EVOLUTION: A Catholic Solution?

[edwest2]

Nature has no intelligence or goals, neither do random mutations. Whatever happened, God is a direct causal agent but both Pope Benedict and Cardinal Schoenborn have had to deal with human beings called scientists who are telling them evolution negates a role for God. This is nothing but scientism and naturalism, which leads to atheism.

Peace,
Ed

 

[grannymh]

John 10
1"I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. 3The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice."

Dear Luke65,

Thank you for this post. It is keeping me from getting an infraction. When I was called away from my last post, I felt like I was screaming at people to wake up to reality. We are not playing parlor games or debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have a serious moral crisis.

I will not blame science per se. But I sure do recognize the wrong kind of intellectual pride which is appearing along with scientific discoveries. I sure do recognize wobbly relativism all over the place. I sure do recognize the very wrong theory that science explanation takes the place of God’s basic truth.

I will not say that every scientist is out-of-hand wrong. I will say that some, especially their groupies, are publically chipping away at the concept of God. They are reaping success.

Thank you, Luke65 for posting the real reality.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is worthy of profound respect.
Check out FOCA regarding medical and related professions.

 

[Brucegpope]

StAnatasia,

• would love to go!! Need anyone to carry a suitcase? I’m a former seminarian and present religion teacher and historian. It has been my main topic of intense study and research for years on this very question. The conference should yield some fascinating discussion and intelligent argument. What ever comes of the conference will of course be argued and not be the end all. At least we can now prove the earth revolves around the sun. That took 400 years. I hope the Pope issues an updated encyclical as to where the magesterium stands.

Bruce, its the Gregorian University. I’m flying to Rome in a month to participate in that conference. No doubt it will be heavily reported, but I will post my reflections here as well.

StAnastasia

 

[rad314]

Pius XII did not know what we now know about genetics, and the genetic impossibility of all human beings descending from one breeding pair.

If you read carefully what I said in #64, building upon ideas suggested in earlier posts, you’ll see that I’m not suggesting that every ancestor of every human being is a descendant of Adam and Eve, but at the same time the solution I propose does not fall under Pius XII’s explanation of polygenism.

Awaiting your comments on #298 . . .

I should probably clarify, since the word ‘literally’ has been so abused in modern parlance, that when I say ‘literal history’ or ‘literally true’, I mean an account, word-for-word true, relating events exactly as they happened.

 

[Luke65]

Dear Luke65,

Thank you for this post. It is keeping me from getting an infraction. When I was called away from my last post, I felt like I was screaming at people to wake up to reality. We are not playing parlor games or debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have a serious moral crisis.

I will not blame science per se. But I sure do recognize the wrong kind of intellectual pride which is appearing along with scientific discoveries. I sure do recognize wobbly relativism all over the place. I sure do recognize the very wrong theory that science explanation takes the place of God’s basic truth.

I will not say that every scientist is out-of-hand wrong. I will say that some, especially their groupies, are publically chipping away at the concept of God. They are reaping success.

Thank you, Luke65 for posting the real reality.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is worthy of profound respect.
Check out FOCA regarding medical and related professions.

You’re welcome, Granny. And remember, in the end our Lord will not lose even a single one of His sheep. But of course, we are all part of His plan to achieve that. So let’s just all do our part and pray that God’s will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.

 

[rad314]

Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican I solemnly defined that everyone must “confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing” (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5).

No argument here. Yes, all matter and all spiritual beings were created by God. Does that mean, for instance, that each and every star was individually created by God exactly as we see it now? Of course not.

Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that “the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.

Well, yes. I rubbed your nose in this passage back around #160. Good to see that you’re catching on.

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).

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).

Same comment as followed the previous quoted passage.

To say that something is not literal history is not to say that it’s necessarily a fiction.

And please see #324.

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).

Of course. In fact, Fr. John Hardon, in his The Catholic Catechism (at least I think that’s the title – I don’t have it before me at the moment) expresses the insight that many people who argue in favor of human evolution do so with the intent of attacking the doctrine of original sin. I thought the entire point of this thread was to try to develop an evolutionary explanation that preserves that doctrine. I think we did. At least, no one has offered an explanation why it can’t be so.

 

[hecd2]

If you study the genetics involved, you’ll discover why it is not possible to avoid a genetic bottleneck if you have only two individuals (or eight Noachians) rather than a breeding population of several thousand from which all succeeding generations descend. Alec has posted loads of information on this in the past. Perhaps he will refresh our memories on this point

Sure. Here goes:

Many genes occur within a species in slightly different forms. Genes that have more tham one variant within a species are called polymorphic. Each different version of the gene is called an allele.

Some genes occur in a species in only one variant or allele. Some genes occur with only a small number of variants or alleles. Other genes occur in many different variants - in that case the gene is said to be highly polymorphic.

Now, a healthy normal human couple can carry, at the very most, four different alleles for one gene. That’s because there are two copies of each gene in each individual - one inherited from their father and one from their mother. So in two people there can be no more than four alleles. However in many genes there are vastly more than four alleles. On the DRB1 gene for example there were 58 human alleles known in 1995 when Ayala did his analysis - see below. Since then many more have been found so that by 1998 Bergstrom et al was reporting that there are 135 alleles on the locus, and in 2004, Screuder et al reported 297 alleles of DRB1 that had been discovered.

Now, you might well say that all the additional alleles in the human population are the result of mutations occurring in the human lineage since Adam and Eve passed on their maximum of four alleles at each locus to their offspring. But that doesn’t hold water. The alleles aren’t just uniformly different. We can gather them together into groups or families of alleles. Alleles in different groups are different from alleles in other groups at many nucleotides (a nucleotide is a like a letter in the DNA code). Within a group, alleles are quite similar, differing perhaps by just one letter from another allele in the same group. In other words, genes mutate and diverge and form families just like organisms. Groups of alleles that are very different are likely to have diverged a long time ago - more recent new alleles are very similar to their siblings in the same group.

Not only that, but many of the major groups of allele on the DRB1 gene are shared with our closest living relatives the chimpanzee, and other great apes. By comparing the groups of alleles in humans and the groups of alleles in chimpanzees, we can determine a date for when the different groups diverged from one another. If a group is present in both species its origin must have pre-dated the divergence of the chimp and human lineages. Many of the DRB1 groups of alleles diverged many millions of years in the past, before the divergence of the human-chimpanzee lineages. Ayala (the same Ayala who is presenting a paper at the March conference at the Gregorian University) calculates that six million years ago at the time of the chimp-human divergence there were 21 lineages of allele which have survived to today, and that is not possible if humans have passed through a population bottleneck of just one couple.

Such a severe bottleneck would leave an unmistakeable signature on other parts of the genome too - other polymorphic sites in the autosomes (the non-sex chromosomes); on the Y-chromosome; in the mitochondrial DNA. All of these analyses agree that the minimum breeding human lineage bottleneck in the last six million was 10,000 individuals and that a bottleneck of two people in the last 200,000 years is just not tenable.

In the next post, I’ll list a selection of papers that report the work that supports these conclusions.%between%

 

[hecd2]

Here are a list of papers that report the work referred to above:

The MHC complex:
Ayala, The myth of Eve, Molecular biology and human origins, *Science *270, 1930 - 1936

Bergstrom et al, Recent Origin of DRB1 alleles and implications for human evolution,* Nature Genetics* 18, 237 (1998),

Screuder et al in The HLA Dictionary*, Tissue Antigens* 65, 1 - 55

Gyllensten, Sundvall and Ehrlich, Allelic diversity is generated by intraexon sequence exchange at the DRB1 locus of primates, PNAS 88, 3686 – 3690 (1991)

Beta-globin:
Harding et al, ‘Archaic African and Asian lineages in the genetic ancestry of modern humans’, Am J Hum Genet 60, 772 - 789

Apolipoprotein C II:
Xiong et al, ‘No severe bottleneck during human evolution; evidence from two apolipoprotein C II alleles’, Am J Hum Genet 48, 383 -389
**
Nuclear genome**:
Rogers and Jorde, ‘Genetic evidence on the origin of modern humans’, Hum Biol 67, 1 - 36, show that a modest bottleneck of 10,000 individuals is consistent with the data.

Takahata et al, ‘Diversion time and population size in the lineage leading to modern humans’, Theor Popul Biol 48, 198 - 221

Zhao et al, Worldwide DNA sequence variation in a 10 kilo-base noncoding region on human chromosome 22, PNAS 97, 11354 – 11358 (2000)

mtDNA:
Takahata, ‘Allelic genealogy and human evolution’, Mol Biol Evol 10, 2 - 22;

Y-chromosome data:
Hammer, ’ A recent common ancestry for human Y-chromosomes’, *Nature *378, 376 - 378

Pritchard et al, Population growth of Human Y Chromosomes: A Study of Y Chromosome Microsatellites, Mol Biol Evol 16,1791 – 1798 (1999)

LD:
Tanesa et al, Recent human effective population size estimated from linkage disequilibrium, Genome Res 17, 520 – 526 (2007)

Hayes et al, Novel multilocus measures of linkage disequilibrium to estimate past effective population size, *Genome Res *13, 635 – 643 (2003)

X-chromosome:

Yu, Fu and Li, DNA polymorphism in a worldwide sample of human X-chromosomes, Mol Biol Evol 19, 2131 – 2141 (2002)

Microsatellites:

Zhivotsky et al, Features of evolution and expansion of modern humans, inferred from genomewide microsatellite markers, Am J Hum Gen 5, 1171 – 1176 (2003)
**
General studies**:

Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, The application of molecular genetic approaches to the study of human evolution, Nature Genetics 33, 266 – 275 (2003)

Jorde, Bamshad and Rogers, Using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA markers to reconstruct human evolution, Bioessays 20, 126 – 136 (1998)

Liu et al, A geographically explicit model of worldwide human settlement history, Am J Hum Gen 79, 230 – 237 (2006)

J D Wall, Estimating ancestral population sizes and divergence times, Genetics 163, 395 – 404 (2003)

Hawks et al, Population bottlenecks and Pleistocene human evolution, *Mol Bio Evol *17, 2 – 22 (2000)

Harpending et al, Genetic traces of ancient demography, PNAS 95, 1961 – 1967 (1998)

Takahata and Satta, Evolution of the primate lineage leading to modern humans: Phylogenetic and demographic inferences from DNA sequences, PNAS 94, 4811- 4815 (1997)

Yu et al, Low nucleotide diversity in chimpanzees and bonobos, Genetics 164, 1511 – 1518 (2003)

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[edwest2]

A patent clerk at the United States Patent Office advised that the Patent Office be closed. In his estimation: all the worthwhile inventions had already been invented.

During World War II, the British military advised the closing down of an office tasked with looking at new inventions. Their statement was based on the fact that scarcely one out of a hundred submitted ideas was worth considering.

In 2009, hecd2, citing science which is primarily blind to Biblical truths, is declaring that all science can see is the entire truth and the complete truth. That since science cannot investigate the supernatural then the supernatural, it follows, does not exist.

The Catholic Church provides “other areas of reason that we still need” (Pope Benedict), and provides to all the fullness of truth.

Peace,
Ed

 

[hecd2]

I still find it hard to reconcile your acceptance for the need for moral and ethical norms with atheistic-evolutionary materialism though.

Let me see if I can help you to understand. But first, I need to understand exactly where you are coming from. Do you think that without God:

• we wouldn’t *know *what was moral and immoral, or
• we wouldn’t *care *what was moral or immoral, or
• the difference between morality and immorality would not exist?

I would think that morality implies some “should” – an obligation from people. I can’t see how random mutation and natural selection brings any obligation with it.

Perhaps it brings obligations that are rooted in the evolutionary success of mutuality, co-operation and reciprocal altruism.

We “should” or “shouldn’t” do things for a reason. When we question those reasons, we find various purposes described. But those purposes move up the steps of authority and value to some ultimate or highest reason.

Help me here again - in your mind, what is the highest or ultimate reason for which we should do or shouldn’t do things?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

A patent clerk at the United States Patent Office advised that the Patent Office be closed. In his estimation: all the worthwhile inventions had already been invented.

And your evidence for this myth is what exactly? You do seem to be prone to believing myths, lies and innuendo, particularly if you think they support your prejudice.

But even if this story were to be true, what would it show other than the circumstance that the US Patent Office had once employed a remarkably stupid official?

During World War II, the British military advised the closing down of an office tasked with looking at new inventions. Their statement was based on the fact that scarcely one out of a hundred submitted ideas was worth considering.

And your evidence for this is what exactly?

In 2009, hecd2, citing science which is primarily blind to Biblical truths, is declaring that all science can see is the entire truth and the complete truth.That since science cannot investigate the supernatural then the supernatural, it follows, does not exist.

Science has corrected biblical errors often enough in matters relating to nature.The biological ancestry of humans is a natural matter. Science is able to determine that humans are not solely descended from only two parents (the overwhelming evidence for that is listed above, and I notice that you decline to engage in it - preferring to continue ignore all evidence, and pretend it does not exist, so that you can continue to believe in a myth), and therefore that there cannot have been a literal Adam and Eve.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[edwest2]

The Catholic Church believes in Adam and Eve. Your evidence is incomplete.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Namesake]

Help me here again - in your mind, what is the highest or ultimate reason for which we should do or shouldn’t do things?

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Game theory.

 

[hecd2]

The Catholic Church believes in Adam and Eve. Your evidence is incomplete.

Extremely erudite engagement with the arguments and evidence is noted.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[grannymh]

Of course. In fact, Fr. John Hardon, in his The Catholic Catechism (at least I think that’s the title – I don’t have it before me at the moment) expresses the insight that many people who argue in favor of human evolution do so with the intent of attacking the doctrine of original sin. I thought the entire point of this thread was to try to develop an evolutionary explanation that preserves that doctrine. I think we did. At least, no one has offered an explanation why it can’t be so.

You have the right title for Father Hardon’s book – with the addition of “A Contemporary Catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church.” I want to check the sections on Evolution in regard to “some special action of God was operative in the formation of the first man’s body…” page 93

The more I read about genetics, the more I believe that God didn’t need to follow human genetic principles. He created from scratch. Thus, Eve and Adam were individuals created as a separate step before genetics kicked in. The term preternatural comes to mind. (I’m one of the crazies who can hold more than one view of Genesis at the same time.)
You sound like you know Father Hardon’s work. Since I only used him regarding the Eucharist and that was nine years ago, I would appreciate your thoughts.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is worthy of respect. Human life is sacred.
Check out FOCA regarding the medical and related professions.

 

[StAnastasia]

StAnatasia,

• would love to go!! Need anyone to carry a suitcase? I’m a former seminarian and present religion teacher and historian. It has been my main topic of intense study and research for years on this very question. The conference should yield some fascinating discussion and intelligent argument. What ever comes of the conference will of course be argued and not be the end all. At least we can now prove the earth revolves around the sun. That took 400 years. I hope the Pope issues an updated encyclical as to where the magesterium stands.*

Brucegpope, as far as I know, registration for the conference is still open, if your teaching schedule allows you to fly to Rome for it. They would no doubt welcome you since you have studied and taught these issues for many years. I’m interested in knowing what books you assign to your students. I still use Ian Barbour’s Religion in an Age of Science, but I have added Catholicism and Science (Allen and Hess and Allen, 2008) and and Evolution: from Creation to New Creation (Hewlett and Peters, 2006).

StAnastasia

 

[StAnastasia]

The more I read about genetics, the more I believe that God didn’t need to follow human genetic principles. He created from scratch. Thus, Eve and Adam were individuals created as a separate step before genetics kicked in. The term preternatural comes to mind. (I’m one of the crazies who can hold more than one view of Genesis at the same time.)
Blessings,granny

Grannymh, “before genetics kicked in” would take you back billions of years, long before humans diverged from the primate family tree.

 

[StAnastasia]

If you read carefully what I said in #64, building upon ideas suggested in earlier posts, you’ll see that I’m not suggesting that every ancestor of every human being is a descendant of Adam and Eve, but at the same time the solution I propose does not fall under Pius XII’s explanation of polygenism.
Awaiting your comments on #298 . . …

Your ideas in both #64 and # 298 are plausible!

 

[edwest2]

grannymh;4752931:

The more I read about genetics, the more I believe that God didn’t need to follow human genetic principles. He created from scratch. Thus, Eve and Adam were individuals created as a separate step before

genetics kicked in. The term preternatural comes to mind. (I’m one of the crazies who can hold more than one view of Genesis at the same time.)
Blessings,granny

Grannymh, “before genetics kicked in” would take you back billions of years, long before humans diverged from the primate family tree.

“billions of years”? According to who? I’m not convinced the primate family tree is but a contrivance. We may resemble some primates but that can be explained simply by body plan.

Peace,
Ed

 

[StAnastasia]

“billions of years”? According to who? I’m not convinced the primate family tree is but a contrivance. We may resemble some primates but that can be explained simply by body plan.Peace,Ed

Ed, because you’re not convinced is a reason for the scientific community to doubt it? Isn’t that the argument from incredulity?