Humanity in general

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theCardinalbird

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If our souls are created directly from God, is it possible for our bodies to be the product of God’s evolution?
 
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Creation is ex nihilo. It can be odd to think of creation not from something
 
In any event, NOW we are an amazing Soul / body combo
till death do them part.
 
This might be wrong, but I don’t see an issue with that idea, i.e. I don’t think it necessarily opposes the Catholic faith, provided one accepts that humans were designed as they are according to His will, and that God is ultimately the author of existence.

And of course that the soul is not a result of evolution but of direct creation by God. Since we are created in the image of God, and the human soul is something immaterial and not present in other matter, the soul is not the product of any kind of evolution.

Pope Pius XII, Humani generis:
[T]he Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, 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 - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
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@Arwing is right.

While we need understand how theology and science are divided, it is acceptable to support Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The problem we’re often seeing is the misunderstanding that Darwin’s theory supports atheism.
  1. Darwin himself was not an atheist and said so himself in his biography
  2. While we need religion to regulate science, science is just the understanding of God’s creation.
Unfortunately, the new Atheists like RIchard Dawkins have done a poor job at dividing the two. Dawkins said himself:
…Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled Atheism."
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A very strange quote since it seems more that he is speaking of religion, not science.
 
Joe1 said:
is it possible for our bodies to be the product of God’s evolution?
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God had endowed the universe with many natural marvels, and the origin of humans could be one of them.
 
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Of course.
In fact the traditional understanding was that the body of the embryo itself evolves in the womb with a succession of material souls until the time of “quickening” when God immediately infuses its final spiritual soul.

If the Church traditionally had any problem in this area it was being too enthusiastic about how actively matter itself gives rise to animal life without God’s direct intervention at all.
Traducianism went beyond the above and asserted that even the final spiritual soul was produced by material processes in the womb (ultimately coming from the inherent spiritual force of the father’s semen).

Traducianism was not so much a heretical sect but rather a strong school of Catholic thought within the Church that was popular but ultimately discarded.

While the ancients never suspected that what happens in the womb could have happened with the origin of the human race…the theology is already in place.
 
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If you believe in the duality of the person, where soul and body are separate, then isn’t the body just the meat car to transport the soul around. So why does it matter how the meat car was produced? It’s irrelevant by this view point since its the soul that is being judged for its actions as it drives around the meat car. There is a little problem with the idea of believing in evolution to create the meat car, it disproves the story of Adam and Eve if taken literally.
 
Our bodies are quite a bit more than a meat cart. They are the visible manifestation of our soul. That is, they are the only means we have of communicating/revealing our soul to others.
 
Scripture shows us that God did not directly create our bodies out of nothing. Rather it states that God used matter that He had previously created.
Genesis 2:7a then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground,

What He directly creates is the soul.
Genesis 2:7b and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Beautiful!
 
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My points were irrelevant to the importance our meat cars are to us and how we use them. I was pointing out that, if you believe in duality of soul and body, the judgement of the body that your deity places on its followers is on the soul, not the body, since the duality group believes the moral assessments and decisions comes from the soul. Just like the car is irrelevant to deciding what to do about an accident, you assess the driver. The soul is the driver. I guess what I wrote was unclear on this point to you. The importance to the car in the accident is irrelevant to the moral assessment of that car in the accident. It’s the soul that is to be assessed for judgement by your deity. So how the meat car is created is irrelevant to the story of how the soul drives this meat car and how important the meat car is to the soul is irrelevant as well on the topic of judgement of the soul by the deity and everyone else that believes in duality.
 
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