Descendants of Adam and Eve mated with pre-humans?

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You seem as guilty as any of us for it turning into an evolution thread.
 
"But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” ( Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” ( Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).

From Communion and Stewardship
 
edwest211 said:
An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…
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I am not proposing an evolutionary process outside the bounds of divine providence. That is a misunderstanding on your part.
 
It sure looks that way. I still want to know who these alleged proto-humans were. Evolution could never have led to modern man without proto-humans, or God created them male and female ex-nihilo.
 
Well, I can only say, that the way that God’s creation turns out is completely according to his providence. His plan for the world 8nclude all that happened, all of our free-will decisions, everything, concieved by God thru all eternity.

God is a creator, not a designer.
 
I’m going to bed in a minute.
I only wonder why Moses bothered mentioning the rib and Adam’s side if it didn’t happen like that. Would God have told him this is how it happened, if it didn’t? What would be the point? Surely not just to make up a line so that 4,500 years later the Fathers could link to it the birth of church from Christ?
 
Well, then why did God tell Moses two different stories with regards to creation?
 
Ghosty1981 said:
I don’t know of any reason why this idea would be forbidden. It doesn’t violate the teachings that rational souls are created directly by God and that all “true men” descend from Adam and Eve. For what it’s worth this idea is one that I personally hold as well.
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These are my views too. It fits perfectly with Biblical account and what we know from science. I think it takes more effort to not believe it happened this way. I was exposed to a lot of Fundamentalist thought in years past and the lengths to which they were willing to suspend disbelief pushed me to the brink of jettisoning Christianity. I was delighted to find Catholicism doesn’t reject science.
JimmyTolder said:
I believe that is heretical, but leaving that aside, it is a foul and disgusting theory. It says that man, including the God-Man, Jesus Christ, is the result of a sexual union between men and beasts. Bestiality is intrinsically evil. It is intrinsically disordered. The idea that man arose from an abominable act is beneath the dignity of creatures said to be made “in the image” of God.
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I’m not sure of your faith tradition, but it’s not heretical for Catholicism. Non-rational homosapiens would have been compatible with rational ones biologically in every way. We can only speculate about how a non-rational homosapien might have acted, but it likely would have been highly intelligent and emotive. It was probably far closer to us than the highest animals are today.

Beastiality is disordered because there’s no possibility of procreation. But sex between rational and non-rational homosapiens results in a rational homosapien, so is very fruitful. There’s really nothing here to object to.
 
Interesting article. He doesn’t explain why he thinks it’s bestiality though?

I’ll go with what we believe to be correct for now. 😄
 
Ok, I just reread the end of the article slower. It seems he’s specifically calling sex with closely related hominins, like Neanderthals, to be bestiality. Presumably then, homosapien sex is ok.
 
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No, the homosapiens without rational souls were not human, they were animals, so it too would technically be beastiality. But I do think a definitely different form, since the appearance was identical and interbreeding was possible.
 
Considering the church teaches it doesn’t know who is in hell that site is very flawed.
 
edwest211 said:
There is no evidence for proto-humans.
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Considering that the only difference being posited between “proto-humans” and “true humans” is the presence of an immortal soul… exactly what kind of evidence are you suggesting might be possible to exist?

The absence of ‘evidence’ that cannot possibly exist does nothing for your case… you realize that, right?
edwest211 said:
or God created them male and female ex-nihilo.
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You realize that even Genesis doesn’t say that they were created “ex nihilo”, right? The narrative says that Adam was created from the dust, and Eve from his rib. 😉
JimmyTolder said:
The idea that man arose from an abominable act is beneath the dignity of creatures said to be made “in the image” of God.
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Aaaand, we’re off! OK: time to point out that incest is no less abominable. 😉

(I give it about 2.5 seconds before we get the reply “but they were pure back then, so incest was just peachy keen and lovely!” :roll_eyes:)
 
Demons also walked amongst humans and indeed had children with humans.

Nephalem
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
Would it be safely orthodox to theorize that the children of Adam and Eve, or at least some of them, may have mated with “almost-human” beings, and that the children of these unions would have been human, with immortal souls and having inherited original sin from the human parent?

This becomes more credible if we assume that Adam had two natural “almost-human” parents, and that the creation story (“dust of the earth”) is just an allegory. In other words, if Adam had parents, they were right on the cusp of being human, but did not have human reason or immortal souls, they gave birth to Adam, and he transcended that cusp and was the first human being. (Eve doesn’t easily fit into this theory, so that’s another problem.)

I am not saying that I believe in this, but it is one way to explain the propagation of the human race.

Any thoughts?
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Yes. My thoughts on this topic: don’t worry or spend too much time thinking about it. What’s important to know is that somehow, someway God created us: we are His creation and were formed in the likeness of His image.

The specifics on how this was done — in the grand scheme of things — really isn’t that important.
 
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