Imagination and the Mind of Man

This series of posts explores how imagination is connected to the development of man’s mind and how imagination has provided man’s mind with capabilities that exceed the capabilities of the minds of other entities created in Genesis thereby enabling man to “master the earth” (Gen 1:28) and be master over the other entities created in Genesis.

Review of the previous post.

The previous post, post number 3 of 7, discussed how man’s ability to imagine allows man to have free will.

 Preview of this post.

This post, post number 4 of 7, discusses how man’s ability to imagine allows man to have a memory that is superior to the memories of any of the other entities created in Genesis.

1. Memory

Since human free will works best when there is the ability to imagine the consequences and results associated with a choice, a memory^[1] is also required for the proper and effective exercise of free will. Without memory, mistaken choices may be repeated. While it might be argued that one can have free will without memory, such free will would be chaotic and directionless. Humans would not learn and hence would not progress under such conditions. Furthermore, the more knowledge one has, the more likely one will be to be able to extrapolate one consequence associated with a choice into the equation associated with another choice. Two situations may be diverse from each other, but one with knowledge of both situations and consequences and an imagination may be able to use knowledge from one situation to solve a problem associated with another situation. Thus, knowledge can also be added to the requirements for fully exercising imagination and free will. Only one with an imagination could form a mental impression of the meaning of each choice. For that reason, man must have free will as free will goes hand in hand with an imagination, knowledge and memory.

Free will without some consequences is not really free will as there must be some consequences in order for people exercising free will to learn and progress. The consequences of free will without consequences are the subject of Genesis 6:5-7 where God regretted that He had made man because of the uncontrolled actions of the Nephilim.

Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden because there were no choices to be made (God provided everything) and they were not able to exercise their imagination^[2]; furthermore, it could be argued that the Tower of Babel was destroyed because it was intended to make all mankind uniform (“else we shall be scattered all over the world” Genesis 11:4) thereby destroying diversity and choice, hence hindering the exercise, and growth, of man’s imagination^[3]. Which is why this episode concludes with the verse:  “Thus, the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:8. It thus could be argued that God wanted diversity so there would be choices since He had given humans the tools to make choices: free will and imagination to exercise choices associated with free will. God has entrusted His great creation to the exercise of man’s imagination, our free will and to our memory for safekeeping and our abilities to exercise our free will, learn lessons and apply those learned lessons to current and/or future problems.

Preview of the next post.

The next post, post number 5 of 7, presents further abilities which can be attributed to man’s ability to imagine.

^[1] As discussed in the series titled “In God’s Image,” the human imagination is capable of forming mental impressions of complex events and complex items; hence, the human memory was expanded to be capable of handling complex events and complex items. Therefore, the complexity of the human memory might be traced to and grown from the complexity of human imagination. As also discussed in that series, the complexity of human communication might also be traced to and grown from the complexity of the human imagination and the human memory since humans developed and improved their communication skills to share the results of their memories and imaginations with each other.

^[2] See the series “Another Interpretation of the Garden of Eden Story”.

^[3] See the series“The Tower of Babel”.