, as well. This would manifest itself in the decay and rot of fruit fallen on the ground, for example -- something not explicitly stated in the Bible, of course, but something which could reasonably be speculated.

    Of course, as you already noted, death for plants and animals could have already existed for these things and not conflict with Romans. It could also be possible that digestion worked differently pre-Fall. But there's nothing that can be definitively concluded via Scripture, one way or the other.

    "2. I accept that Romans 5:12 teaches that death entered the world via sin"

    This can also mean that death was the indirect result for all people because of the actions of Adam and Eve. Before they ate of the fruit, all people would have been able to live forever. However, A&E condemned the entire world to death because of their actions; therefore, certain death -- i.e., the elimination of any possibility of eternal life -- entered the world via their sin.

    This can also be demonstrated in Gen 2:17 (NIV): but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.

    Paraphrased: If you eat of this fruit, you will certainly die (because I will kick you out of the Garden and remove access to the tree of life).

    Also, Gen 3:22 (NIV): And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

    If it is necessary to eat from the tree of life to live forever, then Adam was not innately immortal...for if he were, there would be no need to eat from the tree of life. Biblical tautology.

    Consequently, if he had never sinned and had remained in the garden, but also had never eaten from the tree of life, he would have died eventually. QED.

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  15. WaterBoy8:48 PM

    "Conceptually I don't see anything wrong with what Dr. Howe is saying. It actually makes a great deal of sense to me on a "big picture" level."

    Agreed.

    The only other argument against this that I have seen is that Eve was created as Adam's "helpmate". Not wife. Not mate. But as a helper, implying that the work was more than he could handle himself.

    Just one more wrinkle for you.

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  16. I'm thinking about it.

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  17. Res,

    Moses could not look upon God's face because by that time, man was a creature full of sin and fallen. God cannot look upon sin. And that is why it would have killed Moses. He was a faithful man, yes. But he was a fallen man because of Adam.

    Before the Fall from grace, God could be around Adam and Eve because they were without sin, so they could look upon the face of God and not die.

    Remember, He turned His face away from Jesus when Jesus was on the cross taking all the sin of the world upon himself. That must have been so ugly, and God could not look at Jesus. Jesus knew that God looked away, he could feel it in his soul. That moment in time was the most danger that Jesus was in from Satan's temptations.

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  18. Ok, another question for Res or somebody in the group. What are the 10 dimensions of our universe?

    That is a little over my head. Could somebody explain it to me? TIA.

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  19. Before I go into this I blieve I know where the Garden of Eden was located. They were kicked out and to this very day no man is allowed to live there. It is oblong and about 1420 square miles or 910,000 acres. It is in Tanzania and you can see it from the air on google earth it is lush and green with all kinds of wildlife and vegetation with Reddish soil that Adam was molded from (however you take the story). Adam's name means in part red.

    03 08 06 S, 35 37 58 E
    Back out to an eye elevation of about 100 miles to see it all. The tack is in the north part of a crater

    God dwelled in the mountain of God on the NE side of the Garden.
    02 45 34 S, 35 54 51 E

    Back out to an eye elevation of about 25,000 feet It is the only volcano like it in the world. The lava is at 500C and doesn't glow during the day because of the low temp then falls in to a dusty white powder. It has been active since the days of Adam.

    Now you know where the real cradle of mankind is. I'll bet no one you know knows this.


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  20. Susan9:46 AM

    Outlaw, I was hoping you'd join in the discussion. How are you feeling these days? Along with my dementia ridden FIL, you have probably been most in my thoughts.

    I would not be surprised if that is correct. But I have a question for you in response. Wouldn't God have allowed the Garden to be destroyed in the Flood to protect it from true and conclusive discovery?

    He knew then what great curiosity His creation had. When He posted an angel at the entrance, He meant to keep all mortals out until we re-earned the right to enter.

    So the great Flood would have been a natural way to keep us from actually finding the Garden until He deems us ready to re-enter.

    It would not surprise me if it was found to have been in some place like Tanzania or even Madagascar. Both places are so lush and tropical.
    And who knows exactly what the entire African continent looked like back then? It could have been much more lush and tropical before the ancient Romans and Egyptians and the like stripped it of resources for their empires.

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  21. Susan It was destroyed by the flood, but the place is still there. It does not have all the characteristics of the original garden and is just a spot on the map to point to. Like The Temple, Sodom ect. all were destroyed but the place where they resided is still there.

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  22. Remember I said I believe that is where it was I don't know for sure.

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  23. The only other argument against this that I have seen is that Eve was created as Adam's "helpmate". Not wife. Not mate. But as a helper, implying that the work was more than he could handle himself.

    Like procreate?

    What are the 10 dimensions of our universe?

    Susan this is open to speculation and debate. Some quantum physicists speculate a 11th dimension, some speculate fewer than 10.

    We have the four knowable dimensions: height, width, depth and time. The other 6 dimensions are mathematically inferred but not (at least currently) within our ability to experience. The additional 6 dimensions are typically broken into two groups, the metaverse (bigger than the universe) and the microverse (very small). The metaverse is a term used to describe things beyond the universe. Microverse refers to the extremely tiny interworking's of matter, space and energy. Most of the things you see dealing with quantum physics, like particle accelerator experiments, the god-particle etc are microverse issues.

    If you Google Microverse or Metaverse you will get all sorts of scifi related links. I'm using the terms descriptively. There may be better terminology in use. I suspect that either Outlaw or Waterboy could give you a better answer than this as well as explain the mathematics behind it.

    I'm heading into work shorty and will be tied up there till after midnight tonight. I'll try to check back throughout the day but I doubt I get much free time today, and I'm planning on sleeping in Monday.

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  24. Susan7:48 PM

    Res, after all your OT, you are certainly entitled to the bliss of sleeping in.

    Thanks for all the wonderful discussion in this post. Very enjoyable.

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  25. Anonymous6:27 AM

    Again, T-Rex would be unimpressed by your theology. He would however find your Remington Bolt action rifle compelling.

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  26. Anonymous6:28 AM

    Again, T-Rex would be unimpressed by your theology. He would however find your Remington Bolt action rifle compelling.

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  27. WaterBoy1:25 PM

    "Like procreate?"

    Heh, yeah. Kinda hard to fulfill that task by yourself in the absence of asexual reproduction.

    But again, a wife or mate could do that, too.

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  28. Res the more I look at this the more complicated it becomes. I am just going to leave it with I don't know for now.

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  29. Res Ipsa5:57 PM

    Outlaw,

    You can probably do a better job explaining 10 dimensions to Susan than I did. How about taking a crack at it?

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  30. Susan it is a mathematical theory and not a conversational one. It is based on string theory to which I don't ascribe. I do believe there are more than 4 dimensions but not string theory. It is not important so much to try and understand other dimensions, because you can never see up a dimension you can only see down. A three dimensional person can visualize a two dimensional stick figure. But a two dimensional stick figure cannot visualize a three dimensional being.

    This is why we don't look out the window and see angels but we are constantly in the sight of angels. That is really all you need to know Susan. So Res is speculating that we may have lost a dimension or two when we fell and could no longer see God (locked out of the Garden) and those limits on dimensions could be limitations of the mind only and at the fall we lost the ability to see past the four dimensions we see now in space-time.

    Does this help?

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