Cinocefali "văzuţi" de Marco Polo în insulele Andaman. Ilustraţie din "Livre des Merveilles, sec. 14-15.

Să mi se îngăduie niţică nebunie speculativă. Zilele astea se poartă speculaţiile de la amvon, prin urmare nu pot să fiu mai prejos, amvonul meu fiind blogul.

Am dat zilele acestea peste nişte dezbateri: admiţând prin reducere la absurd că între pământeni şi extratereştri ar fi posibilă împerecherea, neamul rezultat ar fi pasibil de mântuire?

Putem purta dezbateri scolastice nesfârşite pe acest subiect.

Eu unul aş adopta o linie pragmatică: să vedem mai întâi primul extraterestru şi prima odraslă hibridă şi apoi tranşăm problema (nu odrasla!) într-un sinod interconfesional (era să zic „ecumenic”).

Între timp, să dăm un pic în mintea lui Augustin, care atacă problema din alt unghi.

Îmi place concluzia lui (vezi ultimul paragraf), pe care o aplic astfel la dezbaterile noastre despre extratereştri şi rase hibride.

Avem trei posibilităţi:

1)      Extratereştrii nu există, deci împerecherile cu oamenii sunt imposibile. Nu are rost să ne punem problema mânuirii lor. (Varianta pe care o susţin).

2)    Extratereştrii există, dar nu ştim dacă e posibil amestecul lor cu oamenii. Decidem dacă hibrizii sunt oameni atunci când îi vedem. Cine i-a văzut, să mi-i arate şi mie

3)    Dacă extratereştrii există şi se pot împerechea cu oamenii, atunci odraslele rezultate au nevoie de mântuire fiindcă poartă în ele sămânţa căderii adamice.

Să-l ascultăm acum pe Augustin. Citatul este din Cetatea lui Dumnezeu, cartea XVI. Sublinierile îmi aparţin.

Chapter 8.—Whether Certain Monstrous Races of Men are Derived from the Stock of Adam or Noah’s Sons.
It is also asked whether we are to believe that certain monstrous races of men, spoken of in secular history, have sprung from Noah’s sons, or rather, I should say, from that one man from whom they themselves were descended. For it is reported that some have one eye in the middle of the forehead; some, feet turned backwards from the heel; some, a double sex, the right breast like a man, the left like a woman, and that they alternately beget and bring forth: others are said to have no mouth, and to breathe only through the nostrils; others are but a cubit high, and are therefore called by the Greeks “Pigmies: “ they say that in some places the women conceive in their fifth year, and do not live beyond their eighth. So, too, they tell of a race who have two feet but only one leg, and are of marvellous swiftness, though they do not bend the knee: they are called Skiopodes, because in the hot weather they lie down on their backs and shade themselves with their feet. Others are said to have no head, and their eyes in their shoulders; and other human or quasi-human races are depicted in mosaic in the harbor esplanade of Carthage, on the faith of histories of rarities. What shall I say of the Cynocephali, whose dog-like head and barking proclaim them beasts rather than men? But we are not bound to believe all we hear of these monstrosities. But whoever is anywhere born a man, that is, a rational, mortal animal, no matter what unusual appearance he presents in color, movement, sound, nor how peculiar he is in some power, part, or quality of his nature, no Christian can doubt that he springs from that one protoplast. We can distinguish the common human nature from that which is peculiar, and therefore wonderful.

The same account which is given of monstrous births in individual cases can be given of monstrous races. For God, the Creator of all, knows where and when each thing ought to be, or to have been created, because He sees the similarities and diversities which can contribute to the beauty of the whole. But He who cannot see the whole is offended by the deformity of the part, because he is blind to that which balances it, and to which it belongs. We know that men are born with more than four fingers on their bands or toes on their feet: this is a smaller matter; but far from us be the folly of supposing that the Creator mistook the number of a man’s fingers, though we cannot account for the difference. And so in cases where the divergence from the rule is greater. He whose works no man justly finds fault with, knows what He has done. At Hippo-Diarrhytus there is a man whose hands are crescent-shaped, and have only two fingers each, and his feet similarly formed. If there were a race like him, it would be added to the history of the curious and wonderful. Shall we therefore deny that this man is descended from that one man who was first created? As for the Androgyni, or Hermaphrodites, as they are called, though they are rare, yet from time to time there appears persons of sex so doubtful, that it remains uncertain from which sex they take their name; though it is customary to give them a masculine name, as the more worthy. For no one ever called them Hermaphroditesses. Some years ago, quite within my own memory, a man was born in the East, double in his upper, but single in his lower half—having two heads, two chests, four hands, but one body and two feet like an ordinary man; and he lived so long that many had an opportunity of seeing him. But who could enumerate all the human births that have differed widely from their ascertained parents? As, therefore, no one will deny that these are all descended from that one man, so all the races which are reported to have diverged in bodily appearance from the usual course which nature generally or almost universally preserves, if they are embraced in that definition of man as rational and mortal animals, unquestionably trace their pedigree to that one first father of all. We are supposing these stories about various races who differ from one another and from us to be true; but possibly they are not: for if we were not aware that apes, and monkeys, and sphinxes are not men, but beasts, those historians would possibly describe them as races of men, and flaunt with impunity their false and vainglorious discoveries. But supposing they are men of whom these marvels are recorded, what if God has seen fit to create some races in this way, that we might not suppose that the monstrous births which appear among ourselves are the failures of that wisdom whereby He fashions the human nature, as we speak of the failure of a less perfect workman? Accordingly, it ought not to seem absurd to us, that as in individual races there are monstrous births, so in the whole race there are monstrous races. Wherefore, to conclude this question cautiously and guardedly, either these things which have been told of some races have no existence at all; or if they do exist, they are not human races; or if they are human, they are descended from Adam.