Pope Francis: ‘Evolution … is not inconsistent with the notion of creation’

[Hans_W]

Did Neanderthals have souls?

When did we get souls? That’s the question people want to have answered.

And that question is treated as if the soul was something physical, like another organ, just not visible. People want a scientific proof, or at least a description or explanation which looks “scientific”. Since science only deals with the physical world and not with the supernatural, science won’t tell you anything about the soul.

I can’t imagine a hominid couple, mum and dad, looking down on their baby which suddenly got a soul because it turned into a homo sapiens. In my humble opinion we need to treat this as a mystery that we cannot understand with the help of our limited space-time understanding of the world. Does anybody want to explain the Virgin Birth through physics and chemistry?

That’s the problem we have today. Everything must have a scientific explanation, including the divine. For thousands of years people looked up in awe at a rainbow – that was a mystery to them. God made it. Now we can explain a rainbow through the laws of physics. And everything else needs to be explainable as well.

I am not belittling science now. When we can reconstruct how a fish turned into an amphibian over millions of years, or find the explanation for a rainbow – that’s great. That increases our appreciation of this wonderful world which God has created. But let’s not try to explain and analyse the divine with our limited reasoning, our microscopes and test tubes.

 

[edwest2]

That’s right. Science can’t study God or the soul. When two people in the past became “ensouled” is illogical and unscientific. Science has limits and there is knowledge that we need that goes beyond science. Raise the dead, give sight to the blind, instantly. That’s what God can do. Rise from the Dead? That’s what God can do.

Ed

 

[Thorolfr]

Neanderthals fit the profile of a racial group.

Except that the DNA genome of Neanderthals has been sequenced from ancient remains and it is distinct from that of Homo sapiens sapiens and is more than just a different racial group from any that exist today. That is to say, they didn’t just look different from our kind of humans.

 

[Faith1960]

Except that the DNA genome of Neanderthals has been sequenced from ancient remains and it is distinct from that of Homo sapiens sapiens and is more than just a separate racial group. That is to say, they didn’t just look different from our kind of humans.

I’ve been looking online to see if they were human or not. I can’t get a definitive answer.

 

[edwest2]

Modern humans have Neanderthal DNA. That we can show.

Ed

 

[Thorolfr]

I’ve been looking online to see if they were human or not. I can’t get a definitive answer.

I don’t think that the word “human” is really a scientific term. But in general usage, I think that the word “human” usually refers only to Homo sapiens sapiens. From a scientific standpoint, humans are just members of the hominin clade and a branch of great apes. As Wikipedia says:

Modern humans (Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens) are the only extant members of the hominin clade, a branch of great apes characterized by erect posture and bipedal locomotion; manual dexterity and increased tool use; and a general trend toward larger, more complex brains and societies.[3][4] Early hominids, such as the australopithecines whose brains and anatomy are in many ways more similar to non-human apes, are less often thought of or referred to as “human” than hominids of the genus Homo,[5] some of whom used fire, occupied much of Eurasia, and gave rise to [6][7] anatomically modern Homo sapiens in Africa about 200,000 years ago where they began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago.

In common usage, the word “human” generally refers to the only extant species of the genus Homo — anatomically and behaviorally modern Homo sapiens. Its usage often designates differences between the species as a whole and any other nature or entity.

In scientific terms, the definition of “human” has changed with the discovery and study of the fossil ancestors of modern humans. The previously clear boundary between human and ape blurred, resulting in “Homo” referring to “human” now encompassing multiple species. There is also a distinction between anatomically modern humans and Archaic Homo sapiens, the earliest fossil members of the species, which are classified as a subspecies of Homo sapiens, e.g. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

 

[Thorolfr]

Modern humans have Neanderthal DNA. That we can show.

I know and I myself have Neanderthal DNA. But that does not mean that Neanderthals are just a racial group similar to other racial groups that exist today, all of which belong to Homo sapiens sapiens and are more closely related to each other DNA-wise than what any of us are to Neanderthals. The amount of Neanderthal DNA in any modern human is generally quite small (less than 5%).

 

[Faith1960]

I know and I myself have Neanderthal DNA. But that does not mean that Neanderthals are just a racial group similar to other racial groups that exist today, all of which belong to Homo sapiens sapiens and are more closely related to each other DNA-wise than what any of us are to Neanderthals. The amount of Neanderthal DNA in any modern human is generally quite small (less than 5%).

So did humans interbreed with non humans?

 

[Hans_W]

That’s right. Science can’t study God or the soul. When two people in the past became “ensouled” is illogical and unscientific. Science has limits and there is knowledge that we need that goes beyond science. Raise the dead, give sight to the blind, instantly. That’s what God can do. Rise from the Dead? That’s what God can do.

Ed

Well, I am glad we can agree on something.

I just want to expand on your “science has limits” which probably is supposed to imply that our religious belief transgresses those limits.

Science gives us knowledge about nature and is built on facts and reason. You can see it as limited in the same way as a locomotive is limited because it can’t fly. A locomotive can’t fly because it is not built for flying, and that’s not really a limitation.

Religious knowledge is different because it is built on faith.

I still would like to hear your reasons for distrusting Ken Miller. I can’t see a difference between his understanding of evolution and the Pope’s acceptance of that topic.

 

[WonderAndAwe]

That’s right. Science can’t study God or the soul. When two people in the past became “ensouled” is illogical and unscientific. Science has limits and there is knowledge that we need that goes beyond science. Raise the dead, give sight to the blind, instantly. That’s what God can do. Rise from the Dead? That’s what God can do.

Ed

Negating disabilities isn’t playing God though.

Or is letting a blind person see with the snap of your fingers what you meant? Because we have been working on fixing blindness and deafness permanently with simple surgery and implants, with tech getting better every day.

 

[rossum]

I’ve been looking online to see if they were human or not. I can’t get a definitive answer.

Try, Fossil Hominids: mitochondrial DNA. That has an illustration of the comparison between human, neanderthal and chimp mitochondrial DNA:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

The conclusion of that article says:

The studies of Neandertal mtDNA do not show that Neandertals did not or could not interbreed with modern humans. But the lack of diversity in Neandertal mtDNA sequences, combined with the large differences between Neandertal and modern human mtDNA, strongly suggests that Neandertals and modern humans developed separately, and did not form part of a single large interbreeding population. However Neandertals apparently remained capable of interbreeding with humans, and did so with an early population of modern humans in the Middle East about 70,000 years ago.

I am inclined to think that the relationship was something like the relationship between lions and tigers. The two species are somewhat inter-fertile, see “Ligers” and “Tigons” for the results. However, the inter-fertility is not perfect. Male ligers/tigons are sterile, though the females are fertile. Fertile females allow DNA from one species to cross into the other.

Horses and donkeys have separated further and mules are all sterile, except in very rare cases of female mules.

rossum

 

[RGCheek]

Try, Fossil Hominids: mitochondrial DNA. That has an illustration of the comparison between human, neanderthal and chimp mitochondrial DNA:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/cellfig6.gif

The conclusion of that article says:

The studies of Neandertal mtDNA do not show that Neandertals did not or could not interbreed with modern humans. But the lack of diversity in Neandertal mtDNA sequences, combined with the large differences between Neandertal and modern human mtDNA, strongly suggests that Neandertals and modern humans developed separately, and did not form part of a single large interbreeding population. However Neandertals apparently remained capable of interbreeding with humans, and did so with an early population of modern humans in the Middle East about 70,000 years ago.

I am inclined to think that the relationship was something like the relationship between lions and tigers. The two species are somewhat inter-fertile, see “Ligers” and “Tigons” for the results. However, the inter-fertility is not perfect. Male ligers/tigons are sterile, though the females are fertile. Fertile females allow DNA from one species to cross into the other.

Horses and donkeys have separated further and mules are all sterile, except in very rare cases of female mules.

rossum

Thank you for that link!

I think of myself as a Neanderthalo-American and collect all the data I can on the topic.

 

[triumphguy]

Try, Fossil Hominids: mitochondrial DNA. That has an illustration of the comparison between human, neanderthal and chimp mitochondrial DNA:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/cellfig6.gif

The conclusion of that article says:

The studies of Neandertal mtDNA do not show that Neandertals did not or could not interbreed with modern humans. But the lack of diversity in Neandertal mtDNA sequences, combined with the large differences between Neandertal and modern human mtDNA, strongly suggests that Neandertals and modern humans developed separately, and did not form part of a single large interbreeding population. However Neandertals apparently remained capable of interbreeding with humans, and did so with an early population of modern humans in the Middle East about 70,000 years ago.

I am inclined to think that the relationship was something like the relationship between lions and tigers. The two species are somewhat inter-fertile, see “Ligers” and “Tigons” for the results. However, the inter-fertility is not perfect. Male ligers/tigons are sterile, though the females are fertile. Fertile females allow DNA from one species to cross into the other.

Horses and donkeys have separated further and mules are all sterile, except in very rare cases of female mules.

rossum

Do many lions have tiger DNA in them?

Most Europeans (who seem to be fertile BTW) have Neanderthal DNA in them.

 

[triumphguy]

Perhaps Adam and Eve weren’t even Homo Sapiens but an earlier hominini: homo ergaster or homo habilis, or the later homo erectus.

I’m currently looking for the quote, but Pope Benedikt, when still Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that Adam and Eve were the first couple to look upwards and realize their place in the Universe and accept the fact that God is Other.

A human species that could use fire, make tools, produce art, speak even if in a rudimentary way, and that put flowers and food in graves could no doubt understand the transcendence of God.

 

[Faith1960]

Try, Fossil Hominids: mitochondrial DNA. That has an illustration of the comparison between human, neanderthal and chimp mitochondrial DNA:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/cellfig6.gif

The conclusion of that article says:

The studies of Neandertal mtDNA do not show that Neandertals did not or could not interbreed with modern humans. But the lack of diversity in Neandertal mtDNA sequences, combined with the large differences between Neandertal and modern human mtDNA, strongly suggests that Neandertals and modern humans developed separately, and did not form part of a single large interbreeding population. However Neandertals apparently remained capable of interbreeding with humans, and did so with an early population of modern humans in the Middle East about 70,000 years ago.

I am inclined to think that the relationship was something like the relationship between lions and tigers. The two species are somewhat inter-fertile, see “Ligers” and “Tigons” for the results. However, the inter-fertility is not perfect. Male ligers/tigons are sterile, though the females are fertile. Fertile females allow DNA from one species to cross into the other.

Horses and donkeys have separated further and mules are all sterile, except in very rare cases of female mules.

rossum

It says their numbers put them outside the human range so that suggests to me that neanderthals werent human, right?
And if they werent human, how could they have rational souls?

And another question, if many of us have Neanderthal in us wouldn’t that suggest we’re not fully human?

 

[clem456]

Perhaps Adam and Eve weren’t even Homo Sapiens but an earlier hominini: homo ergaster or homo habilis, or the later homo erectus.

I’m currently looking for the quote, but Pope Benedikt, when still Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that Adam and Eve were the first couple to look upwards and realize their place in the Universe and accept the fact that God is Other.

A human species that could use fire, make tools, produce art, speak even if in a rudimentary way, and that put flowers and food in graves could no doubt understand the transcendence of God.

Here’s the difficulty I have with the earlier hominid proposition:
If we are made unique in God’s eyes, in his image, that seems to propose specificity (species). It seems easier to accept that man’s specific material makeup was set aside as unique when God infused the soul. (Material side still evolving from earlier beings.)

 

[triumphguy]

Here’s the difficulty I have with the earlier hominid proposition:
If we are made unique in God’s eyes, in his image, that seems to propose specificity (species). It seems easier to accept that man’s specific material makeup was set aside as unique when God infused the soul. (Material side still evolving from earlier beings.)

Good question: But are we unique in our relationship to God, or in our lineage, or in the exact species we are now? If we evolve further does that mean our descendants are NOT human?

 

[RGCheek]

Good question: But are we unique in our relationship to God, or in our lineage, or in the exact species we are now? If we evolve further does that mean our descendants are NOT human?

Exactly.

I doubt that ensouled humans are biologically any different from nonensouled humans back then.

Moral awareness and moral responsibility is not a factor of biology.

 

[Hans_W]

Exactly.

I doubt that ensouled humans are biologically any different from nonensouled humans back then.

Moral awareness and moral responsibility is not a factor of biology.

The problem people seem to have is that “ensouled humans” have everlasting life, whereas “nonensouled humans” just disappear after dying. That looks like a black/white issue from our earthly perspective, if we want to explain that “scientifically”. I don’t think it’s that simple. We should leave that to God. There is another solution which is way beyond the reasoning capacity of our little brains.

Concerning moral awareness, chimpanzees and other higher mammals have that as well. It must come from having a bigger brain and therefore is a factor of our biological makeup.

 

[Kelt]

Exactly.

I doubt that ensouled humans are biologically any different from nonensouled humans back then.

Moral awareness and moral responsibility is not a factor of biology.

How then do we account for people who are psychopaths, or are mentally damaged through accident at or before birth, in a way that renders them unable to be morally aware and responsible? These states of being have biological causes…