That kind of mindset sounds creepy to me. The parishioners I know spend their leisure time fishing or scrapbooking instead of rooting out heresies. I wonder who was tarred and feathered, and what books were figuratively burned.
As a nonscientist, I observe starving deer at the end of a boom-bust population cycle (as usual, out of phase with the predator population numbers, so at other times, the wolves starve) doesn’t seem balanced, but you may mean balanced in another sense.
Right. It’s a dynamic equillibrium, not “Bambi.” These tend to equillibrium as described by the Lotka-Volterra equations:
Yes. An example would be mammals set loose on Mauritus, with the subsequent extinction of dodos. There is a new equillibrium now, which replaced the old.
OK, so we just interpret this differently. There is such an element of randomness of the mechanics of evolution (as in DNA mutations from simple replication mistakes or background radiation) and the way long term evolutionary patterns change because of unpredictable events like meteor strikes that I, personally, do not see the hand of God in it.
Well, it’s certainly not the way Protestant fundamentalists see it. But it fits the Catholic idea of divine providence.
I said** I** didn’t see it. I do, however, accept God as an omniscient and omnipotent first cause, with evolution unfolding along paths known to Him ab initio. I don’t believe that the the limitations of human reason and experience can allow us to detect how divine providence moves.
Arclight, rooting out heresies is not so easy any more. In our diocese, when the Inquisition has to dispose of a heretic they first have to check with the air pollution control department to find out whether it is a burn day or a spare the air day. They then have to put in a city requisition for rope, a stake, and a cord of firewood. If they use the diocesan tumbrel to cart the heretic to the stake they have to seek a permit to run a horse-drawn conveyance on city streets. It’s not as simple as in the old days, I can assure you. Oh, for those cracklin’ old Catholic autos da fe!
The Catholic Church teaches it is possible. By the light of natural human reason, we can detect God in nature. What is misleading is to think that God is hidden.
You should relocate to southern Nevada. Here, my parish contracts with the local Mob. “Problems” quietly disappear, buried in the desert sands, no one the wiser.
Are you saying you’ve got a mind subtle enough to grasp the concept of particle/wave duality? What does an electron really look like?
Glad to oblige! A bit of levity to relieve the ever stern reality of the Inquisition. Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition – with its “comfy chair” – is the only one that rears its head in our diocese.
One of the great bishops of our time!
In May 2002 Weakland had a homosexual affair with Paul Marcoux, a Marquette theology student and possible seminarian, and Weakland paid Marcoux $450,000 from Milwaukee Archdiocesan funds to cover it up.
Not quite. Humans have about 25,000 different genes. The point is that we carry two copies of each one of these genes in each cell in our body - one copy comes from our father and one from our mother. DRB1 is just one of the 25,000 genes and like all the others, we each have two copies of it.
That’s correct. In this scenario, there would be three versions or alleles of the gene in the population (remember each person only carries two copies and so can only carry a maximum of two different alleles).
You would only have two copies of each gene, no matter how many different versions exist in the population.
Yes, and also the fact that some of the copying mistakes are shared with chimps, so that we know that some of the original copying mistakes occurred before the chimpanzee and human populations diverged.
Not quite - it’s not a question of time but a question of logic. There are too many alleles of DRB1 (and many other genes) in the human population to be supported by a population of two people. The human population cannot have ever had just two parents.
Not quite. If we had only two parents since we have been human, the number of different alleles in the human population would be much fewer, and we would not share multiple lineages of allele with chimps. It’s not just a question of time, but also other evidence.
No - the evidence excludes the possibility of a bottleneck of two parents since the divergence of human and chimp lineages.
Yes, we can positively rule it out.
It’s not just a question of time but also a question of logic and gene coalescence. It is just possible that somewhere in the ancestry of humans there were just two parents, but that would have had to be before the emergence of the great apes - so unless we are prepared to accept that Adam and Eve were two primitive pre-ape mammals, we can positively exclude the possibility of their literal existence.
No - two sole human parents of the existing human population can be ruled out.
I’m afraid not. The genetic data indicates an effective inbreeding population of 10,000 to 100,000 individuals over the last 6 million years, until recent population expansion in the last 15,000 years. There has been some discussion of a bottleneck about 70,000 years ago associated with the Toba supervolcano catastrophe supported by Y-chromosome coalescence (and, I think, a few other autosomal loci) but the genetic data, taken as a whole, does not seem to support such a recent bottleneck. There is some evidence for a bottleneck 2 million years ago, long before the emergence of H sapiens, consisting of a breeding population of 1,000 to 10,000 individuals. As you know, a bottleneck of two individuals is completely excluded by the data.
Well, it’s a matter of nomenclature. Basically, you have to accept an inbreeding population of H sapiens with a mixture of those with mortal and immortal souls.hecd2:
No, that’s not the ‘human population’. There were human beings and there were PHOMS.
Sure - and as far as I know there is no scientific reason why this could not be so. There might perhaps be theological reasons against it, as a consequence of it requiring, for many generations a mixed population of ensouled and not ensouled people.
Because it would take even a dominant trait many generations to fix to 100% prevalence in a population of several thousand.
Matter results from the conversion of gravitational potential energy during inflation.
Regarding the above reply (which I respectfully disagree) can we still continue discussion about Eve and Adam–especially since I discovered after I posted my time length idea, that I had not taken into consideration the chimp/human divergence? So that I am not deceptive,I wasn’t quite ready to address that issue.
As I understand evolutionary biology, the origin of life has not been scientifically proven.
As I understand the Catholic position, God originated life, but did not share His blueprints with us. He did declare, emphatically, that the universe, us included, was good. The Catholic position is that Eve and Adam are the parents of humanity.
As I understand me, the only thing that I have really thought about regarding Eve and Adam’s primitive state, is that I definitely would not be interested in dating the “missing link.”
I am open to exploring all possibilities from lumps of clay onward. For me, the point of becoming truly human would be when Eve and Adam received their immortal, spiritual souls.
Two primitive pre-ape mammals? Is that your original idea?
Blessings,
granny
All human life has a special place in the universe.