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The Ādam Paradox Hypothesis 208
Part VI — Science and Revelation in Dialogue
Chapter 21
Purpose, Freedom, Accountability
The weight of trust that only humans agreed to bear.
To be human is to carry more than a genome. We are not merely descendants
of survivors; we are bearers of responsibility. If the Adam Paradox Hypothesis
is correct, the decisive leap in human becoming was not only cognitive but
moral. Symbols and imagination were not gifts of convenience. They were the
foundations of trust, law, and accountability.
The Qur
ʾān describes this moment starkly:
“We offered the Trust to the heavens, the earth, and the mountains, but they refused to bear it
and feared it. Man undertook it — he is indeed unjust and ignorant” (Q 33:72).
This verse names the paradox. The trust (al-amānah) is weighty, greater than the
mountains. It gives humans freedom, and with freedom comes both greatness
and failure.
Freedom as Double-Edged
The infusion of symbolic cognition gave humanity a gift no other species
shares: the ability to imagine, to choose, to remember the past and project
futures. With it came the power of law, art, myth — and also deception,
violence, and tyranny.
Other primates live by instinct. A chimpanzee does not invent gods, nor bind
itself by oaths. Humans, after Adam, do both. We can shape myths that sustain
justice, or lies that destroy civilizations.
This is the double edge of freedom. It is the glory of imagination and the terror
of responsibility.