The Remnant Online
News => Signs of the Times => Topic started by: Cop on August 23, 2010, 09:01:25 PM
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[Excerpts]
Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the "naughty" one. But this punishment wasn't enough - he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.
Like many scientists and humanists, I have long been fascinated by the capacities and inclinations of babies and children. The mental life of young humans not only is an interesting topic in its own right; it also raises - and can help answer - fundamental questions of philosophy and psychology, including how biological evolution and cultural experience conspire to shape human nature. In graduate school, I studied early language development and later moved on to fairly traditional topics in cognitive development, like how we come to understand the minds of other people - what they know, want and experience.
But the current work I'm involved in, on baby morality, might seem like a perverse and misguided next step. Why would anyone even entertain the thought of babies as moral beings? From Sigmund Freud to Jean Piaget to Lawrence Kohlberg, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals. One important task of society, particularly of parents, is to turn babies into civilized beings - social creatures who can experience empathy, guilt and shame; who can override selfish impulses in the name of higher principles; and who will respond with outrage to unfairness and injustice.
A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it's because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=print
(Bloom, The Moral Life of Babies, "New York Times," 5/3/10)
["For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another" (Romans 2:14-15).]
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The researchers lack a moral compass to understand the truth. But, they cannot help but see something. :) Just as the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the human life, when moved by the Spirit of God. Apart from Christ, there is no good thing in a baby. It has a conscience and can be moved by the Spirit, but apart from the Spirit of God, the baby has nothing good in it. Even a baby knows to smile to get something to eat. Even a baby has a need to be touched and loved. A baby knows enough to cry and to smile to get what it wants. It is an inborn trait of selfishness.
We are discussing this idea of "self worth" and self esteem in the Sabbath School lesson being taught today around the world in our churches. There is no self worth even though each of us has great value in the eyes of God. He sees what we can become. He values us in accordance with the price paid for our redemption. Such love!!! To allow His Son to come into this dark world as a helpless baby subject to our weaknesses at the risk of losing Him!!!! We ought to appreciate the self sacrifice seen in this great love!!
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Amen!
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The researchers lack a moral compass to understand the truth. But, they cannot help but see something. :) Just as the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the human life, when moved by the Spirit of God. Apart from Christ, there is no good thing in a baby. It has a conscience and can be moved by the Spirit, but apart from the Spirit of God, the baby has nothing good in it. Even a baby knows to smile to get something to eat. Even a baby has a need to be touched and loved. A baby knows enough to cry and to smile to get what it wants. It is an inborn trait of selfishness.
We are discussing this idea of "self worth" and self esteem in the Sabbath School lesson being taught today around the world in our churches. There is no self worth even though each of us has great value in the eyes of God. He sees what we can become. He values us in accordance with the price paid for our redemption. Such love!!! To allow His Son to come into this dark world as a helpless baby subject to our weaknesses at the risk of losing Him!!!! We ought to appreciate the self sacrifice seen in this great love!!
Brother Richard, are you saying that for a baby to smile to get something to eat that is sin ,a transgression of the law? A baby in the womb does not have a conscience. The consicence is the ability in the frontal lobe to choose right from wrong based off of evidence. The three week old baby in the womb cannot discern right from wrong. I think we are incorrectly discerning the fallen nature to be sin even when it is not acted upon and indeed cannot be acted upon. If I am hungry and ask for an apple that is not sin. If I need to ask for an apple to get one is that selfish sin ? God gave the impulse for hunger for preservation. If that is sin then we will sin until the day we die.
I am not saying that a baby outside the womb cannot sin but it seems to me that it is not sin for a baby to cry because he is hungry. Cring is releasing an emotion and sometimes it expresses a need foroneself or for another. Jesus cried. Unless a baby is taking a sucker from another baby at that baby's expense I don't see how crying or smiling enters into the realm of sin.
Was it a sin because Hannah cried because she had not a baby? Wasn't she crying pleading for a baby?
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Well, I certainly opened myself up for this. :) My point had nothing to do with sin, but with the fact that to attribute morality to the baby's actions can certainly be misunderstood. Where is the Holy Spirit in their study? A baby can be moved by the Spirit to certain behaviour. This is not proof that a baby is born with a moral compass and able to follow it independent of help from God. This is foolishness. A baby needs a Saviour just like adults. It has no ability to do good unselfishly on its own.
From a theological point of view, a pre-fall baby would be different from a post-fall baby. Can we agree? What is the difference? The post-fall baby needs the Spirit to guide it. The pre-fall baby would not have needed the same help since its nature was not evil.
But, then that is another subject slightly removed from the ability of a baby today to do good independent of the Spirit of God. I think we agree on this? :)
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Well, I certainly opened myself up for this. :) My point had nothing to do with sin, but with the fact that to attribute morality to the baby's actions can certainly be misunderstood. Where is the Holy Spirit in their study? A baby can be moved by the Spirit to certain behaviour. This is not proof that a baby is born with a moral compass and able to follow it independent of help from God. This is foolishness. A baby needs a Saviour just like adults. It has no ability to do good unselfishly on its own.
From a theological point of view, a pre-fall baby would be different from a post-fall baby. Can we agree? What is the difference? The post-fall baby needs the Spirit to guide it. The pre-fall baby would not have needed the same help since its nature was not evil.
But, then that is another subject slightly removed from the ability of a baby today to do good independent of the Spirit of God. I think we agree on this? :)
I reread your quote several times to try to understand your point. If I understand you correctly I'm thinking I agree.
I am not attributing moralitiy to a new born baby neither must we attribute immorality to an unborn baby or even new born baby based on physical expression of need. If we agree that a baby inside the womb is as much of a baby as one outside the womb then we can talk about the unborn baby just as well. A post fall baby in the womb is not comitting sin. Both the prefall unborn baby and the post fall unborn baby it would seem would not be able to seek the Holy Spirit until it has the mental capbilites and mental growth to do so. I suppose one could say we get into a gray area when conception is only minutes away. This is why I believe we enter ambiguous ground when we begin this kind of discussion.
What would the Holy Spirit guide a three minute old baby in the womb to think, choose, or do?
Does an unborn baby need a Savior even though he has not acted upon his fallen nature? Yes, on two counts. #1 Unless he dies soon he has no choice but to sin. #2 Since we are of the lineage of Adam the tiny unborn baby suffers the results of Adam's transgression therefore he needs a Savior even before he is developed enough to transgress the law. This does not mean that the baby personally deserves banishment from heaven but that he would suffer such as an inheritance.
Then we enter into the death of a baby before the age of accountability. While we are told a little about this there are situations we are not informed about.