Do you believe in Adam and Eve or Evolution?

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Thanks, Ed…

As stated…ancient peoples believed in a first man and a first woman, and that these creation stories are attempts by the human person to find answers to who they are, where they came from, where they are going…

There must be a beginning to homo sapiens…and I have no trouble seeing homo sapiens evolving from what is considered less than human…but the turning point is indeed, God deciding then was the time to give homo sapiens a soul, to see this origin as made in the image of God.

The creation stories up to Noah are considered as myths…but the light of the One, True God speaks through these questions…

Will we ever know our actual origins? or how life was created?..I do not know…but faith in God always transcends His creation.
 
KathleenGee said:
Thanks, Ed…

As stated…ancient peoples believed in a first man and a first woman, and that these creation stories are attempts by the human person to find answers to who they are, where they came from, where they are going…

There must be a beginning to homo sapiens…and I have no trouble seeing homo sapiens evolving from what is considered less than human…but the turning point is indeed, God deciding then was the time to give homo sapiens a soul, to see this origin as made in the image of God.

The creation stories up to Noah are considered as myths…but the light of the One, True God speaks through these questions…

Will we ever know our actual origins? or how life was created?..I do not know…but faith in God always transcends His creation.
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Where in the Catechism does it state they were myths?
 
buffalo said:
  1. But you can google it. MTDNA Eve is well known and I am quite surprised you do not know of her.
2a. Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock

2b. "…Regardless of the cause, evolutionists (beeliner’s emphasis) are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate.

2c. 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.
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3.Where in the Catechism does it state they were myths?
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  1. Never hoid of the lady. But I will definitely check it out.
2a. Now, THAT’S a link. Thank you.

2b. Well, I just skimmed the first couple of pages of the PDF, but the word ‘evolutionists’ jumped out at me. That seems suspicious, like referring to people who believe in gravity as “gravitists” or “Newtonians”. But I will check further.

2c. As Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” used to say, 6000 years just seems a little too 'conveeeeeenient".
  1. Nowhere in the Catechism that I’m aware of, but the introductory material to the Genesis volume of the Anchor Bible treats the subject at considerable length.
 
If anything, Ed, Adam and Eve explain the reality of the beginning of mankind as we know, and Adam and Eve are very similar to those named by other peoples who lived in ancient times.

So at one level, to say Adam and Eve are who they were…we cannot fully count that…but they are the explanation within Tradition from which much theology has evolved.
 
beeliner said:
2b. Well, I just skimmed the first couple of pages of the PDF, but the word ‘evolutionists’ jumped out at me. That seems suspicious, like referring to people who believe in gravity as “gravitists” or “Newtonians”. But I will check further.
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Ann Gibbons is the author.:hmmm:
 
I can’t vote on this. It isn’t an either/or question in my mind.

I think it’s likely that Adam and Eve literally existed (though I don’t insist on it - it still works for me as True Myth, to use George MacDonald’s and Tolkien’s concept), AND that God has made use of evolution as part of His creation process.

Since I’m not Catholic, I’m not too worried about Catholic teachings on the matter, but so far as I’m aware, they’re compatible with my view.
 
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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References please.
 
I have to clarify…having heard as well of the first woman…in Africa…now may be only 6000 years ago…

I am following the inclinations of JPII and Pope Benedict…the human species evolving…but when arriving at homo sapiens, and we being made in the image of God…this is the time of God’s intervention…

So on one hand…perhaps we probably will never know these mysteries in the way we want in this life…and I still refer to our tradition of naming Adam and Eve and the condition of mankind with the fall of our first parents…but to get into the scientific and anthropological dimension of this…science is on a journey of on going discoveries…

Faith and reason and science should work together.
 
I’m sure others have already pointed it out, but this poll presents a false dichotomy.

I believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and I also accept the common descent of all life.
 
beeliner said:
Both 1 and 2 are common knowledge.

If that knowledge has not reached you, I’d suggest googling.
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Sorry buddy but it’s your burden to support your claims.

As was mentioned on page 1, Catholics are required de fide to believe in a literal Adam and Eve, while we are free to take the creation account allegorically. vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html

Regarding your point #1, the most liberal estimates of H. sapiens appearance on the African savannah place us at about 200k years. While it’s true that other members of the genus Homo were around a million years ago, those such as H. ergaster, H. antecessor and H. erectus show no evidence of spiritual beliefs or even a primitive understanding of their own mortality, and so couldn’t serve as decent “Adam and Eve Prototypes”. nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/abs/nature05336.html
nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7027/full/nature03258.html
 
xixxvmcm85 said:
Sorry buddy but it’s your burden to support your claims.

As was mentioned on page 1, Catholics are required de fide to believe in a literal Adam and Eve, while we are free to take the creation account allegorically.

Regarding your point #1, the most liberal estimates of H. sapiens appearance on the African savannah place us at about 200k years. While it’s true that other members of the genus Homo were around a million years ago, those such as H. ergaster, H. antecessor and H. erectus show no evidence of spiritual beliefs or even a primitive understanding of their own mortality, and so couldn’t serve as decent “Adam and Eve Prototypes”.
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I never mentioned anything about prototypes, only that humanity was far more ancient than the timeframe of the Biblical accounts. You are correct in the figures for H sapiens and the other humanoid species, that is a long way from all of them, along with animals, created in the same day a few thousand years ago.

Regarding a literal ‘first pair’ from whom all of humanity descended, that is somewhat like whether Mary had other children - she either did or didn’t, it’s a matter of fact, not of faith.

The Church’s authority does not extend to matters of fact, though she is certainly free to offer her opinion.
 
beeliner said:
Both 1 and 2 are common knowledge.

If that knowledge has not reached you, I’d suggest googling.
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Laplace Transforms are common knowledge.

You might want to read this before throwing darts at a moving target.
catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp

particularly under “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).
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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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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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Jack_Bauer said:
Laplace Transforms are common knowledge.
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I dunno about that. I know that they are mathematical, beyond that I have no knowledge of them.

I think I understand the Heisenberg Principle, but I’m not sure.
 
beeliner said:
I dunno about that. I know that they are mathematical, beyond that I have no knowledge of them.

I think I understand the Heisenberg Principle, but I’m not sure.
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Quantum Mechanics. Never heard of it. 😃

Don’t know how you’d work through that effectively without knowing LaPlace Transforms.

I was just being a … a… well a a smart ellic earlier. Trying to provoke a riot.
 
beeliner said:
I dunno about that. I know that they are mathematical, beyond that I have no knowledge of them.

I think I understand the Heisenberg Principle, but I’m not sure.
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Quantum Mechanics. Never heard of it.

Don’t know how you’d work through that effectively without knowing LaPlace Transforms.

I was just being a … a… well a a smart ellic earlier. Trying to provoke a riot.
 
In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated:…
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I take no issue with the encyclical, which mainly addresses original sin, a matter of FAITH.

Still if the Church were to decree tomorrow, ex cathedra and under pain of mortal sin, that 2 plus 2 equalled 5, it would still equal 4. That’s a fact.

My observation was that I suspected that most anthropologists would disagree that all of humanity sprung from a single ‘first pair’, but that I wasn’t sure, and I suggested that the other poster ask one or two and report what they said.

I might do so myself.
 
BOTH.

Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and studies of our DNA show that Adam and Eve were real people.

And from our most recent scientific discoveries (which could change), it looks like evolution did play at least some, possibly a significant, part in how our world came to be.
 
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