Adam and Eve and Evolution

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Hey everyone. I have been having this issue for a while. First of all, I believe in the Theistic Evolution theory which states that God created the world using evolution. Basically He guided evolution in order to bring about the world as it is today. However, I also believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were the first and only human beings and who committed the Original Sin which we all inherit.

The problem I have is this: How did human beings evolve but yet there were only two people in the beginning: Adam and Eve. If human beings evolved then that means that there were human-like creatures before Adam and Eve. We could call them hominids since that what science calls them. All of these various hominids would have been reproducing and having hominid babies. So how did it come about that only two of those babies happened to be the first true humans, Adam and Eve?

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Holly3278 said:
Hey everyone. I have been having this issue for a while. First of all, I believe in the Theistic Evolution theory which states that God created the world using evolution. Basically He guided evolution in order to bring about the world as it is today. However, I also believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were the first and only human beings and who committed the Original Sin which we all inherit.

The problem I have is this: How did human beings evolve but yet there were only two people in the beginning: Adam and Eve. If human beings evolved then that means that there were human-like creatures before Adam and Eve. We could call them hominids since that what science calls them. All of these various hominids would have been reproducing and having hominid babies. So how did it come about that only two of those babies happened to be the first true humans, Adam and Eve?

Thanks in advance for your help.
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Starting from Pope Pius XII:
  1. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
– Humani Generis

Evolution is a scientific theory, and science does not deal with souls. Souls do not evolve, they do not fossilise and they are not encoded in DNA. Evolution can easily produce a population of unsouled hairless upright hominid apes.

Souls come directly from God. God can give two, and only two, of those evolved hominids souls. Those two souled hominids are scientifically identical to the surrounding population, but are theologically very different. Theologically those two were the only true human beings on the planet.

All of us alive today are descended from that pair of souled humans.

rossum
 
This will be a great question to ask God when we get to heaven, huh? LOL!

I agree with the folks who have basically said that we don’t know when exactly Adam and Eve came into play. It’s possible when scientists point at human-like skeletons that basically evolved from 6000 or 7000 years before Adam and Eve could possibly have entered the picture, that God allowed human beings to “evolve” just as He did other species but that at some point, He gave two of them souls and that was the beginning of humanity as we know it today. To me, that doesn’t decry either the concept of evolution or the biblical story of creation which has to have at least a basis in truth. If you read the old testament, you can see the Israelites tracing their geniology right back to Adam and Eve. (This one was the father of such and such who fathered so and so-- right on back to Adam and Eve) The Jewish history is so precise that–to me anyway–something happened when Adam and Eve entered the picture–and we may never know for sure during our earthly lives!
 
Good question.
Others along the same line:
How was Jesus conceived when Mary knew no man?
How is the Eucharist the body of Christ, when it appears to be just bread?
How did Jesus raise Lazarus after three days dead?
How was Jesus resurrected?
How did He ascend into Heaven?
How and where can He be sitting at the right hand of God?
How are we to be resurrected to eternal life?
The way I see things is that God’s Word is Reality; everything flows from there.
Science cannot tell us the mechanics of how God shaped the earth of Eden into the form of Adam (It cannot identify him.), nor of how Eve was created.
The answer you seek also has not been revealed, so it is a mystery, perhaps to test one’s faith. Your premises may be incorrect; I don’t know.
If God is truly omnipotent, He can create anything.
 
rossum said:
Starting from Pope Pius XII:
36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.

– Humani GenerisEvolution is a scientific theory, and science does not deal with souls. Souls do not evolve, they do not fossilise and they are not encoded in DNA. Evolution can easily produce a population of unsouled hairless upright hominid apes.

Souls come directly from God. God can give two, and only two, of those evolved hominids souls. Those two souled hominids are scientifically identical to the surrounding population, but are theologically very different. Theologically those two were the only true human beings on the planet.

All of us alive today are descended from that pair of souled humans.

rossum
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Interesting. So basically humans could have evolved to a certain point but didn’t have a spiritual soul and then when God decided humans had evolved enough he gave a man and a woman a spiritual soul when they were created in their mother’s wombs and then they were the first “true humans”? What I mean by “true humans” is humans like us who have souls. Oh and of course those first “true humans” were Adam and Eve.
1ke said:
God gave them a spiritual soul.
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Interesting. So Adam and Eve could have been conceived in the wombs of non-spiritual humans but at the moment of their conception they were given spiritual souls?
Aloysium said:
Good question.
Others along the same line:
How was Jesus conceived when Mary knew no man?
How is the Eucharist the body of Christ, when it appears to be just bread?
How did Jesus raise Lazarus after three days dead?
How was Jesus resurrected?
How did He ascend into Heaven?
How and where can He be sitting at the right hand of God?
How are we to be resurrected to eternal life?
The way I see things is that God’s Word is Reality; everything flows from there.
Science cannot tell us the mechanics of how God shaped the earth of Eden into the form of Adam (It cannot identify him.), nor of how Eve was created.
The answer you seek also has not been revealed, so it is a mystery, perhaps to test one’s faith. Your premises may be incorrect; I don’t know.
If God is truly omnipotent, He can create anything.
Click to expand...
Well, not to go off the topic but for your first question, Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit while remaining a virgin.

Second, the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ and it becomes so by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Third, Jesus raised Lazarus by His divine power.

Fourth, Jesus was resurrected by the divine power of God.

Fifth, Jesus ascended into Heaven by His divine power.

Sixth, He can be sitting at the right hand of God in Heaven by the divine power of God. I’m not sure how else to explain this.

Seventh, we are to be resurrected by God’s power.

So basically the answer to all of your questions is that it happens by the power of God.
 
Holly3278 said:
. . . So basically the answer to all of your questions is that it happens by the power of God.
Click to expand...
👍

My point is that this also is all we know for certain about the creation of Adam and Eve. Science tells us Mary could not have conceived. I don’t believe we can look to science to tell us any more about our beginnings than has been revealed in Genesis. I may be wrong, but I don’t see how. My favourite fantasy is that all life on earth, earth itself actually, is a necessary by-product of God’s creation of man, whereby He enters into His creation - a sort of plants and apes evolved from the final aim, which was man, idea :). I can’t say anything about the particulars of how this would work.
 
Holly3278 said:
Hey everyone. I have been having this issue for a while. First of all, I believe in the Theistic Evolution theory which states that God created the world using evolution. Basically He guided evolution in order to bring about the world as it is today. However, I also believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were the first and only human beings and who committed the Original Sin which we all inherit.

The problem I have is this: How did human beings evolve but yet there were only two people in the beginning: Adam and Eve. If human beings evolved then that means that there were human-like creatures before Adam and Eve. We could call them hominids since that what science calls them. All of these various hominids would have been reproducing and having hominid babies. So how did it come about that only two of those babies happened to be the first true humans, Adam and Eve?

Thanks in advance for your help.
Click to expand...
A Bible versus that might give some insight.
Genesis 2:15 - The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

According to this, God took man and put him into the Garden. Maybe after “man” evolved to the point that man was what he wanted, he took one of them, and put him in the Garden of Eden?
 
ckutac said:
A Bible versus that might give some insight.
Genesis 2:15 - The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

According to this, God took man and put him into the Garden. Maybe after “man” evolved to the point that man was what he wanted, he took one of them, and put him in the Garden of Eden?
Click to expand...
It makes sense.

No one has seen a whirling/flashing/turning flaming sword in this world.
Eden could be another world altogether.
Perhaps it is the true nature of this world, not in its fallen state. If this were the case, I can imagine the sword being that of time as we experience here - there’s no going back to that eternal condition, just forward to death.
We don’t know; we can’t know unless it is revealed imho.
 
The more I learn about our first parents, Adam and Eve, the more I praise and thank God Who created them as the first humans who are called to share in His own life. (Information source. Genesis 1: 26-28; CCC, 355-357; CCC, 366) Like our first parents, we, too, are “wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139, “The all-knowing and ever-present God”)

Links to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/
 
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