Adam and Eve

[rossum]

We now know that NS is a conservative process not a creative one.

Variation is the creative part of the overall process. The selection part filters out the uncompetitive variations.

In an unchanging environment the selection is indeed conservative. In a changing environment then the selection is not conservative, but is biased towards those organisms better adapted to living the the (slightly) different environment. This allows organisms living in an environment to track slow changes in the environment.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

Variation is the creative part of the overall process. The selection part filters out the uncompetitive variations.

In an unchanging environment the selection is indeed conservative. In a changing environment then the selection is not conservative, but is biased towards those organisms better adapted to living the the (slightly) different environment. This allows organisms living in an environment to track slow changes in the environment.

rossum

No argument here with adaptation.

 

[thinkandmull]

The Bible is not a book with stories and ideas which God wants us to read. He wants us to read the Summa and other books; the Bible is HIM speaking. To say He speaks to us figurately when He says “in 7 days”, that’s possibly use of poetical style, really meaning 7 ages. But when the BIble says such and such happened and so and so said something, you can’t deny its truth without the whole Bible being compromised. Why maybe one or more of the Gospels are not strictly historical. You may say “well historical criticism shows that that book, for example, is intended to relate history”. Ok, well by your logic maybe God wanted a historical document in the Bible to be read, like the love letter of Solomon. “He just wants us to read it, maybe its not one hundred percent accurate”. There is no answer to that. Those who claim (like Fr. Benedict Groeschel) that the book of Job is not historical are heretics plain and simple. If it is just a story, that we can NEVER know the purpose of it’s place in the Bible; the parts in which God spoke could just be part of the story, infected with the imperfection of the Jewish writer’s understanding of God. God doesn’t just want us to read it, when we read it, God is on the other end. That is our faith

 

[inocente]

All humans being descended from a single couple is confirmed by science. Think of Mitochondrial Eve’s parents as just one of many possible ancestral couples. That couple were not the only two biological humans alive at the time. It is not possible for science to tell a biological human (a human body but without a human soul) from a theological human (a human body with a human soul).

Obviously the theo-humans would be physically fertile with the bio-humans which allows the avoidance of incest, as is required by the lack of the observable effects expected from any genetic bottleneck.

rossum

I can’t see your logic. Mitochondrial Mabel may be a common mother of everyone who is alive today but she is not the ancestor of all humans ever. There were other humans alongside her as you say, and for many generations after there were humans who didn’t have her as a common ancestor. Arbitrarily redefining all those people as theologically non-human for convenience is just, well, silly. Maybe that’s your point . If it wasn’t so silly it would be dangerous too, merely by choosing a still more recent ancestor, large groups of humans alive today could be instantly reclassified non-human.

 

[rossum]

I can’t see your logic. Mitochondrial Mabel may be a common mother of everyone who is alive today but she is not the ancestor of all humans ever. There were other humans alongside her as you say, and for many generations after there were humans who didn’t have her as a common ancestor. Arbitrarily redefining all those people as theologically non-human for convenience is just, well, silly. Maybe that’s your point . If it wasn’t so silly it would be dangerous too, merely by choosing a still more recent ancestor, large groups of humans alive today could be instantly reclassified non-human.

Y-Chromosome Adam’s parents are also Universal Common Ancestors, and are more recent than M-Eve’s parents. There are others even more recent, but they are more difficult to identify, and have to be found statistically. The latest possible UCA for humans did not live that long ago, between 5,000 and 15,000 years ago. See Most recent common ancestor.

rossum

 

[thinkandmull]

Wikipedia? I don’t know about that

 

[grannymh]

You are being lied to by anti-evolution websites. Evolution is not a random process because it includes natural selection, which is not random. Abiogenesis is not a random process because it includes chemistry, and chemistry is not random.

Any calculation which is based on pure randomness is not a model of either abiogenesis or evolution. If the model does not reflect the process it is meant to be modelling then the results of the model are useless and can be ignored.

I could go further, but I won’t given that there is currently a moratorium on the discussion of evolution.

One last thought; if two Popes, three if you include Pius XII, do not have a problem with Catholics accepting theistic evolution then why do you reject it?

rossum

As I have been learning from CAF and the BioLogos Foundation, there is a huge difference between theistic evolution and Catholic doctrines…really huge once one has the curiosity and courage to go beyond the simple cliché “God did it.”

 

[ValPal]

Is the two first parents theory simple?

Actually, yes. That is true for any new species, not just man.

My concern with this whole issue is timing. If the timing in the Bible is correct, the oldest existing isolated tribes in the world were around prior to Adam and Eve.

 

[rossum]

Actually, yes. That is true for any new species, not just man.

My concern with this whole issue is timing. If the timing in the Bible is correct, the oldest existing isolated tribes in the world were around prior to Adam and Eve.

There is no timing in the Bible There are various timings derived from different interpretations of the Bible.

Some of those derived timings are far too short. Remember that God made the world as well as the Bible. The correct interpretation of one agrees with the correct interpretation of the other. That is how people can check whether their interpretations are correct.

rossum

 

[inocente]

Y-Chromosome Adam’s parents are also Universal Common Ancestors, and are more recent than M-Eve’s parents. There are others even more recent, but they are more difficult to identify, and have to be found statistically. The latest possible UCA for humans did not live that long ago, between 5,000 and 15,000 years ago. See Most recent common ancestor.

And my sister and I have remarkably recent common ancestors who we like to call mom and dad, but that doesn’t make the other seven billion people on the planet non-human. Sorry, I just can’t see how common ancestors are relevant, nor the logic to your “theo-humans” proposal.

 

[inocente]

Actually, yes. That is true for any new species, not just man.

I think all the evidence is that speciation occurs gradually across a population over time but if you have contrary evidence please cite it, it’s always good to learn.

My concern with this whole issue is timing. If the timing in the Bible is correct, the oldest existing isolated tribes in the world were around prior to Adam and Eve.

This is only a problem in pseudo-science, and pseudo-science has a number of ways of dealing with inconvenient issues. In this case anyone who existed before Adam and Eve is simply redefined as non-human and bingo, problem solved.

 

[inocente]

I understand your position and the positions of other Christians and of non-theists.
inocente;10052454:

So my question remains: would I be turned away from your Church purely because I can’t believe they [Adam and Eve] are anything more than allegory?

bump

 

[grannymh]

bump

Allegory can be used to reveal Divine Intervention which is vocalized within Catholic doctrines. In other words, one needs to do some deep thinking when it comes to the first three chapters of Genesis **and **when it comes to the Gospel of John, chapter six, etc., etc. Accepting Catholicism hangs on a lot more than some fig leaves.

 

[ValPal]

This is only a problem in pseudo-science, and pseudo-science has a number of ways of dealing with inconvenient issues. In this case anyone who existed before Adam and Eve is simply redefined as non-human and bingo, problem solved.

“Pseduo-science,” as you like to call it, is superior to “no-science.” Your discussion starts and ends on a story thousands of years old with no science to back it up.

FWIW, there are a whole lot of non-humans, as you like to call them, running around the Andaman Islands, amongst other places.

 

[ValPal]

There is no timing in the Bible There are various timings derived from different interpretations of the Bible.

Some of those derived timings are far too short. Remember that God made the world as well as the Bible. The correct interpretation of one agrees with the correct interpretation of the other. That is how people can check whether their interpretations are correct.

rossum

There is lineage in the Bible, so there appears to be a limit as to how long ago in time Adam and Eve could have existed.

It is my own personal opinion that the story of Adam and Eve represents an awareness in man that was not present before.

 

[grannymh]

There is lineage in the Bible, so there appears to be a limit as to how long ago in time Adam and Eve could have existed.

It is my own personal opinion that the story of Adam and Eve represents an awareness in man that was not present before.

That “awareness in man which was not present before” is actually the real human nature, of the very first real human person, which uniquely unites both the material world *and * spiritual worlds. In other words, at the beginning of human history, the first man consisted of both rational soul and material anatomy.

 

[Jim_Baur]

I know that Catholics are free to believe evolution if they choose to. However, I have a scientific and mathematics background and it is obvious to me that the Theory of Evolution is scientifically impossible. There are hundreds of scientific reasons why the Theory of Evolution is impossible but I will just mention one reason. One of the hallmarks of the theory is that there was no “intelligent design”(as from God). Therefore every genetic change must have happened by accident!.

The Mathematical probability that something came from nothing, that the first living creature came into being by accident and that all of the billions of different life forms came about by accident is zero! Evolution is scientifically impossible! The main problem I have with the public schools teaching the Theory of Evolution as fact is that it acculturates a materialistic world view in children. Once a child’s world view is set, because of “cognitive dissonance” it is next to impossible for the child to accept anything as true that is counter to that world view.

There is no place for God in the Theory of Evolution as it holds that there is nothing but matter and mindless energy in existence and that everything came into being by accident, Therefore for the child (or adult) to maintain the world view that the Theory of Evolution presents; God must either be nonexistent or impotent! Neither of which is true.

I used to work as a Registered Nurse on psychiatric units in hospitals for 20 years.

I like your ideas.

Is this stated explicitly: " One of the hallmarks of the theory is that there was no “intelligent design”(as from God). Therefore every genetic change must have happened by accident!."

Thanks!

 

[rossum]

There is lineage in the Bible, so there appears to be a limit as to how long ago in time Adam and Eve could have existed.

Lineages in the Bible can leave people out, witness Matthew 1:1 “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham” Jesus was not Abraham’s grandson; the lineage given has large gaps in it.

rossum

 

[grannymh]

I like your ideas.

Is this stated explicitly: " One of the hallmarks of the theory is that there was no “intelligent design”(as from God). Therefore every genetic change must have happened by accident!."

Thanks!

Two key planks of modern Darwinian theory are: “common descent and natural selection acting on unplanned genetic variations.” Source: Chapter One, page 8, by molecular biologist Ann Gauger, Science & Human Origins ISBN-13: 978-1-936599-04-2 (paperback). This book’s last chapter, by Ann, reviews current challenges to Francisco J. Ayala’s 1995 bold claim that a narrow population bottleneck of one or very few couples could not have occurred in human ancestral history.

 

[ValPal]

Lineages in the Bible can leave people out, witness Matthew 1:1 “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham” Jesus was not Abraham’s grandson; the lineage given has large gaps in it.

rossum

There is a lineage from Adam. That would lead me to believe that believe that this is more modern, rather than ancient. I am not aware of an oral tradition going back tens of thousands of years.