Can animals sin..?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ATrai
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
ATrai said:
According to Catholic theology, evolution may be true, but somewhere along the evolutionary line God made a distinction and endowed two humans with a human soul. So, what of the parents of these two human souls? Could they sin?

According to the theory of evolution, changes in species develop at an excruciatingly slow pace. Were the biological parents of the first two humans so different that they could not sin?
Click to expand...
In a (my?) Thomist approach to evolution and our first parents, the difference between Adam and his biological parents (if he was born from them), wouldn’t be biological. It was not additional brain development that separated Adam, but rather his God-given rational soul; his “form” (in a Thomist sense; his formal cause). The raw “computational powers” of the brain would have been the same, along with sensitive feelings. But the power of Adam’s true human soul in this case would be his ability to grasp abstract concepts in a universal way, to think beyond his particular experiences or particular mental imaginings. Adam would have been able to grasp concepts such as good, evil, right, and wrong in ways his parents couldn’t.

His parents would have still be highly advanced and social animals, more advanced than any non-human animals today, but not rational thinkers, and not capable of sin.
 
Last edited:
Animals can commit evill, but bear little to no culpability. Only human can bear the culpability necessary for evil to become sin.
 
Luke 19:40

I tell you," he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Matthew 27:51

“At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split”

Not alive like you or I but nevertheless created by God. Since everyone desires pets in Heaven I’ll speak on behalf of our stoney brethren. 🤓
 
You are being too anthropomorphic…you cannot apply human traits to non-human species.
 
Troll mode.

A human being has an animal nature, so…

Just kidding. Animals have no knowledge about the moral gravity of their actions. Even some humans fail to see the wrong they have done. But certainly animals act according to instinct, not according to the knowledge of right or wrong.

But at the very least a Dog is unlikely to betray you and may even sulk if it thinks you are displeased… Looool
.
 
Last edited:
Wesrock said:
In a (my?) Thomist approach to evolution and our first parents, the difference between Adam and his biological parents (if he was born from them), wouldn’t be biological. It was not additional brain development that separated Adam, but rather his God-given rational soul; his “form” (in a Thomist sense; his formal cause). The raw “computational powers” of the brain would have been the same, along with sensitive feelings. But the power of Adam’s true human soul in this case would be his ability to grasp abstract concepts in a universal way, to think beyond his particular experiences or particular mental imaginings. Adam would have been able to grasp concepts such as good, evil, right, and wrong in ways his parents couldn’t.

His parents would have still be highly advanced and social animals, more advanced than any non-human animals today, but not rational thinkers, and not capable of sin.
Click to expand...
Hence the question of what happened to Adam’s (Biological) Parents and all the other humanoid beings that did not have rational souls.

The only answers that i can come up with is that we killed them all. And no, that is not my ideal point of view
 
Last edited:
Nope. They’re hunting and doing a great service. As a matter of fact, I will help them in their efforts and wage a war against Mice 🐭
 
Sin requires a rational being with free will. Otherwise the following conditions, which define mortal sin in this case, could not be met. From the CCC:
1857 For a sin to be mortal , three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."131

Venial sin would involve these but to a lesser degree, or would mean that one or two of these requirements are missing.
 
Last edited:
IWantGod said:
40.png
Wesrock:
In a (my?) Thomist approach to evolution and our first parents, the difference between Adam and his biological parents (if he was born from them), wouldn’t be biological. It was not additional brain development that separated Adam, but rather his God-given rational soul; his “form” (in a Thomist sense; his formal cause). The raw “computational powers” of the brain would have been the same, along with sensitive feelings. But the power of Adam’s true human soul in this case would be his ability to grasp abstract concepts in a universal way, to think beyond his particular experiences or particular mental imaginings. Adam would have been able to grasp concepts such as good, evil, right, and wrong in ways his parents couldn’t.

His parents would have still be highly advanced and social animals, more advanced than any non-human animals today, but not rational thinkers, and not capable of sin.
Click to expand...
Hence the question of what happened to Adam’s (Biological) Parents and all the other humanoid beings that did not have rational souls.

The only answers that i can come up with is that we killed them all. And no, that is not my ideal point of view
Click to expand...
Well… it gives an alternative to incest between Adam and Eve’s children if Adam and Eve’s descendants interbred with them. They’d have been biologically identical and compatible. Arising outside of any civilized culture and having been raised among them, they wouldn’t have been that distinct culturally or behaviorally. And the offspring of such unions could have resulted in all the children having true human souls. Essentially, they weren’t killed out of existence, but bred out, passing on their genetic material, true, but eventually all surviving offspring were true men and women at some point. Abstract thinking does give one a selection advantage, too.

Of course, all of this is all speculation, just possible alternatives that could fit our current scientific models.
 
Last edited:
I still stand by my initial post which you can read up thread.
 
Last edited:
Rocks have to have a soul the bishop visited the boys school ( they attend a catholic school)
And the bishop helped them make prayer rocks they wouldn’t have made prayer rocks if rocks were soulless creatures
 
Psalm 118:22

“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”

I definitely think that there’s more to the humble rock than meets the eye…
 
If they can, my Beagle is definitely living in sin with my Yorkie. They are both boys, even! 😦
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top