It is the matter of definition which applies both to this thread and to the article.
One thing about natural science is that definitions are very important. The Homo lineage from the homo/pan divergence is now defined as “hominin.”
Personally, I love to look at the various steps to the modern human anatomy and thus our own human species. Research papers assume that each step is a large sturdy population which has evolved from a previous large sturdy indiscriminate random breeding humanizing population. The newly evolved large population is also a sturdy indiscriminate random breeding humanizing population because that is the way evolution works. The large population is so integral to evolution, it is usually assumed.
In the Stacy Trasancos article, she writes: “I think of evolution as fundamentally nothing more than atoms and molecules, organized into physical systems, doing their thing.”
We could get technical and consider physical systems as a large population. However, the human species is a lot more than atoms and molecules according to the Catholic Church. Basically, the article does not recognize the population of two taught by the Catholic Church.
I’m not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with what I posted. I don’t want to get sucked into this because I’ve been down this road before, so I’ll simply say in this thread my position is best stated by “wesrock.” I think I agree with everything he has said.
Almost everything said in these types of threads is philosophical speculation. Nothing wrong with that, but you can’t really say “X is wrong” or “Y is right” simply because you are both speculating, and there is no official Church position on the subject and science describes both opposing positions.
I am certainly not an expert in either evolution or anthropology, but I have read a number of books on each. From what I have read, anthropologists seem to assume an existing population of, for example, homo sapiens, which to me is begging the question of how they came into being. So OK, let’s assume homo sapiens appears c. 200,000 years ago. But surely a group of 50, 100, 1,000, or whatever didn’t all appear simultaneously. If homo sapiens is genetically different than preceding species, then a random (let’s not spend all day discussing ‘random’) mutation produced the first homo sapiens. Call him Adam if you want to. I don’t understand how the same random mutation could occur simultaneously in a group and create multiple Adams. That just seems scientifically wrong. And if you’re Catholic and looking for a single Adam, religiously wrong. So it seems to me science and religion would be in agreement. Maybe I’m missing something here, I don’t know. Where would Eve come from? Again, you could imagine all sorts of scenarios. But once they produced children, it’s not that hard (for me anyway) to jump to the idea that these children could mate with non-homo sapiens hominins and produce (by genetic laws) more homo sapiens, etc.
So it seems to me quite easy to both believe in what anthropologists would call evolution and what religion would call the creation of Adam. I don’t see any contradiction. Maybe I’m naive.
I like analogies, so indulge me. Let’s take an electric light that you control by a voice-activated control: “Siri, turn on the lights!” And into the room with these voice-activated lights you bring a young native of Papua or Brazil or somewhere who has never heard of artificial lights. So you say “Siri, turn on the lights!” and the lights go on. The native is amazed! You must be God! You created light! So in my little analogy you could have at least two points of view: 1) The person who said “Siri, turn on the lights!” is God. 2) the lights came on for a whole library full of scientific reasons–wireless technology to give and receive the signal, electrons, conductive material for the electricity, etc. etc. So you could see an ignorant group of people could argue for days over which was true. But of course they’re both true–you caused the light to go on, but you relied on scientific laws to carry out your will. No contradiction at all!
I think a lot of argument is over nothing. Some people seem to dismiss any scientific argument based on chemistry, atoms, molecules, etc. and insist “Siri, turn the lights on!” = God went “Poof!” But wait a minute: didn’t God create the atoms, molecules, chemical laws, etc. that enabled this to happen? As I said before, insisting on a “direct action only” God limits God.
The other issue seems to be causation, time, intent, goals, and those sorts of things. But again, I think it comes down to a misunderstanding of God and putting limitations on God. If you believe that God is like us and sees things in a sequence, then you have all sorts of problems that you struggle to explain. But if you see God as a being outside of time and space, who sees everything there ever was simultaneously and who can comprehend all of the universe, past, present, and future simultaneously, most (all?) of these problems disappear. Now if, as humans, we are bound up in space and time, we can’t really understand how this is done, I think that’s perfectly acceptable. Like the native in my analogy, we see something happen but have no idea of the mechanism that made it happen. Nor do we know the intent or goal, which as a ‘future’ idea is meaningless to a being outside of time.
