Reconciling Evolution with Adam and Eve

[Gottle_of_Geer]

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

Thanks - I think I got the Gregories confused ​

 

[Benadam]

Steve40, you’ve missed an exciting two weeks of discussion on this thread about how theology can be deeply re-envisioned and enriched in light of the modern scientific world view. You’re just plain wrong in your assertion about what Catholics are required to believe or not to believe. Regarding your other assertion – “let’s scrap the evolution theory and move on” – just what theory do you propose to offer in its stead to the 100,000+ working biologists who employ it on an hourly basis? They will want to subject your alternative theory to the usual rigorous tests before “scrapping” something that has worked increasingly well every year for the past 150 years!

Petrus

Petrus I’m not sure how you understood Steve but we are required to believe that all modern humans are gentically decended from Adam and Eve and that Adam and Eve are not genetically decended from a pre-adamic race of humans.

 

[Memaw]

If you read the Bible without previous assumptions you will see that it is an eyewitness account. However, for various reasons, others wish to confuse the issue. I thank the earlier poster for pointing out how the Church teaches that sin came through a particular pair of individuals, Adam and Eve.

It is easy to call someone a liar but God does not lie. The dinosaurs lived but died, just as many species of animals have been wiped out in recent history. Genesis 1:5 “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” This is repeated for the second day.

What you may read here is a strange insistence for Christians to accept the word of man over the word of God. God cannot be separated from His Creation and the sin of the first man and woman was the cause for Jesus Christ coming to earth as one of us.

Pope Benedict has made certain statements that show the Church is open to science, but that God must be part of Creation. As written, the theory of Evolution makes no allowance for God, and this cannot be. The Church does not support a mechanistic naturalism where we sprang from nothing and will die to nothing.

God bless,
Ed

God sait it, I believe it and that settles it! The Church is open to science, but science cannot contridict the Church or guess whose wrong. To put it simply, they, Scientist, have never found PROOF that man evolved from ANY lower form of life they only jumped on monkeys, (or chimps) because their body form is simililar. But the dogs body form is similar to an elephants, they both had 4 legs, a head and tail, but no one says a dog evolved from an elephant. AND they have NEVER found a fossil of someone half monkey and half human in the evolvoing process. NO proof. How do they explain that Man has the ability to KNOW. LOVE and SERVE GOD when animals do not have that capacity. Man also has a free will to refuse to Know, Love And Serve GOD and to argue about such silly things as this. Trust GOD, and live in peace.

 

[Doug50]

The geocentric model is exactly what NASA uses for navigation.

And why is that? Because the Big Bang model of the Universe holds that the center of the Universe is everywhere. Anywhere, or no matte where, you go in space the Universe will be seen as expanding away from you. If there are aliens on other planets doing space travel they’d likely use there on geocentric model.

“Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.”
Pensées (1670) – Quotations by Blaise Pascal
www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Quotations/Pascal.html

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Those 100,000+ biologist will someday be dead. Where will their wild butt-head theory be then. God will still be God and what He said will still be what He said. Why do you want to believe the gueses of men instead of the Word of God?

Yes, and as they replaced evolutionists before them, others will replace them. Why do you insist on denying what the Church has accepted? Isn’t it sinful to adamently refuse what the church teaches? Pride comes ot mind.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Only if don’t realy want to know who and what you are. Any philosopher who tells you that your body does not have meaning is a fool, and any philosopher who says that how the human body came about does not mater is an idiot. Sicience has developed a faith of it’s own without and often devoid of reason.

I perfer not to worship knowledge which can be based upon a lie.

Science is not a faith. Show wherein Science is devoid of reason? give examples with citations to reputable science journals or books.

Many to most so called scientists believe in poly-geism which is a heresy condemned by the Church including Pope Pius XII. Many scientist, “so called” would say that the first female coming from the first male is a myth yet all Catholics like it or are required to believe this. Anyone who truly looks at evolution objectively can not reconcile Church teaching with it.

Also, many so called scientists do not believe that water once covered the whole earth. This was prophesied by the first Pope and condemned as heresy, see 2Peter3 3-7.

please define Poly-geism I cannot find a definition in my dictionary. Catholics are NOT required to be in a literal adam and eve. Since the church has accepted evolution in theory, see Popes Pius XII, JPII and Benedict XVI, your argument seems in opposition to church teaching. Not many, but Most reputable scientists know there was no worldwide flood on this planet.

God sait it, I believe it and that settles it! The Church is open to science, but science cannot contridict the Church or guess whose wrong. To put it simply, they, Scientist, have never found PROOF that man evolved from ANY lower form of life they only jumped on monkeys, (or chimps) because their body form is simililar. But the dogs body form is similar to an elephants, they both had 4 legs, a head and tail, but no one says a dog evolved from an elephant. AND they have NEVER found a fossil of someone half monkey and half human in the evolvoing process. NO proof. How do they explain that Man has the ability to KNOW. LOVE and SERVE GOD when animals do not have that capacity. Man also has a free will to refuse to Know, Love And Serve GOD and to argue about such silly things as this. Trust GOD, and live in peace.

God said what? And yes they have found tons of proof. You ignore the evidence apparently. You misunderstand evolution if you thing that a half-man, half-monkey is what is being searched for. That is just simply a bad understanding of evolution.

sentience is the key to knowing. Some animals have sentience, though humans have evolved the greatest sense, the sense to wonder how he came to be.

go to my blog, and on the right column, you will find an array of scientific links. The NAC, Smithsonian, Geologic Society, and Institute. All impeccable sources. They will set you straight on evolution and the big bang.

 

[Benadam]

Catholics are NOT required to be in a literal adam and eve. Since the church has accepted evolution in theory, see Popes Pius XII, JPII and Benedict XVI, your argument seems in opposition to church teaching.

We are not free to deny that there was an original man and woman who are the parents of all modern humans. Whether you call them Adam and Eve or not doesn’t matter. No where have I read any of your references state that we are free to deny the traditional source of original sin, Adam.

The Church hasn’t made any definitive statements concerning evolution except that it must be approached with caution. At this point in time Catholic theologians are free to explore it as a possibility but are forbidden to teach it as absolute truth.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Many to most so called scientists believe in poly-geism which is a heresy condemned by the Church including Pope Pius XII. Many scientist, “so called” would say that the first female coming from the first male is a myth yet all Catholics like it or are required to believe this. Anyone who truly looks at evolution objectively can not reconcile Church teaching with it.

Also, many so called scientists do not believe that water once covered the whole earth. This was prophesied by the first Pope and condemned as heresy, see 2Peter3 3-7.

Polygenism is not a heresy, nor did Pius XII say it was. He did say this:​

• 1. It remains for Us now to speak about those questions which, although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith. In fact, not a few insistently demand that the Catholic religion takes these sciences into account as much as possible. This certainly would be praiseworthy in the case of clearly proved facts; but caution must be used when there is rather question of hypotheses, having some sort of scientific foundation, in which the doctrine contained in Sacred Scripture or in Tradition is involved. If such conjectural opinions are directly or indirectly opposed to the doctrine revealed by God, then the demand that they be recognized can in no way be admitted.
• 1. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter – for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faithful[11] Some however rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from preexisting and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.
• 1. 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 either that 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 represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in 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.[12]
     my emphases

That was in in 1950. This is 2007. A great deal has happened in the sciences, & in theology since 1950: & Papal documents cannot be treated as timeless expressions of immutable truth, valid as they stand for all peoples & nations & tongues for ever and ever. Neither theology nor the Church’s mission is well served if the Faith is treated as eternally valid in any one form - this would require the Church to be everywhere & in all things identical with (say) the Church in the days of the Apostles: as though St.Paul never preached, without reading the Summa Theologiae & the Vulgate, or at least the Douai-Reims Bible.

This is silly - of course it is. But this is where confusing expressions of doctrine with the doctrines expressed leads. If we are not to think anything not thought by the Apostles, or the Fathers, or the Counter-Reformation, or the Church before 1962, then theology is at end. So is theological research. So is the study of God’s creation. If we do not canonise the medicine or mathematics or of the first, fifth, or 18th century - why canonise as final & capable of no correction the geography or understanding of history & language or the encyclicals of those times ?

…more…]

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

…ended]

The very men appealed to by some Catholics were as reliant on the notions of their times on matters of the sciences as we are; had the critics of the moderns been alive in 420 AD, they would have had plenty of reason to attack that modernist Augustine for his evil doctrines; which were sufficiently un-traditional to merit discussion at a council in Jerusalem: to this day, the Orthodox are anti-Augustinian. The self-styled “true Catholics” of today would have attacked him, just as they attack outstanding Catholic scholars of recent times, such as the late Father Raymond Brown.

The problem is that they forget that the past they venerate, was once the unvenerable present. That is one of the reasons that no date or period or theology or any other thing can be given absolute value - St. Thomas did not have the status in 1277 at Paris that he had in 1570 or 1879; he was extremely controversial: after all, he had used Aristotle for theology - & several of Aristotle’s works had been condemned in 1215. The not-yet-sainted Friar Thomas used them, just as his mentor Albert of Cologne had done. The use of Aristotle was at least as controversial & as objectionable as the use of critical scholarship still is for many Catholics - & for many of the same reasons. After the condemnation in 1277 of several positions attributed to him, there was a flood of Dominican defences of the late Friar Thomas. (The Orthodox don’t like his theology either.)

To treat any one moment in the Church’s history as the end of all Christian thought is not even Catholic - it is Protestant through & through; it has been Protestantism that sees everything after the Apostles, or after the fourth or sixth or some other century, as having nothing to say. Catholicism is not like this - it is as open to what a theologian in 2007 says, as to one in 200 or earlier.

Papal documents also rely on the learning of their times; often rely on the sort of learning which is found so objectionable by many. No teaching documents descend from Heaven; any more than the Bible did. Not even Bulls & Encyclicals. It is because the sciences, & theology itself (& thus, the investigation & expression of doctrine) do not stand still, that what the Church or the Fathers or whoever it may be cannot be taken as being the final word on anything.

What the Pope said in 1950 may still be valid; or, it may have been overtaken by progress in the sciences. The study of the sciences is not the same kind of issue as the Assumption: the Assumption is about something not conditioned by time, once it took place; events within this world, which is not the heavenly world, are conditioned by time; whether they are the pronouncements of Popes, the investigations of theologians, or the thinking of scientists. So they cannot be treated as incapable of change or improvement.

 

[Thomas_XIII]

I don’t want to sound glib, but this is all very simple. The scripture says that death came through man via sin. Evolution, “theistic” or otherwise, says that man came into the world through death. The two are simply not compatible and it is time that The Catholic Church wake up, show a little back bone, and reject this notion. The Church needs to reject evolution outright for the sake of her members and the whole world.

 

[dixieagle]

244Rocket, if you came from your grandparents, why do you have cousins?

This is priceless I think you and my dear SIL, a very Catholic and very brilliant evolutionary biologist (“computational phylogenetics”, to be exact) would have a great time chatting.

When pressed as to how he reconciles evolution with belief in God, he refers to evolution as “God’s modus operandi.” Makes sense to me.

Your posts are brilliant and delightful.

God bless.

 

[drpmjhess]

This is priceless I think you and my dear SIL, a very Catholic and very brilliant evolutionary biologist (“computational phylogenetics”, to be exact) would have a great time chatting. When pressed as to how he reconciles evolution with belief in God, he refers to evolution as “God’s modus operandi.” Makes sense to me. Your posts are brilliant and delightful. God bless.

Thank you, dixieagle! I would be very interested in making contact with your Catholic evolutionary biologist friend, if she/he would be so inclined. If so, please send me a message.

I like the reference to God’s “modus operandi.” One of the things that bothers me so much about Young Earth creationism is that it strikes me as blasphemous to straitjacket God into a timeline and method dictated by one ancient book, a book that was never intended by its authors to serve as a science text.
Prayerfully yours,
Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Another thing about the Big Bang, i recall a atheist biochemical Nobel price winner criticizing Stephen Hawking when he said “God created the numbers”. when according to the atheist the numbers created God. Stephen Hawkings retorted that before the Bing Bang the rules of mathematics and Physics did not exist at all, and going before the Big Bang was not a scientific endeavor but a methaphysical one. Stephen is a pure agnostic, not a deist or atheist. And a friend of Pope John Paul II.

inthecloud, you raise an interesting question about numbers. I thought Stephen Hawking had once opined that there might be a rather limited number of possible universe-constituting equations for God to choose from. In other words, the universe we inhabit requires precise mathematical relationships between its contituent parts, illustrated by the Pauli exclusion principle. While God could choose from among a limited number of universe scenarios, God would be bound by logic (e.g., God could not make 2+2=5).

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Those 100,000+ biologist will someday be dead. Where will their wild butt-head theory be then. God will still be God and what He said will still be what He said. Why do you want to believe the gueses of men instead of the Word of God?

Steve40, you are confusing guesses with theories. Gravity is not just a guess about why things fall in the same way as you might guess whether the next flip of a coin will reveal heads or tails; evolution is not just a guess in the same way that you might guess blindfolded where to pin the tail on the donkey.

Gravity, evolution, the germ theory of disease, heliocentrism, the atomic theory of matter – these are all well substantiated explanations for natural phenomena.

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Those 100,000+ biologist will someday be dead. Where will their wild butt-head theory be then. God will still be God and what He said will still be what He said. Why do you want to believe the gueses of men instead of the Word of God?

Steve40, as to your castigation of evolution as a “wild butt-head theory” – I can only guess you’ve never ventured into a biology laboratory, and never conversed with a working biologist. When the 100,000+ evolutionary biologists are dead and gone, they will already have been repaced with 100,000 more.

I might better ask you, when evolutaonry biology has refined our understanding of God’s living creation ever more clearly and carefully in 100 years, where will be your pitiful “creation” museums in San Diego and Cincinnati? In the dustbin of history.

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Also, many so called scientists do not believe that water once covered the whole earth. This was prophesied by the first Pope and condemned as heresy, see 2Peter3 3-7.

Steve40, water never covered the whole earth, although in the course of continental drifting there have been periods when large areas of now dry land were under the ocean. The area from Nevada to Colorado, for example, was under the great inland sea during the Cretaceous (144-65 million years ago).

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Petrus I’m not sure how you understood Steve but we are required to believe that all modern humans are gentically decended from Adam and Eve and that Adam and Eve are not genetically decended from a pre-adamic race of humans.

No, we are not required to believe that. The human genographic project is rapidly amassing evidence for the great antiquity of the human species. Catholics can celebrate the fecundity of God’s graceful creativity as we contemplate our genetic kinship with all life on earth.

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

God sait it, I believe it and that settles it! The Church is open to science, but science cannot contridict the Church or guess whose wrong. To put it simply, they, Scientist, have never found PROOF that man evolved from ANY lower form of life they only jumped on monkeys, (or chimps) because their body form is simililar. But the dogs body form is similar to an elephants, they both had 4 legs, a head and tail, but no one says a dog evolved from an elephant. AND they have NEVER found a fossil of someone half monkey and half human in the evolvoing process. NO proof. How do they explain that Man has the ability to KNOW. LOVE and SERVE GOD when animals do not have that capacity. Man also has a free will to refuse to Know, Love And Serve GOD and to argue about such silly things as this. Trust GOD, and live in peace.

Memaw, stop parroting the talking points creationist organizations send you in their literature (I recognize all your arguemtns), and think for yourself. Visit a university biology laboratory with active research programs. Talk with working biologists – find out what they are seeking to understand, and why they assume the truth of the evolutionary theory! Find out why it is no threat to Christian belief, as long as scientists don’t stray outside their sphere of competence…

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

The Church needs to reject evolution outright for the sake of her members and the whole world.

Thomas XIII, when the Church rejects the world as you suggest, she deprives the world of the grace of her witness. A good read is Catholic biologist Ken Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God.”

 

[SpiritMeadow]

I don’t want to sound glib, but this is all very simple. The scripture says that death came through man via sin. Evolution, “theistic” or otherwise, says that man came into the world through death. The two are simply not compatible and it is time that The Catholic Church wake up, show a little back bone, and reject this notion. The Church needs to reject evolution outright for the sake of her members and the whole world.

I would not wish my beloved Church to become the laughingstock of the thinking world and loose all credibility as a moral force in the world. Wake up. The Church is under attack worldwide, don’t add another burden to its already exhausting load of critics.