regarding being able to see stars more than 6000 light years away if the Earth is only 6000 years old
I’m not sure how burials prove that a person is self-conscious, unless you make the connection for me. But I’m perfectly open to the idea that people have had self-conscious minds for over 200,000 years old.
I see no reason to assume that Genesis is a historically accurate document. Nor, from what I understand, does the Church. “Inspired” is not the same thing as “accurate”. Now it may be the case that Genesis is accurate – consider that *the lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack *-- but I feel no need to take the book literally.
“In the case of a burial in Shanidar Cave, Northern Iraq, there may have even more elaborate ritual activity. Apparently, the body of a man had been placed on pine boughs in the grave and flowers from 8 different species had been sprinkled on top. It is difficult to account for such activity by Neandertals unless it is assumed that they believed in some sort of afterlife. If they thought that their dead relatives and friends were only food or garbage, it is highly unlikely that they would have carefully buried them in this way.”
We actually don’t know if Neanderthals were a different species or not. Modern science classifies them as a different species, but that’s not based on DNA or proof of non-interbreeding. Until recently wolves and domestic dogs were classified as different species, despite the obvious fact that they DO interbreed without difficulty or steril offspring.
“evidence for consciousness”? Would you mind explaining? All living macro organisms have consciousness. Dogs and cats are awake and then they are unconscious until they wake up.
There is some DNA evidence that Neanderthals were sufficiently different from ourselves to be considered a different species:
Agreed. We are lucky to have any Neanderthal DNA at all; 30,000 years is a long time.
Unfortunately such graphs don’t indicate an ability or inability to interbreed and therefore be considered a single species. Our knowledge of genetics has progressed a lot since 1997, and a lot of the differences in the various genomes have been found to be a lot less significant that previously assumed (and likewise, many similarities have been found to be a lot less significant).
Such graphs do indicate that the two species very probably did not interbreed, or if they did it was at a very low level. That indicates that there was in practice effective reproductive separation between them and so that is is less inaccurate to treat them as two different species. Of course, new data may change this.
I don’t find it difficult to account for, however much these scientists do. Both animals and humans are capable of affection, and the burial activity is a form of affection – and perhaps, I agree, something more. But I do not consider the belief in an afterlife, even if this were proven by the above, evidence that a “person” has a soul.
“Man” may be only homo sapiens sapiens, but the Church does not declare that man is the only kind of creature with an eternal soul. There could be (or have been) other fully sentient beings, on other worlds or our own, who were fully self-conscious and ensouled.
Adam and Eve are defined as being the same species you currently are.
Actually – the Church does declare that the human species is the only kind of creature who has an eternal spiritual soul on this earth, past, present and future.
A search for homo sapiens came up empty. Can you point me to the CCC section that defines mankind or humanity?
If there was any interbreeding, even on a low level, then Neanderthals would qualify as humans from a religious perspective. The practice of reproductive separation really doesn’t mean anything in this context.
It there were fertile offspring it would push the age back for homo sapiens to about 500,000 years ago.
We have have the complete genome from mitochondrial DNA sequences only, no cell nucleus DNA. But it still tells us a lot.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
You are welcome. Please put Adam in the search box. Also put creation in the search box. Other words will come to you as you scan the various paragraphs. Sometimes, one has to read paragraphs above and below the cited one to get the full meaning.
Those mysterious verses in Genesis have interesting footnotes. Plus, there should be a Bible authority to interpret them.
Biological and anthropological changes are gradual or clinal.
Perhaps, on a biological level. It wouldn’t push back the date for humanity, however, since it is the immortal soul that makes the human, not merely the biology.
All that shows is that there was no widespread genetic contribution from Neanderthals to homo sapiens, it doesn’t show that interbreeding was impossible. The article itself even says as much.
Now that you have me thinking – it seems I found the homo sapiens idea when looking for “original sin”. I read through a bunch of paragraphs which emphasized the uniqueness of Adam and his relationship to all of salvation history, that is, to Jesus Christ, etc. The clear way these and other paragraphs were written depended on the foundation of humanity as we are today.