At what point in the evolutionary line did humans start getting souls.

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cajhockey said:
But doesnt God creating adam contradict with evolutions stance that humans evolved over many forms?

We have fossils of about 20 different species of humans that have evolved over a few millions of years.
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science isn’t supposed to contradict God. God is above all.
 
cajhockey said:
But doesnt God creating adam contradict with evolutions stance that humans evolved over many forms?

We have fossils of about 20 different species of humans that have evolved over a few millions of years.
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God created Adam by giving a rational, immortal soul to a hominid. The evolution of the human body does not contradict this at all, though some people may well reject the evidence for evolution.

So as for your original question, we don’t know exactly when Adam was created, but it would be at some point in the biological line where humans are pretty much physically identical to what we are today. Adam and Eve were the first human beings, defined not by physical body structure, which may indeed have developed by evolution, but because they had rational souls and human bodies, which is the relevant definition of humanity.

Peace and God bless!
 
cajhockey said:
But doesnt God creating adam contradict with evolutions stance that humans evolved over many forms?

We have fossils of about 20 different species of humans that have evolved over a few millions of years.
Click to expand...
Many of the “fossils” of humans have turned out to be fake, one I seem to remember turned out to be a bone from a pig. However my answer still stands, The first human soul was infused into Adam the first man by God when He created him. Exactly how He created him we do not know.
 
cajhockey said:
Evolution tells us that we didnt all start out as human. So at what point did we first get a soul? Evolution is a very slow process. Someone must have been the first to have had a soul.

The basic timeline is a 4.5 billion year old Earth, with (very approximate) dates:
  • 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),
  • 3 billion years of photosynthesis,
  • 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),
  • 1 billion years of multicellular life,
  • 600 million years of simple animals,
  • 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans),
  • 550 million years of complex animals,
  • 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,
  • 475 million years of land plants,
  • 400 million years of insects and seeds,
  • 360 million years of amphibians,
  • 300 million years of reptiles,
  • 200 million years of mammals,
  • 150 million years of birds,
  • 130 million years of flowers,
  • 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,
  • 2.5 million years since the appearance of the genus Homo,
  • 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today,
  • 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out.
mammals have been around for 200 million years and humans first started appearing around 2.5. Scientist say that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. Did this common ancestor have a soul? Remember this evolution happened very slowly. Its not like yesterday there was a common ancestor and today it split into a group of monkeys and a group of humans.
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When the first monkey used a hand made axe to chop the heads off his father and mother for a fry-up
 
Ghosty said:
God created Adam by giving a rational, immortal soul to a hominid. The evolution of the human body does not contradict this at all, though some people may well reject the evidence for evolution.

So as for your original question, we don’t know exactly when Adam was created, but it would be at some point in the biological line where humans are pretty much physically identical to what we are today. Adam and Eve were the first human beings, defined not by physical body structure, which may indeed have developed by evolution, but because they had rational souls and human bodies, which is the relevant definition of humanity.

Peace and God bless!
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Science can in no way comment on the immaterial. This entire statement is pure conjecture without scientific content.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Science can in no way comment on the immaterial. This entire statement is pure conjecture without scientific content.

Peace,
Ed
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I don’t believe I ever claimed to be making a scientific statement. My statement was not pure conjecture, however; it is based not only on theology but on rational philosophy.

You are correct on one point, however, which is that science can’t comment on the immaterial. Since we’re talking about the immaterial soul here, science (as you’re defining it) really can’t be used to approach the question of when humans began having souls.

Peace and God bless!
 
I’ve seen a lot of people misunderstanding this question, so I’ll take a stab…

Cajhockey is assuming Christianity to be true, for the sake of argument, because he is (I presume) open to discovering it is true. This is a good idea. He is not committed to the Bible, although Christians are. There are at least two possibilities:
  1. God created human beings out of nothing, roughly according to the book of Genesis. This does not commit someone to a 6000 year-old universe, and the idea of a 6000-year-old universe is absurd.
To someone who believes in evolution, which is a perfectly reasonable belief, possibility #1 is hard to accept. Why would God create evidence of evolution *approaching *humanity, but then stop evolution and pick up some clay instead? It is certainly possible, but a bit hard to comprehend.
  1. God created the Earth and caused human beings to evolve from other animals. This, then, leaves the question of when the soul first entered a human – an extraordinarily powerful question.
So those are the preliminaries…

My theory: humans were ensouled the moment they were self-conscious, because self-consciousness is the prerequisite for sin. Unless you can think about yourself making a decision, you cannot wrong yourself, your God, or anyone else.

This argument fits with a historical understanding of soul. To Descartes, “mind” and “soul” were equivalent concepts, both of them rooted in the capacity to be self-conscious (to know that I am thinking, and that I exist). Self-consciousness made man realize his freedom, and only with this freedom could he sin.

(As for animals having souls, animals have spirits, but not eternal souls. The Latin word for spirit is anima, a word that referred to things that could move on their own.)
 
God could have created Adam and Eve supernaturally and inserted them into the timeline wherever He wished regardless of what may or may not have been happening in the universe at the time.
 
buffalo said:
God could have created Adam and Eve supernaturally and inserted them into the timeline wherever He wished regardless of what may or may not have been happening in the universe at the time.
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Yes he could have. He also could have inserted me into the timeline 10 seconds ago and created false memories of me inside of everyone’s mind, my own included. But why rely on supernatural explanations when the natural ones are completely plausible?
 
tjm190 said:
Yes he could have. He also could have inserted me into the timeline 10 seconds ago and created false memories of me inside of everyone’s mind, my own included. But why rely on supernatural explanations when the natural ones are completely plausible?
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Because, as Pope John Paul II has stated, it is not possible for science alone to explain the ontological leap to man. See Communion and Stewardship, available online.

Second, the natural explanations are, by definition, incomplete.

Finally, science is concerned with data only. At this point, Adam and Eve, are meaningless concepts from a scientific point of view. The only reason they are brought up here is to give Catholics the impression that some wild idea might be true with, at this point, zero evidence to back it up.

Peace,
Ed
 
tjm190 said:
Yes he could have. He also could have inserted me into the timeline 10 seconds ago and created false memories of me inside of everyone’s mind, my own included. But why rely on supernatural explanations when the natural ones are completely plausible?
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You were inserted 372 posts ago!😃
 
Moses told his people not to drink the blood of animals because blood is the container of the spirit. Hmmm???
 
cajhockey said:
Evolution tells us that we didnt all start out as human. So at what point did we first get a soul? Evolution is a very slow process. Someone must have been the first to have had a soul.

The basic timeline is a 4.5 billion year old Earth, with (very approximate) dates:
  • 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),
  • 3 billion years of photosynthesis,
  • 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),
  • 1 billion years of multicellular life,
  • 600 million years of simple animals,
  • 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans),
  • 550 million years of complex animals,
  • 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,
  • 475 million years of land plants,
  • 400 million years of insects and seeds,
  • 360 million years of amphibians,
  • 300 million years of reptiles,
  • 200 million years of mammals,
  • 150 million years of birds,
  • 130 million years of flowers,
  • 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,
  • 2.5 million years since the appearance of the genus Homo,
  • 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today,
  • 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out.
mammals have been around for 200 million years and humans first started appearing around 2.5. Scientist say that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor. Did this common ancestor have a soul? Remember this evolution happened very slowly. Its not like yesterday there was a common ancestor and today it split into a group of monkeys and a group of humans.
Click to expand...
in the third from last, a more accurate statement would be the appearance of humanoids or anthropoids.
 
NoWings said:
If I may hazard a guess, it happened when one of two things happened (if you’re taking a metaphorical view of Genesis):

Humans became endowed with souls the moment they decided to act consciously good on their own free will (showing mercy, etc).

Humans became endowed with souls the moment they decided to act consciously evil beyond the nature of animals.
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Unlikely science will ever have evidence of this given the power of nature to bury the past.
 
cajhockey said:
Science does not have evidence of the existense of the soul. The bible claim it exists so Im asking at what point in the time line did it appear
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The human being is evidence of the soul.

The immaterial/ spiritual component and the material/corporal component are intimately united in the one nature of the human person. At what point in time, there was the first complete unity of the person, is not known.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
My theory: humans were ensouled the moment they were self-conscious, because self-consciousness is the prerequisite for sin.
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Yet there is evidence for consciousness that goes back to the earliest dating for homo sapiens (200,000 years ago) in the form of burials and grave goods. Indeed there is similar evidence for homo neanderthalis, which stretches back some 500,000 years.

Yet if we are to believe Genesis; " And Abel was a shepherd, and Cain a husbandman." Genesis 4:2.

However the earliest evidence for agriculture and animal domestication only goes back 10,000 years ago or so.

How do you reconcile this?
 
RobbyS said:
in the third from last, a more accurate statement would be the appearance of humanoids or anthropoids.
Click to expand...
Actually, no, the original statement is perfectly accurate; That is the estimate age of the first species in the homo genus, homo habilis. Hominids have been around a longer than that.

–
Bill
 
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