In post #305 wmw wrote: “Still, the first step is understanding that if science is saying that there is more than a single pair of parents to the whole human race that this is in divergence with the teaching of the Catholic Faith.” Rev. Austriaco recognizes this requirement and avoids that divergence, I think, because he actually mixes a degree of biological monogenism in with his theological monogenism (more than I would, by the way). His scenario posits a “first and only” couple in a biological sense as well as in a theological sense, because they were the first to have the biological prerequisites for human language as well as the first to have an eternal rational soul. In his scenario they were also the genetic ancestors of all humans with true human language and eternal souls. I don’t know if he would call those lacking these endowments “subhuman” or “prehuman” but nonetheless the distinction is very clear in his speculative scenario. So, perhaps Rev. Austriaco provides a way to - as wmw also wrote in post #305 - “find the true science” that avoids divergence with Catholic faith rather than “abandoning the Catholic Faith at the first theory that challenges it.”
For those interested, here’s a portion of Rev. Austriaco’s scenario:
“From a theologian’s perspective, biological evolution was a 3.5 billion year process, directed by God, to advance living matter until it was apt to receive a rational soul. This critical point in evolutionary history occurred 100,000 years in southern Africa among a group of anatomically modern human beings when a handful of individuals evolved the neurocognitive capacity to serve as a basis for abstract thinking and language. How exactly this happened will always be a matter of speculation. If the biological capacity for language presupposes the acquisition of a package of pro-language mutations in the human genome, as biologists assume, then I can imagine a scenario where two anatomically modern humans, each with a subset of these pro-language genetic mutations, mate and conceive children … Their children would have inherited the complete package of pro-language genes, bringing together the genetic advantages of each of their parents, and thus, would have acquired a novel capacity for language. With God’s infusion of the human soul, they would be the first instances of behaviorally modern human infants surrounded by a tribe of closely related anatomically modern relatives who would not have full language capacity … Since language is clearly a beneficial trait for the survival of the species, it would not have taken long for these speaking bipeds to dominate and outcompete their non-speaking anatomically modern relatives. These speaking bipeds would migrate out of southern Africa and would eventually populate the rest of the continent and the globe.”
Again, rest assured that I do not teach this in my genetics or other classes! However, if a Catholic student shared with me that she/he saw no possible way to reconcile her/his religious faith with science, besides reminding them that the science could change, I might refer them to Rev. Austriaco as one example of how some Catholics are thinking about these things. Just to know they are not the first and only people to struggle with such questions can be of immense aid, whether or not they find any specific scenario such as Rev. Austriaco’s to be helpful in and of itself.
The full scenario is
here.
Thank you.