Adam and Eve? That's just mythology, says Pell

  • Thread starter Thread starter JMJSHJ
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
** The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution (Dr. Dennis Bonnette)**

Dr. Dennis Bonnette, retired at the end of 2003 as a Full Professor of Philosophy at Niagara University in Lewiston, New York. His website is called Origin of the Human Species

Some two decades ago, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger maintained that scientific evidence pointed to some sort of biological evolution. In a homily, he declared, “Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth.” [1] Still, “mounting support” is not objective certitude, and “some theory of evolution” does not depict its exact form.

In my book Origin of the Human Species, I conclude that we may never know whether the biological theory of human or general evolution is natural scientific fact. [2] I maintain this because of (1) the complexity of the issues raised, (2) evolution’s unscientific unfalsifiability, and (3) the inherent limitations of natural scientific knowledge, especially when dealing with factual events hidden deeply in the recesses of prehistoric time. Indeed, Pope Benedict XVI has aptly pointed out that there is no way to prove or disprove experimentally that evolution actually occurred over immense past ages.

more…
 
There are two “beings” in the drama of Original Sin. One “being” is a transcendent Pure Spirit Who is Creator of all. The other “being” has a created nature which is an intimate unification of* both* the spiritual world and the material world. There is a deeply serious relationship between the two unequal beings.

Understanding this relationship is the first step to understanding the historical Adam.

One of the drawbacks of the mythical Adam approach is the simple fact that the Pure Spirit participant is God.
 
JMJSHJ said:
theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/adam-and-eve-thats-just-mythology-says-pell/story-e6frg6nf-1226322379822

Isn’t that heresy to say that Adam and Eve weren’t real?
Click to expand...
Sadly a lot of Catholics, including good, faithful Catholics, don’t realize that just because the Bible was not written as a scientific text that it doesn’t mean that when it touches on science it is just as inerrant as when it touches on spiritual topics. If we can’t take Gen 1-11 at face value, how can we rationally accept Gen 12-50? And if not Genesis, how can we accept the rest of Scripture? If sin didn’t enter the world in the way the Bible says, how can we know that Jesus died and rose again to set us free from sin?

There are quite a few problems with the theory of evolution. The fossil record doesn’t support it at all. The Bible has outlasted other theories about the origins of the universe and it will be standing when this theory falls as well. It’s not wise to bet against the Holy Spirit. 😉
 
Ridgerunner said:
I’m not sure we disagree particularly. I, too, allow for the possibility that humans evolved in body from some prehuman apelike ancestor. And I’m not troubled by the possibility or the thought. But I also allow for the possibility that it wasn’t that way at all. I wasn’t there when the first true humans (body and soul) were created. Neither were you. A God that can create “strings” and “big bangs” is not limited by what I think or by what you think, and can most certainly create a man from dust without regard to what ape DNA or physiognomy looks like. One cannot get so wrapped up in the theories of his time that he holds God to them.
Click to expand...
Of course I was not at the time of the dynossaurs, but I know that they were there.
Of course, God could create man out of the blue. I may say that would not need the clay nor the Adam’s ribs. Why would he need his ribs? When I was a kid I thought that, being a boy, I had one less rib in mu chest…

So, if God could create man out of the blue and decide to use ribs or in another versions, clay (now, was it ribs or clay?) why can’t God use an animal to incarnate in it a soul?

I prefer an ape to clay or ribs…Actually, these are a little ridicule !

We were not there. But we have a duty to find God’s thought.

I do not think that, having we a perfect explanation to God’s creation of man (incarnation of the soul into an animal) we keep fighting for the clay and ribs and Adam and Eve which are “midrash” and do not have scientific quality.

We must dialogue with Science and insisting on Adam and Eve will lead nowhere, will only lead to a dead.

We must do better…
 
Animals are made of matter and they exist as matter because matter is their nature.

It is because of the God-created spiritual soul, that matter became the first human person. It is not the reverse where some animals, over centuries, developed their own spiritual soul because it was a good idea for society.

The reality of Adam’s relationship with the Creator makes it clear how and why humans do not have the same nature as animals.
 
garysibio said:
Sadly a lot of Catholics, including good, faithful Catholics, don’t realize that just because the Bible was not written as a scientific text that it doesn’t mean that when it touches on science it is just as inerrant as when it touches on spiritual topics. If we can’t take Gen 1-11 at face value, how can we rationally accept Gen 12-50? And if not Genesis, how can we accept the rest of Scripture? If sin didn’t enter the world in the way the Bible says, how can we know that Jesus died and rose again to set us free from sin?

There are quite a few problems with the theory of evolution. The fossil record doesn’t support it at all. The Bible has outlasted other theories about the origins of the universe and it will be standing when this theory falls as well. It’s not wise to bet against the Holy Spirit. 😉
Click to expand...
That is what this shows:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=7720
 
From the IDvolution website - emphasis mine
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on Earth have the same core, it is virtually certain that living organisms have been thought of AT ONCE by the One and the same Creator endowed with the super language we know as DNA that switched on the formation of the various kinds, the cattle, the swimming creatures, the flying creatures, etc… in a pristine harmonious state and superb adaptability and responsiveness to their environment for the purpose of populating the earth that became subject to the ravages of corruption by the sin of one man (deleterious mutations).
Click to expand...
I may be misreading this but This seems to be saying that life forms are perfectly made for their environments. How are you accounting for that 98% of the species that ever existed are now extinct.
 
ChesterBeach said:
From the IDvolution website - emphasis mine

I may be misreading this but This seems to be saying that life forms are perfectly made for their environments. How are you accounting for that 98% of the species that ever existed are now extinct.
Click to expand...
They are adaptable to their environments because they have that built in capability. As time has gone on the ravages of corruption have taken their toll, but it wasn’t that way in the beginning.
 
buffalo said:
They are adaptable to their environments because they have that built in capability. As time has gone on the ravages of corruption have taken their toll, but it wasn’t that way in the beginning.
Click to expand...
It still seems a backward understanding of evolution. It isn’t that the organism adapts to the environment but rather the ones that are best adapted prosper. Environments change and the species that fit that niche in the ecosystem change (or don’t) sharks and horseshoe crabs are a good example of species that haven’t changed all that much.

Taken their toll in what way? Extinction? Are you saying single cell organisms are the height of all life forms?
 
ChesterBeach said:
It still seems a backward understanding of evolution. It isn’t that the organism adapts to the environment but rather the ones that are best adapted prosper. Environments change and the species that fit that niche in the ecosystem change (or don’t) sharks and horseshoe crabs are a good example of species that haven’t changed all that much.

Taken their toll in what way? Extinction? Are you saying single cell organisms are the height of all life forms?
Click to expand...
IDvolution is not evolution. With evolution the arrow points in the up direction, that is simple organisms to complex. IDvolution is complexity and built in capability right from the get go degrading as time goes on, devolution if you will.

Exactly, what the fossil record shows is abrupt appearance, stasis, with limited variation (adaptation).
 
buffalo said:
IDvolution is not evolution. With evolution the arrow points in the up direction, that is simple organisms to complex. IDvolution is complexity and built in capability right from the get go degrading as time goes on, devolution if you will.

Exactly, what the fossil record shows is abrupt appearance, stasis, with limited variation (adaptation).
Click to expand...
You are saying that each generation is getting progressively worse? :rolleyes:
 
ChesterBeach said:
You are saying that each generation is getting progressively worse? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Take a look here:
Dr. John Sanford “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome”

some takeaways:

** “more and more the genome looks like a super super set of programs”**

** “more and more it looks like top down design”**

"the reality is everybody is mutant"

** “the selection process really has nothing to grab hold of”**

** “so it’s kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists,any well informed population geneticist understands man is degenerating”**

** “so in deep geological time we should have been extinct a long time ago”**

** “the human race is degenerating at 1-5% per generation”**
 
It’s a bunch of quotes out of context with no support evidence. Not sure what you are trying to show.
 
ChesterBeach said:
It’s a bunch of quotes out of context with no support evidence. Not sure what you are trying to show.
Click to expand...
There is evidence. Watch the video and look at some of the posts and links on the supporting resources pages. Be prepared for a paradigm shift. 🙂
 
buffalo said:
There is evidence. Watch the video and look at some of the posts and links on the supporting resources pages. Be prepared for a paradigm shift. 🙂
Click to expand...
There’s roughly twenty minutes of my life I won’t get back. :mad:

Great Apes have more gene pairs (24) than Humans (23). Flowering plants have larger genomes than mammals so do amphibians, boney fish, etc.

If “gene degradation” was going to be the down fall of man we’d be there already. If you say at 1% at an average generation at 25 years it would take 2,500 years. Our species is quite a bit older. 😉

It’s junk science.
 
Bubba_Switzler said:
This is false both from a scientific and from a theological perspective.
Click to expand...
It’s not theologically false at all. God is pure action. He is direct action. There was no mediation in the Creation of the universe, and that includes the creation of Adam. You continue to assign inefficiency to the act of an eternal being outside all time and motion. There’s no “getting from point A to point B” with God. He is at both points without any progression whatsoever. This is why the Incarnation is such a mystery. How can something eternal become temporal? Answer, through mediation of a temporal being (Mary) overshadowed by an eternal being (the Holy Spirit).

God needed no mediation to create the universe – indeed there was nothing to mediate – so there is no reason to believe that God would take his greatest creation, man, and create it through an intermediary process like evolution. Ultimately, if there is an argument for evolution, He had to have a greater purpose for it. Now, for One who tells us we are made in his image, there needs to be an explanation why He would put us through a billion years (or whatever) of an evolutionary process from a fish (or whatever) in order to create us, when the very earth this evolution supposedly took place on was created without any mediation whatsoever. Since God has no lack of power, He could not make us less than perfectly in His image. And since there was no sin, there was nothing in us which needed to be perfected, eliminating the idea of evolution.

The other problem here is that it necessitates that Christ Himself descended from other species, since He shared the DNA of the Blessed Mother in becoming flesh.

Wisdom 10:1
Wisdom protected the first-formed father of the
world, when he alone had been created;
Click to expand...
Sirach 15:4
It was he who created man in the beginning,
Click to expand...
Sirach 33:10
All men are from the ground,
and Adam was created of the dust.
Click to expand...
Psalm 148:5
Let them praise the name of the LORD!
For he commanded and they were created.
Click to expand...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top