Jesus DNA?

[Matt16_18]

Continued …

How can we imagine this “parallel universe” reality, and is such a conception really so alien to Jewish and Christian thought? First, I would note that Catholics believe in the Communion of Saints. Catholics understand that in some mysterious way, that the Church is one body, and that all members of the Catholic Church are connected to each other. The Church Militant is connected to the Church Suffering, and to the Church Triumphant. As a Catholic, I don’t really think that Heaven is literally above the clouds in the sky, and that Purgatory and Hell are literally someplace underground. But I do believe that Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory are real places where humans dwell – parallel universes so to speak. And these “parallel universes” are somehow connected to our physical world.

St. Hildegarde says something that I find amazing: “Paradise still exists, a region of joy, blooming in all its pristine loveliness, and imparting abundant fruitfulness to the sterile earth. As the soul communicates life and strength to the body it inhabits, so the earth receives from paradise her supreme vitality; the darkness and corruption of sin, which shroud this miserable world cannot entirely check its influence.”

Paradise still exists and is connected to our fallen world in some mysterious way! But this is really not that unusual an idea for Catholics. When we say a Mass on earth, the Church teaches that the saints in Heaven are participating in that Mass, and that grace is flowing from Heaven to earth through the Eucharist. The Eucharist is like a portal between parallel universes that opens up to allow grace to come into the fallen world. (Please forgive me if my use of the “parallel universe” and “portal” analogies sound like bad science fiction writing, but that is the best language that I have right now).

One conception that I have of all these “parallel universes” is this: the reality that we perceive in our world is a superposition of the different parallel universes that exist. There are the unholy universes of Hell and the realm of the fallen angels. There are the holy universes of paradise and the realm of the holy angels. When Adam and Eve sinned, and new universe came into being, and that universe is a superposition of all these other universes. Our fallen physical world became a battleground where the holy and unholy forces are fighting in conflict. If Adam’s progeny sinned, more of the influence of the unholy universe began to manifest in physical world, and brought to it increasing levels of violence, decay and degradation. If Adam’s progeny prayed and listened to God, then more of the holy universe manifested in the physical world and helped to heal the damage of the unholy universe. Before Jesus came into the fallen physical world, the unholy universe was getting the upper hand, and bringing the physical world to destruction. When Jesus incarnated, he established a portal to another universe, the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of Darkness was defeated by Christ’s death on the Cross, but the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God had not yet been realized in the physical universe.

 

[Matt16_18]

**Catechism of the Catholic Church

670** Since the Ascension God’s plan has entered into its fulfillment. We are already at “the last hour”. “Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect.” Christ’s kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church.

671 Though already present in his Church, Christ’s reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled “with power and great glory” by the King’s return to earth. This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they have been defeated definitively by Christ’s Passover. Until everything is subject to him, “until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God.”

 

[Matt16_18]

Ghosty:

You’re still very far from supporting an alternate universe. All things are possible with God, but why grasp for a theory that has no doctrinal basis, and has absolutely no physical evidence, when alternate theories that incorporate both are available?

Your alternative contradicts both scripture and two-thousand years of Catholic teaching. You are saying that the physical world was subject to death, disease, and decay before Adam sinned, and that cannot be reconciled with Catholic doctrine. You have made God the author of death!

 

[hecd2]

Matt16_18:

How can we imagine this “parallel universe” reality, and is such a conception really so alien to Jewish and Christian thought?

Reading your posts, they seem to boil down to the following:

• The terrestrial paradise is some sort of other but physical universe to this one (always remembering ‘terrestrial’ means earthly)
• Ditto hell, ditto purgatory, ditto heaven
• Adam and Eve were created in the other universe of the terrestrial paradise, where decay and death does not exist, and where their souls occupied immortal bodies with perfect DNA (whatever that might mean) that were based on a different biology from that which we observe here
• This Universe has existed for 13.7 billion, and has always been subject to to death and decay and to the same physical laws
• Evolution occurred on earth in this universe, with common ancestry leading to a group of human-like primates without immortal souls that form a monophyletic group with other primates
• At the Fall, Adam and Eve’s souls were transported miraculously from the other Universe into a pair of primate bodies in a pre-existing lineage in this Universe by an unknown mechanism (you didn’t say what you thought became of the original immortal bodies of Adam and Eve in the parallel universe of the terrestrial paradise)
• The terrestrial paradise continues to exist in another universe

If I have misrepresented anything you said, I’m sure you’ll clarify. Now, in spite of your protests and references to Hildegard and others, it seems to me that this contains much unconventional theology and speculative thinking. We are left with a number of conundrums. Here are two:

1. Humans are not pure souls - to be fully human is to consist of both body and soul - which body then is the true temple of the human soul?: the immortal body of the parallel universe or the mortal bodies that we inhabit in this universe? Which will we be resurrected with?
2. The first four chapters of Genesis describe the creation of a single world, not parallel universes. It is my contention that almost all theologians from 100AD to 1800AD would regard the Garden of Eden as a physical place on this earth. None of them would agree that Genesis 1 describes, not the creation of this universe, but a parallel one. I am afraid, though inventive, your idea that the Garden of Eden lies in a different universe is peculiar to you.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Matt16_18:

That is exactly my point. Science has no power to prove or disprove what I am saying.

Indeed that is so and in a similar way science cannot prove or disprove the notion of fairies at the bottom of the garden, goblins in the woodshed, gremlins in the software, the land of Narnia, angels over Peckham Rye or an infinity of other spiritual or supernatural beliefs. That fact, of itself, doesn’t make any of these ideas more credible.

It seems appropriate to me that Adam and Eve should dwell in mortal bodies that are subject to the physical laws of a fallen world, and that after the Fall, that Adam and Eve should dwell in bodies connected to the lower life forms.

The relationship of humans to the rest of life through our common ancestry, and the processes by which our amazing complexity and our ability to contemplate ourselves and the universe evolved, seem to me to be a reason for awe, wonder and rejoicing, rather than the cause for shame that you find it.

Scriptures doesn’t speak about the details of how Adam and Eve made the transition between dwelling in immortal bodies in the terrestrial paradise and dwelling mortal bodies in the world of death. Personally, I consider these nit picking details to be rather trivial in the grand scheme of things, and whatever those fine details actually are, not knowing the details does not cause me to question what has been divinely revealed to man.

Scripture doesn’t speak about the creation of a multiplicity of universes either - is that a nitpicking detail? It is, if it gets in the way of your own odd theology. There is a German proverb, beloved of engineers: Der Teufel steckt im Detail - the devil is in the detail.

I, unlike you, am prepared to question all ideas, whatever their source, and to reject those that fail to make sense.
Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Ghosty]

Matt16_18: No one is questioning the possibility of multiple universes, only your notion of an alternate Creation where Eden still exists. You’ve mentioned a couple of mystics who share your view, yet the Church in all of its years in theology has barely entertained such notions. Your idea remains solidly in the fringe of the fringe.

Your alternative contradicts both scripture and two-thousand years of Catholic teaching. You are saying that the physical world was subject to death, disease, and decay before Adam sinned, and that cannot be reconciled with Catholic doctrine. You have made God the author of death!

Tell that to the Pope and the Magesterium that has never seen fit to correct this notion, even when praising the very theories that suggest it. Also tell it to Scripture, which states plainly that animals and humans ate plants in Eden, therefore causing death. God did not subject humans to decay and death originally, which is what all of those years of Church teaching were addressing, and I’m not suggesting that God did. Look over the documents and see the heresies they were addressing. There was nothing ever raised about death and decay existing aside from the human condition. Even Scripture talks only of death entering into the world in regards to humans. Romans 5, for example, speaks of sin entering the world, and death through sin, yet the Church does not teach that non-humans sin. In this instance, when reading the context (which is all about humanity specifically), we see that the death entering the world is the death of man, not death in general. This has been the same stance taken by the Church in every instance of official teaching as well, as the heresies being confronted by those writings involved the nature of man and Original Sin, not death in the world in general. I don’t disagree that the Universe suffered due to the sin of man, but to say that there was no death of any kind is stretching things quite a bit.

Another point to remember, also from Romans, is that it never states that one part of Creation suffers from the bondage of decay, but ALL of Creation. This means all things created by God suffer due to the sin of humanity, all Creation suffers in “the bondage of decay”. This leaves absolutely no room for an alternate dimension that doesn’t suffer from decay.

 

[Matt16_18]

hecd2:

Now, in spite of your protests and references to Hildegard and others, it seems to me that this contains much unconventional theology and speculative ….

What qualifies YOU to judge that what I am saying is “unconventional” theology? By whose standards is what I have said “unconventional”? I gave you a quote from St. Hildegarde where she says that paradise still exists - a statement that is supported by the text of Genesis. You, on the other hand, are a scoffer that doubts the existence of angels. Why should I accept that you have a firm grasp of conventional theology?

Humans are not pure souls - to be fully human is to consist of both body and soul - which body then is the true temple of the human soul?: the immortal body of the parallel universe or the mortal bodies that we inhabit in this universe? Which will we be resurrected with?

From scripture we know that the immortal bodies of Adam and Eve were transformed into mortal bodies by the Fall. Scriptures give us no details of how this happened, and those details are not important for our salvation. Scripture also teaches that death, disease, and decay entered into the physical creation after the Fall. This is conventional theology. Your theology is not conventional, because your theology assumes creation was infected with death from the beginning, and that a death driven process of evolution brought forth a race of human beings. Please show me the scriptures that supports your theology!

more …

 

[Matt16_18]

continued …

The progeny of Adam and Eve are born as children of the wrath with mortal bodies in the fallen world. At the resurrection of the dead, the corpses of the dead will be transformed into immortal bodies. **Catechism of the Catholic Church

How do the dead rise?

997** What is “rising”? In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection.

998 Who will rise? All the dead will rise, “those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”

999 How? Christ is raised with his own body: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself”; but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, “all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear,” but Christ “will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body,” into a “spiritual body”:

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel. . . . What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. . . . The dead will be raised imperishable. . . . For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.​

The first four chapters of Genesis describe the creation of a single world, not parallel universes. It is my contention that almost all theologians from 100AD to 1800AD would regard the Garden of Eden as a physical place on this earth. None of them would agree that Genesis 1 describes, not the creation of this universe, but a parallel one. I am afraid, though inventive, your idea that the Garden of Eden lies in a different universe is peculiar to you.

Genesis says that Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden because of their sin – Genesis does not say that the Garden of Eden was destroyed by Adam and Eve’s sin, nor that death and decay entered the Garden.He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Gen. 3:24Many saints have contemplated this verse, and they have believed it means exactly what it says – the Garden of Eden still exists. Nor is the idea of “parallel universes” unique to me.In the beginning God created the heavens (plural) and the earth.
Genesis 1:1

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.
1Cor. 12:2

… science cannot prove or disprove the notion of fairies …

Nor can science prove nor disprove that the Hell of the damned does not exist.

 

[Matt16_18]

Ghosty:

Tell that to the Pope and the Magesterium that has never seen fit to correct this notion, even when praising the very theories that suggest it.

Here is a link to the Pope John Paul II’s Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Please show me where the Pope speaks anywhere about the pre-Fall universe. Please show me where he “endorses” materialist evolution.

Also tell it to Scripture, which states plainly that animals and humans ate plants in Eden, therefore causing death.

Please quote me the scriptures that backs this up.

God did not subject humans to decay and death originally, which is what all of those years of Church teaching were addressing, and I’m not suggesting that God did. … There was nothing ever raised about death and decay existing aside from the human condition.

I have already quoted several times the paragraphs from the Catechism that clearly contradict what you are saying. The Catholic Church has always taught that the physical world became subject to death, disease, and decay after Adam and Eve committed the original sin.

 

[Matt16_18]

THE MIND OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

The beginning of the Church

It is a teaching of the holy Fathers that with the creation of the angels we have the emergence of the first Church. And it can be seen in the writings of the Fathers of the Church that the angels too are members of the Church. Moreover, God the Father is the creator of “all things visible and invisible”. Among the invisible are listed the angels, who sing in praise of God. In the book of Job this witness is preserved: “when the stars were born all the angels in a loud voice sang in praise of me” (Job 38,7). Thus, before the creation of the sensible world there were angels, who sang in praise of God for the creation. And, to be sure, this means that the angels were the first to be created by God.

The fact that the angels are members of the Church, since they sing in praise of God, appears in many troparia. I would like to mention one of these: “By Thy Cross, O Christ, one flock came into being, of angels and men, and one Church: heaven and earth rejoice; O Lord, glory to Thee”. Angels and men belong to the same Flock, to the same Church after the incarnation of Christ. But this means that this unity also existed in the life before the fall. …The first Church was completed with the creation of man, Adam and Eve, and their being placed in Paradise. So it is that men sang praises to the glory of God with the angels.

Adam and Eve lived an angelic life in Paradise. They were in the state of illumination of the nous, which is the first degree of the vision of God. They had communion with God.

According to the teaching of the holy Fathers, Paradise was tangible and intelligible. This is said by St. Gregory the Theologian and is repeated by St. John of Damaskos. The tangible Paradise was a particular place, and the intelligible Paradise was the communion and union of man with God. And of course the two Paradises interpenetrated, in the sense that the Paradise of Eden was receiving God’s uncreated energy.

St. Gregory of Sinai gives us an interpretation of Paradise, which was the second period of the Church. He writes that Paradise was twofold, “tangible and intelligible, namely that in Eden and that of grace”. About the Paradise of Eden he says that it was not completely incorruptible nor completely corruptible, but it had been created “between corruption and incorruption”. The trees that were in Paradise had their natural cycle of flower-bearing, fruit-bearing and the falling of the fruits. When the ripe fruits fell to the ground, and when the trees decayed “they became fragrant dust and did not have a stench like the plants of the world”. There was the natural recycling in the trees and plants, but since Adam had not yet lost the grace of God and therefore the deep darkness had not fallen on the whole creation, there was no decay, a stench did not prevail. There was the whole cycle, but not also decay and stench. And this was so, as St. Gregory of Sinai says, “because of the great wealth and holiness of the ever-abounding grace there”.

Through Adam’s fall, man’s communion with God, with himself, and with the whole creation was broken. Thus man was wearing the garments of the skin of decay and mortality, and of course the whole creation fell into darkness, and “has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Rom. 8,22).

However, in spite of Adam’s fall, the Church does not disappear completely. Man struggles to restore his communion with God and attempts it through various forms of religion, because he has lost the true mindfulness and real knowledge of God.

 

[SCTA-1]

I’m still waiting for someone to address the Eden issue and its location in modern Iraq and not some alternate universe.According to Genesis, Eden was located on this planet and not in another dimension.

 

[ISABUS]

Matt, I was under the impression you are a Roman Catholic. Are you? If not will you please tell me what your religion or faith is.

I’m trying to have a better understanding of where you are coming from with this issue of Adam and Eve. I noted in one of your threads #200 dated August 13, 2004 under the topic ‘Purgatory View’ that you stated the following:

The Beatific Vision isn’t God, it is our participation in the life of God. The Beatific Vision, considered as an act, is a created grace, for it has a beginning in time.

Is this in need of correction? In the encyclopedia section of my Holy Catholic Bible it states ‘The Beatific Vision is the immediate knowledge of God which constitutes the primary felicity of Heaven. The souls of the blessed see God directly and face to face, unveiled, clearly, openly, as He is in Himself; and in this vision they equally enjoy God. This vision is supernatural, not proper to our human nature, so that the intellect of the blessed is supernaturally enlightened by the Light of Glory. The primary object of the Vision is God Himself as He is, in all His perfections and in the three persons of the Trinity. The secondary object of the Vision includes all the mysteries that the individual soul believed while on earth, the sight, recognition and enjoyment of those loved on earth, and knowledge of the prayers and veneration addressed to them by those still on earth.’

Catechism #163-- Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God “face to face, “as he is.” So faith is already the beginning of eternal life: When we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, as if gazing at a reflection in a mirror, it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things which our faith assures us we shall one day enjoy.

There’s no mention that I can find in the online Catholic New American Bible, the Catechism, or elsewhere that Adam and Eve saw GOD. Can you locate anything for me that might state otherwise?
(continued)

 

[ISABUS]

(2 of 2)

Here are a few excerpts from Genesis that were taken from the Vatican’s New American Bible that I thought might be of interest:

Genesis Chapter 2

2 the LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.
[2] God is portrayed as a potter molding man’s body out of clay. There is a play on words in Hebrew between adam (“man”) and adama (“ground”). Being: literally, “soul.”
vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__P4.HTM#$6
Genesis Chapter 6
1 When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them,
2 the sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose.

[1-4] This is apparently a fragment of an old legend that had borrowed much from ancient mythology. The sacred author incorporates it here, not only in order to account for the prehistoric giants of Palestine, whom the Israelites called the Nephilim, but also to introduce the story of the flood with a **moral orientation - the constantly increasing wickedness of mankind. **
[2] The sons of heaven: literally “the sons of the gods” or “the sons of God,” i.e., the celestial beings of mythology.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__P8.HTM

Matt, are you aware that many Roman Catholic scholars agree that Adam and Eve are symbols and much of Genesis is based on ancient myth?

Thanks,

Isabus

 

[Matt16_18]

ISABUS:

Matt, I was under the impression you are a Roman Catholic. Are you?

Yes, I am a Roman Catholic.

I noted in one of your threads #200 dated August 13, 2004 under the topic ‘Purgatory View’ that you stated the following:

The Beatific Vision isn’t God, it is our participation in the life of God. The Beatific Vision, considered as an act, is a created grace, for it has a beginning in time.

Is this in need of correction?

I believe I am quoting Dr. Ludwig Ott. No, I don’t think this quote needs correction. Our knowledge of God, is not the same thing as God. God creates within us the knowledge of him, and that knowledge of God is a created grace. God is, of course, uncreated.

There’s no mention that I can find in the online Catholic New American Bible, the Catechism, or elsewhere that Adam and Eve saw GOD. Can you locate anything for me that might state otherwise?

Adam and Eve had the preternatural gift of infused knowledge of God. They could converse with God in the Garden. Adam and Eve knew God in a way that the children of the wrath do not, and that is why Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience is so very great, and had such terrible consequences. But Adam and Eve’s pre-Fall knowledge of God is not the same thing as the beatific vision. The angels did not have the beatific vision of God before they fell either. No creature that sees the beatific vision would be capable of sinning, ever.

Adam and Eve were, however, predestined by God to see the beatific vision. This is what the Catechism of the Church means when it says Adam was destined to be “divinized” :**
Cathechism of the Catholic Church
398 ** In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.

Matt, are you aware that many Roman Catholic scholars agree that Adam and Eve are symbols and much of Genesis is based on ancient myth?

Yes, I am. But the Catechism speaks against this way of reading Genesis.**Catechism of the Catholic Church

How to read the account of the fall

390** The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

 

[Charity]

hecd2:

… I’ve belayed now, so I contemplate the mile of air beneath my feet with equanimity.

Thanks for accomodating my airy ideas…and thanks for enriching my mountaineering vocab…[belayed-I had to look that one up.)

My experience of University common rooms is a huge acceptance of bizarre speculations and hypotheses over endless coffee, many of which led to serious work and serious results.

I went to a secular university where religious discussion was taboo. Let’s imagine the medical embryology course:

Student:
“Uhmm, excuse me, Dr. Frankenstein, would you offer an expert opinion on the possibility of a mircualous Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the Dogma of The Holy Roman Catholic Church, in which the resultant zygote would posess the spiritual quality of being perfectly free from all stain of original sin and future actual sin, as well as the properties of a phenotypically normal female appearance, yet possessing both the karyotype of the maternal X & paternal Y, but maybe not posessing the accumulated mutational load of previous ancestors. Describe a potential sequence of events consistent with said characteristics, carefully ruling out any option which implies imperfection, androgyny, impropriety, or heresy while taking into account known processes such as superfecundation, polyovulation, chimeric fusion, triploidy, mosaicism, etc., as well as unknown but explorational hypotheses like superploidy, etc. ?”

Professor: " See me after class."

I don’t see how Mary could have been a true hermaphrodite, because then she would have not been the perfect, beautiful woman that she was.

CCC The Immaculate Conception

491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God,134 was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.135

492 The “splendour of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son”.136 The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love”.137

493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All-Holy” (Panagia), and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature”.138 By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.
“Let it be done to me according to your word. . .”

cont’d next post…

 

[Charity]

Cont’d. from previous post…

hecd2:

Poor Adam. No lust. Perhaps that’s why wandered off and got into mischief!

Actually, lust is VERY different from self-giving sexual desire in marriage. Adam & Eve DID experience an integrated sexual desire for each other, experiencing the nuptial meaning of the body. Yes, their conjugal relations were harmonious and satisfactory; Adam did not get into trouble because of lack of sex; but because he failed to submit his will to God and respect his creaturely dependence upon His Creator. Lust is a *result *of the Fall. The Theology of the Body exquisitely explains this phenomena of original man…Have you read it?

…the human genome shows no sign of a sudden degrading event and every sign of unremarkable evolution within the phylogeny of primates

It should show signs of the Fall…Don’t you think that the difference between man & animal is great enough that the human genome SHOULD show a remarkable uniqueness? Or does man’s extraordinary uniquenesss have NO correlate in his anatomy, physiology, & genetics, save the 2% difference b/t us & chimp? Does our sublimity and radical differentiation from animals only reside in the soul?

Take the current human genome and reverse it… Take it back as far as possible… What do you get? Ten thousand WHAT? Original Man reconstructed, Historical Man a posteriori?

According to our faith, the original condition of man was BETTER than the current. Immortality, happiness, holiness, innocence, non-violence, harmony between the sexes, naked without shame, painless childbearing for mom, and easier work day for dad. What genotype could possibly produce any of these qualities? … A change in prostaglandin synthesis or nocioceptive pain receptors could affect partuition, etc…

Is it possible to populate the world with 3.5 billion people from the genes of one man and the one woman derived (maybe?) from him? What would his gene map have had to consist of to propagate the current diversity of races, and variety of morphology; including the effects of evolutionary changes since then? Has this computer simulation been run?

It’s quite hard to speculate about a prelapasarian state if one has no reason to believe in a literal Adam and Eve and a literal Fall and good reason to dibelieve them

It’s not hard to speculate about anything, unless one is obstinate. Even the most inept defense attorney can produce speculation about the most bizarre, wild, scenarios in an attempt to induce reasonable doubt in the jurors, so as to win acquittal for his (obviously guilty) client. I am speculating whether we can OPEN our collective minds in this forum to plumb the depths and belay the heights of the mountaintop experience of God’s truth.

 

[ISABUS]

Hi Matt, I am responding to your thread #194 which is in response to my threads #192 and #193.

I’m a Roman Catholic too! Here is part of your ‘Purgatory View’ thread #200 found on this url:
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=149122#post149122

**Fr Ambrose commented, “**We do have a difference here of some importance. The Orthodox would say that if the “Beatific Vision” is a created thing, then it cannot be God.”

Matt, your response to Fr. Ambrose was, "The Beatific Vision isn’t God, it is our participation in the life of God. The Beatific Vision, considered as an act, is a created grace, for it has a beginning in time.

“We can rightly say that anything that has a beginning in time is created by God. For example, a man is created by God in time, and he is brought to the beatific vision in time. But the “the gift which is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated”, i.e. God gives the man the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated, and without the gift of the Holy Spirit, a man can never see the Beatific Vision.”#

Matt, you still haven’t provided me any sources that confirms what you have stated is the truth. I’m not in agreement with your comment. As I have already mentioned ‘The Beatific Vision’ is God. I’ve supplied you with sources that specifically state that to be a truth based on our Catholic faith (refer to my thread #194). From the very beginning God has remained the ‘the three persons of the Trinity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’. The first soul created by God most definately did ‘see God directly and face to face, unveiled, clearly, openly’ since ‘the soul (intellect) is supernaturally enlightened by the Light of Glory.’

As you are aware there is no mention of Adam or Eve, nor Paradise in the Cathechism of the Catholic Church. Please correct me if I am wrong. I do think our first ‘parents’ were a female and male who had soul-spirit-conscience.

Thanks,
Isabus

 

[hecd2]

Matt16_18:

What qualifies YOU to judge that what I am saying is “unconventional” theology? By whose standards is what I have said “unconventional”? I gave you a quote from St. Hildegarde where she says that paradise still exists - a statement that is supported by the text of Genesis. You, on the other hand, are a scoffer that doubts the existence of angels. Why should I accept that you have a firm grasp of conventional theology?

My dear chap, you don’t have to accept a word that I say. Suit yourself.

However, you are labouring under the misapprehension that one has to accede to ideas in order to understand them and to describe them. If that were right, then the science of human anthropology would be impossible. So not only is the position that you take above fallacious in that respect, but the converse is also false. Being a believer does not necessarily equip one with a good knowledge of theology. This was brought home to me by the bizarre ideas (bizarre compared with Catholic dogma) I encountered in the minds of ever so many devout believers in the many years that I was a practising Catholic.

The fact remains that your idea that the Garden of Eden is located in a parallel universe is unconventional and is not supported by Scripture, nor by the Church Fathers, nor by dogmatic and other doctrinal papal declarations, nor by the CCC nor by the Catholic Encyclopaedia

From scripture we know that the immortal bodies of Adam and Eve were transformed into mortal bodies by the Fall. Scriptures give us no details of how this happened, and those details are not important for our salvation. Scripture also teaches that death, disease, and decay entered into the physical creation after the Fall.

But we know from observation that these things existed in this universe (which is at least part if not all of physical creation) since the Big Bang 13.7 billion. So, did the Fall take place 13.7 billion years ago. Yes or no?

This is conventional theology. Your theology is not conventional, because your theology assumes creation was infected with death from the beginning, and that a death driven process of evolution brought forth a race of human beings.

I don’t have a theology in that sense. Observation (not assumption) tells me 1) that decay existed in the universe since its inception, and death since the first living thing appeared 13.7 billion and 3 billion years ago respectively and 2) that human beings are a member of the phyletic group of primates and that there genomic evolution is unremarkable.

But that is not the point. My observation about the unconventional nature of your idea compares it with the conventional religious view, not with science.

cont/d

 

[hecd2]

Matt16_18:

continued …

The progeny of Adam and Eve are born as children of the wrath with mortal bodies in the fallen world. At the resurrection of the dead, the corpses of the dead will be transformed into immortal bodies.

What happened to the immortal bodies that Adam and Eve occupied in the parallel universe?

Genesis says that Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden because of their sin – Genesis does not say that the Garden of Eden was destroyed by Adam and Eve’s sin, nor that death and decay entered the Garden. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Gen. 3:24
Many saints have contemplated this verse, and they have believed it means exactly what it says – the Garden of Eden still exists. Nor is the idea of “parallel universes” unique to me. In the beginning God created the heavens (plural) and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

Not in my copies of the KJV, the Douay-Reims, and the New Jerusalem bible all of which use the word ‘heaven’. I think the use of ‘heavens’ in the New American bible is meant in the same sense as we say - ‘I looked up to the heavens’, and has nothing to do with parallel universes. ‘Heavens’ is commonly used to mean the cosmos in this singular universe entirely synonymously with ‘heaven’.

Nor can science prove nor disprove that the Hell of the damned does not exist.

We have agreed for some time that science can neither prove nor disprove Hell, Heaven, Purgatory, God, the Devil, fairies, goblins, Narnia, the Land of Oz, Gondor, orcs, angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, Zeus, Thor, little green men, astral travel, apparitions, visions of saints, or any other purely spiritual belief or supernatural being or ‘place’. We are agreed and need never revisit this question again.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[Charity]

ISABUS:

As you are aware there is no mention of Adam or Eve, nor Paradise in the Cathechism of the Catholic Church. Please correct me if I am wrong…

Dear ISABUS,

There is a helpful word list and concordance for the Catechism of the Catholic Church(CCC) at the vatican website.

Frequency of listings in the CCC for:

Adam 44
Eve 26
Adam & Eve 5
Paradise 14
Garden (of Eden) 2
Evolution 1

It has everything, including the kitchen sink!

I hope you find these tools useful in your apologetics efforts. Happy Apologising!

P.S. What does ISABUS mean?

P.S.S. One may right click on any of these blue links and drag and drop them onto one’s browser links toolbar and create a shortcut for frequent reference.