Polygenism/Monogenism

[Petergee]

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.

It’s not only likely, but it is one thing that Catholic doctrine and modern science agree is certainly true.

 

[Faith1960]

It’s not only likely, but it is one thing that Catholic doctrine and modern science agree is certainly true.

Is that so? Please share recently written links with us from modern scientists.

 

[Faith1960]

Interesting.

edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-i.html

edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-ii.html

 

[Petergee]

Is that so? Please share recently written links with us from modern scientists.

There have been dozens of them on this thread. Please pay attention.

 

[Faith1960]

There have been dozens of them on this thread. Please pay attention.

I’ve yet to see anything recently written by well respected scientists who support monogenism. Sorry.

 

[Julia_Mae]

Petergee;10188788:

Originally Posted by Julia Mae

The way Rossum explained it, it makes some sense, but if you believe that at one time the popuation consisted of two people (people in the way science identifies people, not faith) which seems to fly in the face of scientific fact, then that doesn’t make sense to me.

You realize I didn’t say this, Petergee did, asking me if that is my proposition. The quotey-thing messed up.

edit: interesting! It messed up the same way when I quoted you!!

 

[Julia_Mae]

Wow. So, in English it’s saying…what? That we may have risen from a single couple OR a population of humans but the first human was whom God infused a soul into, that human we call Adam?

With respect to the immediate creation of the human soul, Catholic theology affirms that particular actions of God bring about effects that transcend the capacity of created causes acting according to their natures. The appeal to divine causality to account for genuinely causal as distinct from merely explanatory gaps does not insert divine agency to fill in the “gaps” in human scientific understanding (thus giving rise to the so-called "God of the gaps”). The structures of the world can be seen as open to non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world. Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called “an ontological leap…the moment of transition to the spiritual.” While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe.

No, it’s not saying that. The bolded part is key. It’s saying through the natural course of processes in nature, God made sure that we would emerge at some as people who could make that “ontological leap to the spiritual.” Adam is representative of the first humans able to do this, those in whom God could infuse the spiritual soul.

 

[Julia_Mae]

The age of the earth is not a Catholic dcotrine. The existence of a real Adam and Eve is a Catholic doctrine.

Yet, nowhere in the thread do we have anything from the compendium of Catholic dogma and doctrine, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that says this.

 

[Julia_Mae]

Our first parents, before the Fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace.

Our “first parents,” before the Fall, existed as spirit, not in flesh.

 

[Julia_Mae]

Everything living has a soul for it is the animating principle. Properly speaking humans since Adam and Eve have an immortal rational soul.

No, this is incorrect. The animating principle is spirit - not soul. It is the same for all of Creation. Soul is an individual consciousness, a person.

 

[Petergee]

I’ve yet to see anything recently written by well respected scientists who support monogenism. Sorry.

I was referring to your statement that

I just know that it’s highly unlikely that we descended from two people.

 

[Julia_Mae]

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.

Ancient Teeth in Israel May Point to Oldest Ancestors

Ths is really nothing whatsoever to go on. We have this plethora of possibilities and nothing published in any scholarly journal.

First, at 1.8 mya the brain was half the size of a modern human, because we are talking about Homo erectus, so, I don’t see the issue. We’ve always known erectus migrated out of Africa and spread all over the Old World before anatomically modern humans appeared and replaced them.

And garbage dumps are terrible sites for dating anything, anyway, as the layers tend to get jumbled together. But everyone likes a bit of publicity.

The only serious challenge to out of Africa came from Chinese paleoanthropologists, but that was set aside a decade ago. The genetics is unassailable.

you do the rest…

 

[Julia_Mae]

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.

Nice post. The Church agrees with you, in the CCC at least.

 

[Anthony_V]

Yet, nowhere in the thread do we have anything from the compendium of Catholic dogma and doctrine, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that says this.

Catechetics and Dogma are two different things.

Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Written by Dr. Ludwigg Ott)
Section two, the Divine Work of Creation, Chapter 2
The whole human race stems from one single human pair. Sent. certa.

Heinreich Denzinger systematic index:
4. Man; A. The Origin of Mankind
C4A: Adam and Eve were the first human beings created by God. Polygenism is condemned. See Propositions of Zaninus de Solcia Condemned in the Letter Cum sicut accepimus, November 14, 1459:

Condemned proposition: God created another world than this one, and in its time many other men and women existed, and consequently Adam was not the first man. [There are men who do not descend from Adam through natural generation].

When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam now represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.
Humani generis, The Application of the Positive Sciences to Religion, Paragraph 4

 

[Julia_Mae]

When God made Adam, he did so by personally creating a union of body and spirit, which is the soul.

This isn’t what the Church teaches, iirc.

God created humankind in His Image - and God is not female or male, but purely spirit. Once these spiritual beings decided they wanted to be oned with God, to become like God, they had to be sent away, clothed in mortality (including flesh) and only able to return through death.

 

[Anthony_V]

Our “first parents,” before the Fall, existed as spirit, not in flesh.

That is called Origenism, and it was condemned at the synod of Constantinople (Second Council of Constantinople) in 537-555;

If anyone says or holds that human souls had a previous existence, viz., that first they were spirits or blessed powers… let him be anathema.

 

[Julia_Mae]

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.

I can name many, but for this discussion we only need two.

Species aren’t, or haven’t classically, been defined as populations whose members can be genetically compatible, but as those who in nature, interbreed to produce viable offspring. If two populations cannot do that, M1-F2 and M2-F1, they are not members of the same species. If they do it M1-F2 but not F1-M2, or vice-versa, they are subspecies of one another.

We also classify as different species, those who can mate and produce viable offspring, but in nature do not, usually because the populations are geographically separated. But some groups have changed so much physically, that in sexual selection, the other group is not recognizable as “self” and they simply won’t mate with one another. This is how Darwin’s finches speciated when they were all confined to a small set of islands.

So, by example: The BiAka people of the Western Congo Basin are a very ancient nomadic pygmy tribe. The Abatutsi people of Central Africa average over 7’ in height. These two peoples would not encounter each other for mating, but if they did, while it is theoretically possible that BiAka males could produce viable offspring with Abatuitsi females, it is not possible for Abatutsi males to produce viable offspring with BiAka females. The woman’s anatomy precludes carrying the infant to term. These two groups not only do not, but cannot produce viable offspring in nature and so, if we use pure science and treat H. Sap like we do any other species, they are subspecies.

Because human young are so very altricial already, nature pushes the biological envelope and makes our babies as big as possible when they are born, which is why you can confidently sex a skeleton with half a pelvic girdle. Indigenous African peoples are at much greater genetic distance from one another than all other peoples. A Norseman is genetically closer to an Australian aborigine than a BiAka is to an Abatutsi.

The whole of the human race really makes up what is called a “ring species.” A whole series of subspecies that often interbreed at the edges of their populations, but as they become more physically, geographically and genetically distant, no longer do or no longer can. What is unscientific, is the refusal to simply recognize this, which keeps some important work in genetics from being done because the politics means: you cannot even write a grant to study it.

(Of course, we are rapidly erasing almost all of these geographic boundaries in modern times and many of these boundaries are being erased. )

 

[Julia_Mae]

Catechetics and Dogma are two different things.

Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Written by Dr. Ludwigg Ott):

Nice try. But not from the Magisterium. I mean, I can write a book called “Fundamental Catholic Dogma,” too. Pope Benedict XVI has already written on the topic for the Vatican and not been at all fussed about polygenism. It’s been quotes several times ITT.

 

[Anthony_V]

This isn’t what the Church teaches, iirc.

God created humankind in His Image - and God is not female or male, but purely spirit. Once these spiritual beings decided they wanted to be oned with God, to become like God, they had to be sent away, clothed in mortality (including flesh) and only able to return through death.

Where the blazes do you get your theology?

The imago Dei does pertain to the fact that a human being has a spirit, yes, but it is not, and in fact cannot claim that the imago Dei makes humans a sort of spiritual being in essence, because the imago Dei is not the essence of the human nature. Please, go read some St. Maximus Confessor’s Ambiguum 7 or something. I don’t even know where to start with this one.

 

[Anthony_V]

Nice try. But not from the Magisterium. I mean, I can write a book called “Fundamental Catholic Dogma,” too. Pope Benedict XVI has already written on the topic for the Vatican and not been at all fussed about polygenism. It’s been quotes several times ITT.

I’d like to see your sources.