Original Sin & Evolution

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edwest211 said:
Souls do not have a scientific explanation, so there is no reason to believe this.
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God does not have a scientific explanation either. Are you really sure you want to go down that route?

Humani Generis clearly separates the physical human body – “coming from pre-existent and living matter” – from the human soul – “immediately created by God”. Was I wrong to follow official catholic teaching in this?

rossum
 
Your interpretation is too personal. The Church teaches that human beings consist of two parts, a physical and spiritual body. Our body is called “the Temple of the Holy Spirit.” Science would ignore that second part. Why do you mention God? Science cannot study God.
 
@FatherMerrin

There are three main possibilities in terms of Original Sin and Evolution.
  1. Adam and Eve came about, Fell. Maybe it was the Apple, maybe it was something else. Maybe it was in the Garden, maybe the Garden is a metaphor for their overall state with preturnatural gifts that they lost post-Sin. Science doesn’t bare out that the human population was ever as low as 2, but there’s the longshot that something special happened.
  2. Same as before, except that (to borrow from Rossum) their human children had children with the humas around them. Edward Fraser has a rather interesting paper on such a theory.
  1. When Pope Pius XII declared polygenism against the faith, part of it was that the theory of human evolution was different. Today, we have the out-of-Africa theory where all humans came from a group in Africa. Back when PPXII wrote Humani Generis, the theory had humans emerging from separate groups all over the world. So how could a sin in Europe affect the Australian humans? It was irreconcilable. But using what we know now, suppose a group in Africa (containing all humans) sinning. All bearing the guilt of their collective action, Original Sin can still be seen. thomisticevolution.org (I highly recommend it as a great place to reconcile faith and evolution overall) has an interesting set of four essays that begins here. (The 2nd one deals explicitly with Original Sin.)
http://www.thomisticevolution.org/d...city-of-adam-and-eve-part-i-theological-data/
 
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Here we go with evolution again.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t believe it. It doesn’t seem to be compatible with original sin, as well as other things. You’ll probably get some kind of politically correct answer to that objection which really isn’t an answer.
 
spockrates said:
I see. So, yeah, no. My answer was that even if evolution was God’s chosen method of creation, Adam and Eve did exist. That is, the first human male and female did exist, even if they did not call each other by those names, or even if they spoke no language at all.

The inference, then is that they evolved with original sin being part of who they were, as did their offspring.

Make sense?
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Yes, it does. Thank you.
 
Dan_Defender said:
Mitochondrial DNA studies support that all humans have a common ancestor.
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Yeah, yeah; they would say that wouldn’t they? I suspect a lot of scientists tell a lot of tall tales in the name of evolution. Evolutionists spin a lot of bs about the fossil record, too. Ya can’t trust 'em.

Genesis 2:7 rules out any chance of human evolution, I should think.
 
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Sedona said:
The authors of the Old Testament were not writing history.
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If the findings of geological science are to be believed, they have revealed that the ‘six days’ description of creation is not literal, but I believe the OT begins to describe literal history at the point where Adam and Eve are created. Personally, I prefer to believe the Bible (ie, the inspired Word of God) rather than the opinions of the scientific community - origins science is dominated by evolution-obsessed atheists, after all. Who knows what false ideas Satan puts in the minds of such people?
 
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Dan_Defender said:
Mitochondrial DNA studies support that all humans have a common ancestor. The specifics are debatable, but a common ancestor has not been disproved by science. Also, Darwinian evolution is one theory. Theistic evolution is more likely.
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Is there any scientifically-definable difference between Darwinian evolution and Theistic evolution? It seems to me that the two are just alternate ways of of describing the same scientific phenomenon. That is, what thought experiment could you propose to test which of these two is actually true?

From a philosophical perspective these two are very different. But the differences are not amenable to scientific differentiation.
 
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Roseeurekacross said:
everything has a scientific explanation because God created science
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What?! How can science explain Transubstantiation? How can science explain a dead man rising from the dead? How can science explain God creating the universe out of NOTHING?
 
semper_catholicus said:
Here we go with evolution again.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t believe it. It doesn’t seem to be compatible with original sin, as well as other things. You’ll probably get some kind of politically correct answer to that objection which really isn’t an answer.
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This is why I think progressive creation is a much better explanation for Catholics than evolution. Not only does progressive creation fit the geological and fossil records much better than evolution, it is theologically friendly as well.
 
Edgar said:
What?! How can science explain Transubstantiation?
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great question. and one God can explain. And we might be able to explain when we are more knowledgeable.

but we must move past the old dichotomy that its either or, its either natural or supernatural. Because God works in both and has firmly placed the supernatural in the natural, in things like transubstantiation and miracles and prayer and in the communion of saints.
 
This talks about “true men”. I see “true men” as a physically human body, as produced by evolution, with a human soul directly produced by God.

Start with a population of almost-humans who are physically like us, but unsouled. Call then ‘huma’ because they are not quite human. God gives two huma souls, so they become human, in both body and soul. If you like, the second human can be created from the first’s rib.

Those two humans, Adam and Eve, have children, to whom God also gives souls.

To solve the problem of human genetic diversity allow Seth and his siblings to marry into the huma population around them. They are biologically compatible, with compatible DNA, so those marriages will be fertile and any children will be descended from both Adam and Eve as grandparents. God can give those children souls.

Hence there is a single human couple who are ancestors of all living humans, while the huma provide the required genetic diversity we see in modern populations. Eventually all huma die out as ensouled humans spread; only one ensouled human is needed in a couple to allow all children of that couple to be themselves ensouled.

To me that scenario seems to satisfy biology: a minimum population of 10,000 breeding pairs, and descent from a single couple. By treating souls separately from DNA and physical bodies the apparent paradox can be resolved.
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This is probably the most intriguing answer I’ve received so far.
 
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The externals are the same. The difference is the underlying cause/mechanism. In one case it is random mutations in the other it is the guiding hand of God.
 
semper_catholicus said:
I’m not familiar with progressive creation.
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It matches the fossil record - relatively simple life-forms appeared first, followed by more complex organisms, until we get to man. It may look like biological evolution to some (atheists, esp), but the different life-forms are actually separate an distinct creations (as witnessed by the many gaps in the fossil record, with its distinct lack of transitional fossils). For example, man didn’t evolve from some kind of ape, but was a separate and distinct creation (as described in Genesis 2:7). This process of progressive creation may have taken millions of years.
 
Dan_Defender said:
The externals are the same. The difference is the underlying cause/mechanism. In one case it is random mutations in the other it is the guiding hand of God.
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I could accept (God-guided) evolution … except when it comes to man, whom I believe would have been a separate creation … made from inanimate matter. This point of view is mainly based on Genesis 2:7 and the fact that Christ was “begotten, not made”.
 
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