Reconciling Humani Generis with the human genetic data showing that there never were just two first parents

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buffalo said:
Ok- which one to focus on.
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All of them. The whole point was that it has been open to interpretation from the beginning.

The point was summarized nicely at the top of the page. My emphasis in bold.
Catholics are at liberty to believe that creation took a few days or a much longer period, according to how they see the evidence, and subject to any future judgment of the Church (Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis 36–37). They need not be hostile to modern cosmology. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “[M]any scientific studies . . . have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms, and the appearance of man. These studies invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator” (CCC 283). Still, science has its limits (CCC 284, 2293–4).
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gama232 said:
Catholics cannot accept polygenism - more than two first parents.
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Is it reasonable to conclude that Pius intended that Catholics believe a thing in spite of biological and natural realities? No. What is meant by polygenism should be understood in light of the errors with which Pius was concerned.
 
Those errors were created by others and Humani Generis was written to instruct the faithful. The key takeaway is how some people around 1950 wanted to turn some clear Church/Bible teachings from literal to symbolic. Those people who wanted that change were wrong then and are wrong now. Nothing’s changed.

“Natural realities”? Very, extremely vague. Or maybe you should contact the Pope to straighten him out.
 
buffalo said:
Most interesting. (from a lieing creationist source - not) Started out with more complexity? Oh my.
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This is a non sequitur from @Freddy 's comment. It also does not follow from this conversation. No one here has argued that evolution only includes going from less complex to more complex at all times. This is a common misconception.
 
gama232 said:
“Natural realities”? Very, extremely vague. Or maybe you should contact the Pope to straighten him out.
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Not vague at all. It is reality that you are alive - correct? That is a reality that is a part of the natural world.

Pope Benedict is a much more subtle thinker than you appears to be based on this thread.

Interesting that no where have you mentioned Francis, as he is the current Pope.
 
By calling the Genesis story a “myth,” people avoid saying it is mere “fantasy,” that is, with no foundation in reality at all.
Crisis
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With this sentence, the article from crisis shows it is based on 19th century rationalism rather than 20th, or even 21st century philosophy. Pope John Paul II described the difference in his audience on 19 September 1979, very early in his pontificate:
If in the language of the rationalism of the 19th century, the term “myth” indicated what was not contained in reality, the product of the imagination (Wundt), or what is irrational (Levy-Bruhl), the 20th century has modified the concept of myth.

L. Walk sees in myth natural philosophy, primitive and religious. R. Otto considers it as the instrument of religious knowledge. For C. G. Jung, however, myth is the manifestation of the archetypes and the expression of the “collective unconsciousness,” the symbol of the interior processes.

M. Eliade discovers in myth the structure of the reality that is inaccessible to rational and empirical investigation. Myth transforms the event into a category, and makes us capable of perceiving the transcendental reality. It is not merely a symbol of the interior processes (as Jung states), but it is an autonomous and creative act of the human spirit by means of which revelation is realized.
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St John Paul put these observations in a footnote to comments on Genesis 2-3, making them particularly pertinent here. These descriptions describe non-literalist ways that Genesis can be understood, and suggest that the literalist interpretation was not the meaning the author(s) intended. I think these understandings, and the others he adds, are a better description of how the story of Adam an Eve has traditionally been understood than the literalist historicizing interpretation.
 
When I suggested contacting the Pope, who were you thinking of? Pope Benedict backs me on this and so does Humani Generis, and other Popes. Eve did not evolve, she was made by God from Adam’s side.
 
It is very obvious here that the desired goal is not education but in finding some loophole to propose a ‘non-literalist’ Genisis. Not going to happen.
 
Science generally focuses on the natural and excludes the supernatural. This is not done maliciously, or because of some opposition to God, as some have tried to assert recently. It is a way to keep focus on a common landscape, instead of bringing up religious conflicts continually. It is part of the discipline, though some may turn the exclusion into a quasi religious belief.

Both PiusXII and John Paul II recognized that science correctly sees continuity in the evolution of man, while theology sees discontinuity. This is the gist of the problem we have been discussing. It will not be resolved by injecting the supernatural into the scientific account, or by importing genes into the theological account, as if they could account for the soul. A different approach is needed, since “it is not obvious how [these] may be reconciled” according to Pius. John Paul indicated a path forward, without fully developing it, that excludes the intrusion of either discipline on the other.
 
A very wrong opinion. “Op-Ed Contributor Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, was the lead editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.” I’ll stick with the Catechism which affirms the existence of our first parents.
 
You think that John Paul II’s “desired goal is not education but in finding some loophole to propose a ‘non-literalist’ Genesis.”?

Ascribing motives that way seems rather anti Catholic.
 
buffalo said:
So he guided us into error? I don’t think so.
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Strawman. Clever strawman, but strawman nevertheless.
buffalo said:
The authors intended, and the hearers understood, the immediate creation of Adam and Eve.
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“Immediate”? Are you sure you don’t want to qualify that? The creation accounts say that Adam was created from pre-existing materials.

Or, do you want to assert – in line with the Church – that the “immediate” creation is the soul…?
buffalo said:
The one about infused knowledge?
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Note that it isn’t complete infused knowledge of all things, though.
 
gama232 said:
A very wrong opinion. “Op-Ed Contributor Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, was the lead editor of the official 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church.” I’ll stick with the Catechism which affirms the existence of our first parents.
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You seem to have a very ahistorical view of what it means to be Catholic. If you know anything about the history of the Catholic Church, you know that it is dynamic, not static. Doctrines like the Trinity did not exist until they were formulated between the composition of the gospels and the Council of Nicaea. It was process that took nearly 300 years.

Read Schönborn on early Christology and Iconography in “God’s Human Face: The Christ-Icon” to see how debated the issue was about whether the Face of God could even be depicted. We take it for granted now.
 
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I ask that you not rewrite what I wrote. Pope John Paul II received high praise from some people because he seemed to affirm evolution. That wasn’t true. Those who praised him left out a critical part of his address. Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 1996.

“What is the significance of a theory such as this one? To open this question is to enter into the field of epistemology. A theory is a meta-scientific elaboration, which is distinct from, but in harmony with, the results of observation. With the help of such a theory a group of data and independent facts can be related to one another and interpreted in one comprehensive explanation. The theory proves its validity by the measure to which it can be verified. It is constantly being tested against the facts; when it can no longer explain these facts, it shows its limits and its lack of usefulness, and it must be revised.

“Moreover, the elaboration of a theory such as that of evolution, while obedient to the need for consistency with the observed data, must also involve importing some ideas from the philosophy of nature. And to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here—in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved. There are materialist and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories. Here the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology.

“As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.”
“Theories of evolution” not just one.
 
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Hair splitting. Adam and Eve had what are called ‘preternatural gifts’ by the Church. That included bodily immortality. No getting away from that.
 
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