Quote:
Originally Posted by mizpeh
I'm not putting 2 and 2 together here. I would agree with Rousseau's thought that we are not born with original sin or in total depravity. The Bible teaches we come to an age when we know between good and evil. Until that time we are innocents like Adam and Eve were before they took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I'm not sure you answered my question about Chomsky. How did he prove the slate was not clean? Do you think the mind is the same as the brain? are you using those words interchangably?
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The brain is the organ from which the mind arises. The physical characteristics of the brain will be manifest in the non-physical realm of the mind.
A ball-peen hammer could reduce any of us adults back to the level of "innocence" that you describe.
What Chomsky demonstrated, and what Pinker develops further is that we don't come into the world with a "blank slate." We come into the world with a "human nature" and "instincts" and that one of these instincts is for language. (More
here).
If we come into the world with "anything at all," then the "slate" could not have been "clean" (and by "clean" they don't mean just "morally clean" - but "clean" of any programming at all).
We have propensities. Many of these propensities do have moral implications, thus we can sin and utimately we do (
Romans 3:9-18). Rousseau's idea that there existed nations of "noble savages" who were free from any taint or corruption was naive at best. The truth of the matter is that the "savages" are just as war-like and fierce as the "corrupted" and "tainted" Europeans.
Where does the Bible "teaches we come to an age when we know between good and evil" and "Until that time we are innocents like Adam and Eve were before they took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?"
Certainly, childhood has its innocence for "such is the Kingdom of God." But those children required a bloody sacrifice at Calvary as much as any of the rest of us. Why was that?
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