Given the principles of evolution, natural selection, survival of the fittest, etc, do you think belief in the supernatural will die out or become a m

[grannymh]

We often use the words “random breeding” as a description of the large evolving Homo populations which descended from the Homo/Pan speciation event.

Random breeding can be attributed to a polygenesis developing population. It could be possible that in a large evolving population there would be “couples” who would mate. However, random breeding would take place before one individual found true love.

 

[OneSheep]

Very good questions. Reading science journals, I see the words “may,” “likely” and similar. A certain number of assumptions are made and they can’t be replicated in the lab.

With Evolutionary Psychology, we have this:

“Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection.”

If we are just biological products then our psychology has the same roots as our alleged biological development. And so we are reduced to nothing more than self-upgrading biological machines with self-upgrading minds that started for reasons unknown.

Ed

The side note, though, is that “self-upgrading” may/may not involve continuous involvement of our Creator (depending on one’s faith).

Evolutionary psychology is a fascinating field, and though a person studying in the field may come to see that the evolution of Human Psychology is very mechanistic, that characterization does not change the spectacle of what it is to be human. Human psychology is wondrous and awesome, and with wonder and awe what is elicited is the same emotion and general sentiment as encountering the “supernatural”.

Seeing the flesh (which intricately involves the mind) as mechanistic is not necessarily a reduction. The person who somehow devalues humanity or creation itself based on seeing mechanisms is himself a curiosity; I think that any devaluation by scientists may be centered on something more emotional, such as the negative impacts human have caused to ecosystems.

Or can you think of any other way that people come to devalue humanity?

 

[edwest2]

The side note, though, is that “self-upgrading” may/may not involve continuous involvement of our Creator (depending on one’s faith).

Evolutionary psychology is a fascinating field, and though a person studying in the field may come to see that the evolution of Human Psychology is very mechanistic, that characterization does not change the spectacle of what it is to be human. Human psychology is wondrous and awesome, and with wonder and awe what is elicited is the same emotion and general sentiment as encountering the “supernatural”.

Seeing the flesh (which intricately involves the mind) as mechanistic is not necessarily a reduction. The person who somehow devalues humanity or creation itself based on seeing mechanisms is himself a curiosity; I think that any devaluation by scientists may be centered on something more emotional, such as the negative impacts human have caused to ecosystems.

Or can you think of any other way that people come to devalue humanity?

In the interest of scientific research:

Fetal tissue is offered to research labs instead of just being discarded as medical waste.

All of us reading this began life as human embryos but human embryos are being destroyed for research.

Adult stem cell research has led to useful applications but that has been downplayed for a few reasons.

You take away the habitats of animals by draining swamps and clearing land, followed by building condos.

There is more than enough land in the US to grow food but some of it lies fallow in exchange for “farm subsidies” costing billions.

Ed

 

[lynnvinc]

It is important to understand that one of the basic doctrines of real and proven evolution is that evolving from Homo species to Homo species to modern humans took place in large polygenesis source populations. A large random breeding evolving population is not the same as the Catholic doctrine that the human species was founded by a population of two, Adam and Eve. The Homo/Pan split is a speciation event and not the original human population of Adam and Eve.

Evolution Information link
evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/evo_07

Not so, and I studied anthropology at Berkeley. They are just wrong if they are saying those things. The band from which modern humans sprung was a very small, homogenous population, and we humans of today, whatever our so-called race, are very closely related, a subspecies, like a single breed of dog. Like some collies are a bit lighter and some a bit darker. Racial theories are just wrong.

No one that I know of supports the polygenesis theory – which is a racist theory from the 19th century, totally rejected by anthropologists today (who are really the ones who study human evolution closely, not general biologists).

I never ever heard of the homo genus splitting from pan, it is from the australopithecines (which I figure may have become the Yetis and Big Foots of today…if those legends are true). And even within the Homo genus there were several branches. All died out except one – we humans of today came from one narrow subspecies of Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens sapiens, and we did not become fully human with human language until much later, maybe some 40,000 years ago or so.

The australopithecines did walk upright, but their brain was small (like chimps, so they were “animals” not “humans”). The large human brain was the next to the last thing to develop – the very last thing being our vocal tract fully capable of human language, which even Homo sapiens neandertalensis did not have, tho they and other animals do have communication systems and H.s.n. it seems even buried their dead with things and may have had some idea of an afterlife.

Hope this helps.

You do know that all people of today are descents of one woman – something genetics discovered nearly 40 years ago.

And people did not willing go into agriculture, but it was those who were pushed out of the fertile (hunting & gathering) valleys and were forced into it…sort of like it says in the Bible.

Science just keeps getting closer and closer to our Christian ideas about origins. But science just isn’t capable to getting into really fine details about an Adam and Eve and how they sinned, etc. Tho we do know that at some point bad behavior became a sin, because we had developed the intelligence and moral thinking/feeling to KNOW it was wrong and sinful. That’s when we really became human – eating that forbidden fruit (or some such sin) and gaining knowledge of good and evil.

It’s a blessing and a problem to be human. We really have to watch our p’s & q’s, or else.

 

[Bradski]

But these are fairly basic questions that science should have been asking years ago. When we avoid these questions, then explanations for the 1829 relentless and progressive steps for the evolution of the eye, seem to take the micky.

I truthfully do not know how they can call this science.

Eric, you really need to move away from taking every single figure and date that you come across as being dyed in the wool, 100% specific and accurate as to the matter in hand. If someone mentions a specific date or number, then quite often they are being used as an indication of something.

No-one actually means that there were 1829 steps involved in the evolution of the eye. They are using the figure to indicate how quickly an eye would evolve if, in this particular example, there was only a 1% change in each generation, then an eye could evolve in 1829 steps involving just 364,000 generations.

Even allowing 1 year per generation, that’s less than a million years. A ridiculously short time when you are considering evolution. See here: don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/eye_time.html

 

[grannymh]

Brief clarification regarding descendants of one woman.

The research of Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Charles Wilson, pulbished in 1987, included populations which had more than one female. It is the media which decided that an “Eve” in the headlines would sell more papers.

For information, please refer to Mitochondria Eve, Wikipedia. There is a section on common misconceptions*.*
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Note that the Out of Africa Theory replaced the theory of Milford H. Wolpoff.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Each human person is worthy of profound respect.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . I never ever heard of the homo genus splitting from pan, it is from the australopithecines (which I figure may have become the Yetis and Big Foots of today…if those legends are true). And even within the Homo genus there were several branches. All died out except one – we humans of today came from one narrow subspecies of Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens sapiens, and we did not become fully human with human language until much later, maybe some 40,000 years ago or so. The australopithecines did walk upright, but their brain was small (like chimps, so they were “animals” not “humans”). The large human brain was the next to the last thing to develop – the very last thing being our vocal tract fully capable of human language, which even Homo sapiens neandertalensis did not have, tho they and other animals do have communication systems and H.s.n. it seems even buried their dead with things and may have had some idea of an afterlife. . .

:twocents:

The central feature of any being is its soul. Neglect of this basic reality is where modern science goes off track.

I’m going to go as far as to say that whether it is an atom, perhaps any inanimate thing, a unicellular creature, a plant, an animal or a person, we are dealing with one being existing in relation to everything else. What this means is that a collection of atoms, regardless of how complex their organization, cannot themselves become alive. Although we can design and manufacture a computer, a collection of organs cannot be put together to form an animal or Frankenstein monster. With in vitro fertilization, we have the illusion that we are bringing about the existence of a new creature by merely physical means. Matter, I’m going to assert, as a form of being, rests on and perpetually comes into being from Existence itself. Gametes are what they are, as you and I are who we are, one individual being in themselves. It is from their union, each surrendering its individuality, that a new soul, one with the matter of which it is constituted, is brought into existence from the Source of all existence. This is all Grounded in God, who brings all creation forth, all time and all space and everything within it.

Modern science does not have a handle on our ontological structure, who we are as beings. I don’t like the term supernatural because it assumes that a soul is not the essential feature of creatures. The issue is not brain size or vocal chords, but rather the capacity to love, to have free will and to know, not so much intellectually, but within our hearts, within our very being, to know our God. We may have come into existence with capacities such as speech, mathematics, the appreciation of beauty and goodness, fully formed. Or, perhaps these developed over time through God’s graces. At the moment, it appears we can fit the puzzle parts in a number of different ways to create our own theory of creation.

 

[lynnvinc]

Brief clarification regarding descendants of one woman.

The research of Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Charles Wilson, pulbished in 1987, included populations which had more than one female. It is the media which decided that an “Eve” in the headlines would sell more papers.

For information, please refer to Mitochondria Eve, Wikipedia. There is a section on common misconceptions*.*
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Note that the Out of Africa Theory replaced the theory of Milford H. Wolpoff.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Each human person is worthy of profound respect.

Yes, I know that, but they also make the point that the population from which modern humans evolved would have been very small & fairly homogenous, AND all people today did get their mitochondrial DNA from one woman.

Now since that was estimated to be some 200,000 years ago give or take, it would have been during the time of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and we can assume the narrow group from which modern humans sprung were not quite fully human then, so the Biblical Eve probably would have come sometime after that. Maybe around the time we really gained enough knowledge of good and evil to be fully adult-culpable of sin.

As mentioned science really cannot pin it down to a single couple, Adam and Eve. It just doesn’t have the capability to do so. That means (according to science) the Adam and Eve story is neither wrong nor right – it is just unknown and pretty much an unknowable, scientifically speaking.

The main takeaway is that we at some point we became a bunch of sin-prone people who can go to Hell – which it seems no one, not even fairly religious folk, wants to talk or think about.

 

[lynnvinc]

:twocents:

The central feature of any being is its soul. Neglect of this basic reality is where modern science goes off track…

You are just expecting science to do something it simply cannot do. That is not its purview. It just cannot say anything about the spiritual one way or another. It can neither prove or disprove that people have souls or there is a God.

I would suggest that people interested in spiritual matters read spiritual books based on people who have had extraordinary contact with the divine (and approved by the Church) and meditate on God, seek divine union with God. That is about the most we can do in this life to “know” about spiritual things.

St. John of the Cross is a good place to start – ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL. He was well educated in the sciences of his time, so he is aware of those science issues, but he really gives great guidance for the soul on spiritual matters.

Another great book is STORY OF A SOUL, by St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

It’s good to learn science, but for spiritual matters, we need to go to other sources.

I know Americans (and it seems all the people now) are very materialistic, but perhaps it would be good to study “divine economy,” rather than dwell on the economy all the time or the material world as analytically separated from the spiritual.

 

[GEddie]

:twocents:

The central feature of any being is its soul. Neglect of this basic reality is where modern science goes off track.

I’m going to go as far as to say that whether it is an atom, perhaps any inanimate thing, a unicellular creature, a plant, an animal or a person, we are dealing with one being existing in relation to everything else. What this means is that a collection of atoms, regardless of how complex their organization, cannot themselves become alive. Although we can design and manufacture a computer, a collection of organs cannot be put together to form an animal or Frankenstein monster. With in vitro fertilization, we have the illusion that we are bringing about the existence of a new creature by merely physical means. Matter, I’m going to assert, as a form of being, rests on and perpetually comes into being from Existence itself. Gametes are what they are, as you and I are who we are, one individual being in themselves. It is from their union, each surrendering its individuality, that a new soul, one with the matter of which it is constituted, is brought into existence from the Source of all existence. This is all Grounded in God, who brings all creation forth, all time and all space and everything within it.

Modern science does not have a handle on our ontological structure, who we are as beings. I don’t like the term supernatural because it assumes that a soul is not the essential feature of creatures. The issue is not brain size or vocal chords, but rather the capacity to love, to have free will and to know, not so much intellectually, but within our hearts, within our very being, to know our God. We may have come into existence with capacities such as speech, mathematics, the appreciation of beauty and goodness, fully formed. Or, perhaps these developed over time through God’s graces. At the moment, it appears we can fit the puzzle parts in a number of different ways to create our own theory of creation.

Maybe that is philosophically true, but you don’t get anywhere without the mega-head and the vocal cords, or for that matter the hands and feet!

Souls have a propensity of not fossilizing, so they can never be part of a scientific description of the human being. That’s how science works, just as philosophers have until very modern times, ignored the body.

ICXC NIKA

 

[lynnvinc]

I don’t like the term supernatural because it assumes that a soul is not the essential feature of creatures…

I agree with you, because that term sort of compartmentalizes the spiritual and God as something not working in this world, something beyond.

The religious person will see God’s work in everything that happens in this material world. An accident, a delay, in all things divine economy is working. We can meditate and guess, knowing that we have a Good God who wants salvation for us. Jesus let us know that.

Giving up all attachments as St. John of the Cross suggests will gain us everything. Only then we can live in peace carrying out God’s will and work.

 

[lynnvinc]

Getting back to the OP, religion will not die out, tho it probably is a minority WV in the highly materialistic world we live in where money, not God, is king.

It’s interesting that many scholars some 100 or so years ago thought religion would die out, replaced by science. However, Sir George Frazer (anthropologist) in THE GOLD BOUGH (1890) in writing about folk beliefs around the world (superstitions, magic), thought that science would replace folk beliefs (which are pre- or pseudo-science beliefs about cause and effect), and that religion would go on, as far as he could tell. Religion was something more than folk beliefs or science and would persist because it gave us much more, beyond science.

What is amazing to me is that folk beliefs have also persisted into this day and age and have not died out or been replaced by science.

So here we are today – plenty of science, folk beliefs, and religion

 

[OneSheep]

In the interest of scientific research:

Fetal tissue is offered to research labs instead of just being discarded as medical waste.

All of us reading this began life as human embryos but human embryos are being destroyed for research.

Adult stem cell research has led to useful applications but that has been downplayed for a few reasons.

This was your response to my question:
“can you think of any other way that people come to devalue humanity?”

Yes, I agree, when people have a strong desire or need, they may come to devalue humanity in some way. You present a good example; the value of embryos is seen as less than the value of what the medical research could do for people born.

You take away the habitats of animals by draining swamps and clearing land, followed by building condos.

There is more than enough land in the US to grow food but some of it lies fallow in exchange for “farm subsidies” costing billions.

Ed

Well, all fallow land is habitat, whether it is a swamp or not. But I understand what you are saying, that for a scientist to have a bad feeling toward humanity because of habitat destruction is an error.

Again, there is an emotional aspect involved. People see the intricacies and beauty of ecosystems and the amazing creation of individual species, and when they see habitat destruction, they feel resentment. Then, land that is set aside for habitat restoration is subsidized, costing billions, and many taxpayers resent the use of their money for a purpose they do not appreciate. Again, the emotional aspect is present.

And then, we take a look at questions like “why does the human have a capacity to resent?”. One answer might be “because he is fallen”, which really goes nowhere (and in some respects expresses a resentment toward human nature). Instead, an investigation can be made toward the objective of understanding the evolutionary advantages of resentment as an emotion, and, for example, it could be shown that resentment plays an important role in conscience formation, and conscience formation is an important, survival-enhancing mechanism for a species that relies on societies (tribes) in order to enhance fitness.

Now, in taking this “whole picture” approach, how can one not experience wonder and awe? One comes to the question, “from where did all this come?” and we can surmise the source to be a Wondrous Something, and when one is in prayerful relationship, a Loving and Merciful Something.

 

[Aloysium]

You are just expecting science to do something it simply cannot do. That is not its purview. It just cannot say anything about the spiritual one way or another. It can neither prove or disprove that people have souls or there is a God.

I would suggest that people interested in spiritual matters read spiritual books . . . It’s good to learn science, but for spiritual matters, we need to go to other sources. . .

. . . Souls have a propensity of not fossilizing, so they can never be part of a scientific description of the human being. That’s how science works, just as philosophers have until very modern times, ignored the body.

ICXC NIKA

I have high expectations, which I believe we can achieve. We can do it, but it means turning the world upside down.

With respect to our understanding of what it means to be human, we are now at a phlogiston stage. And, of the universe itself, we remain geocentric, believing it to be centred around matter rather than God, the Light that gives rise to and illuminates all. To bring God into the equation can and should be done, rather than leaving things as they are with evolution being some truth that is appealed to when justifying any particular theory. While this consideration need not be included on every page of a calculus, anatomy, physiology, or organic chemistry text, God as the central Fact who brings everything together, will be known to all. In other words, science in heaven is joyous, taking us into the heart of things as they truly are.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . you don’t get anywhere without the mega-head and the vocal cords, or for that matter the hands and feet! . . .

That said, being unable to speak, walk or hold on to things does not make one any less human.
Nor does a damaged or undeveloped head, despite of the honour of sapiens that we have bestowed upon ourselves.

 

[grannymh]

. And, of the universe itself, we remain geocentric, believing it to be centred around matter rather than God, the Light that gives rise to and illuminates all.

This says to me that some, not all, are still living in the era of Galileo without the Catholic Church influence.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . some 200,000 years ago give or take, it would have been during the time of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and we can assume the narrow group from which modern humans sprung were not quite fully human then, so the Biblical Eve probably would have come sometime after that. Maybe around the time we really gained enough knowledge of good and evil to be fully adult-culpable of sin. . .

My understanding is that knowledge of good and evil is a work in progress within humanity. That’s why we needed the Ten Commandments.
If you mean conscience, the connection between our hearts and that of God, it would have been there from the start.
The spiritual nature of which it is an expression, is an image of the relationality of the Triune Godhead.

I suppose I’m quibbling over terms, but while an animal might bear a resemblance to a human being, I would not consider it to be “not quite fully human”.
To be a person is an all or nothing quality.
The human soul, did not evolve and is not an emergent property of the brain; it allows for the capacity for love, and consequently, in opposition to that imperative, to bring about evil through our free will.

Ontologically, we are one person, fulfilled when united with others in love.
Here, we find ourselves damaged in our relationships, and consequently within ourselves.
The person who we are has an individual history, as does humanity of which we are expressions.
We began at some point in time and it is clear that, as revealed and reaffirmed within the Church’s teachings, it started with one human being, who became two.
Operating from a different set of assumptions that include the reality of the Eucharist as the body and blood of Christ and the immaculate conception, it is most certainly plausible and consistant with the data.

 

[grannymh]

My understanding is that knowledge of good and evil is a work in progress within humanity. That’s why we needed the Ten Commandments.

May I jump in with the sad observation that there are a few participants here who are unaware of the complete Catholic explanation of Genesis 2: 15-17. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not some physical source Adam needs so he can become humanly knowledgeable about right and wrong. Adam is a fully-complete person with a rational spiritual soul.

For whatever reason, it is apparently easy to skip CCC 396 and CCC 1730 and also skip common sense about the original relationship between humanity and Divinity.

**CCC 396 **
God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” spells this out: “for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.” The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.

**CCC 1730 **God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.”
In small print
Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.

 

[lynnvinc]

My understanding is that knowledge of good and evil is a work in progress within humanity. That’s why we needed the Ten Commandments.
…

There were several commandments before the 10 Commandments, such as “don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and “keep the garden.” For that we would have to have language (and a soul), so we did understand and we did violate both and continue to do so, violating the other commandments that came later.

Other species, even our pre-human predecessors, are not culpable, but we are.

When exactly that happened, when we received our souls, science cannot say. I guess the important point is that we did receive them & the type/level of understanding that makes us culpable, and thus we are different from the non-human animals. We, unlike them, can go to Hell. I think it matters less when exactly the change happened, only that it did happen and here we are.

When I think of those many Catholics in India who practice untouchability, treating Dalits in a very mean and horrible way as subhumans based on false notions of pollution, and those Catholics in the West who deny the real local to global pollution they are causing that harms and kills people, totally failing to “keep the garden.” Well, there are lots of us who are headed for Hell if we don’t repent and put forth some effort to change.

I was thinking that in addition to the various NGOs and activisms we need a St. Sebastian Anti-Discrimination Society with the main charism to pray to end discrimination and for the souls of those who are discriminating against and abusing others, with special focus on the Dalits in India, but perhaps other places as well.

 

[grannymh]

There were several commandments before the 10 Commandments, such as “don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and “keep the garden.” For that we would have to have language (and a soul), so we did understand and we did violate both and continue to do so, violating the other commandments that came later.

My poor older than dirt brain… I remember hearing that Adam was a He not a We.