How did it come to be there are different races of people

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It’s called evolution which a Catholic is allowed to believe in.
 
I do not read tht the Pope was insisting that all things outside the ark were absolutely and completely destroyed. One can still see the story of Noah as the prefiguring of the Church without having to hold that all animals not in the ark were destroyed, or that all of humanity outside the ark were destroyed.

and the last sentence of the Encyclical is a doozey. And in the second paragraph, the comment about the Greeks not accepting the Pope must confess to not being the sheep following Christ is a reference to the Orthodox, and the Church’s position is that they are in schism, but have valid priesthood and valid sacraments - an apparent direct contradiction to Boniface VIII.

the earliest Jewish scripture appears to be somewhere around 1100 BC - 1000 BC. The Gilgamesh flood story appears to go back to about 2700 BC, or shortly before the earliest known writings, apparently of any source. That there was a flood is something I would leave to the folks centered around geology and archaeology, but with multiple stories of a flood, certainly there is some evidence. and given that writing was limited to an extremely small segment of mankind in that area of the Near East, and information was in large part even after writing started in oral format, that whenever the author of the story of Noah wrote, they had plenty to work from.

I certainly do not question the action and guidance of the Holy Spirit to the authors of the OT. But one does not have to believe tht there was a world-wide flood wiping out all of the living creatures in the world - including humans - to believe that there was something the OT writer was conveying, and that the ark represents the Church, and that those “in the ark” are saved and those “out of the ark” are not saved.

Nor am I required to believe that Balaam’s ass spoke words, nor that there was a gate at the entrance to Eden, or an angle guarding it. I am required to believe there was an Adam (a play on words of adamah) and an Eve - and between Pope Pius XII and mitochondria we learn that.

And as to floods, out here in the west we have the repeated Missoula floods and the Bonneville Lake flood from the last ice age, between 15,000 years ago and 13,000 years ago. Could Noah’ flood have been during that ice age? I have no clue; it might be possible, and the writer telling the story 12,000 years later.

Or it may have been something different; but in reading the encyclical, I see nothing which says we have to believe that the entire population of the world was wiped out. And for that matter, if it was wiped out, that it was due to one flood.

Could God do that? Of course - I will easily grant that. Did God need to do that in order that the prefiguring story of the Church was written down?

Nope.
 
I haven’t had the time to read what others are saying here, but in my tradition, there is an answer, and it’s an ancient one which hasn’t been a mere response to Darwin since it is so ancient, and of course what I mean by that is evolution. Many Midrashim and Kabbalistic teaching speak of evolution, perhaps not in the same way as Darwin preached, but very similar. There is also the idea in some circles that the Mabul (flood) was a local one and that others survived as well. This is just foot for thought.
 
Of course I have my own problems with evolution, such as the notion that they seem to know exactly what is a transitional fossils, how are they sure it is transitional and not another organism with both legs and fins? Just my two cents on the matter.
 
But they are not vastly different. That’s the problem with the Victorian notion of race. At a biological level there is very little difference, and at a genetic level, the most genetically distant populations of humans are more closely related than some neighboring chimpanzee tribes in Africa.
 
I’ve read and heard in lectures that there is more genetic diversity among Africans than there are amongst people from other continents.
 
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I am assuming that the first man is Melanesian.

Melanesians in spite of being similar in appearance to sub Saharan Africans are the most genetically distant to Africans than Europeans.
 
otjm said:
and the last sentence of the Encyclical is a doozey. And in the second paragraph, the comment about the Greeks not accepting the Pope must confess to not being the sheep following Christ is a reference to the Orthodox, and the Church’s position is that they are in schism, but have valid priesthood and valid sacraments - an apparent direct contradiction to Boniface VIII.
Click to expand...
Do the Orthodox know that we know they have been outside of Christ’s flock since 1302? I wonder if someone should tell them.
 
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I don’t think you are condescending.

There’s a lot of questionable attitudes towards race in the US.

Let me go on a mini rant.

A lot of people in the US say Asian race when the actually mean Chinese, Japanese or Korean. South Asians, Middle Easterners and Central Asia’s aren’t considered proper Asians.

I understand that in the UK people from South Asia, like Indians and Pakistanis are called Asians, while East Asians are called Orientals. To me Orientals are carpets. So why aren’t East Asians considered proper Asians?
 
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They don’t know, and in fact in the literature make it clear what they mean by transitional. Fortunately we have the molecular as well as fossil and morphological evidence, and in the big picture confirm each other. The tree of life is backed up by a lot of evidence that is only explained by evolution.
 
The first man is Jarawa, a tribe from the Andaman Islands of India. Their Y-chromosome haplotype is from the same group as some Tibetans and Japanese, especially Okinawans and Ainu (the third picture is an Ainu man). It is believed that this group diverged in central Asia, with one branch going south and becoming the Andamanese (first picture) and another group going East and becoming the Ainu (last picture).

Traces of this lineage are actually found in many places in Asia (and pretty much only Asia, if I remember correctly), the markers are just most concentrated in these two groups.

So that “black” man in the first picture is absolutely “Asian”, genetically speaking. His ancestors simply moved to a climate that favored characteristics that are are similar to those of African pygmies, despite having a clearly “Asian” genetic profile. His cousins eat sushi on Hokkaido and live in the mountains of Tibet, and his family split off from any possible African grouping possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago.

I’m no geneticist, mind you, so I’m quite open to correction.
 
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One has to remember that theories are not settled science, thus are often found wanting over time, being that elements of truth that make up theories are dressed up with broad speculation that later often turns out to be not true. Pangenesis for example was the Darwinian explanation of heredity, which is not supported by DNA research. The wonder of science is that it reveals the awesome mysteries that make up the known universe; often, the problem with some scientists is that their minds become clouded when they stop believing in God, and begin believing in themselves, and build upon a false foundation. Thus the problem with pride is that it always blinds the mind. As for current scientific research, modern science has opened new frontiers of understanding and speculation, as will always be the case, for example
 
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Darwin fully admitted he had no system for heredity, so let’s be clear on what the first iteration of Darwinian evolution said and didn’t say. And this appears to be a bit of an etymogical fallacy in action, a confusing of a more generic use of the word “theory” for a very specific scientific definition. As much as anything can be confirmed in science evolution has been confirmed, and I’ll be blunt, if you’re faith relies on a literal interpretation of Genesis, then your faith is wrong.
 
Genesis 2:6 states that God made man from the slime of the earth-or “dust of the earth depending on the translation; interpret that as you will—-but to go from slime/dust to rational human being does imply some sort of evolution.
 

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1 COR 12:12-3](http://usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/readings/bible/1Corinthians/12:12)
Brothers and sisters:
As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

Now the body is not a single part, but many.
If a foot should say,
"Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body, "
it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
Or if an ear should say,
"Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body, "

it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?
If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
But as it is, God placed the parts,
each one of them, in the body as he intended.
If they were all one part, where would the body be?
But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, "I do not need you, "
nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.”
Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker
are all the more necessary,
and those parts of the body that we consider less honorable
we surround with greater honor,
and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety,
whereas our more presentable parts do not need this.
But God has so constructed the body
as to give greater honor to a part that is without it,
so that there may be no division in the body,
but that the parts may have the same concern for one another.
If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it;
if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy.

Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it.
Some people God has designated in the church
to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers;
then, mighty deeds;
then gifts of healing, assistance, administration,
and varieties of tongues.
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?
Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have gifts of healing?
Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret?
 
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