Polygenism/Monogenism

[Faith1960]

I would love him to be part of this dialogue…

This resource page has the latest science…

I can assure you that regardless of what they tell me, I won’t be sharing here, lest it becomes fodder for more debate.

 

[Faith1960]

Genetic study challenges theory that modern humans came from just one place in Africa

Read more: dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2207097/Genetic-study-challenges-theory-modern-humans-came-just-place-Africa.html#ixzz2GfP5xuLI

Skull Fossil Challenges Out-of-Africa Theory

“Before this find, the main reason was that at least these humans had big brains,” said David Lordkipanidze, a paleoanthropologist at the Georgian State Museum in Tbilisi who led the excavation team. “Now this shows that [their brains] were quite small.”
The brain of the new specimen from Dmanisi is about half the size of a modern human’s brain. The two skulls found in 1999 at the site are also about 1.8 million years old and had room for substantially larger brains.

Do you have anything more recent?

 

[MarkInOregon]

I can assure you that regardless of what they tell me, I won’t be sharing here, lest it becomes fodder for more debate.

When do you believe we became human with a soul? Do you think the soul gradually developed? Are you proposing God ensouled a whole group? Are you claiming all of our apparent ancestors were ensouled humans? What was the process of our creation by God in your opinion? Could you spell out what you think a little more clearly so that we can better understand the problem you are having? Just what is your understanding of the process? Maybe however we cannot go into that as it may violate forum rules?

Peace,
Mark

 

[Faith1960]

When do you believe we became human with a soul? Do you think the soul gradually developed? Are you proposing God ensouled a whole group? Are you claiming all of our apparent ancestors were ensouled humans? What was the process of our creation by God in your opinion? Could you spell out what you think a little more clearly so that we can better understand the problem you are having? Just what is your understanding of the process? Maybe however we cannot go into that as it may violate forum rules?

Peace,
Mark

I’m willing to admit that I don’t have the answers, though many in the sciences do. I can’t speak on how humans came to have souls, I just know that it’s highly unlikely that we descended from two people.

 

[rossum]

The out of Africa idea is being challenged today.

References please.

Science is provisional and is always being revised. The truth of Revelation is not.

Except for things like usury, slavery etc.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

From your own link: ‘It is possible that modern humans emerged from a non-homogeneous group,’ said Mattias Jakobsson from Sweden’s Uppsala University, one of the authors.

Many of these same articles do that. It is possible… (insert what you want)

Over time the dots can be connected. Remember, these articles are always trying to defend the current paradigm.

Modern Humans Emerged Far Earlier Than Previously Thought, Fossils from China Suggest

[

](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...est-human-fossil-china-out-of-africa-science/) Oldest Modern Human Outside of Africa Found

Chinese fossil challenges traditional early-human time line, study says.

Neandertals ‘Hardly Differed at All’ from Modern Humans

Laetoli Footprints Fully Modern Too Early

                                                          	**[Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100217-crete-primitive-humans-mariners-seafarers-mediterranean-sea/)**

Prehistoric axes found on a Greek island suggest that seafaring existed in the Mediterranean more than a hundred thousand years earlier than thought.

Is the Hobbit’s brain unfeasibly small?

 

[Faith1960]

Many of these same articles do that. It is possible… (insert what you want)

Over time the dots can be connected. Remember, these articles are always trying to defend the current paradigm.

Modern Humans Emerged Far Earlier Than Previously Thought, Fossils from China Suggest

[

](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...est-human-fossil-china-out-of-africa-science/) Oldest Modern Human Outside of Africa Found

Chinese fossil challenges traditional early-human time line, study says.

Neandertals ‘Hardly Differed at All’ from Modern Humans

Laetoli Footprints Fully Modern Too Early

                                                          	**[Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100217-crete-primitive-humans-mariners-seafarers-mediterranean-sea/)**

Prehistoric axes found on a Greek island suggest that seafaring existed in the Mediterranean more than a hundred thousand years earlier than thought.

Is the Hobbit’s brain unfeasibly small?

I don’t have time to read all of this now, because I’ve got to get ready to go out to dinner soon but I’ll read more of what you’ve linked us to, later tonight or maybe tomorrow. From what I’ve read so far, I don’t see anything suggesting that monogenism is accepted by any scientists, and your link suggests there may have been interbreeding going on, which makes me further question things.

From your link:

<<<<Finding such an ancient example of a modern human in China would drastically alter the time line of human migration. The find may also mean that modern humans in China were mingling—and possibly even interbreeding—with other human species for 50,000 or 60,000 years.

(Related: “Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence.”)

What’s more, the find seems to suggest that anatomically modern humans had arrived in China long before the species began acting human.

For example, symbolic thought is a distinctly human trait that involves using things such as beads and drawings to represent objects, people, and events. The first strong evidence for this trait doesn’t appear in the archaeological record in China until 30,000 years ago, Trinkaus said.>>>>>>>>>>>

 

[buffalo]

I don’t have time to read all of this now, because I’ve got to get ready to go out to dinner soon but I’ll read more of what you’ve linked us to, later tonight or maybe tomorrow. From what I’ve read so far, I don’t see anything suggesting that monogenism is accepted by any scientists, and your link suggests there may have been interbreeding going on, which makes me further question things.

From your link:

<<<<Finding such an ancient example of a modern human in China would drastically alter the time line of human migration. The find may also mean that modern humans in China were mingling—and possibly even interbreeding—with other human species for 50,000 or 60,000 years.

(Related: “Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence.”)

What’s more, the find seems to suggest that anatomically modern humans had arrived in China long before the species began acting human.

For example, symbolic thought is a distinctly human trait that involves using things such as beads and drawings to represent objects, people, and events. The first strong evidence for this trait doesn’t appear in the archaeological record in China until 30,000 years ago, Trinkaus said.>>>>>>>>>>>

A take away is that these findings are all over the place. Working back in time is very tricky. Same with population genetics.

But one thing they know for sure - Adam and Eve could not exist.:banghead:

DNA news - now 80% is coding - down goes “junk DNA”

It is unlikely that you will find the mainstreamer’s who are predominantly atheist/agnostic admit to it outright. It will be some time before that happens, most likely till the next generation of scientists.

 

[buffalo]

Site hints at Asian roots for human genus
New finds in Caucasus suggest non-African origin for ancient Homo species

…
Early members of the genus Homo, possibly direct ancestors of people today, may have evolved in Asia and then gone to Africa, not vice versa as many scientists have assumed.
Most paleoanthropologists have favored an African origin for the potential human ancestor Homo erectus. But new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in Denton and his colleagues.

 

[buffalo]

faith1960 - when you get back share with me the top three evidences for there not being an Adam and Eve together with their base assumptions.

 

[Anthony_V]

First, we need to define terms. To the Church a human being is a human soul in a human body.

You are confusing the soul with the spirit. In the anthropogenic context, spirits are not substantial things infused into a body. God directly forms the soul, which is an immediate information [v] of the spirit and body into being. The union of the body and spirit is the soul, which is a person. Humans obviously share in that co-creation, but I digress.

My main point is that, for the purposes of this topic, you can’t go around infusing souls into material bodies and call it done turkey. If you did, then it really would be a life force trapped inside a material body. Or if you went around infusing spirits into material bodies, that would be more or less spiritual possession. It is Catholic doctrine that the body and spirit are co-essential to the nature of man. That’s why death is so horrible. It’s contrary to the human nature as a principle of identity.

 

[MacBP]

I’m going to take a shot at this since the Polygenism/Monogenism issue has troubled me too. With that said…

According to Wikipedia: Monogenism or sometimes monogenesis is the theory of human origins which posits a common descent for all human races. (If anyone is going to give me grief for using Wikipedia… some accuracy studies have said that’s it comparable to Encyclopedia Britannic. Wikipedia undergoes far more peer review than the average published paper. Finally, unless the information provided herein contradicts some otherwise well established finding I find its useless to say doesn’t matter it’s from Wikipedia. Rant done for the day. )

Monogenism does not seem to say that there was a population bottleneck of only two people. It only says that everyone on Earth descended from some common ancestor.

Could this occur? Well it already has. See mitochondrial eve. While she existed within a larger population we all carry her mitochondrial DNA; consequently, every human being on Earth that is alive today is descended from her.

So what’s to stop the same thing from happening with… say… a rational soul and a original sin. It’s very possible that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of every human alive today. As their descendants bred with those around them, their offspring were granted rational souls. In the same that mitchondrial eve’s line replaced everyone else, Adam and Eve’s line replaced the human population. Scientifically plausible and works with monogenism.

 

[fnr]

May I ask what is the theological reasoning for insisting on God’s special creation of humanity being two original humans? Is there a version of the Adam and Eve story compatible with evolutionary explanations for the origin of human species? For example, might we posit that Adam and Eve represented two groups of people and that Genesis 3 depicts the fall of these groups of people in allegorical terms? That even the birth of human civilization was the result of a dialectical process by which both original groups compromised themselves?

We can read Genesis as a description of human nature. As Dr. Scott Hahn points out in his book “Lord Have Mercy,” Adam and Eve respond to God after eating of the tree of knowledge by first hiding, then Adam blames Eve, and even God for putting Eve with him. This is a very good allegory of how people tend to evade admission of sin.

Later in Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel can also be viewed as an allegory of the agrarian revolution, with its attendant economic growth and increasingly hierarchical societies, destroyed the pastoral cultures that preceded them. In fact, the New American Bible notes that the Mark of Cain may represent face markings employed by the pastoral bedouins of the Middle East.

Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel both lead from Cain and Abel to the story of Abram, thus setting the stage for the story of the Patriarchs and the origins of the Jewish people. We already know that the story of Abram includes ethnic groups that didn’t exist in the Middle East until after 1000 BC. So it seems to me that we should read Genesis as a guide to God’s intention in creation, human nature and salvation history, as St. Paul seems to have used it. It takes nothing away from the Incarnation and Atonement to say that humanity is fallen by a process that is allegorically described by Genesis 2-3.

 

[fnr]

I’m going to take a shot at this since the Polygenism/Monogenism issue has troubled me too. With that said…

not seem to say that there was a population bottleneck of only two people. It only says that everyone on Earth descended from some common ancestor.

So what’s to stop the same thing from happening with… say… a rational soul and a original sin. It’s very possible that Adam and Eve were the ancestors of every human alive today. As their descendants bred with those around them, their offspring were granted rational souls. In the same that mitchondrial eve’s line replaced everyone else, Adam and Eve’s line replaced the human population. Scientifically plausible and works with monogenism.

I have no issue with that if we read it allegorically. We know that Neanderthals disappeared because they interbred with other more modern humans. Couldn’t we say that human intellect from its origin was tainted by concupiscence? That every person lives with the legacy of that prideful avarice that seems to underly all our natures?

 

[Faith1960]

            Most paleoanthropologists have favored an African origin for the potential human ancestor *Homo erectus*.  But new evidence shows the species occupied a West Asian site called  Dmanisi from 1.85 million to 1.77 million years ago, at the same time or  slightly before the earliest evidence of this humanlike species in  Africa, say geologist Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas in  Denton and his colleagues.

Are you okay with the idea of an old earth?

 

[Faith1960]

You are confusing the soul with the spirit. In the anthropogenic context, spirits are not substantial things infused into a body. God directly forms the soul, which is an immediate information [v] of the spirit and body into being. The union of the body and spirit is the soul, which is a person. Humans obviously share in that co-creation, but I digress.

My main point is that, for the purposes of this topic, you can’t go around infusing souls into material bodies and call it done turkey. If you did, then it really would be a life force trapped inside a material body. Or if you went around infusing spirits into material bodies, that would be more or less spiritual possession. It is Catholic doctrine that the body and spirit are co-essential to the nature of man. That’s why death is so horrible. It’s contrary to the human nature as a principle of identity.

I’d really like to hear more from you since you’re a seminarian. Do you think the first humans came from a group of people or one couple and how is this being explained to you and your fellow classmates?

 

[Faith1960]

biologos.org/blog/does-genetics-point-to-a-single-primal-couple

 

[Anthony_V]

I’d really like to hear more from you since you’re a seminarian. Do you think the first humans came from a group of people or one couple and how is this being explained to you and your fellow classmates?

I haven’t taken any classes on this yet (still taking core classes… ughh). I’m self-taught, and affirmed and critiqued by priest friends here and there. In fact, I’ve never actually taken any formal theology classes, so I can’t credit myself as a proper resource. Nevertheless, I will give you my understanding of the matter.

Though we are discussing a biological phenomenon, it is imperative that we remember how grace and sin are effected. It is imperative that there be a common ancestry for all human beings today, because original sin is a dogma of faith. It is not something illusory, as a metaphor of the human condition. Original sin is the fall of man from a life of communion with God in grace. The relationship between God and Adam/Eve was a real relationship. When God made Adam, he did so by personally creating a union of body and spirit, which is the soul. Soul comes from the word “pneuma” which means breath or spirit–literally, life-stuff. The human person is directly created of the life-stuff of God, by God, which is in his image. There is such a thing as a material soul, but we won’t go in that.

Man is made as a microcosm of the entire cosmos. As much as people have a hard time grasping it, the universe is anthropocentric. “How can it be us?” But any other species could ask the same thing. God chose to become a human, and this is something to gawk and then fall on the floor dead about. Talk about hearing the Gospel like the first Christians did! Jesus is the head of the human race, which he has adopted as his own in the incarnation. Jesus is the anthropos, as the new Adam, and the universe is anthropocentric.

[BIBLEDRB]Colossians 1:15-16[/BIBLEDRB]

God is never outdone in generosity. We are the apex between the spiritual and material orders, as well as predestined to be God’s crowning work of creation. That’s nothing to sneeze at! When man fell from the grace which God bestowed on him, this was a disaster of massive proportions. I have not looked deep enough into the matter, but some eastern traditions suggest that Christ would have come anyway: taking St. Athanasius’ famous words, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God,” as a strict paradigm. But I digress (again). The reality of original sin and the cosmic melodrama which follows as a result cannot be ignored.

I wrote a rather dense and dramatic article on Salvation as a two-fold mystery:
purelycatholic.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-mystery-of-our-salvation-pt-1.html
Read the introduction and then scroll down to the Imago Dei. I’m finding that article to be very useful.

Now, how does all this matter in regards to what you’re asking? I’m trying to exhibit the mind-boggling reality of original sin, and the even more immense reality of the grace of God, and how they are absolutely necessary to understanding man’s history. Man’s history, while natural, is not purely natural.

[BIBLEDRB]Romans 5:17[/BIBLEDRB]

 

[Petergee]

See, Peter, this is what always happens. The second someone from science tries to point out something scientific that flies in the face of some cultural taboo, all heck breaks loose in the moral self-righteousness arena.

Self-righteousness has nothing to do with it. I’m talking about facts known to science.

If you look up what has classically constituted species and subspecies, you will know that there are geographically isolated groups of H.sap that cannot interbreed naturally between both genders.

Oh, really? Please name one such group of Homo sapiens.

 

[Petergee]

Science doesnt have to prove everything but if it disproves something the Bible says, then that is a problem.

I see no problem. Science has not disproved anything that the Bible says, it never will and it never possibly can. Scientific truth cannot possibly contradict revealed truth.