Adam, Eve and Evolution

[PilgrimJWT]

I am by no means an expert on evolution or scriptural studies on Genesis. But for what it’s worth (probably very little), here is my opinion.
I have great respect for science and scientific research. In that realm, the book is always open and tomorrow’s discovery may trump today’s accepted opinion. With Scripture, we are dealing with revealed truth and the book is always closed. But we must be very careful not to confuse science with revealation.
There is no doubt in my mind that an uncaused cause (God) is responsible for creation. He did it the way he wanted to do it and did not need us to tell Him how. He gave us minds so we could figure it out.
As far as Adam and Eve go, I see it as a story and not likely a literal occurrence. But I have no problem with that–the importance of the story is to teach us about morality. Human perversity is self-evident, and our need for a Redeemer is obvious enough.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

Alec - Re My view is that the easiest solution to the problem is to abandon the doctrine of monogenism (and in fact this has been done in practice by almost every practicing Catholic biologist). If the Church accepts (as she does) that creation in six days is an allegory, I fail to see the difficulty in accepting that the story of Adam and Eve is an allegory about the emergence of humanity.

See vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html ***HUMANI GENERIS *ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII

**Especially

1. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

 

[hecd2]

steve b:

Interesting site.

I went for something along the lines of definitions and summary statements from a scientist/doctor. catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0042.html

This is the most awful claptrap. It’s not just wrong, almost in every thing it says, it’s deliberately wrong. It’s misleading. It distorts. It’s dishonest .

I thought in my naivety that lying for Jesus is an enterprise confined to bible belt fundamentalists. I’m very sorry to find it here in a Catholic forum.

Even the fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist resources such Answers in Genesis have abandoned some of silliness on this webpage.

Lying for Jesus will not be a successful tactic to get to heaven.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

"There are no humanoid skeletons older than Neanderthal man.

For context:

catholiceducation.org/ar…nce/sc0042.html

Well if you must use deliberate obscurantist sources, you are bound to be drawn into embarassing error.

I’m pretty sure you have no idea what Solly Zuckerman was claiming because you are using a source, Bernhoft, who obviously has no idea either. Bernhoft quoted by you says: ‘There are no humanoid skeletons older than Neanderthal man.’ In your own words, evidence, my man, evidence.

Right, let’s move from propaganda to science. Zuckerman and Oxnard (know who he is? - a well respected anatomist like Zuckerman and a student of Zuckerman) claimed that the Australopithecines are not in the ancestral line of modern humans by applying the technique of biometrical analysis to morphological measurements of cranial and post-cranial fossils. Zuckerman and Oxnard challenge bipedality of Australopithecines. Whether or not they are right (and the current scientific hypotheesis is that they are not justified in excluding all Australopithecines from the direct ancestry of modern humans), this has nothing to do with what I posted or the question we are consiedering. And Zuckerman and Oxnard would ridicule Bernhoft’s nonsense: '‘There are no humanoid skeletons older than Neanderthal man’.

Since Zuckerman’s analysis was about Australopithecines and not Homo species, what evidence is there for Homo species earlier than H neanderthalensis? This is a tiny selection of all that is available:

Leakey REF, ‘Evidence for an advanced Plio-Pleistocene homihid from East Rudolf, Kenya’, Nature 242, 447 - 450. KNM-ER 147 ; Homo rudolfensis; 1.9 million years old

Leakey MD et al, ‘New hominid skull from Bed I, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania’, Nature 232, 308 - 312. OH24; Homo habilis; 1.8 million years old

Leakey REF, 'Further evidence of Lower Pleistocene hominids from East Rudolf, North Kenya, Nature 248, 653 - 656; KNM-ER 1813; Homo habilis; 1.9 million years old

Johanson et al, ‘New partial skeleton of Homo habilis from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania’, Nature 327, 205 - 209; OH62; Homo habilis, 1.8 million years old

Leakey REF, ‘New hominid fossils from the Koobi Fora formation in Northern Kenya’, Nature 261, 574 - 576; KNM-ER 3733; Homo ergaster, 1.7 million years old

Brown et al, ‘Early Homo erectus skeleton from West Lake Turkana, Kenya’, Nature 316, 788 - 792; KNM-WT 15000; Homo ergaster, 1.6 million years old

Clarke et al, ‘More evidence of an advanced hominid ar Swartkans’, Nature 225, 1219 - 1222; SK847; Homo ergaster; 1.5 million years old

Dubois, ‘Pithecanthropus erectus, eine menschenaehnliche Ubergangs form aus Java’, Landesdruckerei, Batavia; Trinil 2; Homo erectus; 500,000 years old

Weidenreich, ’ The skull of Sinanthropus pikenensis’, Palaeotologia Sinila New Series D, Ne10 Geological Survey of China, Pehpei, Chung King; Peking Man, Homo erectus, 400,000 years old

Conroy et al, ’ Newly discovered fossil hominid from the Sfar depression, Ethiopia’, Nature 276, 67 - 70; Bodo cranium; Homo heidelbergensis; 60000 years old

de Lumley and de Lumley, ‘Decouverte de restes humains anteneandertaliens dates du debut de Riss a la Caune fe l’Arago’, C RE Acad Sci Paris 272, 1729 - 1742; Arago XX1; Homo heidelbergensis; 400,000 years old

Assuaga et al ’ Three new human skulls from the Sima de los Huesos Middle Pleistocen site in Sierra de Atapuerca,’, Nature 362, 534 - 537; Ayapuerca 5; Homoheidelbergensis; 300,000 years old.

All of these and many more that I could quote are older than H neanderthalensis. You did want evidence, didn’t you?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

steve b:

As a followup, to my previous post, because chimpanzees and apes, have 24 pairs of chromosomes and humans have 23 pairs, we can look very similar, 98% similar, but that isn’t 100% similar. Skeleton similarities, make for interesting comparisons, but that’s it. Determining our ancestry to the apes, has been one giant leap of faith for evolutionists. It’s not science. Sometimes they make these assumptions on a few bones, or fragments of bones. Yet huge leaps are made from inferences.

Glad you raised this point about chromosome number in humans compared with other, non-human, great apes. Bet you wish you hadn’t.

The fact that human apes have 23 pairs of chromosomes and the non-human apes 24 pairs is interesting. How did that happen? The answer can be found here:
evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

I summarise:
All great apes apart from man have 24 pairs of chromosomes. There is therefore a hypothesis that the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor’s chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. The evidence for this hypothesis is very strong.

The Evidence

Evidence for fusing of two ancestral chromosomes to create human chromosome 2 and where there has been no fusion in other Great Apes is:

1. The analogous chromosomes (2p and 2q) in the non-human great apes can be shown, when laid end to end, to create an identical banding structure to the human chromosome 2.
2. The remains of the sequence that the chromosome has on its ends (the telomere) is found in the middle of human chromosome 2 where the ancestral chromosomes fused.
3. the detail of this region (pre-telomeric sequence, telomeric sequence, reversed telomeric sequence, pre-telomeric sequence) is exactly what we would expect from a fusion.
4. this telomeric region is exactly where one would expect to find it if a fusion had occurred in the middle of human chromosome 2.
5. the centromere of human chromosome 2 lines up with the chimp chromosome 2p chromosomal centromere.
6. At the place where we would expect it on the human chromosome we find the remnants of the ancestral 2q centromere

Not only is this strong evidence for a fusion event, but it is also strong evidence for common ancestry; in fact, it is hard to explain by any other mechanism.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Joe Kelley:

See vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html ***HUMANI GENERIS ***ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII

Especially

1. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

I am perfectly aware of this statement that appears on this website in this tract:
catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

This is precisely my beef. Pius XII is plainly wrong about this and by continuing to make authoritative statements based on this teaching, the Church (or this little corner of it) is setting itself up for further embarassment. You would have thought that the Church fathers would have learned their lesson by now after the debacles of opposition to Copernican cosmology, old earth geology and Darwinian evolution.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[DuMaurier]

hecd2:

I am perfectly aware of this statement that appears on this website in this tract:
catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

This is precisely my beef. Pius XII is plainly wrong about this and by continuing to make authoritative statements based on this teaching, the Church (or this little corner of it) is setting itself up for further embarassment. You would have thought that the Church fathers would have learned their lesson by now after the debacles of opposition to Copernican cosmology, old earth geology and Darwinian evolution.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

The Church’s position is the same it was for Galileo; until you can prove your theory conclusively beyond any shred of doubt then doctrine will not be altered. It’s as simple as that.

**The Church insists that man is not an accident; that no matter how He went about creating Homo sapiens, God from all eternity intended that man and all creation exist in their present form. Catholics are not obliged to square scientific data with the early verses of Genesis, whose truths-and they are truths, not myths-are expressed in an archaic, pre-scientific Hebrew idiom; and they can look forward with enjoyment and confidence to modem scientific discoveries which, more often than not, raise fundamental questions which science itself cannot answer.

catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Issues/Darwin.html

The Church is not afraid of scientific criticism. She distrusts only preconceived opinions that claim to be based on science, but which in reality surreptitiously cause science to depart from its domain.

-Pope John Paul II

 

[Ghosty]

I still don’t see how this bottle-neck “problem” destroys the place of Adam and Eve. By its nature a bottle-neck tells us only the most recent limitation on the gene pool, and does not account for anything prior to the time in question.

Incidently, the Bible itself poses this very same “problem”, yet no one seems to acknowledge that, and this “problem” is represented by the story of the Flood. How many people forget that, according to Scripture, Adam and Eve are NOT humanity’s most recent common ancestor according to the Bible? Noah and his family represent the most recent scriptural bottle-neck, and there are countless other examples of genetic diversity being greatly reduced through war, plague, Wrath of God, ect throughout Scripture.

On a scientific level, we can only evaluate the most recent bottle-necking of human descent. If two people grew into a population of 100,000, and then 99,000 of those people died off, then our genetic evidence would only point to the group of 1,000 because prior to that point we have no way of evaluating the genetic diversity of the population. Whether that population represented a single tribe, or a wide range of family groups, we wouldn’t be able to determine. The genetic bottle-necking is a false argument only worthy of debunking the most rigid and fundamentalist readings of Scripture. It in no way debunks the full range of Scriptural and orthodox readings of the single parent grouping postulations regarding Adam and Eve.

 

[hecd2]

DuMaurier:

The Church’s position is the same it was for Galileo; until you can prove your theory conclusively beyond any shred of doubt then doctrine will not be altered. It’s as simple as that.

Well, thank heavens the similarity of the Church’s position here, and in the Galileo case, doesn’t extend to the methods employed by the Holy Office.

‘When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion…’

Not only is this a statement of doctrine but an authoritarian instruction to the faithful about what scientific opinion they and cannot hold. The Church has failed to learn that it cannot suppress truth about the natural universe by attempting to proscribe certain scientific opinions. This is bound to end in further embarrassment for the Church.

The Church is not afraid of scientific criticism. She distrusts only preconceived opinions that claim to be based on science, but which in reality surreptitiously cause science to depart from its domain.

-Pope John Paul II

I don’t understand what the relevance of this is to the issue at hand. I am not criticising the Church. I am simply lamenting the Church’s predisposition to cover herself in ridicule by taking an authoritarian and scientifically erroneous stand.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[DuMaurier]

hecd2:

I don’t understand what the relevance of this is to the issue at hand. I am not criticising the Church. I am simply lamenting the Church’s predisposition to cover herself in ridicule by taking an authoritarian and scientifically erroneous stand.%between%

It is relevant because people are using science to move into theology where it does not belong. That’s whay JPII is warning us about. That’s what got Galileo in trouble. Even if polygenism were proved true, which it hasn’t been, then I still don’t see a conflict with Catholic theology.

The Church holds that we become human when God endued us with a soul. So even with polygenism Adam and Eve would have been the first fully “human” beings in the spiritual sense.

 

[steve_b]

hecd2:

This is the most awful claptrap. It’s not just wrong, almost in every thing it says, it’s deliberately wrong. It’s misleading. It distorts. It’s dishonest .

I thought in my naivety that lying for Jesus is an enterprise confined to bible belt fundamentalists. I’m very sorry to find it here in a Catholic forum.

Even the fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist resources such Answers in Genesis have abandoned some of silliness on this webpage.

Lying for Jesus will not be a successful tactic to get to heaven.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

The scientific consensus is that there are huge gaps between species and groups of species, that there are no common ancestors and no intermediate fossil forms. The “evolutionary tree” is a fiction found only in school textbooks.

You’re begging your case rather than providing evidence.

 

[hecd2]

Ghosty:

I still don’t see how this bottle-neck “problem” destroys the place of Adam and Eve. By its nature a bottle-neck tells us only the most recent limitation on the gene pool, and does not account for anything prior to the time in question…

On a scientific level, we can only evaluate the most recent bottle-necking of human descent. If two people grew into a population of 100,000, and then 99,000 of those people died off, then our genetic evidence would only point to the group of 1,000 because prior to that point we have no way of evaluating the genetic diversity of the population. Whether that population represented a single tribe, or a wide range of family groups, we wouldn’t be able to determine. The genetic bottle-necking is a false argument only worthy of debunking the most rigid and fundamentalist readings of Scripture. It in no way debunks the full range of Scriptural and orthodox readings of the single parent grouping postulations regarding Adam and Eve.

Sorry, but you make a number of errors in this post, the most critical of which is the claim that the genetic evidence can only inform us about the most recent bottleneck and masks any previous information about genetic diversity. In fact a severe bottleneck, prior to a modest one, will leave its imprint in the molecular data.

SNPs, diverse microsatellite loci, and differences between genetic diversity and heterozygosity in autosomal, X-linked, Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA compared across various racial and geographical regions can give us considerably richer information than you imply.

But the key finding here is that analysis of common alleles in highly polymorphic loci in human and chimpanzee indicate no severe bottleneck since the divergence of human and chimpanzee lineages.

This is supported by:

1. analysis of the major histocompatibility complex - specifically the human leucocyte antigen - DRB1:
   Ayala, ‘The myth of Eve, Molecular biology and human origins’, Science 270, 1930 - 1936
2. Beta-globin:
   Harding et al, ‘Archaic African and Asian lineages in the genetic ancestry of modern humans’, Am J Hum Genet 60, 772 - 789
3. Apolipoprotein C II:
   Xiong et al, ‘No severe bottleneck during human evolution; evidence from two apolipoprotein C II alleles’, Am J Hum Genet 48, 383 -389

Rogers and Jorde, ‘Genetic evidence on the origin of modern humans’, Hum Biol 67, 1 - 36, show that a modest bottleneck of 10,000 individuals is consistent with the data.

This minimum population size of 10,000 individuals throughout hominid history is also supported by mitochondrial genetic diversity:
Takahata, ‘Allelic genealogy and human evolution’, Mol Biol Evol 10, 2 - 22;

By Y-chromosome data:
Hammer, ’ A recent common ancestry for human Y-chromosomes’, Nature 378, 376 - 378

By nuclear DNA:
Takahata et al, ‘Diversion time and population size in the lineage leading to modern humans’, Theor Popul Biol 48, 198 - 221

All of this evidence refutes the possibility that humans derive genetically from two individuals within the last 6 million years

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

steve b:

The scientific consensus is that there are huge gaps between species and groups of species, that there are no common ancestors and no intermediate fossil forms. The “evolutionary tree” is a fiction found only in school textbooks.

You’re begging your case rather than providing evidence.

Read the thread and then think honestly about who is providing evidence and who is not.

To claim that the scientific consensus is that there are no common ancestors and no transitional fossils is at best mistaken and at worst deliberate falsehood.

You are an out-and-out anti-evolutionist aren’t you? One of the kind who actually knows no science but pontificates about it anyway.

No intermediate fossils, huh? Well, I’m sure that since evidence is so precious to you, you will carefully explain the anatomy of:
Acanthostega
Eusthenopteron
Greererpeton
Icthyostega
Pederpes finneyae
Tulerpeton?

How about Eomaia scansoria?

Microraptor gui?

However, I am not here to defend the whole Theory of Evolution against your sort of hapless ill-informed opposition, but to make a very specific point about the fact that the Church is getting into a pickle over the doctrine of monogenism.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[steve_b]

hecd2:

Glad you raised this point about chromosome number in humans compared with other, non-human, great apes. Bet you wish you hadn’t.

Don’t be sure

hecd2:

The fact that human apes have 23 pairs of chromosomes and the non-human apes 24 pairs is interesting. How did that happen? The answer can be found here:
evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

I summarise:

Allow me to summarize for YOU. An ape is not a man, and a man is not an ape. Although that last point might get tested at times

hecd2:

All great apes apart from man have 24 pairs of chromosomes. There is therefore a hypothesis that the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor’s chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. The evidence for this hypothesis is very strong.

As I said before, hypothesis and opinions are like mouths, everybody has one. I’m interested in fact, not opinion.

hecd2:

The Evidence

Evidence for fusing of two human chromosome 2ancestral chromosomes to create and where there has been no fusion in other Great Apes is:

You assume man is an ape, and that apes are our ancestors. And that the fusing of 2 ancestral chromosomes occured. I said I wanted fact, not theory or assumptions.

hecd2:

1. The analogous chromosomes (2p and 2q) in the non-human great apes can be shown, when laid end to end, to create an identical banding structure to the human chromosome 2.

We’re 98% similar but that’s not enough to produce an offspring.

hecd2:

1. The remains of the sequence that the chromosome has on its ends (the telomere) is found in the middle of human chromosome 2*** where the ancestral chromosomes fused.***

Let’s get this straight. No fusing occured. It’s theory that it occured. It is merely opinion.

hecd2:

1. the detail of this region (pre-telomeric sequence, telomeric sequence, reversed telomeric sequence, pre-telomeric sequence) is exactly what we would expect from a fusion.

Yet it (the fusion)is not stated as fact. It’s theory. If it was fact it wouldn’t need to be presented as theory.

hecd2:

1. this telomeric region is exactly where one would expect to find it if a fusion had occurred in the middle of human chromosome 2.

That’s a HUGE “if”.

hecd2:

1. the centromere of human chromosome 2 lines up with the chimp chromosome 2p chromosomal centromere.
2. At the place where we would expect it on the human chromosome we find the remnants of the ancestral 2q centromere

Not only is this strong evidence for a fusion event, but it is also strong evidence for common ancestry; in fact, it is hard to explain by any other mechanism.

Alec

It’s evidence of a theory, not evidence of fact.

 

[steve_b]

hecd2:

Read the thread and then think honestly about who is providing evidence and who is not.

You’re not providing evidence that man came from apes. You’re providing theory

hecd2:

To claim that the scientific consensus is that there are no common ancestors and no transitional fossils is at best mistaken and at worst deliberate falsehood.

You can’t show transitional fossils between apes and man. It’s all theory.

hecd2:

You are an out-and-out anti-evolutionist aren’t you?

Only your version

hecd2:

One of the kind who actually knows no science but pontificates about it anyway.

I found this interesting. It’s obviously not a religious article in the least.

"A report published in April, 1998 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that scientists at Duke University have explored a new avenue of fossil anatomy and found surprising evidence suggesting that the Neanderthals, relatives of modern humans, could have had the same gift for speech as modern man. The research was conducted by Dr. Richard F. Kay and Dr. Matt Cartmill at the Duke Medical Center in Durham, N.C., with the assistance of a former student, Michelle Balow. The Duke scientists directed their research at the hypoglossal canal in all primates. It is a hole at the bottom of the skull in the back, where the spinal cord connects to the brain. Through the canal run nerve fibers from the brain to the muscles of the tongue. On the basis of comparative measurements of hypoglossal canals of modern humans, apes and several human ancestor fossils, the researchers concluded that the canals of modern humans are almost twice as large as those of modern apes – the chimpanzee and the gorilla – which are incapable of speech. They also found that the canal size of austrolopithecines, earlier human relatives that died out about one million years ago, did not differ significantly from that of chimpanzees. To narrow the range, the scientists examined skeletons of Neanderthals and also of species of the Homo genus that lived as much as 400,000 years ago. These included Kabwe specimens from Africa and Swanscombe fossils from Europe. Their hypoglossal canals fell within the range of those of modern Homo sapiens.“By the time we get to the Kabwe, about 400,000 years ago, you get a canal that’s a modern size,” Cartmill said. “And that’s true of all later Homo species, including Neanderthal.”

Ergo, for what it’s worth, if one is to make conclusions using this finding, one could theorize that according to Duke, man did not come from apes as you suggest.

hecd2:

No intermediate fossils, huh? Well, I’m sure that since evidence is so precious to you, you will carefully explain the anatomy of:
Acanthostega
Eusthenopteron
Greererpeton
Icthyostega
Pederpes finneyae
Tulerpeton?

How about Eomaia scansoria?

Microraptor gui?

However, I am not here to defend the whole Theory of Evolution against your sort of hapless ill-informed opposition, but to make a very specific point about the fact that the Church is getting into a pickle over the doctrine of monogenism.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Where is the intermediate between ape and man? When/how did 24 pairs of chromosomes become 23 pairs?

 

[hecd2]

steve b:

It’s evidence of a theory, not evidence of fact.

You have no idea how silly your statement is, do you?

You really do not have a clue about how science works or about anything in science. I’ve been around long enough to know that attempting to communicate with you is a complete waste of time. I am very sad to find this sort of fundamentalist dishonesty on a Catholic forum.

I commend these words of St Augustine to you:

‘Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?’

St Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, translated by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

DuMaurier:

It is relevant because people are using science to move into theology where it does not belong.

What people?

That’s whay JPII is warning us about. That’s what got Galileo in trouble.

Galileo used science to ‘move into theology’? Do you actually know anything about the Galileo affair? Galileo stuck exclusively to science, and simply pointed out that the evidence supported a cosmology different from the cosmology that the Church authorities of the day held to be true because of what they saw as scriptural authority. The Holy Office of the Inquisition declared that Galileo’s support for the Copernican cosmology was heresy. If any party was wandering from their sphere of authority to a place where they ‘did not belong’, it was the Church It’s quite shameful to put any of the blame for what happened on Galileo. There is no justification for the way he was shamefully treated. Galileo got into trouble because of the arrogance and authoritarianism of lesser men than he.

Even if polygenism were proved true, which it hasn’t been, then I still don’t see a conflict with Catholic theology.

Well, I don’t see a conflict either. But the polygenic origins of modern humans is a fact. If you wish to challenge any of the evidence, be my guest.

The Church holds that we become human when God endued us with a soul. So even with polygenism Adam and Eve would have been the first fully “human” beings in the spiritual sense.

Fine. Is this the ‘God gave two of the population souls and all their descendants had souls’ idea? See an earlier post of mine for the theological and scientific problems with that concept.

I really do think the best, simplest, and most beautiful solution is to regard Adam and Eve as allegorical ( as almost all Catholic scientists do anyway) and to give up on the heavy doctrinal teaching which forbids holding the opinion of polygenism. That doctrine is heading for embarassment and will provide another stick for the enemies of the Church

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[marciadietrich]

DuMaurier:

It is relevant because people are using science to move into theology where it does not belong. That’s whay JPII is warning us about. That’s what got Galileo in trouble. Even if polygenism were proved true, which it hasn’t been, then I still don’t see a conflict with Catholic theology.

The Church holds that we become human when God endued us with a soul. So even with polygenism Adam and Eve would have been the first fully “human” beings in the spiritual sense.

I don’t think you understand the issue. It isn’t whether or not there was polygenism before Adam and Eve, it is Adam and Eve as first parents of all to transmit original sin via propagation (CCC 404-419). Thus at the point we say a literal Adam and Eve as parents to all humans, and no other men could exist who did not come from them (as Pius XII states in an earlier quote) … that is where it is monogenism, that is the bottleneck that is being spoken of. So even given that Adam and Eve were first for being given a rational soul, there are all those around them who must die without reproducing and all of mankind coming only from Adam and Eve. That does conflict with science in this area.

Now if I have to choose, I’ll choose the Church teaching and figure that there is some explanation that we’re not yet privy to. Even if it is the parallel universe stuff.

Marcia

 

[steve_b]

hecd2:

You have no idea how silly your statement is, do you?

You really do not have a clue about how science works or about anything in science. I’ve been around long enough to know that attempting to communicate with you is a complete waste of time. I am very sad to find this sort of fundamentalist dishonesty on a Catholic forum.

Hey, don’t get sore at me. because you didn’t put your theory of man descending from apes accross.

hecd2:

I commend these words of St Augustine to you:

‘Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?’

St Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, translated by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Wise words indeed. Nowhere in Augustines statement does it say that one’s opponant on an issue, isn’t to be cross examined. You say we came from apes. Well, you haven’t made your case. So don’t try and use that quote against me. Evolution is a theory. In fact its many theories. With many dots to connect. Don’t expect Catholics to just roll over and play dead. If you feel frustrated, maybe it’s because you haven’t been able to connect the dots.

 

[PhilVaz]

steveb << The scientific consensus is that there are huge gaps between species and groups of species, that there are no common ancestors and no intermediate fossil forms. The “evolutionary tree” is a fiction found only in school textbooks. You’re begging your case rather than providing evidence. >>

You got to be kidding me. Don’t rely on creationist nonsense. Go to a library (as I have), check out a book on paleontology (as I have), and you will find (for example, from Carroll’s Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution)

“During the past 20 years, our knowledge of fossil vertebrates has increased immensely. Entirely new groups of jawless fish, sharks, amphibians, and dinosaurs have been discovered, and the major transitions between amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and mammals, and dinosaurs and birds have been thoroughly studied. Evidence from both paleontology and molecular biology provides much new information on the initial radiation of both birds and placental mammals.” (Carroll, page xiii preface).

There are indeed gaps since the fossil record has only been mined the past 200 or so years, but there are dozens of examples of intermediates in this article by Kathleen Hunt, I double-checked her references to Carroll (Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution) and they are indeed correct.

Another fantastic example are the walking-whales that have been unearthed the past decade. These are found here on Phil Gingerich’s page and good information here on one of those Ambulocetus Natans (the “walking whale that swims”)

http://www.researchcasting.ca/images/ambulocetus.jpg

Phil P