Adam and Eve were not the first Human Beings

[Skadi]

I am familiar with the research to locate the parts of the brain which control movements of the body. This ability, known as “brain mapping”, p(name removed by moderator)oints the brain area which controls each physical movement. Thus, previous inoperable brain tumors can now be performed in relative safety.

I know that there are attempts to locate intellectual action as opposed to physical action. The reason “brain mapping” during awake brain surgery cannot be used to determine the location of a person’s intellectual free choice is that awake brain surgery does not simulate real life. From the little I have seen about the experiments to locate intellectual or emotional reactions to stimuli, I do not take the media’s pronouncements seriously. This does not mean that I do not recognize the validity of some of the experiments. While these experiments can lead to conclusions, they are restricted conclusions. In real life, our intellect is free to respond to stimuli in many different ways

Regarding sentience. While I am not a scientist per se, I do use comparisons as a way of exploring available evidence.

There is a lot to discuss and a lot for me to learn. Thank you.

Your right our technology is nowhere near what I described but it was simply a hypothetical to illistrate my point.

Again this is a great discussion, glad to be here.

 

[Skadi]

Sigh, I don’t even know where to start.

Simply:
We exist as physical, mental and spiritual creatures, who are whole, a unity.
Sure, it’s all physical.
It’s also all mental.
Where’s it happening? Within our individual, unique existence, which is eternal in nature.

Man doesn’t own a soul.
It owns you.

I agree we are both spiritual and physical beings but we know way our physical componants do. Why do lobotomies work if not because that part of the brain causes the behavior? Unless the brain facilitates the transfer from spirit to physical which I guess you could claim, but still face the same problem of inteligence ect. Being limited by the physical brain.

 

[Skadi]

Bottom line is this: it is not arrogance to see order in nature, and thus higher and lower places in that order. Moreover, it is not the Catholic position that having a higher order means that lower order beings are irrelevant, or merely mechanisms for our own uses and pleasures. Rather, because we are higher order, we are obliged to serve and care for those lower order creatures who are under our dominion, as declared by God. A simple example of this is the Catholic teaching regarding Guardian Angels. These are higher order beings, angels, in perpetual service to, through care for, humans, lower order beings. That is the meaning of order in the Catholic paradigm. “The first will be last and the last will be first.”

I agree that may not necisarily be the way the church teaches but to those with only a passing knowledge they can be seen that way. Ideas that are not fully understood are easy to corrupt, such as the Nazi corruption of “Übermensch” concept.

Ultimately your arguement comes down to divine revelation, and the interpretation of that revelation which you believe to have been guided to proper understanding by the Holy Spirit. But I do not believe the bible to be the infallible word of the ultimate divine being, and so I’m afraid this arguement dose nothing to sway me. I doubt you would be swayed by arguements and claims from my religions sacred scripture either. So I respect and understand what you think, but I disagree with the validity of your source.

 

[grannymh]

I did not read that the Pope found evolution of the body of man to be in direct contradiction to doctrine. He does not remark on that point. He states that the matter is not absolutely proven; he implies that divine revelation advocates caution be applied in addressing the question.

So on the basis of this encyclical, I read nothing which forbids “us” (including you granny) taking whatever position we like on the evolution of the body.

It is Blessed John Paul II who declared that the material emergence or the epiphenomenon of a non-spiritual soul (evolution of the body) was directly opposed to Catholic doctrines. This is why our brains should not get stuck in the 1940-50’s.

 

[grannymh]

Granny - that’s a bit dismissive (perhaps that explains your apology?). But rather than dismissing the poster’s remark, it would assist the debate if you went to the specifics of your concern rather than endlessly repeating your worry about science vs Divine Revelation.

Thank you for your courteous post.

I have already mentioned a few specifics of my concern, which means that there is no need for me to continue in that area.

I definitely appreciate the observation that my worry is "science vs. Divine Revelation even though I have specifically mentioned “public interpretations or extrapolations of natural science research papers” as being that which “directly contradict Divine Revelation.” I now realize that I did not name those “public interpretations or extrapolations” which intersect with some basic Catholic doctrines such as human origin, human nature, and Original Sin committed by the first human person. Considering some of the previous posts on Adam and Eve, I kind of thought that the “interpretations” were obvious. However, since the “endlessly repeating” will stop, I do not need to clarify.

What I am learning from this observation, thank you, is that in general some, not all, people consider “science” as one lump of information in the same way that “Darwin’s theory” is considered one lump of information. Now, I understand the generalization of the words “science vs Divine Revelation.”

Personally, I prefer topics closer to the first Human Beings such as their nature which includes the spiritual, immortal, rational soul. I also like to discuss Humani Generis because the action of Adam as the first human is important for understanding the necessity of Jesus Christ’s Divinity. Finally, I prefer not to worry about Darwin’s legacy leading me too far off topic.

 

[Rau]

It is Blessed John Paul II who declared that the material emergence or the epiphenomenon of a non-spiritual soul (evolution of the body) was directly opposed to Catholic doctrines. This is why our brains should not get stuck in the 1940-50’s.

Sounds like JP II was kind in his assessment. I’ve not heard that large numbers of lapsed Catholics have bought into that particular “discovery”, but I imagine it is quite attractive to atheists. False “teachers” abound and researchers regularly pursue dead ends and hypothesise the unprovable.

I would be grateful for a link to the piece by JP II to which you refer if available to hand.

 

[Rau]

Thank you for your courteous post.

You are most welcome.

 

[Aloysium]

I agree we are both spiritual and physical beings but we know way our physical componants do. Why do lobotomies work if not because that part of the brain causes the behavior? Unless the brain facilitates the transfer from spirit to physical which I guess you could claim, but still face the same problem of inteligence ect. Being limited by the physical brain.

Move your hand! The behavior has multiple causes, the most essential (no doubt the wrong philosophical term) one being, that you exist. The movement would be caused because I told you to and you played along. If you did not have a brain, you would not have been able to see and identify the words. This is how you and I, co-existing in this physical universe, can communicate. The actual meaning exists in our spiritual soul.

What we are, it is all one thing. There is no transfer from physical to spiritual, or vice versa, because these are different “things” (There is no good word IMHO: realities, dimensions, axes, structures, ways of understanding . . . ?) that comprise the unity that is the person.

The hand moves. In the brain, an astronomically large number of chemical reactions are occurring in different parts to result in an integrated “message” that “travels” down my spinal cord to the peripheral neurons which “cause” muscular contractions, resulting in the usually coordinated movement of the hand.
I move my hand - of all the multiple complex causes that are necessary, I myself is one of them.
I don’t affect matter; I am matter as I am spirit.

Who am I? and Where do I come from? would be the questions for which Reality Itself is the only answer. (There’s lots written to point you in that direction, but it also involves action and choice.)

 

[Skadi]

Move your hand! The behavior has multiple causes, the most essential (no doubt the wrong philosophical term) one being, that you exist. The movement would be caused because I told you to and you played along. If you did not have a brain, you would not have been able to see and identify the words. This is how you and I, co-existing in this physical universe, can communicate. The actual meaning exists in our spiritual soul.

What we are, it is all one thing. There is no transfer from physical to spiritual, or vice versa, because these are different “things” (There is no good word IMHO: realities, dimensions, axes, structures, ways of understanding . . . ?) that comprise the unity that is the person.

The hand moves. In the brain, an astronomically large number of chemical reactions are occurring in different parts to result in an integrated “message” that “travels” down my spinal cord to the peripheral neurons which “cause” muscular contractions, resulting in the usually coordinated movement of the hand.
I move my hand - of all the multiple complex causes that are necessary, I myself is one of them.
I don’t affect matter; I am matter as I am spirit.

Who am I? and Where do I come from? would be the questions for which Reality Itself is the only answer. (There’s lots written to point you in that direction, but it also involves action and choice.)

Agree, but the same process works when I tell my dog to fetch, my dog just has a far smaller understood vocabulary sense it has a less developed brain.

I agree with what your saying, I’m just stating I don’t think that inteligence comes directly from the soul. If a person with an extream mental handicap has a soul so can an animal. I don’t think things like personality are a product of the soul, but of genetics and life experience. We are our soul and our body, and they are one, but at the same time you could consider me typing this right now as a result of an incredibly complex series of events leading up to this moment from the beginning of time. A soul is the spark that starts life but my soul didn’t tell me to write this, my mind which is a product of life experience did.

 

[grannymh]

Sounds like JP II was kind in his assessment. I’ve not heard that large numbers of lapsed Catholics have bought into that particular “discovery”, but I imagine it is quite attractive to atheists. False “teachers” abound and researchers regularly pursue dead ends and hypothesise the unprovable.

The emergence or epiphenomenon of the spiritual soul as part of the evolution of the human body is in keeping with the philosophy of materialism where nature is the only authority.

I would be grateful for a link to the piece by JP II to which you refer if available to hand.

“It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God (“animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere iubei”; “Humani Generis,” 36). Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.”
Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22, 1996)
newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm

 

[Rau]

The emergence or epiphenomenon of the spiritual soul as part of the evolution of the human body is in keeping with the philosophy of materialism where nature is the only authority.

“It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God (“animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere iubei”; “Humani Generis,” 36). Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.”
Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22, 1996)
newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm

Thanks. I shall read with interest.

To my mind, any scientist speaking - as a scientist - about the soul, has forsaken science.

 

[grannymh]

Thanks. I shall read with interest.

To my mind, any scientist speaking - as a scientist - about the soul, has forsaken science.

Not exactly.

The basic principle of the scientific (inductive) method is to observe without prejudice.

 

[grannymh]

Your right our technology is nowhere near what I described but it was simply a hypothetical to illistrate my point.

Again this is a great discussion, glad to be here.

I have been wondering…

What information would we discover if we explored that hypothetical as if it actually happened? What would the physical evidence tell us and not tell us?

When we observe the spark of divine life in ourselves, can that spark override the hypothetical? Or more importantly, can that spark exist along with the hypothetical?

I was imagining what it would be like if there were a spot in my brain which was connected to my loving chocolate ice cream. Could I look at a bowl of chocolate ice cream, desire chocolate ice cream, mouthwatering, and then choose vanilla ice cream?

Genesis, first three chapters, and the Catholic Church teach that the first two humans were human because their nature unified the material and immaterial into one nature which is fundamentally the same as our nature. We have to have a material body in order to live and be nourished in our material environment; but, is the body the only thing we need in order to live?

Am I correct that you believe that there is a fundamental spark of divine live, a spiritual principle, aka soul in humans? It seems to me that we are looking at the basic concept of soul as existing in both humans and animals. The basic concept of soul is that it animates material
matter–soul and body idea. Animals and humans are a huge step up from living organisms such as plants and bacteria. We need to check Aristotle for that basic definition of soul.

One more thing which I keep wondering. Did the gorilla Binti Jua recognize a “soul” in the unconscious child? I am using the word “soul” as a principle or sign of life. The difference between your approach to soul and my approach to soul is that I consider the soul animating humans as immortal and the soul animating animals as mortal along with the animal’s material anatomy.

P.S.
Thoughts for very much later in our discussion. When I look at Adam as he is described in the first three chapters of Genesis, I see ourselves being and doing like Adam. Perhaps, our existence is the best evidence for two first human parents of mankind.

The gorilla Binti Jua is the heroine when a child fell into the Ape Pit at Brookfield Zoo.
chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/08/16/15-years-ago-today-gorilla-rescues-boy-who-fell-in-ape-pit/

 

[Arandur]

“It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God (“animas enim a Deo immediate creari catholica fides nos retinere iubei”; “Humani Generis,” 36). Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.”
Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22, 1996)
newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm

Note that he targets a deficiency of specific theories of evolution, ones which come from certain philosophies (such as materialism–beyond the bounds of science, strictly speaking). Some, not all. There is a recognition that there are theories of evolution (even of the human body) which may have validity. The rejection is any theory that posits a materialistic origin or evolutionary development of a “soul.”

 

[Arandur]

I agree we are both spiritual and physical beings but we know way our physical componants do. Why do lobotomies work if not because that part of the brain causes the behavior? Unless the brain facilitates the transfer from spirit to physical which I guess you could claim, but still face the same problem of inteligence ect. Being limited by the physical brain.

You limit the soul to a mere animating life force, so basic that that virtually all of what describes and defines us is merely biological.

So, if we have a soul, what are its properties? Are there differences in degree or characteristics from one soul to another, in your belief?

What would you cite as evidence for your belief?

You seem to recognize something of the possibility that most Christians accept–that the spiritual soul has certain properties connected to and expressed through the physical, like light passing through a lens (if the lens is damage or occluded, as a damaged brain may be, the light from the other side will be distorted or prevented from coming through clearly).

Logically, this is certainly a possibility. What argument would you use to eliminate this possibility in favor of a merely biological source for intelligence?

What I find particularly interesting here is that you extrapolate the existence of a soul as a means of explaining how life could come from unlife. But you don’t do the same favor for intelligence, i.e. how intelligence can come from un-intelligence.

After all, as has been demonstrated, communication and meaning, to say nothing of of the existence of natural laws themselves, mathematics, ideals, principles, and everything that occurs in the realm of imagination and abstract thought, cannot be quantified or observed in the physical universe. These are immaterial things. Thus they cannot be grasped, created by, understood by, transmitted by, or retained by merely physical things–like the physical, biological brain. These acts of intelligence, then, being immaterial, cannot be governed wholly by the material, only expressed in the material world by some material means. Hence, the brain as a lens or tool facilitating the “making-physical” of the immaterial concepts themselves.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . I don’t think that inteligence comes directly from the soul. If a person with an extream mental handicap has a soul so can an animal. I don’t think things like personality are a product of the soul, but of genetics and life experience. We are our soul and our body, and they are one, but at the same time you could consider me typing this right now as a result of an incredibly complex series of events leading up to this moment from the beginning of time. A soul is the spark that starts life but my soul didn’t tell me to write this, my mind which is a product of life experience did.

I find your comment equating mentally disabled people to animals to be offensive beyond the pale.
Nothing told you to write what you did, it is a product of who you are as a human being, a soul in serious need of maintenance.

 

[tolstoy]

around and around we go…

Best point so far. Just read through page one and I’m bored already.

 

[cfauster]

Kemp argues for theological monogenism, but it’s also interesting how he addresses the issue of souls:

Science, Theology, and Monogenesis

 

[Memaw]

I blatantly and fully disagree.

Firstly, yes we can eat them. We are omnivorous preditors and it is in our nature to hunt and kill for sustinance, no different from a lion or wolf.

Secondly, you incorrectly atribute all these qualitys found in humans to our souls, this is false. We humans have a remarkably well developed brain. Dolphins show a sense of morality when they save drowning people, and monkeys can be taught to read and use sighn language. Just because we are more inteligent than other life on this planet does not mean they have no souls. Inteligence and capacity to understand complex concepts like morality comes from the brain not to soul. Do psychopaths have no souls because they lack a mental construct for morality? Or is that simply a deficiency of their physical brain?

Again I think this position that we are alone as having Imortal souls and are made in the image of the divine is extreamly arrogant and relies on incorrect assumptions as to why we are more inteligent than other species.

Of course you disagree, your a pagan and have no belief in GOD. God Bless, Memaw

 

[edwest2]

Actually, this seems to significantly undermine the ground I think you’re trying to take, since the main pronouncements against polygenism come in the form of letters from pope’s not explicitly defined by them nor by ecumenical council as being infallible but, as you say, as a “teaching from” doctrine but within the realm of a pope’s “free speech.”

It has seemed to me that Pius’s statement that it is “in no way apparent” how polygenism could square with teachings of Original Sin and Redemption are actually somewhat weak words–for they leave themselves open to a later explanation that does indeed harmonize the two satisfactorily, within the realm of the development of doctrine.

In fact, it ends up sounding like some of the dispute in the early days of formal Western science and astronomy, even the heliocentrism debates, where scientists were admonished to have extreme caution, because it was not immediately apparent how new discoveries could square with old understandings of Scripture. Galileo got himself into trouble the same way many evolutionists do today–by claiming more than the evidence from Natural Revelation showed, and not properly taking Divine Revelation into consideration. But still, some of his core assertions–those of the more careful and proper Copernicus–were indeed explored, accepted, and grew into a greater realization of an even greater glory of Creation than we had previously perceived, and one that still fits quite nicely with Scripture and Tradition.

So I would caution both sides against a repeat of the Galileo affair–scientists from going too far as Galileo did, and the faithful from just dismissing such ideas as incompatible with faith without sufficiently and continually exploring and seeking harmony between our understandings of Divine and Natural Revelation.

In one sense, it can come down to how you are considering the “gaps.” Are you asserting a “Darwin of the Gaps” in assuming that, while we still don’t know how much happened, the theory of evolution MUST be the solution (a faith-statement in a man-made theory)? Or, on the other side, are we asserting a weak “God of the Gaps” argument by assuming that what is not explained well by evolution is done by fiat miracle, absent observable/discoverable secondary natural causes.

I am aware, as was explained a few pages back, that evolutionary theory cannot at present account for the positive creative information required for the formation of complex new physical structures or species. It seems to explain adaptation fairly well, and some examples of speciation (particularly behavior-based reproductive isolation in the wider definition of “species” commonly used today, rather than true genetic incompatibility). But do we assume that God miraculously intervenes to produce new biological information to achieve this, or does He use some as-yet-undiscovered secondary natural cause to do so?

Any of these requires, ultimately, an Intelligent Designer, so even the naturalistic approach does not get around God.

And this is why I say that arguing about this issue too often expends much energy in antipathy, rather than seeking to truly understand God’s Creation better. We unnecessarily pit our discoveries of natural processes against God or vice versa. Such a complex nature still required a Creator, so there is no inherent threat to faith.

The question of first parents is a little bit different, but even there, as I’ve said before, there seems no conflict with Faith no matter what process through secondary natural causes God used to “form” man’s body out of the dust, for we know, still that He infused (“breathed”) an immaterial soul into that physical body, making a new creation uniquely in His image and likeness.

That doesn’t answer the question of polygenism, but it does seem to render moot any concern that biological evolution of the body is a threat to the understanding of man as body and soul.

The threat is simple: the theory of evolution, while undergoing ongoing slight modifications, must be complete with no possibility of studying something called a soul. In other words, material explanations are fully sufficient. Science is a barrier to acceptance of a thing called a soul, which is fine as science goes. The soul part is not included, which is fine to those who view religion in general as superstitious nonsense. Man is the end result of a series of events that are purely mechanical.

That’s the issue. But to answer the OP, the Church teaches there were no other human beings around. The ‘hominids,’ it appears, were just ape-like creatures that resembled humans as far as their general body plans - that’s all. They were animals. Take the chimpanzee. And look at the differences in cranial shapes in the different human racial types today.

Peace,
Ed