Disregard This Thread

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Hope1960

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Hope1960 said:
Adam, Eve, and Evolution | Catholic Answers

I have communicated with Ed Feser who is a philosopher. He says that in the beginning humans interbred with human-like beings who didn’t have souls and God gave their offspring souls, thus starting the human population. He’s certain Catholics are allowed to believe this. My former Bible Study teacher, a theologian who taught at the Seminary agrees that it’s ok.

You can read about this by Googling an article Monkey in Your Soul, I think. He has several articles.

Is the part of the link in the Catholic Answers tract I posted above, where it says “It [the Church] has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that mans BODY developed from previous biological forms, under Gods guidance but insists on the special creation of his soul,” basically saying the same thing, or allowing for the same thing?
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I posted this months ago and was hoping for more answers.
 
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edwardfeser.blogspot.com

Monkey in your soul?

Before we get to part II of my series on modern biology and original sin, I want briefly to reply to some of the responses made to part I . ...
edwardfeser.blogspot.com edwardfeser.blogspot.com
 
Yes, you understand correctly. As long as we preserve the teaching that rational souls are created immediately and individually by God and that their presence marks the difference between human beings and other hominids, we are free to follow scientific consensus on the development of animal bodies, including the notion that the first ensouled humans were part of a larger population of hominids without rational souls that provided the necessary gene pool for making more humans.
 
Usagi said:
Yes, you understand correctly. As long as we preserve the teaching that rational souls are created immediately and individually by God and that their presence marks the difference between human beings and other hominids, we are free to follow scientific consensus on the development of animal bodies, including the notion that the first ensouled humans were part of a larger population of hominids without rational souls that provided the necessary gene pool for making more humans.
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So Catholics are free to believe in Ed Fesers theory, right?
 
That is what I just said, yes. At least that’s my understanding. Ed Feser is a Catholic.
 
As far as I’m aware, the Church has never condemned Flat Earth Theory either. That doesn’t mean it’s a reasonable position to hold though.
 
My priest and I talked about this so I’m going to drop out of the convo, even though I am the OP.
 
This sounds very similar to something Pope Benedict XVI said. That evolution was similar to God just drawing forth his creation, toward the moment at which we became human and were granted souls.
 
LoyalViews said:
This sounds very similar to something Pope Benedict XVI said. That evolution was similar to God just drawing forth his creation, toward the moment at which we became human and were granted souls.
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You mean Ed Fesers theory I posted about in my OP sounds similar to what Pope Benedict XVI said?
 
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No, i will not disregard this thread.

I don’t know if its a hundred percent ligit, but i certainly prefer it to incest.
 
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You prefer to believe that our ancestors propagated themselves by bestiality?
 
I get what your saying, and that’s a fare point, but at least they were in a biological sense human, they just didn’t have a soul.
 
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Even if we suppose that they were physically indistinguishable from humans (though metaphysically, we would still be speaking of a different kind of creature), Feser’s theory requires us to say that our ancestors mated with irrational creatures. That such creatures were (so the theory goes) physically similar to humans does not change the moral status of the act, it would still involve a rational creature mating with a human-looking ape.

OTOH, the first generation of Adam’s children marrying their siblings, in a world where there were no social customs against it (since there was no society prior to it), would not be so implausible.
 
True, they were irrational creatures, but i wouldn’t say they were merely physically similar but rather God gave a rational soul to a member of an already existing group. They were biologically identical to us in terms of species.
 
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The soul if the form of a living thing. Plants, animals, and people all have souls, but only we have rational souls. For God to “give a (rational) soul” to an existing creature would mean to change it from one type of creature to another. This would remain true even if we suppose that the two species had the same DNA.

Even if the similarity extended to psychometric dispositions, we’re still talking about the equivalent of someone mating with their pet ape.
 
Arkansan said:
The soul if the form of a living thing.
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In terms of the rational soul, i am not sure what that means. If you mean that the rational soul is our biological identity, then i disagree with that, not to mention it sounds materialistic.
 
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