Reconciling Evolution with Adam and Eve

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I can come up with good reasons for most of it I think. Setting up archetypes in the psyche through these human experiences in the formative years of civil nations for instance.
 
This is all going to be a moot question soon… evolution is really just a micromechanism that helps species survive…The more I read about Intelligent Design, it seems more obvious that the time has come to get over the strangle hold Darwinism has had on science and move on to find truth… read: Darwinism under the microscope by JP Gills and T Woodward… very interesting!
 
Benadam said:
I can come up with good reasons for most of it I think. Setting up archetypes in the psyche through these human experiences in the formative years of civil nations for instance.
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Doesn’t this negate a literal interpretation? Whence the compulsion for an all-or-nothing approach to sacred scripture?
 
SpiritMeadow said:
If I read you correctly, its a bit of a stretch but I guess it works okay. If that reconciles the creation and evolution for ya, thats great, I mean remember what the republicans looked like on stage being asked if they believed in evolution.? The creationist theory cannot but make one look rather silly it seems to me. But I’m not gonna start all over with that argument,… LOL.
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Thanks SpiritMeadow,

I think it shows that any creation story that makes sense to us, evolution or Genesis, can’t even begin to describe what it’s actually like to watch God create the universe. Sure, science can tell us what happened in the past and how the present relates to the past according to fixed laws of physics, and many people, scientists and religious people alike, find that this makes it harder for them to believe in God.

I heard a scientist talking about how some religious people believe in evolution, and he was amazed that people could believe that a divine being would choose to create the world in the exact way that required Him to do absolutely nothing to help in its creation. I can sort of see where he was coming from.

I can see why some people find the notion of God setting everything up and letting it run on its own for billions of years sounds preposterous. If you imagine God sitting around waiting billions of years for mankind to evolve, I can see why some people think it sounds like religious people are clutching at straws for some way to still believe in the face of modern understanding. By contemplating how God created past, present and future all in an insant, as one work of creation, at least for me, it takes away the uneasiness and allows me to really appreciate God more by looking at what science is learning about the past. It doesn’t seem preposterous anymore if you consider that God created it all at once. Instead, the relationships between past and future just show that God put beauty in the laws of physics, much like he gave us beauty in other parts of nature, like flowers, mountains, the stars, etc. Then science can become something that glorifies God.
 
You’re welcome, Spiritmeadow.

What is the very thing that sets humans apart from other animals? It’s the moral sense that we believe we have. And this is what I think is at the foundation of the evolution/creation debate.

There are two ways to look at morality: either moral are metaphysically real or they are not. The terms for this is moral realism and moral anti-realism. The phylosophical term for moral anti-realism is Moral Relativism.

It doesn’t logically follow that evolution equals metaphysical Naturalism. The real goal that athiests have in arguing evolution is their backdoor agressive promotion of Naturalism.

If/thens
But here’s the kick in the pants for Naturalism: If Naturalism is true then moral realism is false. Nature doesn’t endow anything with a right to life, let alone any other rights. For Naturalims, morality is all Moral Relativism. It’s been my experience that not only atheists but theists only have a vague concept the implications.

Secular Humanism is an oxymoron. Why? Because Secularism holds to Nautalism which holds to moral anti-realism. Humanism OTOH holds to a belief in a universal Moral Realism - a morality independent of cultural subjective invention/norms. Because metaphsical moral anti-realism and metaphyscial moral realism cannot both be true, marrying Secularism to Humanism creates the oxymoron.

Most athiests think of themselves as secular humanists and argue for human rights. But if human rights are real, are independent of societal invention, and they are not of natural origin, what are they? At the very least, they would have to be non-organic rights. Science can no more prove human rights are real then it can prove evil is real. There’s no evil in Naturalism either. Evil is the negation of another’s human right. Civil rights OTOH are organic rights and can be studied by the social science since they are cultural inventions. Bein relative to culture, they are real in the normative sense but not necessarily the metaphysical/ethical sense. Since civil rights are relative to cultural norms, what may be a legal right in one society may not be a right in another. A jew in Nazi Germany had no civil rights; slavery would be another example.

Seems to me such athiest have a pardoxical situation: If Naturalism is true then Human Rights is a false belief - the stuff of myth. But if human rights are Real then Naturalism must be false for whatever these Human Rights are they aren’t the stuff of nature. For lack of a better word, I guess we could call them spirtual things that somehow inform the human experience…but maybe were just fooling ourselves into thinking they are real.

If you know human rights are real then you know, by some reason of faith, something about the nature of reality that science has no access to. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal…” is a faith statement.

To this theist, at the very least, Adam represent the first man who had this knowledge of Moral Truth breathed into him. God is Truth.
 
clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/VOFTalks.html

“The Dance” contains developments in thought from a talk given by Father George Coyne in October 2001. This took place at the Phoenix Civic Center and was entitled, When the Sacred Cows of Science and Religion Meet.
“Our scientific knowledge of the physical evolution of the universe, and our very limited knowledge of the origin of humans within it, might provide an opportunity to enrich our relationship to God as creator, if only we get loose of our idolatries.”

Part One: Science Looks at the Universe

Part Two: Thoughts From A Religious Believer
 
RMH said:
. read: Darwinism under the microscope by JP Gills and T Woodward… very interesting!
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This is just warmed over “Intelligent Design” stuff. After Dover it’s really a waste of time to try to promote ID as science, which it isn’t. ID and YEC have yet to make one single contribution to modern science, which suggests that neither is a productive research program. Evolutionary thinking in allied sciences, on the other hand, continue to pour forth discoveries in profusion.

That being said, I agree with you that as theists we have to assume the world was designed by an infinite intelligence. That does not mean we can use that assumption as a research tool or as a block on a further line of research; rather, it means it is an epistemological underpinning for why we do science at all. (I recognize that atheists do not assume this underpinning, although they do have faith that the world is knowable, or they would probably sell used cars rather than spend arduous years earning PhDs and living in labs.)

Petrus
 
Neil_Anthony said:
Thanks SpiritMeadow,

I think it shows that any creation story that makes sense to us, evolution or Genesis, can’t even begin to describe what it’s actually like to watch God create the universe. Sure, science can tell us what happened in the past and how the present relates to the past according to fixed laws of physics, and many people, scientists and religious people alike, find that this makes it harder for them to believe in God.

I heard a scientist talking about how some religious people believe in evolution, and he was amazed that people could believe that a divine being would choose to create the world in the exact way that required Him to do absolutely nothing to help in its creation. I can sort of see where he was coming from.

I can see why some people find the notion of God setting everything up and letting it run on its own for billions of years sounds preposterous. If you imagine God sitting around waiting billions of years for mankind to evolve, I can see why some people think it sounds like religious people are clutching at straws for some way to still believe in the face of modern understanding. By contemplating how God created past, present and future all in an insant, as one work of creation, at least for me, it takes away the uneasiness and allows me to really appreciate God more by looking at what science is learning about the past. It doesn’t seem preposterous anymore if you consider that God created it all at once. Instead, the relationships between past and future just show that God put beauty in the laws of physics, much like he gave us beauty in other parts of nature, like flowers, mountains, the stars, etc. Then science can become something that glorifies God.
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I think you’ve painted a lovely picture, one of grandeur, power, and beauty. I can’t imagine how anyone could object.
 
wildleafblower said:
Hi Neil 🙂

The ‘term science, as we use it today, represents a method for finding out how the natural world works by purely natural means’.
(hecd2 - msg. #347 under the topic **Pope Benedict admits evidence for evolution ** forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=2565940#post2565940
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=2565940#post2565940
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Sure, and ‘finding out how the natural world works’ can glorify God, because God designed it. Understanding how it works makes God look great and glorifies Him.
 
edwest2 said:
I’m done. Genesis was real history and Adam and Eve were our first parents. God bless,Ed
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Ed, here’s an interesting persective:

“Interpreting the Bible narrowly … ignores the centuries of biblical scholarship that add great depth and meaning and make the book a dynamic, living thing…”
Jame Schaefer, Assistant Professor of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee in The Journal Times
 
One of the blessings of having been raised Catholic outside the US is that the creacionist nonsense is limited only to few, often poor and marginal fundamentalists.
I think that in fact once you accept that the Genesis tale is symbolic, many of the moral truths of Genesis came true and are perfectly compatible with science.
Thing like:
  1. God created the universe out of nothing. The big bang.
  2. We are made of (star) dust. Carbon dust from comets.
  3. There was a biological Adam who lived in Africa.
  4. The Paradise looks a lot like Africa, full of animals with humans on the top of the food chain.
  5. There was a biological Eve who lived in Africa, but that biological Eve was not a modern human, the biological Adam was the first modern Homo Sapiens, and his female daugthers were the first modern women (from hisr rib).
  6. The capacity most scientists identify as separating the descendants of the biological Adam from other early Homo Sapiens was the posibilty of symbolic (in the image and likeness of GOD’s) thought which leads to science, civilization, natural law and religion, and the posibility to know God. Hence the inmortal souls. For the first time humans started to care about their dead.
  7. But as a result of the animal nature of humans, there are natural instincts like aggression, selfsihness and lust that need to be controled. Those insticts are the reptilian part of our brain (the snake) that the enemy (Satan) will try to use to destroy us.
    The original sin: Satan used those insticts to stray us to GOD will’s, the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil.
See, is not that difficult to make a non literal reading of Genesis be compatible with science. I guess a trained theologician with a science background can do wonders here.
 
drpmjhess said:
Ed, here’s an interesting persective:

“Interpreting the Bible narrowly … ignores the centuries of biblical scholarship that add great depth and meaning and make the book a dynamic, living thing…”
Jame Schaefer, Assistant Professor of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee in The Journal Times
Click to expand...
Actually I thought the piece on Fundamentalism from the Pontifical Biblical Commission was great, and spoke volumes. I’m be using the phrase “fundamentalism is intellectual suicide” a lot. Its so true, sad but true.
 
inthecloud said:
One of the blessings of having been raised Catholic outside the US is that the creacionist nonsense is limited only to few, often poor and marginal fundamentalists.
I think that in fact once you accept that the Genesis tale is symbolic, many of the moral truths of Genesis came true and are perfectly compatible with science.
Thing like:
  1. God created the universe out of nothing. The big bang.
  2. We are made of (star) dust. Carbon dust from comets.
  3. There was a biological Adam who lived in Africa.
  4. The Paradise looks a lot like Africa, full of animals with humans on the top of the food chain.
  5. There was a biological Eve who lived in Africa, but that biological Eve was not a modern human, the biological Adam was the first modern Homo Sapiens, and his female daugthers were the first modern women (from hisr rib).
  6. The capacity most scientists identify as separating the descendants of the biological Adam from other early Homo Sapiens was the posibilty of symbolic (in the image and likeness of GOD’s) thought which leads to science, civilization, natural law and religion, and the posibility to know God. Hence the inmortal souls. For the first time humans started to care about their dead.
  7. But as a result of the animal nature of humans, there are natural instincts like aggression, selfsihness and lust that need to be controled. Those insticts are the reptilian part of our brain (the snake) that the enemy (Satan) will try to use to destroy us.
    The original sin: Satan used those insticts to stray us to GOD will’s, the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil.
See, is not that difficult to make a non literal reading of Genesis be compatible with science. I guess a trained theologician with a science background can do wonders here.
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I think you have done quite nicely. I can sure see a priest or two perusing these pages. There have been some lovely homiletic themes expressed here. 🙂
 
inthecloud said:
  1. But as a result of the animal nature of humans, there are natural instincts like aggression, selfsihness and lust that need to be controled. Those insticts are the reptilian part of our brain (the snake) that the enemy (Satan) will try to use to destroy us.
    The original sin: Satan used those insticts to stray us to GOD will’s, the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil.
Click to expand...
Inthecloud, I like your placing of the development of sin and moral consciousness within the evolutionary trajectory. I also like your tying of the symbolic serpent in Genesis 3 with the ancient reptilian brain. Howefer, I would be interested in the take of an evolutionary biologist on the questin of whether aggression, selfishness, and lust necessarily originate only in the reptilian part of the brain.

Petrus
 
inthecloud said:
One of the blessings of having been raised Catholic outside the US is that the creacionist nonsense is limited only to few, often poor and marginal fundamentalists.
I think that in fact once you accept that the Genesis tale is symbolic, many of the moral truths of Genesis came true and are perfectly compatible with science.
Thing like:
  1. God created the universe out of nothing. The big bang.
  2. We are made of (star) dust. Carbon dust from comets.
Click to expand...

This is very very significant - because it enriches the meaning of the Incarnation & the Redemption 🙂​

If it is true, & if the Word made flesh assumed the whole of our nature, ISTM that He assumed our evolution & origin as well. Which underlines the cosmic character of what He has done, as mentioned by St. Paul. Everything - evolution on the largest scale included - is “in Christ”. (Which is a Scotist POV AFAICS - it’s not a novelty.) On this reckoning, evolution - like everything else - is summed up in Christ: He is its goal & purpose. So much for the objection that faith in Him is “parochial”; how can it be, if all things are in Him ? Evolution helps us see how “catholic” the Church is, & for appreciating the Mother of God.

So it is entirely under His Kingship. If all the heavenly bodies are “in Him”, they cannot control us: for He has subdued the “rulers” to Himself - earthly rulers, all heavenly bodies, all demonic powers, all religious rulers, all “rulers” in the kosmos: all prinicipalities, powers, dominations, etc., without exception. Which makes them powerless to harm His own. 😃 He is “the Saviour of science” too.

Which deepens the meaning of Psalm 8, as the author of Hebrews noticed: for him, Jesus is “the son of man” who has been made “a little lower than the angels”, who is now “crowned with glory and honour”: which is very Pauline. St. Irenaeus, with his doctrine of “recapitulation”, would have appreciated the witness - so to call it - of evolution to Christ; so would St. Gregory of Nyssa.

Evolution can be random yet be a witness to its Saviour, because its meaning for faith & theology & doctrine is not necessitated by its actuality in the world: so the meaning & the thing are separable (which is not to say the separation is healthy). So evolution is in this way like Christ: neither manifests God, neither is a sign of His Presence, unless one is enabled to see Him.
  1. There was a biological Adam who lived in Africa.
  2. The Paradise looks a lot like Africa, full of animals with humans on the top of the food chain.
  3. There was a biological Eve who lived in Africa, but that biological Eve was not a modern human, the biological Adam was the first modern Homo Sapiens, and his female daugthers were the first modern women (from hisr rib).
  4. The capacity most scientists identify as separating the descendants of the biological Adam from other early Homo Sapiens was the posibilty of symbolic (in the image and likeness of GOD’s) thought which leads to science, civilization, natural law and religion, and the posibility to know God. Hence the inmortal souls. For the first time humans started to care about their dead.
  5. But as a result of the animal nature of humans, there are natural instincts like aggression, selfsihness and lust that need to be controled. Those insticts are the reptilian part of our brain (the snake) that the enemy (Satan) will try to use to destroy us.
    The original sin: Satan used those insticts to stray us to GOD will’s, the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil.
See, is not that difficult to make a non literal reading of Genesis be compatible with science. I guess a trained theologician with a science background can do wonders here.
Click to expand...

It really is necessary for this split between the two to end. 😦 How can the Church have a fully “catholic” appreciation of God’s works, or a fully “catholic” appreciation of the Sacraments - or of anything in creation - if she does not appreciate His mighty works in the universe ? If she can’t appreciate trilobites or the birth of mountains & stars as witnesses to Him, she is missing out an awful lot 😦 🙂​

 
Gottle_of_Geer said:
How can the Church have a fully “catholic” appreciation of God’s works, or a fully “catholic” appreciation of the Sacraments - or of anything in creation - if she does not appreciate His mighty works in the universe ? If she can’t appreciate trilobites or the birth of mountains & stars as witnesses to Him, she is missing out an awful lot 😦 🙂
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Gottle, this is an important point. Catholic sacramentality presupposes a value to the cosmos, an appreciation of more than merely the human. And the redemption of all creation also assumes its intrinsic worth As Ireneaues and Gregory of Nazianzen (and others) expressed it, “what is not assumed is not redeemed.”
Petrus
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

This is very very significant - because it enriches the meaning of the Incarnation & the Redemption 🙂​

Evolution can be random yet be a witness to its Saviour, because its meaning for faith & theology & doctrine is not necessitated by its actuality in the world: so the meaning & the thing are separable (which is not to say the separation is healthy). So evolution is in this way like Christ: neither manifests God, neither is a sign of His Presence, unless one is enabled to see Him. ## It really is necessary for this split between the two to end. 😦 How can the Church have a fully “catholic” appreciation of God’s works, or a fully “catholic” appreciation of the Sacraments - or of anything in creation - if she does not appreciate His mighty works in the universe ? If she can’t appreciate trilobites or the birth of mountains & stars as witnesses to Him, she is missing out an awful lot 😦 🙂
Click to expand...
These lovely posts have sure got me to thinking. I recall the David Attenborough nature shows, and the “Planet earth” series on discovery. As we travel to the most inhospital places on our planet, places where in some cases only a handful of people have ever been too, and find the tenacious desire of life to live, in the most amazing ways, I look upon the fundamentalist narrowness as truly heartbreaking.

To assume that this universe is all about us is to deny the incredible life found 7 miles below the ocean surface. It has no purpose God could have “intended” for us. Or to the amazing creatures that inhabit the seas beneath the South Pole, or in the vast tundra of northern canada. Such things scream evolution, and in doing so, stand in salute to the Beauty that God has wroth, when he THOUGHT, and it all began.

My heart truly aches for those who continue in the narrow framework of simple stories meant simply to remind us of the grandeur we can never fully comprehend.
 
wildleafblower said:
Hi Neil 🙂

The ‘term science, as we use it today, represents a method for finding out how the natural world works by purely natural means’.
(hecd2 - msg. #347 under the topic **Pope Benedict admits evidence for evolution ** forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=2565940#post2565940
http://forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=2565940#post2565940
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Wild, I guess I’m totally confused as to what exactly your position is and what you really disagree about. You’re posts are in some ways back and forth…Could you please enlighten us a bit on where you stand?
 
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