Evolution: Is There Any Good Reason To Reject The Abiogenesis Hypothesis?

[Aloysium]

rational souls are indeed sufficiently different from material souls to require a special act of creation while animal souls simply require generation; it is you that reduced both to “substantial form” without recognizing the fundamental difference between them.

The sciences are appealing to many because they point to a reality that is accessible to the senses. We can identify, measure things and share what we find. That this is not the case with philosophy, is why many of those people looking for certainty, stay away from it. It appears as though anyone can say anything and it is considered valid, at least to themselves, and possibly as anything else. We see that here where certain posts focus on the differences in belief systems, rather than addressing the reality to which they point, which sometimes may be simply a different perspective on same thing. It’s felt that this can only lead to nothing but endless argument, this kind of thread seen as an example.

While I would agree that rational souls, meaning persons, “are indeed sufficiently different from material souls to require a special act of creation”, so too are what I see as the different kinds of souls we find in single-celled creatures, plants and animals.

we now know that plants do indeed sense and even move. We can now also observe bacteria which also possess sense and local motion, the hallmarks of animal life.

Exactly, what we have are different kinds of being, each manifesting itself in different individual forms. Obviously philosophies and theologies are only as valid as they are capable of representing the truth, the structure of existence. And what we find in the world are invididual beings, separate to and existing in relation to everything else. Pet owners who love their dogs find it difficult to accept the possibility that they may not be reunited with what is the embodiment of beauty and goodness; how can it be heaven without beloved Fido. Their pet does not exist in some fanciful delusion, but rather at the other end of a deep connection between the person and the reality of a living form, a substantial form. Whatever a “generation” from matter may mean, what we encounter is a completely different set of relationships in any organism that is not found in its constituent matter. One’s pet dog is a dog; the archetypal reality that the individual creature represents, exists in the mind of God. Of course there also exist individual living souls that are not “rational”.

 

[rossum]

There are some among us without original sin and rational souls? How can we tell?

Not any more, just as there are no more people among us who have not got their mitochondrial DNA from M-Eve. Such people once existed, but have now died out.

As to detecting souls, that is a problem for those of you who believe in souls. Could you detect if the soul in a cow had been a Hindu human in a previous life? You cannot just assume that the Abrahamic-type soul is the only possibility.

 

[buffalo]

LOL ---------------------------------- Good one

 

[buffalo]

but it’s a safe bet that in 2019 everyone can trace their lineage back to Adam.

How would you know that?

 

[buffalo]

We can identify, measure things and share what we find.

The issue here is most adults think that science can/has eliminated God through its pronouncements. Science by its own definition has a limited say about the universe and is provisional.

 

[edwest211]

By defining the soul in this way, no connection can be credibly made to evolution.

 

[buffalo]

Such people once existed, but have now died out.

I wonder why.

 

[Aloysium]

Science reveals the workings of nature, how things function within themselves and interact with what is around them. But, we want more - the big picture and what it means. So we go beyond it and develop the sort of world view, based on our assumptions of what is basic about existence, that we see in evolutionary theories and intelligent design. Others may call it science to stray into those areas of understanding, but then there should be honesty, and admit that ID is no more pseudoscience than Darwinism.

 

[o_mlly]

Not in the slightest. I honestly don’t know how you’re coming to this conclusion.

I don’t know if you are just being clever but you explain exactly how in your next paragraph:

One substantial form can come from a different substantial form without any difficulty, so long as the new substantial form is contained at least virtually in the old …

Does not virtually means potentially? You speculate that science will in time eliminate Aquinas’ vegetative soul, and life may emanate from non-life:

… it can just as easily be that the cat arose over a long period of successive generations, from the primordial stem cell to the placental mammal to the cat …

Although such has not been demonstrated, I accept the supposition for now only to examine its conclusions looking to Aquinas for confirmation. So, it’s reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid violating the principle of sufficient cause, you place in the first created elements the potentials necessary to evolve the highest irrational animal (or at least a cat). Is that correct?

Elements are generally not thought to have animating principles but a lithic soul is, I suppose, possible. You speculate that elements possess in their lithic souls the potentials necessary such that in combinations with other elemental beings, life proceeds from some primordial soup. Is that correct?

If so, we have but three substantial forms, a lithic soul, an irrational soul and a human soul directly created by God in your speculation.

Let’s clarify your supposition before delving further into Aquinas. While we need not be “slavish” in following the Angelic Doctor, nor should we be cavalier in dismissing or twisting what he taught in order to prop up a theory of evolution.

 

[Gorgias]

I wonder why.

Two reasons:

• the proposition is that, when an ensouled human and an unensouled human mate, their child is ensouled. That means that the population of unensouled humans declines over time, until extinct.
• if you were in direct competition with an animal for a scarce resource necessary for survival, who do you think would win? Naturally, we would expect true humans to out-survive non-humans.

 

[edwest211]

But this explanation is not scientific. If there were almost-humans, couldn’t they continue to mate with each other?

 

[buffalo]

Two reasons:

• the proposition is that, when an ensouled human and an unensouled human mate, their child is ensouled. That means that the population of unensouled humans declines over time, until extinct.
• if you were in direct competition with an animal for a scarce resource necessary for survival, who do you think would win? Naturally, we would expect true humans to out-survive non-humans.

Hmmm - that is a huge leap to think Adam and Eve suddenly had such prowess to out compete so many more brutes.

I don’t buy either of these propositions.

 

[Hobgoblin]

How would you know that?

I don’t know for sure. I suppose there might be an isolated tribe somewhere that’s never interbred, but after several millennia the rest of our cosmopolitan world has cross-pollinated enough that it’s hard to envision avoiding it. All it takes is one parent and the rest of the line is permanently rational. It’s like a disease that just keeps spreading.

I wonder why.

Old age if nothing else. After they bred with one of Adam’s descendants their children became rational and the non-rational line stopped. The expanding line of Adam eventually touches all other lines and kills them. It would be difficult to avoid over thousands of years.

Two reasons:

• the proposition is that, when an ensouled human and an unensouled human mate, their child is ensouled. That means that the population of unensouled humans declines over time, until extinct.
• if you were in direct competition with an animal for a scarce resource necessary for survival, who do you think would win? Naturally, we would expect true humans to out-survive non-humans.

Prop 1) They just need time. The expanding line is nearly unavoidable unless a group is in complete isolation… And if you subscribe to a global flood it doesn’t even matter since any unsouled still alive then would have drowned.
Prop 2) is observed in nature all the time. The best adapted win.

So was the polygenism exclusion your reason for believing the Church ruled out evolution? Now that you’ve seen a workable solution what do you think?

 

[Hobgoblin]

But this explanation is not scientific. If there were almost-humans, couldn’t they continue to mate with each other?

Sure they would, but as soon as their lines became contaminated with rational humans they would stop. Over time Adam’s line would expand to touch all others.

 

[Gorgias]

But this explanation is not scientific. If there were almost-humans, couldn’t they continue to mate with each other?

Yes, they could have. But, for each ensouled-human / unensouled-human mating, you reduced the number of unensouled persons in the subsequent generation.

Hmmm - that is a huge leap to think Adam and Eve suddenly had such prowess to out compete so many more brutes.

They were rational in a way that their ancestors were not. Even science shows us that successor species of hominins outcompeted predecessor species of hominids!

I don’t buy either of these propositions.

I know. But, you asked…

 

[edwest211]

As Adam and Eve were the new kids/adults on the block and without any certainty that there were not almost-humans elsewhere, I don’t find the observation acceptable.

 

[Gorgias]

As Adam and Eve were the new kids/adults on the block and without any certainty that there were not almost-humans elsewhere, I don’t find the observation acceptable.

They weren’t “new kids on the block”; they were the children of their parents who had grown to adulthood. When ensouled (directly by God), they had a distinct competitive advantage that their peers did not possess. Or do you think that the rational soul doesn’t make much difference…?

 

[Pattylt]

They weren’t just new, they were better. They were rational. Look at the evidence of only our species surviving. All of us having been ensouled from just A and E is expected if they were more able to survive and breed with more success. Scientists estimate that most of us share a link to Gengis Kahn merely due to his multiple breeding with multiple wives and that is not that long ago. There has been more than enough time.

 

[edwest211]

The soul is not a scientific concept. I don’t see how science could accept it.

 

[Ghosty1981]

Does not virtually means potentially?

Not necessarily. Potency is a property of matter, and “virtually” can refer to the operations of a form, which is act. To use Aquinas’ own example of abiogenesis the earthworm (which he believed to be generated from putrefaction and not sexual reproduction) the earthworm exists virtually in the formal power of the stars (he believed that the movement of the stars affected changes on earthly matter) and the potential of the earthly elements. Neither the stars nor the elements are alive, according to Aquinas, but together they can produce life because the living form is within them virtually.

We now know that the stars themselves are not what Aquinas thought them to be, but I would argue that these same principles that Aquinas observed and attributed to the heavenly bodies are indeed real and might be more correctly attributed to universal laws of physics, quantum mechanics, or some other yet undiscovered form-beyond-physical matter. These forms act on properly disposed matter to produce new effects, even life, and these forms existed from the moment of Creation (what I believe is the “Big Bang”). These forms don’t account for themselves, and are in fact proof that God exists, but that’s another topic. I would also add that forms can’t arise spontaneously from matter working mechanistically; any new formal power, such as the power of sight, must be present virtually in the primordial “Laws”. No new “Laws of Physics” can arise from the activity of the universe.

So, it’s reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid violating the principle of sufficient cause, you place in the first created elements the potentials necessary to evolve the highest irrational animal (or at least a cat). Is that correct?

Yes, I think this is a reasonable conclusion. I would add that these first created elements and forms are necessarily created by God from nothing.

continued…