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Rau
Guest
That would be fine. I (for one) don’t pretend to know precisely what God did. It is enough that he created all mankind in a special relationship with himself.
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PickyPicky
Guest
Oh, heck, I’ve done that. 
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rossum
Guest
It cannot always be at conception, otherwise one identical twin would be soulless, or a human chimera would have two souls. This is not a simple question.
rossum
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Aloysium
Guest
Definitely not a simple question; here’s how I would put it.
Although the word is a noun, Spirit is not a thing.
It may be thought of as a verb - doing, thinking, feeling and perceiving, but all these require a body to actualized them.
So Spirit is like a capacity.
It is also a unifying principle, in the sense that we exist as individuals, whole and one although composed of diverse parts.
The key word now is existence. We exist as ourselves.
But, being ourselves implies what is other to us that we can perceive, think and feel about, and act upon.
Being is relational, in the sense of a self-other.
We know the known in the knowing. We do something in the doing.
We love, give ourselves to what is other for their good, in the giving. And, it is thereby that we are united with and know them as they are in themselves, as they are known by God.
So all this being and relatedness, our capacity to love, is because we exist in relation to God, who brings us into being, knows and loves us.
Words unfortunately fail but let’s broadly say that creation of a human being involves the “breath of God” passed onto, or perhaps organizing matter as a new being, which is an image of the Triune Godhead, with the capacity to love and the qualities that this requires - knowledge and free will.
We can think of matter not as clumps of stuff, but as data - a type of being that is information. That “information” is its doing what it does to make it what it is. Chemicals do stuff that is basic. In becoming one in the form of a person, matter can be said to inform the spirit. It is also the means by which the spirit expresses itself in time and space. The being and doing of chemicals becomes one under the organizing principle that is the person.
Bearing this in mind, an analogy may be made to a server in a computer network. The matter that constitutes the zygote provides information to the spirit and in the case of twins, contributes to two different consciousnesses.
Their individual God-given existence in one embryo would be the cause of its splitting.
Again, the spirit and the body are one. While there would be a closeness in having shared the same body at its earliest stages, it is still love that would join the twins. A compassion stemming from the knowledge that the other is just like themselves. But that is the case for all of us in a way, as children of God, existing in His image, feeling, thinking, perceiving and doing.
That said, the reality of who we are, as beings grounded in eternity, is actualized through our decisions, what we do with what we are given.
As long as this post is, it’s the short of it.
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Ender
Guest
Darwinism old and new rejects the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is essentially a change driven by chance mechanism. That theory has been challenged by some serious scientists. That aspect of Darwinism (as opposed to natural selection) has always seemed suspect; it relies too much on the belief that “with enough time anything can happen” which seems more like wishful thinking than science. And it no longer seems to coincide with what is now known about how cells actually work.
It has been a surprise to learn how thoroughly cells protect themselves against precisely the kinds of accidental genetic change that, according to conventional theory, are the sources of evolutionary variability. By virtue of their proofreading and repair systems, living cells are not passive victims of the random forces of chemistry and physics. They devote large resources to suppressing random genetic variation and have the capacity to set the level of background localized mutability by adjusting the activity of their repair systems. (James Shapiro, Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, U of Chicago)
I think the theory of neo-Darwinism is facing some serious challenges that will only grow more serious as genetics becomes more understood.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
…as it should, since there is no evidence that it happens.rossum:
Darwinism old and new rejects the possibility of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
(appeal to authority?) That theory has been affirmed by even more serious scientists. (If you can do it so can I)
Intuition can be misleading when applied to very large or very small quantities.
There is nothing surprising or anti-Darwinian about that. Most mutations are harmful, so it makes sense that the genetic mechanisms would evolve to minimize errors. However some errors do escape repair, and these to lead - very occasionally - to beneficial changes.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
This is a fine way of interpreting those sections of the Catechism that describe the relationship between the spirit and life. But if the interpretation uses the philosophical sense of words like spirit and life, we can’t turn around and then apply a strictly biological and scientific interpretation to those words when it suits us. In other words, those sections of the Catechism do not say that the physical body could not have developed through evolution.
If the complaint is that the parents of Adam did not have immortal souls, then that same complaint would have to be applied to the clay of the earth from which God is to have built Adam. That clay did not have a soul either. And yet Adam did. The answer is that God created a soul for Adam at the moment of his formation from clay. Well, if God could create a soul for Adam at the moment of his formation from clay, He also could have created a soul for Adam at the moment he was conceived in the womb of his pre-human primate biological mother. So again, the doctrine of the soul does not conflict with an evolutionary origin for Adam’s physical body.
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edwest211
Guest
That quote is inaccurate.
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edwest211
Guest
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qui_est_ce
Guest
Not everybody on this forum is Catholic.Metis1:
Hostility? Me thinks you might be a tad over-sensitive. I’ve experienced lots of hostility on some atheists sites, but this one is very polite and mild-mannered (as a Catholic site should be).
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Aloysium
Guest
You might want to specify what you mean by the term evolution.
There is no way random chemical activity led to the complexity that we find in a cell, let alone the inter-relatedness of tissues in a plant or even greater reality which is an animal, with all its instinctive behavioural patterns. Contemplating ourselves, possessing the neurological equipment necessary to fully express the qualities that accompany its spiritual soul - no natural selection was involved here.
We seem to view life differntly. I would say that its reality includes what we immediately perceive through the senses and intellectually classify as matter, but add that a living creature, whatever its nature, is greater than what we see. I don’t believe a human being could be conceived from non-human gametes. It just doesn’t fit with my way of my understanding of the unity that is soul-body in every living creature, spirit-body in mankind.
The growing complexity of environments over time is definitely significant and important to the creation of mankind. All life is rooted in the physical world as is also explained in Genesis. So, I would not say that what’s behind what science sees is not there, just that the standard theory of evolution as an explanation and a story is a distortion of that reality.
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LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
Evolution: The process by which different kinds of living organisms have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth - through small mutations and natural selection.
Why not?
I can go with either view of life, depending on the context. But when I am talking about one sense of the word “life” I will not suddenly switch to the other sense as if they mean exactly the same thing.
OK, so that is your personal belief.
I think you are reacting to a distorted version of evolution.
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Ender
Guest
Does this imply that mutations do not occur randomly? If they are not random does that not mean they are caused?
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Metis1
Guest
If you were to be correct, then the geneticists should overwhelmingly agree with you-- but they simply don’t. In physical anthropology, we heavily rely on them since that is their are of expertise, and no serious geneticist for one minute would deny that some mutations can be beneficial.
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Ender
Guest
Of course there is evidence (evidence does not constitute proof).Ender:
…as it should, since there is no evidence that it happens.
if we accept that environmentally induced phenotypes can be inherited, as recent observations show and which I will discuss in a later section, then we have broken the Weismann barrier, because the germline is no longer isolated from the environment and the organism’s response to it. We have also automatically broken the other neo-Darwinian assumption of random variation because phenotype changes can then guide inheritable variation, at least to some degree, as we have seen in item 2, above. The honest response to this situation is to say that the central tenets of neo-Darwinism are simply no longer valid. (Denis Noble, Emeritus Prof Dept of Physiology, Anatomy, Genetics at Oxford, Fellow of the Royal Society)
Here you conflate evidence with proof. The theory has not been “affirmed”.
This is precisely the “stuff happens” form of Darwinism that accepts everything but explains nothing.
The whole field of microbiology is a problem for neo-Darwinism, since there is no separate germ line, and there is rampant exchange of DNA between species. Evolution is as much dependent on horizontal transfer of DNA as on vertical inheritance. Even the concept of species is a problem. (Noble)
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Aloysium
Guest
Most genetistists would agree that one should avoid tetratogens.
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Metis1
Guest
About mutations:
Nonlethal mutations accumulate within the gene pool and increase the amount of genetic variation.[23] The abundance of some genetic changes within the gene pool can be reduced by natural selection, while other “more favorable” mutations may accumulate and result in adaptive changes.
Prodryas persephone, a Late Eocene butterfly
For example, a butterfly may produce offspring with new mutations. The majority of these mutations will have no effect; but one might change the color of one of the butterfly’s offspring, making it harder (or easier) for predators to see. If this color change is advantageous, the chance of this butterfly’s surviving and producing its own offspring are a little better, and over time the number of butterflies with this mutation may form a larger percentage of the population…
Although mutations that cause changes in protein sequences can be harmful to an organism, on occasions the effect may be positive in a given environment. In this case, the mutation may enable the mutant organism to withstand particular environmental stresses better than wild-type organisms, or reproduce more quickly. In these cases a mutation will tend to become more common in a population through natural selection.
For example, a specific 32 base pair deletion in human CCR5 (CCR5-Δ32) confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes.[104] One possible explanation of the etiology of the relatively high frequency of CCR5-Δ32 in the European population is that it conferred resistance to the bubonic plague in mid-14th century Europe. People with this mutation were more likely to survive infection; thus its frequency in the population increased.[105] This theory could explain why this mutation is not found in Southern Africa, which remained untouched by bubonic plague. A newer theory suggests that the selective pressure on the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation was caused by smallpox instead of the bubonic plague.[106]
An example of a harmful mutation is sickle-cell disease, a blood disorder in which the body produces an abnormal type of the oxygen-carrying substance hemoglobin in the red blood cells. One-third of all indigenous inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa carry the gene, because, in areas where malaria is common, there is a survival value in carrying only a single sickle-cell gene (sickle cell trait).[107] Those with only one of the two alleles of the sickle-cell disease are more resistant to malaria, since the infestation of the malaria Plasmodium is halted by the sickling of the cells that it infests…. – Mutation - Wikipedia
Nonlethal mutations accumulate within the gene pool and increase the amount of genetic variation.[23] The abundance of some genetic changes within the gene pool can be reduced by natural selection, while other “more favorable” mutations may accumulate and result in adaptive changes.
Prodryas persephone, a Late Eocene butterfly
For example, a butterfly may produce offspring with new mutations. The majority of these mutations will have no effect; but one might change the color of one of the butterfly’s offspring, making it harder (or easier) for predators to see. If this color change is advantageous, the chance of this butterfly’s surviving and producing its own offspring are a little better, and over time the number of butterflies with this mutation may form a larger percentage of the population…
Although mutations that cause changes in protein sequences can be harmful to an organism, on occasions the effect may be positive in a given environment. In this case, the mutation may enable the mutant organism to withstand particular environmental stresses better than wild-type organisms, or reproduce more quickly. In these cases a mutation will tend to become more common in a population through natural selection.
For example, a specific 32 base pair deletion in human CCR5 (CCR5-Δ32) confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes.[104] One possible explanation of the etiology of the relatively high frequency of CCR5-Δ32 in the European population is that it conferred resistance to the bubonic plague in mid-14th century Europe. People with this mutation were more likely to survive infection; thus its frequency in the population increased.[105] This theory could explain why this mutation is not found in Southern Africa, which remained untouched by bubonic plague. A newer theory suggests that the selective pressure on the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation was caused by smallpox instead of the bubonic plague.[106]
An example of a harmful mutation is sickle-cell disease, a blood disorder in which the body produces an abnormal type of the oxygen-carrying substance hemoglobin in the red blood cells. One-third of all indigenous inhabitants of Sub-Saharan Africa carry the gene, because, in areas where malaria is common, there is a survival value in carrying only a single sickle-cell gene (sickle cell trait).[107] Those with only one of the two alleles of the sickle-cell disease are more resistant to malaria, since the infestation of the malaria Plasmodium is halted by the sickling of the cells that it infests…. – Mutation - Wikipedia
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buffalo
Guest
"so it’s kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists,any well informed population geneticist understands man is degenerating"
Dr. John Sanford “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome” ( a geneticist)
“over 90% of the genome is actively transcribed”
“the genome has multiple overlapping messages”
“data compression on the most sophisticated level”
“more and more the genome looks like a super super set of programs”
“more and more it looks like top down design”
“the reality is everybody is mutant”
“the selection process really has nothing to grab hold of”
"so it’s kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists,any well informed population geneticist understands man is degenerating"
“so in deep geological time we should have been extinct a long time ago”
“the human race is degenerating at 1-5% per generation”
https://idvolution.blogspot.com/2011/12/dr-john-sanford-genetic-entropy-and.html`
Dr. John Sanford “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome” ( a geneticist)
“over 90% of the genome is actively transcribed”
“the genome has multiple overlapping messages”
“data compression on the most sophisticated level”
“more and more the genome looks like a super super set of programs”
“more and more it looks like top down design”
“the reality is everybody is mutant”
“the selection process really has nothing to grab hold of”
"so it’s kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists,any well informed population geneticist understands man is degenerating"
“so in deep geological time we should have been extinct a long time ago”
“the human race is degenerating at 1-5% per generation”
https://idvolution.blogspot.com/2011/12/dr-john-sanford-genetic-entropy-and.html`
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buffalo
Guest
No one argues adaptation.
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Techno2000
Guest
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