Closer to Apes Than They Thought?

[Faith1960]

Just a few weeks ago there was confirmation of the species considered by many to be the “missing link” related to the humanoid also named “Lucy.” I commend the Catholic Church for holding the scientific community in high regard, despite my disagreement with its other stances on different philosophical issues. I don’t remember ever hearing that the Church doesn’t believe that other animals have basic reasoning skills, It just doesn’t seem like it would be much of an issue considering the immortal soul is a metaphysical concept whereas reasoning and rationality are based more on the structure and development of the physical brain.

Yes it is but some people from that other board refused to acknowledge that fact and insist that reasoning, rationality and thought all come from the intellect which, they say doesn’t come from the brain at all but from the human immortal soul.

 

[Faith1960]

I’ll start to worry about it only when Koko and Jenny write their own article for Time magazine and post their replies on this discussion board.

That’ll get me worried too, Jim. I don’t know about Jenny but from what I’ve heard about Koko, she can initiate conversations and has supposedly invented signs for words. As far as I know, she hasn’t mastered the art of typing yet, though.

 

[Faith1960]

Yea. It would be more interesting if the Atheist/Agnostics could come up with some better arguments.

I agree. I didn’t initiate this thread to start a debate. I wanted some answers to help me in my faith journey.

 

[nucatholic]

Faith1960,

They are just plain wrong that a soul is necessary for basic reasoning. We can see that all rationality and reasoning skills are dependant upon the functioning of the physical brain. The Catholic Church, as far as I know, doesn’t dispute this fact. So I think you can rest assured that this specific line of reasoning does not threaten your Catholic faith.

Marantha,

Quoting George Washington does not constitute an argument. This is a fallacious line of reasoning known as the appeal to authority. No doubt Washington was a great man but he was also a product of his time. He did not have the knowledge we have today about anthropology, psychology, and the innovations in philosophy.

John_Henry,

You don’t like smart *** remarks?? All kidding aside, I strongly disagree with any type of egoism based morality. If egoism was true, then it would be ok for someone to murder someone so long as they knew they could get away with it. It is obvious that egoism breaks down logically without any stretches of the imagination. If a person can’t see the problems with egoism, then they just desire to be egoistic instead of desiring truth in ethics.

 

[Maranatha]

I agree. I didn’t initiate this thread to start a debate. I wanted some answers to help me in my faith journey.

If there came to be known aliens with Intelligence and self-awareness, it could be determined they have an immortal soul. Would this shake your faith?

 

[Faith1960]

Faith1960,

They are just plain wrong that a soul is necessary for basic reasoning. We can see that all rationality and reasoning skills are dependant upon the functioning of the physical brain. The Catholic Church, as far as I know, doesn’t dispute this fact. So I think you can rest assured that this specific line of reasoning does not threaten your Catholic faith.

The argument went on for a long, long time and basically, it was repeatedly asserted that intellect comes from the immortal soul and this was taught by the teachings of one of the saints. I’m unsure of which one now but he was a philosopher.

When Terri Shiavo was mentioned, they argued that she had the capacity for reasoning as do all humans because according to the teachings and writings of the saint they kept quoting, all humans have an immortal soul, all intellect comes from the immortal soul, therefore all humans have the capacity for reasoning.
Someone reminded them that in the TS case, a good portion of her brain had liquified and much of her brain matter no longer existed, so she couldn’t reason yet they still argued that this didn’t matter because she had an immortal soul so regardless of what she could do, couldn’t do or what people could observe about her, the capacity for reasoning was still there as a product of her having an immortal soul.

Needless to say, that makes no sense to me, whatsoever. They kept linking quote after quote from one Catholic source after another “proving” their assertions which didn’t sound like proof at all to most participants in the thread. They also kept bringing out the argument that THEY are faithful to the Magesterium, the Church and all Her teachings and the people who disagree with the whole human immortal soul = intellect are disagreeing because they aren’t faithful to the Church.

Some were called heretics and their faith was bashed being accused of not really being Catholic.

Any talk of the brain being the source of reason or ability to think or problem solve was more proof they weren’t faithful to the Church.

 

[Faith1960]

If there came to be known aliens with Intelligence and self-awareness, it could be determined they have an immortal soul. Would this shake your faith?

That would depend on if the Church acknowledged the aliens and their intelligence, self-awareness and immortal soul. If the Church was insisting they didn’t possess those qualities when they did, then yes, it would definitely shake my faith because I look to the Church for truth. If the Church acknowledged that the aliens did possess those qualities I’d see no problem.

 

[Nullasalus]

I agree. I didn’t initiate this thread to start a debate. I wanted some answers to help me in my faith journey.

For what it’s worth, I share a lot of your concerns. I always say my faith hangs by a steel thread - it’s the most accurate way to put it.

However, I read over the article you linked - and honestly, I didn’t find anything in it that truly shook me. Your problems seem to center around assertions by the Church that only humans have an immortal soul, and the reasons why they came to such a conclusion. First, I’d love to see where the Church speaks about animals in regards to things like that - from my understanding, the point that is mostly made clear is that humanity is entirely distinct in terms of capability and mental/spiritual endowment, and has a purpose beyond what animals have. Other than that, it’s speculation and nothing more; an area of debate, such as limbo. (Though there’s an entry on newadvent.org regarding cruetly to animals - animals are not ‘things’ by even loose Catholic belief.)

I don’t think recent scientific development is the first time it’s been pointed out that other animals have some capacity for rudimentary tool use, communication, etc. And I don’t think said development has shortened the gap between a humans and the next ‘closest’ animal by any real degree - humanity isn’t what it is purely because of a capacity for language, or a communal spirit. We are capable of conceiving things that no other animal could ever hope to, desiring things that they could barely understand. Most importantly, we can understand concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, and not just ‘pain and pleasure’.

That millions of years ago the human species (or what it used to be by way of ancestry) may have been at a different stage doesn’t upset me. We can only be vaguely certain of what capacities ‘our ancestors’ had, what their limitations were compared to where we are now. Certainly, something major and considerable happened at one point in our development, and fairly recently by any standard. What the change was, when it happened, and how it happened… that’s perplexing. Even in that article there was a lot of interior debate, on everything from cross-breeding with chimpanzees millions of years ago, to what was the reason our brains have become what they are.

The Church’s position on the origin of man, as near as I can tell, is that at one point mankind as we know it came on the scene, and the ultimate result was a fallen state. It could have been a ‘big bang of human consciousness’ - the point where we crossed the divide from merely experiencing ourselves and our environment, and suddenly began to realize that certain things are good, and certain things are evil, and that we can in fact choose evil if we like. Whatever that point was, it effectively marked the end for traditional evolution for humanity. We continue to evolve, but in dimensions that simply are not covered in the animal world.

That, to me, is one of the strongest arguments for the Church’s view on things. It has always viewed humanity as an oddity among the rest of creation - a kind of creature apart from all the others. Science continues to illustrate this.

 

[Maranatha]

This is Peter Kreeft’s essay on The Case for Life After Death.

In it he states:

The strongest positive argument against life after death is the observation of spirit at the mercy of matter. We see no more mental life when the brain dies. Even when it is alive, a blow to the head impairs thought. Consciousness seems related to matter as the light of a candle to the candle: once the fuel is used up, the light goes out. The body and its nervous system seem like the fuel, the cause; and immaterial activity, consciousness, seems like the effect. Remove the cause and you remove the effect. Consciousness, in other words, seems to be an epiphenomenon, an effect but not a cause, like the heat generated by the electricity running along a wire to an appliance, or the exhaust fumes from an engine’s tailpipe.

What does the observed dependence of mind upon matter prove, if not the mortality of the soul? Wait. First, just what do we observe? We observe the physical manifestations of consciousness (e.g. speech) cease when the body dies. We do not observe the spirit cease to exist, because we do not observe the spirit at all, only its manifestations in the body. Observations of the body do not decide whether that body is an instrument of an independent spirit which continues to exist after its body-instrument dies, or whether the body is the cause of a dependent spirit which dies when its cause dies. Both hypotheses account for the observed facts.

 

[Faith1960]

For what it’s worth, I share a lot of your concerns. I always say my faith hangs by a steel thread - it’s the most accurate way to put it.

However, I read over the article you linked - and honestly, I didn’t find anything in it that truly shook me. Your problems seem to center around assertions by the Church that only humans have an immortal soul, and the reasons why they came to such a conclusion. First, I’d love to see where the Church speaks about animals in regards to things like that - from my understanding, the point that is mostly made clear is that humanity is entirely distinct in terms of capability and mental/spiritual endowment, and has a purpose beyond what animals have. Other than that, it’s speculation and nothing more; an area of debate, such as limbo. (Though there’s an entry on newadvent.org regarding cruetly to animals - animals are not ‘things’ by even loose Catholic belief.)

I don’t think recent scientific development is the first time it’s been pointed out that other animals have some capacity for rudimentary tool use, communication, etc. And I don’t think said development has shortened the gap between a humans and the next ‘closest’ animal by any real degree - humanity isn’t what it is purely because of a capacity for language, or a communal spirit. We are capable of conceiving things that no other animal could ever hope to, desiring things that they could barely understand. Most importantly, we can understand concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, and not just ‘pain and pleasure’.

That millions of years ago the human species (or what it used to be by way of ancestry) may have been at a different stage doesn’t upset me. We can only be vaguely certain of what capacities ‘our ancestors’ had, what their limitations were compared to where we are now. Certainly, something major and considerable happened at one point in our development, and fairly recently by any standard. What the change was, when it happened, and how it happened… that’s perplexing. Even in that article there was a lot of interior debate, on everything from cross-breeding with chimpanzees millions of years ago, to what was the reason our brains have become what they are.

The Church’s position on the origin of man, as near as I can tell, is that at one point mankind as we know it came on the scene, and the ultimate result was a fallen state. It could have been a ‘big bang of human consciousness’ - the point where we crossed the divide from merely experiencing ourselves and our environment, and suddenly began to realize that certain things are good, and certain things are evil, and that we can in fact choose evil if we like. Whatever that point was, it effectively marked the end for traditional evolution for humanity. We continue to evolve, but in dimensions that simply are not covered in the animal world.

That, to me, is one of the strongest arguments for the Church’s view on things. It has always viewed humanity as an oddity among the rest of creation - a kind of creature apart from all the others. Science continues to illustrate this.

Thanks for your reply. It made a lot of sense and was very helpful.

 

[R_McGeddon]

If the DNA evidence was left at the scene before or after the crime took place then the scientific evidence is irrelevant to crime.

Depends if the suspect has a good explanation for why the DNA is there.

Scientific proof is always subject to interpretation.

Not so, scientific proof is black and white. If it was open to interpretation, it wouldn’t be proof.

It’s left up to the jury to determine if the proof is beyond a reasonable doubt.

You keep mis-using the word proof.

Many, perhaps even most, convictions come from circumstantial evidence and the faith juries put in witnesses.

Not in the UK, circumstantial is not beyond reasonable doubt.

That’s not what I wrote at all. I said, without faith there is no love.

Why do you think that?

 

[ribozyme]

Not so, scientific proof is black and white. If it was open to interpretation, it wouldn’t be proof.

No!! There is no such thing as “scientific proof.”

 

[R_McGeddon]

No!! There is no such thing as “scientific proof.”

If there is no such thing, but something is proven scientifically, why isn’t it called scientific proof?

 

[ribozyme]

If there is no such thing, but something is proven scientifically, why isn’t it called scientific proof?

So what is something that has been scientifically proven?

 

[R_McGeddon]

So what is something that has been scientifically proven?

How about the rotation of the Earth.

 

[ribozyme]

How about the rotation of the Earth.

The rotation of the Earth is an observable fact, but we cannot prove that the Earth will continue to rotate tommorow. But that observation validity is contingent on the reliablity of our observations (I am not arguing that the methods to detect the rotation of the Earth are flawed). But by the principle of induction, we assume that it will rotate tommorow and obey the laws of physics that it does obey. The principle of induction cannot be proven.

Maybe our observation that the Earth is rotating is based on flawed observations (I do not think this is so, but this is one of the few weaknessess of empiricism, as we could only derive knowledge from our five senses, but we way we detect observations might be flawed so we do not describe the world accurately). For example, our eyes say to us intuitively that the world is flat, but instead of relying on the untrained eye, those with better analytical tools and knowledge have demonstrated that the Earth is round.

 

[R_McGeddon]

The rotation of the Earth is an observable fact, but we cannot prove that the Earth will continue to rotate tommorow. But that observation validity is contingent on the reliablity of our observations (I am not arguing that the methods to detect the rotation of the Earth are flawed). But by the principle of induction, we assume that it will rotate tommorow and obey the laws of physics that it does obey. The principle of induction cannot be proven.

Maybe our observation that the Earth is rotating is based on flawed observations (I do not think this is so, but this is one of the few weaknessess of empiricism, as we could only derive knowledge from our five senses, but we way we detect observations might be flawed so we do not describe the world accurately). For example, our eyes say to us intuitively that the world is flat, but instead of relying on the untrained eye, those with better analytical tools and knowledge have demonstrated that the Earth is round.

Surely it was scientifically proven before it was observed.

 

[ribozyme]

Surely it was scientifically proven before it was observed.

Nope, observations serve to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. Such a hypothesis has to be congruent with all of the available data.

 

[Ghosty]

If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel’s-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

• G.K. Chesterton

The more we find similarities between us and apes, the more startling our differences become in my mind, and the more they cry out for an explaination.

Personally I believe that the function of the spiritual soul isn’t found in language per se, but in complex abstract thought (to say nothing of our life after death, or our experience of God through Grace). Even this idea is subject to change as it’s not a dogma.

The use of tools by non-human animals is not really suprising to me. It doesn’t require any kind of complex abstract thought to strip a stick and stuff it down a termite hole. That’s an entirely practical and sense-based operation: I need termites to eat, narrow objects go down termite holes easily, taking this narrow stick and putting it down the hole will get termites just as my small finger is better for the task than my whole arm. There is forethought to a degree, but none of this forethought is based on abstraction beyond “the future will happen in a manner similar to the past”, which is a purely sensory conclusion common to almost all animal life that we observe.

That an animal associates a sound or sign with an object, in the case of Koko, is no more suprising than the fact that birds use different calls for mating than they do for alerting their flock-mates of a predator. It’s the very basic operation of “I sense something different from that, so I will treat it differently from that”. It’s the same principle at work for animals with fire, and men with guns, and new additions to their environments.

The real problem is that this whole idea that “tool-making” and language indicate a unique feature of humanity was actually developed by secular thought, not theological. These things, at least insofar as basic sensory deductions can carry them, were actually never denied for animals by Catholic theology. It was Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers who drew that heavy line that turned out to be in sand with the tide rising.

When Koko, having determined the difference between the orange and the telephone, writes a speech about the nobility of the telephone as an invention that has brought together continents, and how it has paved the way towards collective thought, and the exchange of information previously unheard of, via the internet, then I’ll be startled at our similarities. If all she does is recognize that an orange is not a telephone, and creates a signal to indicate this (as many animals already have different signals for different things) and treats them differently (as many animals already have different tastes and uses, such as a different taste for berries than for bark) then I’m not really impressed at all (no offense to Koko!).

The fact is that scientists have generally given far less credit to animals than deserved, and the scientific community is now shocked to discover things that Catholic theologians not only never denied, but some (such as St. Thomas Aquinas) took as fundamental assumptions and conclusions.

Just my thoughts!

Peace and God bless!

 

[R_McGeddon]

Nope, observations serve to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. Such a hypothesis has to be congruent with all of the available data.

A hypothesis is subject to repeated scientific experiments. If those experiments then repeatedly confirm the hypothesis, it is scientifically proven, therefore it becomes scientific proof.