If Adam and Eve were real people but existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, then what about Noah?

[hecd2]

Thank you for making clear that you are in fact a Darwinian naturalist. Since this thread is supposed to be about " If Adam and Eve were real people but existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, then what about Noah?," it appears you contradict the presupposition of the thread, namely that Adam and Eve were real people! (I have yet to notice anyone even seriously trying to answer the question about Noah here!)

I think that if you are describing my worldview, the adjective “Darwinian” is redundant and anomalous, since Darwinism is a scientific theory not a philosophy. I am no more a Darwinian naturalist than I am an Eisteinian or a Diracian naturalist - but I am a naturalist. I do contradict the supposition of the thread for good reason. As for Noah, the story of the Noahic flood cannot be literally true any more than Adam and Eve literally existed, for the same genomic reasons, and for many more reasons.

I think you mistake a basic point of this discussion. … All that is needed for us to rationally reconcile our belief with evolutionary science is to show that Adam’s existence is possible. That is what I attempt to do, in part, in my book, Origin of the Human Species.

But in attempting to show that Adam’s existence is possible, you make two questionable claims that are in the domain of science (that the palaentological data shows that fully human primates arrive at about 500,000 BP, and that human cognition appears in a single instantaneous event rather than gradually); and you have yet to address the genomic data that shows the impossibility of the human or pre-human population ever having passed through a bottleneck of two.

I recognize that, from your materialistic perspective, evolutionary science appears to suffice to explain the origin of the human species without the need for any divine creator or intervention

.
That is correct - to paraphrase - I see no need for the God hypothesis.

And I can see from reading your comments that you appear to be a competent scientist in your own field (also a Ph.D, perhaps?). But you are also a philosophical materialist – and your materialist philosophy as such is not the same thing as natural science.

Of course it isn’t, fully accepted.

Rather, you make certain inferences from your own scientific knowledge whereby you exclude the presence of a spiritual soul in man (and, I suspect, exclude God as well?).

I conclude from my scientific knowledge, AND from my experience of the world in its social, literary, artistic and historical guises, from my reading of philosophers and theologians, from everything I know, experience and feel that neither a spiritual domain nor a personal God is necessary to explain what is before us, at least not a personal God who intervenes in his putative creation.

On the contrary, Christian thought posits God’s existence and the spiritual soul in man, defending these truths both by reason and revelation.

Of course, but calling them truths is begging the question

As a Catholic philosopher, I know how to prove God’s existence and the spirituality of the human soul. (See my own Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence, Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972.)

As a professional philosopher, you must be aware of other professional philosophers who are not convinced by the Five ways or the Kalam argument or other philosophical “proofs” for God (Anthony Kenny for example, Quentin Smith, Vaas, AJ Ayer, AC Grayling, Paul Edwards, Daniel Dennett and so on). Two or three of the Aquinas proofs are based on premises which are now shown to be mistaken - the others fail on logical grounds. This is not really proof, at least not in the sense of the Pons Asinorum.

to be continued

 

[hecd2]

Whether you know my philosophical tradition or are convinced by its proofs is irrelevant to the task at hand, namely, showing that natural science can be reconciled with Christian belief about human origins. The burden of proof falls on you to show that these beliefs are contradictory to good natural science, not merely to your personal materialist philosophy.

I should have thought that the burden for extraordinary claims (for example regarding a literal Adam and Eve) falls on the person making the claim. But I am happy to show that a belief in a literal Adam and Eve is contradictory to good science - we drifted into a discussion of the grounds for your philosophical tradition, which is interesting, but incidental, mainly because you attempted the argument that philosophy, especially yours, trumps science - I was forced to point out that there are good reasons for rejecting your philosophical perspective. So let us stick to the science. Can we do that?

My initial points were scientific criticisms of your argument, viz that fully human primates appear in 500,000 BP, that the mental attributes of humanity arrive overnight (the palaeontological evidence is clearly contrary to that claim), and above all that humans once passed through a bottleneck of two which is absolutely precluded by the genomic evidence - such a severe bottleneck would have left an unmistakeable signal in the human genome at many loci and would have wiped out many allelic families that we share with chimpanzees and other great apes. I can refer you to about 15 or 20 papers that investigate various loci and all of which reach the same conclusion.

While I once shared your skepticism about proving immaterial entities, let us look at what you say about my examples of universal concepts:…

You miss the point my own epistemological moderate realism makes. I concede that triangularity must be defined in terms of space and that humanity entails properties of matter. What Aristotle, St. Thomas and others point out, though, is that spirituality exists in the way in which these concepts are formed and exist in the mind, that is, the mind confers immateriality upon its conceptual content, so that the triangle which must be imagined as singular, with concrete color and shape, is understood utterly apart from the individual conditions of matter. It abstracts from this color, this shape by understanding the definition which universally applies to every concrete instance of triangularity. So, too, with humanity. I can imagine the physical appearance of few men, perhaps. But I can understand the nature of every man, regardless of the concrete and varying individual conditions in which each individual man is realized. A rock is clearly material, but my understanding of “rockiness” abstracts from the concrete material conditions of this or that rock, so as to grasp the universal nature of all rocks. It is not what is known that makes the mind spiritual, but rather the manner in which it knows material and other objects. A full course in philosophical psychology would be needed to fully explicate this doctrine, and that need not be done here in order to show that this defense of true spiritual activities of the human being is what gives rational basis for my claiming that man’s spiritual nature cannot be the product of merely physical evolutionary processes.

Well, I disagree - I (and many others more versed in this than I am) say that these concepts are not universal and not the same from time to time or from person to person, but merely categories into which we put things, which sometimes coincide by negotiation, convention and agreement - which categorisation, negotiation and agreement is conducted by minds which depend only on material brains. By the way, what is the “universal nature of all rocks”?

I don’t expect you to be convinced by this since you are a committed materialist, but at least it may help you to grasp why the Christian can complement his theological certitude about man’s spiritual nature with rational philosophical arguments, arguments which natural science as such does not deal with. You may deal with them, but, I contend you do so, not as a scientist (as you claim), but as a philosophical materialist.

Granted.So shall we stick to science?

to be continued

 

[hecd2]

If one takes seriously, as Christians do both for theological and philosophical reasons, that man has spiritual faculties…then it follows that matter alone cannot give rise to the higher spiritual reality of the human soul.

As I have pointed out, the philosophical reasons can be challenged and theological reasons in this context are merely question begging.

…divine intervention in the evolutionary appearance of man is needed. When you conclude that matter is “necessary and sufficient” to explain human intellective cognition, you fail to grasp the force of philosophical arguments for the spiritual soul …and you also fail to grasp that while spiritual faculties cannot function properly without concommitant organic health (brain function), such dependence is strictly extrinsic, just as a computer cannot process data when there is no data, but it yet exists and functions within itself.

We are going over old ground. I grasp the philosophical arguments - I just don’t think that they stand up to scrutiny (and so do many philosophers). Your computer analogy is not apposite. The brain is not data but the physical processing ground for data which it receives in the form of electrochemical signals from the senses. Why should anyone believe in spiritual faculties that never are and never can be manifested, say in someone born with very severe brain damage? The obvious conclusion is that they do not exist in that person. It is clear that everything that we call human in a person - their intellect, reason, character, humour, psychology, memory, sense of being, theory of mind, artistic gifts, love, hate, envy, anger, addictions and so on all depend on and originate in the brain and can be fundamentally affected by chemical, hormonal and physical intervention. It is unnecessary to posit anything else.

For these philosophical reasons, I know that true man did not appear gradually in the continuum of evolutionary progress …You may not be able to detect the point of his first presence… but such a point must exist

And I declare that you are making an unwarranted claim.

Your conviction that it does not so exist lies in your philosophical materialism, not simply upon irrefutable scientific evidence.

It lies in the palaeontological evidence for the gradual and piecemeal emergence of human faculties, and in the cognitive science of infants and children which shows that these faculties arrive gradually and not suddenly.

You make a good point about the human genome project. …I know the reasons I adhere to the Catholic religion as the authentic revelation of God, and, as a philosopher, I know the reasons why evolutionary science must admit direct divine intervention at some point in prehistory wherein God creates the first true human beings by direct creation of the spiritual soul and instantaneous transformation of some sort of subhuman matter into the body of true man (assuming that some sort of real basis in evolution theory is to be maintained).

That’s nonsense - evolutionary science doesn’t have to admit any claims about supernatural beings or divine intervention. Science is the project of people of all faiths and no faith - there is no need for it to accommodate your personal religious beliefs or that of anyone else.

Without resorting to a direct attack upon the legitimacy of recent findings in microbiology, other avenues of rational reconciliation might be possible. For example, Craig Rusbult, Ph.D. (UW-Madison) suggests the following (using a somewhat more recent chronology for Adam and Eve):

“And here is a scientific question: Even if Adam and Eve were created approximately 150,000 years ago, as proposed in the current consensus of conventional science, mathematically analyzing the genetic diversity of the human population indicates that modern humans originated from a group (of about 10,000 people) not a pair, as with Adam and Eve. If modern humans began with only two people, who could have a maximum of 4 alleles, God would have to miraculously increase the genetic diversity of later generations in order to produce the genetic diversity we now observe, thus leading to theological questions about why God would provide a false apparent history if scientific evidence makes it appear that the ancestors of modern humans was a group, rather than the actual single pair… / a response: Yes, in the time since Adam and Eve, God did cause the human race to develop more new alleles than would be expected by only natural process, so there is an appearance of “miracle” and apparent age. But there was a practical reason for God to do this, so we would have more overall genetic diversity in our immune systems, and the human race (as a whole) would thus have more adaptive flexibility in our responses to diseases. / another response: If Adam and Eve were extremely ancient, living millions of years ago, there would be more time for the human race to naturally develop the number of alleles we now observe.”

I am not sure whether it is you or Rusbult talking in the responses, but the first response fails because we share many allelic families with chimps - the genetic diversity largely predates the human-chimp divergence, and because the diversity is not just in our immune systems, or even in our coding genes, but all over our genomes; and the second response fails because millions of years ago also predates the chimp-human divergence.

I am not saying that Dr. Rusbult’s explanation is the only one possible. Before the interface of facts of revelation and philosophy and generally accepted scientific theory one must always proceed with cautious humility. But to preclude a possibility such as miraculous intervention as a possible explanation for the Human Genome “proplem” merely reinforces the evidence of Darwinian materialistic philosophical presumption. I do not share that worldview for reasons explained above.

When in a scientific corner, many religious resort to the miraculous “explanation”. Well, as you might imagine, I think that tactic is intellectually unsatisfactory. You asked me to show how a literal Adam and Eve is incompatible with good science. I have done so (at least in outline). Ask me questions about the science, probe me for references, review the sequencing technologies, discuss the experimental designs and the sources and corrections of error, but for goodness sake do not resort to the miraculous explanation. Especially since it doesn’t work - there is nothing worse than a miraculous explanation that fails to explain.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To HCD2

Alec,

I can understand your desire to restrict our dialogue exclusively to secular natural science, but must remind you that this is a Catholic forum thread and that Catholics have no need to be intimidated into casting aside their theological and philosophical truths in favor of purely secular arguments immersed in the errors of materialism – errors repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church. Not being restricted by your scientistic presuppositions, I am free to accept evidence you apparently prefer to ignore because it comes from a theological perspective. Since your worldview sees God as an unnecessary hypothesis, and since you reject the possibility of genuine miracles a priori, you reject out of hand the empirically verifiable, historical evidence of direct divine intervention in the world. Consider these examples: (1) the hundreds of cures certified by the International Medical Commission at Lourdes as totally beyond scientific explanation (See the Miracle of Lourdes by Ruth Cranston.), the most widely-witnessed miracle in all history when the sun danced in the sky before some 70,000 witnesses at Fatima in 1917, and the some 400 recorded resurrection miracles of Christian history. (See Raised from the Dead by Albert J. Hebert.) Your insistence on scientific proof appears restricted to those secular public sources which ignore these kinds of concrete evidences which support a worldview that contradicts your inference that Adam and Eve are mythical. The Lourdes Medical Commission is open to competent medical doctors of all faiths or lack thereof, and insists on the most exacting empirical verification of any alleged miracle. It demands full patient records both before and after alleged cures. Significantly, of all the cures certified beyond explanation by medical science, only some 100 have thus far been accepted by the Catholic Church as genuinely miraculous, applying the more stringent criteria of theology and philosophy. Regarding Fatima, claims of mass hallucinations contradict both good science and observable fact, while many of the observers came to scoff, but were forced to believe by their very eyes. While lay observors may not be experts on clinical signs of death, it is preposterous to suggest that some 400 cases of people recorded by serious, trustworthy, and competent witnesses as being raised from the dead in Christian history are all the product of fantasy and delusion. Christians rightly infer that such miracles bear witness to the truth of revelation. Catholicism and most Christians accept as central to their belief systems, as you well know, the special creation of man, the unity of the human race, the fall, and the promise of a Redeemer. (See 1909 Biblical Commission findings.) Your secular inferences contradict what Catholics and many other Christians believe to be direct divine intervention in the world verified by historical evidence of unimpeachable authority. From the rational Christian perspective, it is your inferences which must be rejected, not our beliefs.

You point to philosophical disagreement among professional philosophers as undermining the credibility of Christian philosophers, such at St. Thomas Aquinas, to attain objective philosophical truth. The Catholic Church dogmatically teaches that the existence of God can be known by unaided natural reason, as St. Paul says in Romans 1:20, reasoning from the things that God has made (causality). I know that non-Christian philosophers reject the proofs for God’s existence, but they do so by denying such basic presupposed principles everyone uses when playing a game of billiards, namely, that one can know what is happening on the table, and that when a ball is moved it is moved by something else. Atheists and agnostics deny such proofs by denying such basic metaphysical and epistemological first principles as non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality (e.g., Hume), and the ability to know the external world. Your own claims about natural science would have no validity at all if you did not first embrace these principles, principles which are presupposed by natural science but defended exclusively by classical philosophy, such as that of St. Thomas Aquinas. My book, Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence (Martinus-Nijhoff, 1972), defends the key premise that no infinite regress among per se causes is possible. It is hardly news that a materialist, such as yourself, would reject these proofs. Moreover, your nominalistic rejection of the spirituality of universal concepts is exactly what a materialist, such as yourself, would maintain. But these materialistic objections are precisely those rejected by Catholic teaching, since the Church defends the harmony of faith and reason and insists that reason can discern certain fundamental truths presupposed by the content of revelation. This is not a war between science and religion, but a war between the illicit presuppositions of philosophical materialism and the sophisticated common sense of classical philosophy, preferred by the Church, prior to the modern period wherein philosophers blundered into subjectivism, epistemological idealism, relativism, and materialism.

to be continued

 

[Dr.Bonnette]

To HCD2

Alec,

Human Genome Project scientists infer that some 7 million years ago a common ancestor gave rise to two lineages: one leading to champanzees and bonobos, and the other leading to hominids. You infer that such data precludes any single pair of first parents subsequent to about that time. Further, you claim that paleological evidence precludes the instantaneous appearance of true man, since it shows rather the gradual emergence of intellectual faculties and variations over time and place and between individuals. In so doing, you reveal that your latter inference is not based upon pure science, but upon philosophical inferences affected by your materialist presuppositions. Both Catholic faith and philosophical reasoning maintain that the spiritual intellective soul is strictly immaterial and cannot arise gradually from mere matter. Purely sentient animals can imitate intellective activity through internal sense faculties, namely, the central sense, imagination, sense memory, and estimative sense. Man alone possesses true intellect and a spiritual soul. But this soul enables him to perform purely spiritual acts of conceptualization, judgment, and reasoning employing faculties which are not always in act, or which exhibit extrinsic dependence on sentient faculties and organs. Thus, one would expect variation in appearance of purely intellective activities over time and from individual to individual. A rudimentary grasp of how operative potencies work reveals that man is fully human throughout his life, but that such activities as waking, singing, talking, reasoning, understanding, and so forth, come and go. Your inference that no spiritual soul is present arises from reducing man to a purely materialistic scenario which reveals that your philosophy, not your science, gives rise to your conclusions. Yes, man is an animal, but he is not “nothing but” an animal. At whatever moment in prehistory the first true human being appeared, a being with a spiritual soul directly created by God – at that moment Adam appeared. I do not claim my personal speculations about where or when that might have occurred are necessarily correct, but such a line of demarcation must exist, since the denial of this line of demarcation implies the denial of the entire material-spiritual distinction. The fact that you put no credence in either Christian teaching or traditional philosophy simply reveals that your entire perspective arises, not merely from natural science, but also from your atheistic and materialistic philosophy. I am certain you will affirm that you are a naturalist, but it is misleading to suggest to any and all that your evidence from natural science is the only source of your judgments about God and human origins. Christians have other ways of knowing things and need not hide them under a bushel basket merely because someone like Richard Dawkins tells them that they must do so.

The Human Genome Project is a very recent phenomenon, and its full meaning and implications may yet need further study and understanding. Most of those associated with it have no grasp of the work of Christian philosophers, or else may not be taking into account the implications of Christian philosophizing in their analysis. One thing I have noticed is that literature describing population sizes is replete with references to “estimates,” hardly a concept conducive to infallible or apodictic pronouncements. Further, it seems to me that using genetic data from modern humans to estimate/reconstruct prehistorical lineages and population changes is fraught with uncertainties based upon assumptions/postulations. I am certain that you will now inundate me with “overwhelming evidence” that you will allege only a troglodyte or total ignoramus would hesitate to embrace, but my point, in part, is that you are yourself selectively ignoring much more traditionally established evidence in order to reduce all human knowledge to allegedly near-infallible natural science, the hallmark of a philosophical positivist. I am not saying that this very new scientific data must not be taken into account in attempting to understand how human origins took place, but such analysis and inferences, based on what may prove to be precipitate or even scientistic presuppositions, need not be read as disproving what we already know of Adam and Eve and of true human origins from well-evidenced Christian and philosophical sources. My own much more complete defense of (1) human essential superiority to brute animals, (2) the existence of God and (3) the need for divine intervention in human origins, and the possibile rational reconciliation between evolutionary theory and legitimate Scripture is found in my book, Origin of the Human Species (Sapientia Press, 2003), and described on my website at www.drbonnette.com, which also posts several pertinent articles in full.

 

[juliamajor]

Why does anything about Genesis devolve into a Creationist vs Evolutionary argument? There is so much richness , layers and nuances in Genesis that we could talk about the biblical text alone for a very long time. I’ve taught Genesis twice in the last five years. Never does evolution vs creationism come into my lectures. the text and what it truly says is my focal point.Why is this piece of the thread not moved elsewhere and we can go back to the text itself?

 

[grannymh]

Why does anything about Genesis devolve into a Creationist vs Evolutionary argument? There is so much richness , layers and nuances in Genesis that we could talk about the biblical text alone for a very long time. I’ve taught Genesis twice in the last five years. Never does evolution vs creationism come into my lectures. the text and what it truly says is my focal point.Why is this piece of the thread not moved elsewhere and we can go back to the text itself?

The reason “creationist vs. evolutionary” pops up is the way the topic and OP are worded. Key words-- if & real, plus the reference to age or years regarding the existence of human life on earth in order to fit within biblical genealogy.

Thus, there is a real need to establish the literal reality of Adam & Eve rather than the figurative or symbolic interpretation before one can understand the connection between Genesis and the truths of Catholicism.

You are so right about the richness, layers, and nuances of Genesis. A suggestion would be to word the topic and OP so that it is stipulated that Adam & Eve are real or that the thread is devoted to the Catholic biblical text alone. Please PM me when there is such a thread.

This is a two prong observation: It is important to teach Genesis as it is and as you are doing. But it is also equally important that Sacred Scripture teachers themselves, outside of classes, understand the influence that Richard Dawkins has on Catholics.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is sacred from the moment of conception.

 

[Agripa]

Ok, help me out here - Adma and Eve apparently lived “a very long time”, that is, enough to see several generations born. So whomever Cain married - that woman in the neighboring town - that was his much older sister???

 

[matahari]

::

Why does anything about Genesis devolve into a Creationist vs Evolutionary argument? There is so much richness , layers and nuances in Genesis that we could talk about the biblical text alone for a very long time. I’ve taught Genesis twice in the last five years. Never does evolution vs creationism come into my lectures. the text and what it truly says is my focal point.Why is this piece of the thread not moved elsewhere and we can go back to the text itself?

Truth is important, after all, Christ was crucified because he absolutely refused to allow truth to be compromised. It is a mistake to interpret the Word of God by unreliable and ever-changing human secular ideas. Since the Bible is the Word of God and , by definition, God doesn’t make mistakes then we have to assume the Origin of Species [the atheist bible] IS WRONG. Since 1933 on the back of every US one dollar bill written in latin are the words " Announcing the Birth of the New Secular World Order" verified yesterday at the G20 meeting by Mr.Gordon Brown

 

[juliamajor]

::

Truth is important, after all, Christ was crucified because he absolutely refused to allow truth to be compromised. It is a mistake to interpret the Word of God by unreliable and ever-changing human secular ideas. Since the Bible is the Word of God and , by definition, God doesn’t make mistakes then we have to assume the Origin of Species [the atheist bible] IS WRONG. Since 1933 on the back of every US one dollar bill written in latin are the words " Announcing the Birth of the New Secular World Order" verified yesterday at the G20 meeting by Mr.Gordon Brown

The truth is in the text- not outside of it. Whether that truth is literal or metaphorical it is still the truth. Facts and truth can be polar opposites.
The Bible was inspired by God(breathed) not dictated by Him.And people make mistakes,syntax errors, geographical errors, historical errors. But none that effect doctrine or dogma.Man was inspired to write God’s word through man’s own prism.Man’s cultural,historical, personal experiences are part of that prism and color the text.
In study of the text evolution or creationism never really comes up.truthfully creationism and evolution are unimportant TO ME.I care not one jot about it. What my personal view on either subject is ,I will not tell- because to me it is not germane to the text at all.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Ok, help me out here - Adma and Eve apparently lived “a very long time”, that is, enough to see several generations born. So whomever Cain married - that woman in the neighboring town - that was his much older sister???

No one knows when Adam and Eve lived. Cain’s wife was a descendent of Adam and Eve. How close a relative Cain was to his wife is unknown but we can see she had to be relatively close (sister, niece, grand-niece ?) Remember the “law” did not exist at that time so their actions were morally neutral

hope that helps

 

[Texas_Roofer]

… That’s nonsense - evolutionary science doesn’t have to admit any claims about supernatural beings or divine intervention. Science is the project of people of all faiths and no faith - there is no need for it to accommodate your personal religious beliefs or that of anyone else…
Alec
evolutionpages.com

Hi Alec

There were probably a dozen things in your posts which sparked by curiosity but to simplify the topic it would seem you have rejected humans as unique because a unique human would beget (yes pun intended) the problem of who is first? So that would seem to require the hypostasis humans are not unique, in fact it would seem to rely completely on the concept all life from algae through human must all be equal in core form or soul (for us simpletons), do I understand you correctly on that?

 

[Agripa]

No one knows when Adam and Eve lived. Cain’s wife was a descendent of Adam and Eve. How close a relative Cain was to his wife is unknown but we can see she had to be relatively close (sister, niece, grand-niece ?) Remember the “law” did not exist at that time so their actions were morally neutral

hope that helps

Its funny how this was never explained in grade school!! In fact, I think the nuns avoided these thorney questions!! Thankfully we have apologists who have ready answers for everything!!

 

[hecd2]

Hi Alec

There were probably a dozen things in your posts which sparked by curiosity but to simplify the topic it would seem you have rejected humans as unique because a unique human would beget (yes pun intended) the problem of who is first? So that would seem to require the hypostasis humans are not unique, in fact it would seem to rely completely on the concept all life from algae through human must all be equal in core form or soul (for us simpletons), do I understand you correctly on that?

No, you don’t understand me. It seems clear, that, according to the palaeontological evidence, human abilities developed over time and different abilities developed at different times. It seems that pre-humans and early humans passed through a continuum of cognitive skills. The time when fully human individuals appear in the record depends on what your definition of fully human is. And whatever that definition is, it isn’t likely, according to the evidence, that the transition occurred suddenly between one generation and the next, but that it occured over time, with the eventual emergence of fully human behaviour and cognition between 50,000 and 30,000 BP, or perhaps somewhat earlier, if you hang your definitional hat on laxer criteria.

And I haven’t rejected human uniqueness - humans clearly do have unique cognitive abilities and for that reason deserve a different moral consideration. What I question is the notion that human attributes arise because humans are a different class of being altogether from other living things. In my view, human attributes arise from the same material ground as that of other animals, but the abilities manifested in us are immensely greater than those of other animals, as a difference of degree rather than a difference of kind.

I think that those who claim that our humanity is grounded in an immaterial soul do so without warrant - all the evidence that I am aware of points to the fact that human attributes are emergent properties of a material brain. It therefore follows that the richness of the soul depends on the complexity and capabilities of the mind, which itself is underpinned by the brain. Of course this means that the “souls” of different organisms, far from being equal, depend heavily on the sophistication and complexity of the organism, with humans standing way above all others.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Texas_Roofer]

No, you don’t understand me. It seems clear, that, according to the palaeontological evidence, human abilities developed over time and different abilities developed at different times. It seems that pre-humans and early humans passed through a continuum of cognitive skills. The time when fully human individuals appear in the record depends on what your definition of fully human is. And whatever that definition is, it isn’t likely, according to the evidence, that the transition occurred suddenly between one generation and the next, but that it occured over time, with the eventual emergence of fully human behaviour and cognition between 50,000 and 30,000 BP, or perhaps somewhat earlier, if you hang your definitional hat on laxer criteria.

And I haven’t rejected human uniqueness - humans clearly do have unique cognitive abilities and for that reason deserve a different moral consideration. What I question is the notion that human attributes arise because humans are a different class of being altogether from other living things…

Thank you but I still cannot follow the logic trail let me ask another way: Did humans, monkeys, apes, cows, horses, soy beans and corn all generate from a single event when inorganic chemical became a living organism?

 

[grannymh]

And I haven’t rejected human uniqueness - humans clearly do have unique cognitive abilities and for that reason deserve a different moral consideration.

Would you be willing to add other human uniqueness examples in addition to cognitive abilities? Seems to me that humans are also unique in the way we use our cognitive abilities. My grandkids think I am unique because I want to be Mary Poppins when I grow up. I am very serious and all they do is giggle. Imagination, creativity, and sense of humor are not part of my dictionary’s definition for cognition. Neither is discretion which keeps me from talking about being Mary Poppins in a crowded elevator.

I can understand that paleontological evidence of tool making, going from hunters to gatherers, etc. connects with cognitive ability, but what about evidence for other attributes like story telling and laugher?

Easter blessings,

granny

 

[Soodonim]

Church doctrine says nothing about a laughably young 6,000 year old universe. Pope Pius XII even remarked that the Big Bang, a theory originated by a priest, would seem to confirm Genesis. Leave anti-scientific lies with the heretics who reject not only reason, but much more importantly, the One True Church.

 

[hecd2]

Would you be willing to add other human uniqueness examples in addition to cognitive abilities? Seems to me that humans are also unique in the way we use our cognitive abilities. My grandkids think I am unique because I want to be Mary Poppins when I grow up. I am very serious and all they do is giggle. Imagination, creativity, and sense of humor are not part of my dictionary’s definition for cognition. Neither is discretion which keeps me from talking about being Mary Poppins in a crowded elevator.

I can understand that paleontological evidence of tool making, going from hunters to gatherers, etc. connects with cognitive ability, but what about evidence for other attributes like story telling and laugher?

Easter blessings,

granny

The short answer is yes, since other elements of human uniqueness seem to arise from our unique cognition.

As for palaeontological evidence, beyond fire-use and toolmaking, we turn to evidence of human art, music, ritual, decoration and innovative technology which appear fully fledged about 35,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Texas_Roofer]

The short answer is yes, since other elements of human uniqueness seem to arise from our unique cognition.

As for palaeontological evidence, beyond fire-use and toolmaking, we turn to evidence of human art, music, ritual, decoration and innovative technology which appear fully fledged about 35,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

And why is it not repeated in hundreds, thousands, or millions of others? Why would they deny the ability to develop? Would it not be their destiny to win the game? If biped is an advantage why do the others refuse it? Why if cognitive skills are an advantage why was it refused by the vast majority of evolving species?

Would their refusal to evolve these advantages not in and of its self question the concept of the evolution being a sole source?

 

[Agripa]

Church doctrine says nothing about a laughably young 6,000 year old universe. Pope Pius XII even remarked that the Big Bang, a theory originated by a priest, would seem to confirm Genesis. Leave anti-scientific lies with the heretics who reject not only reason, but much more importantly, the One True Church.

Wow! A rationalist with a 13th century Cathiolic attitude! One of the many reasons I find this site so - enlightening!!