Wie beeinflusst die Sünde Akademie und Forschung? In seinem Werk “Principles of Sacred Theology” (Download hier) im Kapitel “Science an Sin” (43. Kapitel) listet Abraham Kuyper einige Effekte auf.
Grundsätzlich:
If there were no sin, nor any of its results, the subjectivity of A would merely be a variation of the subjectivity in B.
Kuyper nennt Kommunikationsfehler, unbeabsichtigte Fehler in Beobachtung und Erinnerung, Selbstbetrug, Einbildung und Fantasie, den durch verschiedene Menschen entstehenden Verstärkereffekt, körperliche Fehlleistungen, beeinträchtigte Beziehungen, die Verknüpfungen des eigenen Bewusstseins.
(1) that falsehood in every sense and form is now in the world. And since more than one spiritual science hangs almost exclusively upon personal communications, and since in consequence of “falsehood” all absolute warrant for the trustworthiness of these data be wanting, it is sufficiently evident how greatly the certainty of these sciences suffers loss in consequence of sin.
(2) Alongside of this actual falsehood we have the unintentional mistake, in observation and in memory, as well as in the processes of thought.
(3) Self-delusion and self-deception are no less important factors in this process, which renders nothing so rare as a scientific self-knowledge, a knowledge of your own person and character in more than a hypothetical form.
(4) A fourth evil resides in our imagination. In a normal condition the self-consciousness would be able at once accurately to indicate the boundary line between what enters into our consciousness from the real world without, and what is wrought in our consciousness by our imagination. But this boundary line is not only uncertain because of sin, but in strongly impassioned natures it is sometimes absolutely undiscoverable, so that fantasy and reality frequently pass into one another.
(5) Equally injurious are the influences which this abnormal element in the condition of other minds exerts upon us, since this evil, which by itself is already enough of a hindrance, is thereby given a coefficient. Not only are we subject to these influences from infancy, but our education frequently tends intentionally to give them domination over us. Language also adds its contribution.
(6) The effects worked by sin through the body claim here an equal consideration. In consequence of sin there is really no one in a normal bodily condition. All sorts of wrong and sickly commotions bestir themselves in our body and work their effect in our spiritual dispositions.
(7) Stronger still, perhaps, is the influence of the sin-disorganized relationships of life, – an influence which makes itself especially felt with the pedagogic and the social sciences. He who has had his bringing-up in the midst of want and neglect will entertain entirely different views of jural relationships and social regulations from him who from his youth has been bathed in prosperity. Thus, also, your view of civil right would be altogether different, if you had grown up under a despotism, than if you had spent the years of early manhood under the excesses of anarchism.
To which (8) this is yet to be added, that the different parts of the content of our consciousness affect each other, and no one exists atomistically in his consciousness. This entails the result that the inaccuracies and false representations which you have gleaned from one realm of life, affect injuriously again the similarly mixed ideas which you have made your own from another domain.
