Do you believe in Adam and Eve or Evolution?

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supertubos said:
The Church does not teach that Adam and Eve existed.

Adam and Eve never existed.
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The creation story may be regarded as allegorical. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, existed.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

54 . . . he [God] manifested himself to our first parents from the very beginning.

55 This revelation was not broken off by our first parents’ sin…
 
I believe that God created the world through evolution. So, I gather, do most RCs and Anglicans, though they are free to be creationists, even “young earth creationists”. In my opinion, evolution has been proved scientifically. The creation story in Genesis is a very fine allegory.
 
beeliner said:
That is not true.

Catholics are certainly ALLOWED to believe that, or to believe that their story is allegory.

I’ll go with the allegory, for two reasons, well, actually, more than two, but chiefly:
  1. Human beings existed for at least a million years prior to the Biblical timeframe of Adam and Eve.
  2. BOTH creation stories (Gen 1:1ff and Gen 2:41/2 ff) are adaptations of earlier, clearly fictional pagan myths.
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Partially true.

Catholics may choose to believe that Creation did not occur litterally as described in Genesis but they may not choose to believe the story is fiction.
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).
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catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html

The doctinal points
  1. God created everything, including man.
  2. There were “first parents” and we are decended from them.
  3. There was a fall, when our first parents committed the original sin.
 
beeliner said:
  1. Human beings existed for at least a million years prior to the Biblical timeframe of Adam and Eve.
    ths.
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Where did you hear that? Our species, Homo Sapien Sapien, has been around for about 100,000 years.

There were no humans 1 million years ago, from any scientific standpoint. We are a recent species, very new on the scene (evolutionarily speaking).
 
Corki said:
👍

OP, you left us without the choice of “both”. Belief in our first parents, called Adam and Eve and belief in evolution are not incompatible.
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I agree…I believe both, but the option is not available.
 
buffalo said:
Science has found this and now has to be explained: Soft tissue found in Dinosaur fossils.
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Science neeeds to explain fossilization further. Common sense still points to a large gap between dinosaurs and humans.
 
buffalo said:
  1. The above is the constant teaching and understanding of the Church.
  2. Established facts of science? Well know, with all the changing going on - should you believe today’s facts or yesterday’s? Pick one…
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  1. I’m not disputing that; as I said, the only place where I find a possible conflict is with regard to “one human pair”. It seems to me that that is merely an extrapolation of “God created man from the dust of the earth…etc.”.
I don’t believe that anthropologists will tell you that the entire human race evolved from one human pair, and the reason should be obvious: If the human race evolved from one human pair, where did the human pair come from? If you say that God created them, then you have left the realm of anthropology for that of religion/faith.

But I’m not an anthropologist. Why don’t you ask one or two of them who have no pre-ordained religious agenda, and see what they say?
  1. Maybe I’m not keeping up. Can you give some specific examples of ‘all the changing going on’? Especially changes in the direction of the Biblical stories of Genesis rather than away from them?
 
principio said:
Science neeeds to explain fossilization further. Common sense still points to a large gap between dinosaurs and humans.
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Correct - it has to explain how soft tissue can survive for 65 million years.
 
beeliner said:
  1. I’m not disputing that; as I said, the only place where I find a possible conflict is with regard to “one human pair”. It seems to me that that is merely an extrapolation of “God created man from the dust of the earth…etc.”.
I don’t believe that anthropologists will tell you that the entire human race evolved from one human pair, and the reason should be obvious: If the human race evolved from one human pair, where did the human pair come from? If you say that God created them, then you have left the realm of anthropology for that of religion/faith.
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Of course, there’s also the possibility that Adam and Eve weren’t the first Homo Sapiens, just the first ones with immortal souls. That’s definitely a matter of faith rather than science, and I think (though I’m certainly no anthropologist) that it makes the fossil record much easier to reconcile with the belief in First Parents.

I also recall reading somewhere (or possibly hearing on the news) that the mitochondrial DNA of everyone living today can be traced to one woman.
 
solayan said:
1a. Of course, there’s also the possibility that Adam and Eve weren’t the first Homo Sapiens, just the first ones with immortal souls.

1b. That’s definitely a matter of faith rather than science, and I think (though I’m certainly no anthropologist) that it makes the fossil record much easier to reconcile with the belief in First Parents.
  1. I also recall reading somewhere (or possibly hearing on the news) that the mitochondrial DNA of everyone living today can be traced to one woman.
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1a. Well, it’s been a L-O-N-G time since I was in Catholic grade school and high school, but I seem to recall that that was pretty much the prevailing explanation at that time, not as certainty but just as you say, a possibility.

1b. Definitely.
  1. I’d like to hear more about that, does anyone have a link?
 
beeliner said:
1a. Well, it’s been a L-O-N-G time since I was in Catholic grade school and high school, but I seem to recall that that was pretty much the prevailing explanation at that time, not as certainty but just as you say, a possibility.

1b. Definitely.
  1. I’d like to hear more about that, does anyone have a link?
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Yes indeed - MtDNA Eve and YChromosome Adam. Now the claim is that MtDNA Eve and YChromosome Adam never met each other. I answer MtDNA could be Eve and YChromosome Adam could be Noah.
 
buffalo said:
Yes indeed - MtDNA Eve and YChromosome Adam. Now the claim is that MtDNA Eve and YChromosome Adam never met each other. I answer MtDNA could be Eve and YChromosome Adam could be Noah.
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That doesn’t qualify as a link.

While I’m interested in the claim, I’m MORE interested in the SOURCE. If it’s scientific, I’d like to know more, if ‘creationist’, don’t waste my time.
 
beeliner said:
That doesn’t qualify as a link.

While I’m interested in the claim, I’m MORE interested in the SOURCE. If it’s scientific, I’d like to know more, if ‘creationist’, don’t waste my time.
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I never waste anyone’s time. If I post it I got backing, solid backing…:yup:

But you can google it. MTDNA Eve is well known and I am quite surprised you do not know of her.

Here is the bottom line though - there was an assumption made that only this was only passed through the mother. Now we know that is also passes through the father too.

The dating of MtDNA Eve at 200,000 years ago is incorrect since they depended on a constant molecular clock. (and they backed in by coming up with a chimp/human divergence date which made the dating suspect right form the start). The family tree was constructed to make a direct line back to her, which is wrong. The molecular clock is wrong too. And correcting for the clock issues guess where Eve would have lived? Around 6000 years ago. But that cannot be, so they have decided more work has to be done.

Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock

…Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate.
For example, researchers have calculated that “mitochondrial Eve”–the woman whose mtDNA was
ancestral to that in all living people–lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new
clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old.
 
solayan said:
I also recall reading somewhere (or possibly hearing on the news) that the mitochondrial DNA of everyone living today can be traced to one woman.
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True, but this woman also had parents, and they had parents, and they had parents, etc. The mitochondrial “Eve” is simply the most recent female ancestor. More ancient female ancestors did exist.
 
Adam and Eve were real people - our first parents.

Since science cannot study the soul, I don’t know where the idea that God selected two ‘almost humans’ and dropped souls into them came from. It’s certainly not a question science can answer.

Peace,
Ed
 
Maybe Adam and Eve weren’t the first humans biologically, but the first humans to have sin?

Just a thought…
 
edwest2 said:
I don’t know where the idea that God selected two ‘almost humans’ and dropped souls into them came from.
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It’s an idea suggested by Pope John Paul II, as well as BXVI: that the human physical body may have evolved, but the soul comes directly from God.
 
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