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Gorgias
Guest
I’m not sure that this follows. A subsequent statement does not render the previous statement null, nor does it impact its infallibility.
Neither. I’d prefer to go to heaven.
Reconciling Humani Generis with the human genetic data showing that there never were just two first parents
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1Lord1Faith
Guest
Why not just rely on the the archeologists, geneticists, and anthropologists? What more do you want to know about the past that hasn’t been uncovered?
If you could travel to the future do you think you’d be disappointed at what you’d find?
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Freddy
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I don’t know. The great thing about going back is that I could check out each of my generation to see how they lived. But I’m sure there would be things I’d be horrified to know about my ancestors. But you are guaranteed a few billion years to study.Freddy:
Why not just rely on the the archeologists, geneticists, and anthropologists? What more do you want to know about the past that hasn’t been uncovered?
If you could travel to the future do you think you’d be disappointed at what you’d find?
Going forward I imagine watching my descendents populating the galaxy, bravely going where no-one has gone before etc. But…it may only last a few hundred years. How depressing would that be.
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Rau
Guest
. No, my knowledge of such matters is not lacking but I did read your remark too quickly and missed the mention of “nuance”.
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Rau
Guest
Which is the point. One failure is enough to teach us “findings” can be temporal.
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Allyson
Guest
lol, okay, that makes more sense.
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Allyson
Guest
That is a hard choice. I think I would want to see the past because it is something we already know about, but not completely. I would want to see the parts of the past we know the least about like the ancient cites of North America. (I did a dig in PA in college on a villages.)
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Freddy
Guest
It would be interesting to see how far back one could go and still feel a connection to a direct ancestor. And I mean all the way back.Freddy:
That is a hard choice. I think I would want to see the past because it is something we already know about, but not completely. I would want to see the parts of the past we know the least about like the ancient cites of North America. (I did a dig in PA in college on a villages.)
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Allyson
Guest
Indeed. I think maybe at Homo Erectus we would. In fact, I would be interested to see if they built dwellings since I have no expectation that those can be identified in the archeological record going that far back.
The dig I did in PA was maybe an estimated 1/4 of a village that was cut in half along a property line. Part of the village was already lost years before it was found when the farmer had made some level land for chicken barns. He felt so bad after the site was identified, but it was not his fault. To identify a site you have to find enough small bits of pottery and flint debris. The actual structures cannot be identified until after you determine where to dig. You have to get done to the subsoil then scape and look for dark spots of soil from where the timbers were sunk.
Basically, if you don’t know what to look for, there is nothing there.
If we are talking timeframes in the hundreds of thousands of years or more, it is hard to imagine that that kind of evidence would have survived climate change and erosion. It is also why hard evidence of controlled fire is so hard to find so long ago.
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o_mlly
Guest
Have you ever tried my favorite – Boozy Brownies with Salted Caramel Rum Sauce?
I believe we were looking for evidence of a uniquely human trait that is essentially, rather than qualitatively, different from animals. That evidence I suggest is “progress” in interacting with the environment. That progress is attributable to the uniquely human ability (trait) to abstract from reality, discover underlying principles, develop words to communicate those principles, develop symbols for words, and to record the same for future generations to use and build upon.
Yes, the first humans could do all of the above because abstraction, the ability to see the forest as well as the trees, is what is necessary. The first human may not have fully vocalized or recorded what he discovered but, most importantly, he could have.
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Dovekin
Guest
There are at least 2 reasons why this should not be considered an ex cathedra definition that would fit the definition of papal infallibility from Vatican I.
1 Somebody has already mentioned that the language is not appropriate. This is not the language used in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentisimus Deus: by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma. While it is binding, it is rather a limp statement of the fact.
2 More importantly, it is not really about faith and morals if we read it as a statement about the physical generation of humans. This is why the concept of true human is developed, to make it a theological statement and not historical. It is Pius XII who merges the physical and theological issues, and when he does that he is setting up some of the issues we have discussed. His joining of the two makes sorting the component of faith from the factual statements complex and important.
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o_mlly
Guest
Just finished watching Fr.'s presentation. I enjoyed and benefited listening to previous lectures from this good priest.
I defer to the biologists to critique the science Fr. offers but it seem to me, he needs to go further in his argument to square “soft” evolution (God working through secondary causes) to make his case.
Fr. proposes that at the instance an irrational animal generated a mutant with the "language package” in its genome that God, seeing that the material was suitable, infused that material with a rational soul. We now have the first “Adam” made in God’s image.
But how is this man, an immediate descendant of animals, in original justice and holiness? Most certainly, his environment is no Garden of Eden but one just as brutish as his parents’ environment.
How does such a man commit the Original Sin? More importantly, how does that sin, some evil act against his nature, change his genome such that he cannot transmit to his progeny the genes that made him in “original justice and holiness”? Are mutations random or are the range of possibilities dependent on the avoidance of particular acts? God does not, we believe, issue imperfect souls so the deficiency in Adam’s progeny must be a material one.
It’s a good start Fr. N. I look forward to his future lectures.
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AlbMagno
Guest
Reading the Genesis as allegory is as old as Saint Augustine.
And that doesn’t mean it isn’t theologically true, or that there aren’t parts based on real life.
And that doesn’t mean it isn’t theologically true, or that there aren’t parts based on real life.
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Allyson
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I am good with number 1 being a reason it is not infallible by default. He certainly used the magic words in a different encylclical the same year for a clearly ex cathedra statement.
But, I do think the issue of Original Sin is a matter of faith and morals, and that was his primary concern with this encylclical. Because it is an encyclical, we have to treat it with far more defence than an off the cuff statement. In his view, based on the accumulated history of Church teaching, the origins of man is an essential part of the teaching on original sin. I have to agree with him there. It is a foundational premise of original since that there were two, and only two people with the faculties of reason needed to make a free will choice to follow God’s law.
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Neithan
Guest
Wasn’t Mary in “original justice and holiness” from the first moment of her conception? Whether or not a soul is infused with grace is not a material thing. If you mean [Adam & Eve’s] preternatural gifts of integrity and immortality, they may or may not have propagated through natural generation; we’ll never know.
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o_mlly
Guest
Certainly another good point for Fr. N. to address. I believe he is proposing a theology that admits evolution to fully explain the appearance of Adam. He has not yet addressed Original Sin and its effects. If evolution, which is not linear, produced suitable material for the infusion of the first rational soul then would we not see subsequent material generated by rational souls that was not suitable? Could rational animals beget irrational animals? And to your point, did Mary have yet again a unique genome not seen since Adam that was suitable for an infused soul full of grace? I think we still are better served with the miracle, that is, a supernatural rather than natural explanation.
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Allyson
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@Neithan - I am working through the Vyshedsky article right now. It is definitely facinating. I searched the web for chatter about it, and there does not seem to be a lot. I still think 70KYA is late in the game for such a fundamental change to suddenly take place. I am not saying that the richness of culture was not an advance forward, but I do think that there are equally valid alternative proposals that could push back development of pre-frontal systhesis and still explain this later cultural revolution. However, I am not done reading yet. I could change my mind. I would also be interested to see what he publishes from his PFS App for Autism study. I found a Q&A on the web with him about that. That sounded very interesting.
I will be reading through then whole page on the Thomistic Evolution Blog. I did scroll to the end to see what he had to say there that he might now have mentioned in the talk I had watched. I do not think that he had mentioned beastiality, and I can understand why in a public talk. However, I do find that turn of phrase problematic for a couple reasons. 1. I see no essential biological difference between the subspecies of human that were extant at the time because they are all sub-species which can and do cross-breed and create fertile offspring. 2. I do not see that Pius XII would sanction that language.
@Wesrock - I am working through the article you mentioned.
I will be reading through then whole page on the Thomistic Evolution Blog. I did scroll to the end to see what he had to say there that he might now have mentioned in the talk I had watched. I do not think that he had mentioned beastiality, and I can understand why in a public talk. However, I do find that turn of phrase problematic for a couple reasons. 1. I see no essential biological difference between the subspecies of human that were extant at the time because they are all sub-species which can and do cross-breed and create fertile offspring. 2. I do not see that Pius XII would sanction that language.
@Wesrock - I am working through the article you mentioned.
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Allyson
Guest
I think we are pretty much in agreement. He did do a good job of presenting science to a lay crowd, so I have no strong criticism there. It just did not mesh well switching to “how does Adam and Eve work here?”
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Neithan
Guest
That is a fair point. I’d speculate it would have been somewhere between bestiality and fornication, because a marriage between a spiritual human — or “true man” — and animal hominid would not be sanctionable. On the “all genetic data from only two parents” view, however, there would have been sibling incest, so unseemly moral difficulties exist in either scenario.
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Neithan
Guest
I can speculate on your questions, but I think you’re overcomplicating the connection Fr. Nicanor draws between genome and rational soul. The evolution of homo sapiens arrived at a point in time when the genetic material served as a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition, for a human being. All of this is created by God, of course, in time. His immediate creation of a spiritual soul at conception is what made Adam a “true man.” All of Adam’s descendants have the human body that God wills to be a spiritual person.
Original Sin did not necessarily distort the human genome, but removed sanctifying grace and the preternatural gifts, the latter of which would not be natural to the genome anyway. Mary did not need any special DNA to be infused with grace, only the genealogical human descent from Adam and the unique grace of God to be spared ex ante from original sin by virtue of her unique relationship to Christ.
Original Sin did not necessarily distort the human genome, but removed sanctifying grace and the preternatural gifts, the latter of which would not be natural to the genome anyway. Mary did not need any special DNA to be infused with grace, only the genealogical human descent from Adam and the unique grace of God to be spared ex ante from original sin by virtue of her unique relationship to Christ.
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