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Gorgias
Guest
Ahh, but what’s being suggested here isn’t “polygenism”.
Can I stay Catholic and not believe in a literal Adam and Eve?
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Richca
Guest
I think anyone who knows anything about science especially concerning its amazing progression in the last 100 years or so and the on going present amazing discoveries would be extremely reserved about accepting as dogmatic fact and certainty or making dogmatic statements of what may come out of various studies especially the one under discussion now looking as it does hundreds of thousands and even millions of years in the past and which in its very method involves the computation of various uncertain parameters which can only reflect the complexity and contingency of reality to a certain degree. It is possible that science may not be able to prove one way or the other whether the human race descended from a single couple or not. Ann Gauger, a biology scientist who is very knowledgeable in the methods and what is studied in population genetics estimates, sums up the various studies in this way “But one thing is clear right now: Adam and Eve have not been disproven by science, and those who claim otherwise are misrepresenting the scientific evidence.”And this is where you lose anyone who knows anything about science. Scientists tell us that there was never a bottleneck of humans less than 10K individuals, let alone only two. Therefore, when you make statements like this one, you make Christian doctrine lose all credibility. (Incidentally, Augustine makes just this prediction in his discussion of how interpretation of Genesis can make Christians look silly and make non-Christians dismiss us as rubes.)
A bigger problem from what I understand with the population genetics methods and ancestral populations which is rooted in Darwinian evolutionary theory is its application to large scale evolution such as going from ape to man which involves under the theory an enormous number of random mutations in about 6 million years or so according to the fossil record. This is known as Haldane’s Dilemma and in a more recent study Haldane’s Rachet. Other studies also abound that substantiate the claim of Haldane’s Dilemma.
These studies claim that there is not enough time on an order of magnitude of many orders under Darwinian evolutionary theory for the supposed ape-man evolution. According to these scientists and their studies, Darwinian evolutionism contradicts reality and the fossil record. Now, science is suppose to reflect reality and explain it not contradict it. Accordingly, if, as these scientists claim, Darwinian evolutionary theory fails going forward from ape to man, in what sense can the same theory and method work going backwards as from the present to the deep past such as in ancestral population genetic estimates? It doesn’t make sense.
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edwest211
Guest
Source: Catholic Answers
"Real History
"The argument is that all of this is real history, it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis, it is argued, would have understood it as such.
"Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, it still records God’s work—things God really did.
"The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337), but “nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun” (CCC 338).
It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use."
"Adam and Eve: Real People
"It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).
"In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “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 either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).
“The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).”
"Real History
"The argument is that all of this is real history, it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis, it is argued, would have understood it as such.
"Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, it still records God’s work—things God really did.
"The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337), but “nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun” (CCC 338).
It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use."
"Adam and Eve: Real People
"It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).
"In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “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 either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).
“The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).”
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