Adam and Eve and Genetics Difficulty

[Ron_Conte]

Whatever the explanation, Adam and Eve must be held, by faith, to be two real historical persons. Otherwise, original sin becomes a mere figure, and the dogmas of faith on original sin, and by extension on baptism (which takes away original sin) and on the Immaculate Conception (Mary preserved from original sin) would all fail.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are highly figurative, but this does not imply that every element is a figure, nor that none of the persons and events therein are historical.

 

[Bradski]

Accept what the Church teaches in spite of the difficulty.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)

Belief is a choice. Once you accept, everything else will fall into place…

I think that that is Latinitas’s problem. Belief requires that you accept the evidence which will therefore lead to belief. He/she has a problem reconciling theological evidence with scientific evidence.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

My attempt at solution to the dilemma is this: It is of the faith that physical death is a result of the Original Sin committed by the first man, and it is also certain that all physical and emotional and moral sufferings result from this as well (afterall, Eden means, or sounds like the word that means, “pleasure” in Hebrew), so, having fallen from this state, a fast mutation rate would be expected for some time, which then slowed down by God’s Providence. This could explain what is meant by the long ages given in Sacred Scripture. I realize that the arch-skeptic is not going to be convinced by such a theory, given that it invokes supernatural intervention, but of course, this objection is of no merit to the Catholic.

My question for all of you is this (thank you to those of you who have read all of this! ): Is this explanation possible? Would it sufficiently account for the scientific evidence? Are there any other theories that are proposed to reconcile the two?

I’d prefer it if those who had a background in genetics could answer this question, however,I am not interested in this question being answered by skeptics, rationalists, and the like who simply deny monogenism flat out.

Also, if you could say a prayer for me to regain a little more peace of mind about this, I’d appreciate it.

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas

I’m not an “arch skeptic” whatever that means. I am a scientist, and I have done some work in microbial genetics, but less in human genetics. The question you ask doesn’t really fit into the framework of science. I don’t invoke supernatural explanations to form hypotheses or to explain results. However, regarding a conjecture like this, a scientist would ask:

(a) does it run counter to currently accepted thought on how the natural world works? In this case, yes. “Constant rate of mutation” is an oversimplification as well, but on average it seems to be a good assumption. At the very least what you propose runs counter to intuition.

(b) is there any way to test this conjecture? And the answer here is no. If you had access to fossils of humans known to be direct descendants of Adam and Eve, and could extract and sequence DNA (a tall order by the way, for something that old), then you could test the hypothesis, but if you know the fossils to be direct descendants of Adam and Eve then you have your answer already.

So like if I were trying to publish a scientific paper, and I had an unexplained observation, I would report it as unexplained. If I had a reasonable explanation that is in line with generally known phenomena, but not possible (or easy) to test experimentally, I might suggest that (e.g. one reason the ball may have dropped slower than expected is because it passed through a zone of colder air and experienced a higher amount of drag). If it were straightforward to do the experiment, I would do it (i.e. drop the ball through cold air and warm air and see if there’s a difference). If the conjecture runs counter to what we think we know (e.g. the ball dropped slower than expected because it experienced a transient burst of antigravity) then I would refrain from reporting that.

 

[JaKael02]

Has anyone read Pope Benedict’s book on Creation???

In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Ressourcement: Retreival and Renewal in Catholic Thought)

I have recently just finished this book. He seems to apply a whole different angle to the concept of Original sin & has some very unique interpretations of Genesis.

 

[wmw]

I’m not an “arch skeptic” whatever that means. I am a scientist, and I have done some work in microbial genetics, but less in human genetics. The question you ask doesn’t really fit into the framework of science. I don’t invoke supernatural explanations to form hypotheses or to explain results. However, regarding a conjecture like this, a scientist would ask:

(a) does it run counter to currently accepted thought on how the natural world works? In this case, yes. “Constant rate of mutation” is an oversimplification as well, but on average it seems to be a good assumption. At the very least what you propose runs counter to intuition.

(b) is there any way to test this conjecture? And the answer here is no. If you had access to fossils of humans known to be direct descendants of Adam and Eve, and could extract and sequence DNA (a tall order by the way, for something that old), then you could test the hypothesis, but if you know the fossils to be direct descendants of Adam and Eve then you have your answer already.

So like if I were trying to publish a scientific paper, and I had an unexplained observation, I would report it as unexplained. If I had a reasonable explanation that is in line with generally known phenomena, but not possible (or easy) to test experimentally, I might suggest that (e.g. one reason the ball may have dropped slower than expected is because it passed through a zone of colder air and experienced a higher amount of drag). If it were straightforward to do the experiment, I would do it (i.e. drop the ball through cold air and warm air and see if there’s a difference). If the conjecture runs counter to what we think we know (e.g. the ball dropped slower than expected because it experienced a transient burst of antigravity) then I would refrain from reporting that.

Hi Bobby,
Thanks for indulging us non-experts with questions about our own particular theories. I was trying to say to the OP that there is more than just mutation rate, but assumptions of at least :

1. 
   *]Fixed population size.
   *]No migration.
   *]Random mating.
   *]Non-overlapping generations.
   *]Constant mutation rates.
   *]No selection.
   
   So, then are these reasonable statements?
   
   With all this variability and probability scientist are still just saying its highly unlikely that Adam and Eve as a single pair had enough genetic material to explain the current genetic diversity. However, any unusual aspect of Adam or how mutations occurred or newly discovered mechanisms of RNA causing changes in genetic diversity could cause these probabilities to no longer be highly unlikely. Yet, to become likely it appears that God would have to make some sort of intervention.

 

[cfauster]

Hi everyone,

So, I’ve been a bit obsessed with this question the last few days, namely, how to reconcile Catholic doctrine on monogenism with the genetic evidence. In 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission declared that it is not permissible to deny the historical nature of the Genesis 1-3, which I fully agree with and accept. Pope Pius XII declared the same thing in his encyclical Humani Generis. I do not see how one can seriously deny the historicity of Adam and Eve without straining the texts of Scripture beyond their limits (Even if Gen. 1-3 can be dealt with, how about Gen. 4 which says Adam knew his wife, and she conceived?, or how about the beginning of the books of the Chronicles?, never mind the doctrine of the New Testament).

On the other hand, genetic evidence seems to indicate that the human race cannot possibly come from just two human beings who mated; the mutation rate would simply be too high, and if that mutation rate continued, the human race would have mutated itself out existence. It should be noted here that Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve do not satisfy the problem, since there is no necessity that they lived at the same time (although they may have, according to scientific evidence).

Now, of course, this presents us with a difficulty. To defend the view that humans descend from 10000 primal ancestors does not seem to be able to be reconciled with Sacred Scripture, or Catholic dogma regarding original sin. However, the theories that I’ve been thinking of to reconcile it may not do justice to the science, of which, I admit I am grossly ignorant of (biology is the one subject I’ve never really found interesting).

My attempt at solution to the dilemma is this: It is of the faith that physical death is a result of the Original Sin committed by the first man, and it is also certain that all physical and emotional and moral sufferings result from this as well (afterall, Eden means, or sounds like the word that means, “pleasure” in Hebrew), so, having fallen from this state, a fast mutation rate would be expected for some time, which then slowed down by God’s Providence. This could explain what is meant by the long ages given in Sacred Scripture. I realize that the arch-skeptic is not going to be convinced by such a theory, given that it invokes supernatural intervention, but of course, this objection is of no merit to the Catholic.

My question for all of you is this (thank you to those of you who have read all of this! ): Is this explanation possible? Would it sufficiently account for the scientific evidence? Are there any other theories that are proposed to reconcile the two?

I’d prefer it if those who had a background in genetics could answer this question, however,I am not interested in this question being answered by skeptics, rationalists, and the like who simply deny monogenism flat out.

Also, if you could say a prayer for me to regain a little more peace of mind about this, I’d appreciate it.

Benedicat Deus,
Latinitas

A “team of Dominican friars and scholars committed to the preaching of the gospel” … “are convinced that the Thomistic intellectual tradition can provide insightful and compelling responses to these questions.”

They review Catholic teaching on creation and on human origins, and also through evolution.Homo sapiens But perhaps the key part of their work is their theological synthesis that respects the RC Church doctrine and the science mentioned in your post.

 

[Joe_Boylan]

A fascinating discussion indeed. As both a scientist and a theologian what is very obvious to me is that there has to be compromise of some kind in all of these issues. Science is a very young discipline numbering for us no more than two or three hundred years or so. Theology is much older and philosophy older still.

Even though science is my ‘craft’ or my own skill set I would select it to stand aside from the other disciplines. One of the worst mistakes a scientist can make is to claim that he has the definitive answer to all or any of these problems. A scientist is an explorer and can rarely if ever come up with a positive answer to the problem, whatever it is. Even when he thought he had established the temperature of the actual boiling point of water he had to admit subsequently that it could change with atmospheric pressure.

Now for a more theological point which is this. Through all the vast ages of God’s creation He Himself still exists in the eternal now, “Before Abraham was I am.” And let us not forget that nowhere should it be assumed that God cannot touch His creation at any instant of His own choice. After all did He not touch it with the birth of Christ? What about the virgin birth too? The whole of the Incarnation is imbued with the effect of supernatural events. The Eucharistic presence of God which we experience every Sunday and which no scientist can explain. Take the Resurrection for another instance. Now let us step forward in time once more and look at the appearances of Mary to people in the present day and age. It is useless to consign them to private revelation. If I can cite just one of the astounding miracles of Lourdes described in the booklet “I met a Miracle”. Read the story of John Trainer whose cure defied all the scientists of the day and still does. A man shot up in the first World War and consigned to a wheelchair - for the rest of his life. Recovered during his visit to Lourdes to such a degree he could operate his old business of coal heaving until he died in the 1930s from a completely separate and natural cause. He also, so defied the comprehension of those who had awarded him his life-long pension that they refused to cancel it even after seeing what had happened. God must have touched His creation.

Just as much a miracle in my mind is the fact that when Mary identified herself to Bernadette at Lourdes she called herself “The Immaculate Conception”, which was incomprehensible to Bernadette at the time, but which happened only four years after the doctrine had been proclaimed by the Church. God again touched His creation!

With the positive happenings of all these events which are at the heart of our faith I hope it can now be appreciated that whilst God allows His own creation to develop in the way we think it did, i.e according to the theory of evolution, there is a point without any doubt when He touched it and Man and Woman appeared with their human souls as the parents of all of their descendants in our human race.

One more point I should make clear is that you can use all sorts of conspiracy theories to try to explain these events, after all conspiracy theories are very much in fashion today, (Oo lah, lah! and they have been with us for a couple of thousand years or so) but in certain circumstances at least aren’t these the manifestations of “the serpent” whom God condemned after the Fall placing ‘enmity between thee and the woman’? Where does that place the evolutionists who want to categorically exclude anything they cannot understand in God’s Creation?

 

[Ron_Conte]

With all this variability and probability scientist are still just saying its highly unlikely that Adam and Eve as a single pair had enough genetic material to explain the current genetic diversity.

I would place Adam and Eve on earth about 50 to 80 thousand years ago. So there is sufficient time for genetic variability to develop by mutations. It may also be the case (unfortunately) that some human persons in very ancient times mated with AMH, increasing genetic diversity.

 

[cjforJesus]

A “team of Dominican friars and scholars committed to the preaching of the gospel” … “are convinced that the Thomistic intellectual tradition can provide insightful and compelling responses to these questions.”

They review Catholic teaching on creation and on human origins, and also how God created Homo sapiens through evolution. But perhaps the key part of their work is their theological synthesis that respects the RC Church doctrine and the science mentioned in your post.

I found no explanation in the writing of how or when God ensouled Adam and Eve. Were they two grown beasts that God decided had evolved enough.Were they from separate beast parents and these animals then raised humam children? It makes no sense
To me God creating everything makes more sense.

The Catholic Church allows people to believe in a type of evolution but it never say exactly what. It only says that God creates each soul immediately.

I believe Adam and Eve were perfect , genetically pure and probably much more intelligent than we are.

 

[cfauster]

I think elsewhere (not in the material to which I provided links in my previous post) Rev. Austriaco has addressed the importance of human ensoulment, mostly in his bioethics work defending the sanctity of human life.

Here are a couple of starting points if interested in knowing more about his views on life issues:

catholic.com/profiles/fr-nicanor-austriaco-op

Metaphysics and Catholic Bioethics

Genetic Engineering, Post-Genomic Ethics, and the Catholic Tradition

On Static Eggs and Dynamic Embryos: A Systems Perspective

 

[cjforJesus]

I think elsewhere (not in the material to which I provided links in my previous post) Rev. Austriaco has addressed the importance of human ensoulment, mostly in his bioethics work defending the sanctity of human life.

Here are a couple of starting points if interested in knowing more about his views on life issues:

catholic.com/profiles/fr-nicanor-austriaco-op

Metaphysics and Catholic Bioethics

Genetic Engineering, Post-Genomic Ethics, and the Catholic Tradition

On Static Eggs and Dynamic Embryos: A Systems Perspective

But no one can expalin how God gave two animals a rational soul.Were they fully grown? Did each of them come from some sort of monkey creature? Did these monkeys then raise two humans with souls? It is WAY too bizarre and confusing for me. If God ensouls us at conception that means two monkeys mated and had a human OY VEY.

 

[GEddie]

I find no need to “posit” human beings without the spiritual soul/rational mind.

Consider that the human body is an extremely fragile and vulnerable organism. It cannot run fast; it cannot climb trees or escarpments easily; it has no fur, no native weapons, relatively weak senses and muscles and thin skin, and its exposed neck and thin-walled head cause the human body to die quite easily. It’s not a very good animal. Our current dominant position on the natural “food chain” is due entirely to our minds and hands.

So a line of “AMH” with the hands, but no rational soul/mind to make use of them, would vanish in short order. Imagining them just to force polygenism and Scripture together does no good.

IMNAAHO.

ICXC NIKA

 

[wmw]

A “team of Dominican friars and scholars committed to the preaching of the gospel” … “are convinced that the Thomistic intellectual tradition can provide insightful and compelling responses to these questions.”

They review Catholic teaching on creation and on human origins, and also how God created Homo sapiens through evolution. But perhaps the key part of their work is their theological synthesis that respects the RC Church doctrine and the science mentioned in your post.

I great set of links to an honest, but a bit too easy to please group of monks. No, i don’t see this really solving the issues at all.

I find these 2 “questions/answers” troubling:

First, does the narrative presuppose single or multiple original parents? Neither. It suggests that both possibilities can be reconciled with the theological data because there could either have been one contemporaneous original couple or a handful of original contemporaneous and even related members of a family. In the same way that Eve led Adam to sin, if there was in fact a first community, one or more of the original speaking bipeds could have led his or her relatives to do the same.

The science says 10 to 14 thousand the monks are saying maybe two or a handful. They are neither solving the issue nor are they holding fast to the doctrine that all humans are decedent from 1 original pair.

Third, how should we understand the interbreeding that took place between behaviorally modern humans and their archaic hominin contemporaries, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans? Theologically understood, these would be instances of bestiality, which still occurs today. However, because of the similarities in appearance and behavior among these closely-related hominin species, it is likely that it would have occurred more frequently in the past than it does today. The genetic similarity would have also made these matings fruitful in a way not possible today.

Now, not only are our parents really an original tribe of humans maybe not just Adam & Eve, but we also have Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors. Though the case scientifically is rather weak that geneticists can pick out particular strands of DNA (with claims of anywhere from 1% to 20%) that appear via interbreeding when at the same time say 99.7% of the base pairs of the modern human and Neanderthal genomes are identical. Then they also claim that chimpanzees compared to humans share around 98.8% of base pairs. (more disputable numbers, but these are their claims.) A few scientists are bravely questioning this on purely scientific grounds despite the popularity of interbreeding :
newscientist.com/article/dn22168-human-and-neanderthal-interbreeding-questioned/

Again the monk authors of this site accept this all too easily and try to claim that the church council’s definitive statements that we all originated from a single couple is not contradicted. They end up only in some murky middle in a gallant, but grotesque attempt to stretch between the faith and science that is neither faith nor science.

 

[cfauster]

The science says 10 to 14 thousand the monks are saying maybe two or a handful. They are neither solving the issue nor are they holding fast to the doctrine that all humans are decedent from 1 original pair.

I was confused at first myself as I read Rev. Austriaco’s essay but then I realized that the two or a handful refers to the number of first true humans, in the sense of being made in the image of God. God might have used natural biological processes to provide the physical capacity (aptness, I think he calls it) for rational thought, language, etc. but only God’s direct, divine action provided the human soul (the image of God requisite to be considered the first human persons).

In the website essays to which I linked, Rev. Austriaco also discusses another number: the number of interbreeding individuals in the population at the time of the first humans. According to currently available genetic evidence, that was around 10 - 14 thousand (as you too mentioned).

For a more complete explanation of this latter number, I recommend the BioLogos Blog Series on Adam, Eve, and Human Population Genetics.

 

[JaKael02]

as it pertains to Original sin… is this heretical of Pope Benedict to say?

This is a copy of Pope Benedicts homily when he spoke on Original sin. Yes, it’s sourced from a traditionalist website, but the photocopy of the book has not been altered.

novusordowatch.org/benedict/itb-sin.jpg

 

[wmw]

as it pertains to Original sin… is this heretical of Pope Benedict to say?

This is a copy of Pope Benedicts homily when he spoke on Original sin. Yes, it’s sourced from a traditionalist website, but the photocopy of the book has not been altered.

novusordowatch.org/benedict/itb-sin.jpg

I don’t even see how you think it might be heretical. What is the point you are concerned about? That sin grows as we continue to sin as time goes on, but that is the moral to the story of Cain and Able all according to Catholic teaching.

 

[Ron_Conte]

But no one can expalin how God gave two animals a rational soul.Were they fully grown? Did each of them come from some sort of monkey creature? Did these monkeys then raise two humans with souls? It is WAY too bizarre and confusing for me. If God ensouls us at conception that means two monkeys mated and had a human OY VEY.

I believe that God created Adam and Eve miraculous, as two fully grown adults, pattered after the AMH, but with some changes perhaps to the body and brain, as necessary or fitting, and with an immortal soul.

 

[Ron_Conte]

I find no need to “posit” human beings without the spiritual soul/rational mind.

Consider that the human body is an extremely fragile and vulnerable organism. It cannot run fast; it cannot climb trees or escarpments easily; it has no fur, no native weapons, relatively weak senses and muscles and thin skin, and its exposed neck and thin-walled head cause the human body to die quite easily. It’s not a very good animal. Our current dominant position on the natural “food chain” is due entirely to our minds and hands.

So a line of “AMH” with the hands, but no rational soul/mind to make use of them, would vanish in short order. Imagining them just to force polygenism and Scripture together does no good.

IMNAAHO.

ICXC NIKA

The AMH are a scientific (anthropology) and historical fact.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_human
They include more than one species, and are distinct from the BMH (behaviorally modern humans), who of course also have anatomically modern bodies.

 

[GEddie]

The AMH are a scientific (anthropology) and historical fact.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_human
They include more than one species, and are distinct from the BMH (behaviorally modern humans), who of course also have anatomically modern bodies.

If they had human bodies, then they were human beings.

The difficulty is in conjecturing about souls or the lack thereof, just to make polygenism fit with Scripture, particularly since souls do not fossilize.

ICXC NIKA

 

[JaKael02]

I don’t even see how you think it might be heretical. What is the point you are concerned about? That sin grows as we continue to sin as time goes on, but that is the moral to the story of Cain and Able all according to Catholic teaching.

It seems that Benedict does not recognize a “Garden” prior to the fall. I don’t know exactly, but Benedicts interpretation of Original sin is unique to how the Catholic Church has historically understood it. It’s almost like he has equated original sin to just being an imperfect world. But doesn’t stay Adam/Eve were actual people who sinned while prior to this, the world was different.