And we are taught that the soul is what gives the body life.
So I would be inclined to think that an integral part of being a human being is something that cannot evolve.
At the very least, we no longer fit in evolutionarily theory.
I agree.
The spirit and body are one. It’s not so much that the spirit inhabits a body as it is that the spirit is a higher level of organization than that which defines matter. The body is therefore alive, perceiving, feeling, thinking and acting. Another way to think about it is that matter is not just clumps of stuff, but information. Matter can be thought of as informing the spirit’s relational nature; it is the means by which the knower knows the known in time and space. When we die, the body falls apart doing what matter does at a chemical level. That is an important piece of evidence against the standard theory of evolution, by the way,
There is more going on in the creation of new life than molecules interacting, no matter how complex the process. In sexual reproduction, two germ cells coalesce. Each of the pair, a whole in itself, is incomplete, until fulfilled in their union, which results in the creation of a new organism - the soul of the creature one with the physical being that we can observe through the senses. Its soul is “seen” through reason. From the egg it develops, is born and grows. If it is irksome to speak of souls, one might call it instinct, an organizing principle whose physical manifestation would be DNA for example, shaping and directing the organism to do what it does.
It all works from the top down. Molecules do what they do, being what they are. In order to form a living being, that being must incorporate what is otherwise simply star dust. So, if an ape has been conceived, it cannot receive a human spirit, because it is an ape that is taking shape. The creation of a human being is required in order for it to take human form.
Life is more than matter doing its thing. Whatever the organism, while it may have a particular form the differs from its progenitors and offspring, depending on their environment and built-in genetic and developmental capacities for change, they appear to be expressions of their particular species. What we classify as species appears not to relate to an underlying reality. What I mean by this is that we are human beings, one in Adam and one in Christ. We share the same existential nature, although it is expressed in different ways as a result of the gifts(which include challenges) that have been bestowed upon us individually. Whether felines are the same thing as canines and only superficially different, I don’t know, but think not.
A very long-winded way to the conclusion that mankind was created as a new form of being, in the image of God. However He constructed the template, it fits the pattern described in Genesis. The particulars, I would think should be of interest for science, which unfortunately as a social institution is subject to the same dark influences that reveal themselves in history and the daily news.
