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

[Allyson]

“threatened”? That is your assumption. “feel” does not apply either. These assumptions are just that. I post about what I believe. Concerning this thread, it is clear that Church teaching is being manipulated.

You do seem to appear to see evolution is a threat to faith. The simple question is why, other than your read of Church teaching. You are filtering your read of Church teaching through you determination that evolution is not compatible in spite of the fact that Pius was very clear that the scientific study was right and proper for a Catholic to engage in.

I want to know @gama232 in his/her own words.

 

[gama232]

Oh well. One of us is right.

 

[gama232]

Did you read all of Humani Generis? Pope Pius XII made it clear that he wanted evolution studied for and against and further: "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 faith.[11] "

My own words are the words of the Church.

 

[Dovekin]

The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being.
John Paul II. 1996

My own words are the words of the Church.

 

[Allyson]

Did you read all of Humani Generis?

I have read all of Humani Generis many many times over the years. Including twice in full before posting this thread. It is safe to say that, even though I studied many encyclicals in my MA Theology studies, none got read more than twice. (Maybe Faith and Reason is the exception to the no more than 2x’s read.) Humani Generis is the most significant encyclical for me personally.

My own words are the words of the Church.

If I did not synthesize the documents I read for class into my own words, I would have failed out.

 

[gama232]

I think the term is quote mining. Unfortunately, Pope John Paul II’s reflections on human origins were not brief and need to be read in full or people might not believe the right - all of what he said - thing.

 

[Allyson]

And you have not been quote mining?

 

[Dovekin]

I think the term is quote mining.

The master of it was Peter Abelard. He collected quotes from the Church Fathers and arranged them in apparent opposition to one another. Scholasticism grew out of the classes that examined how to determine when they contradicted one another, and when (and how) both were true.

Our Church owes a great debt to this process.

 

[gama232]

Not in this case.

 

[gama232]

“The waiting time problem becomes very severe when more than one mutation is required to establish a new function. This is a very interesting theoretical dilemma.”-- Sanford, John, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith and John Baumgardner. September 17, 2015. The waiting time problem in a model hominin population. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 12, No. 1, Article 18, 28 pages, DOI: 10.1186/s12976-015-0016-z.

 

[Allyson]

“The waiting time problem becomes very severe when more than one mutation is required to establish a new function. This is a very interesting theoretical dilemma.”-- Sanford, John, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith and John Baumgardner. September 17, 2015. The waiting time problem in a model hominin population. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 12, No. 1, Article 18, 28 pages, DOI: 10.1186/s12976-015-0016-z.

This paper looks very interesting on a skim, and I plan to give it a deeper review tomorrow. From what I can tell so far, it is just considering what it would take for one population to advance. One of the things that has been emerging from genome studies done in Africa (and on going) is that there is a lot of gene sharing between populations of homins in Africa. It appears that the genes that make us up came together through hybridization. The end result is that you can get around the waiting time problem because beneficial genes from one population will be added to those of another and so on. I really really highly recommend Riech’s chapter on Africa in the book I linked in the OP for an overview.

Edit: I assume that Sanford is Mr. Gene-gun again?

 

[Freddy]

“The waiting time problem becomes very severe when more than one mutation is required to establish a new function. This is a very interesting theoretical dilemma.”-- Sanford, John, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith and John Baumgardner. September 17, 2015. The waiting time problem in a model hominin population. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, Vol. 12, No. 1, Article 18, 28 pages, DOI: 10.1186/s12976-015-0016-z.

So again, we have someone linking to information that they think supports their views. Why else post it?

So Ed, do you agree with what these three people who have written the paper say (and yes, I’ve read it but I can’t see that you have)? Such as (my emphasis in all cases):

‘…it is estimated that mankind evolved from a chimp-like creature in just 6 million years.’

‘Furthermore, even with a population size of one million, waiting time was 500 million years – which is still extremely prohibitive. This amount of time approximates the estimated time required for the evolution of worm-like creatures into people’.

'… at least 84 million years. This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution.

‘’’…given the ape-to-man timeframe of 6 million years…’

And a quote from a paper that the authors link to as a possible answer to their perceived problem:

'…no serious scientist questions the fact that organic evolution has occurred; ’

You don’t believe any of that. You don’t even think the planet is old enough for man to have evolved from a common ancestor with apes. Why do you and Buff constantly link to information that you emphatically deny is true?

It’s truly bizarre.

 

[Freddy]

Edit: I assume that Sanford is Mr. Gene-gun again?

The very same. From wiki:

"Sanford testified in 2005 in the Kansas evolution hearings on behalf of intelligent design, during which he denied the principle of common descent and “humbly offered… that we were created by a special creation, by God”.

He stated that he believed the age of the Earth was “less than 100,000” years".

It seems that Mr. Sanford is publishing papers that contain information that even he doesn’t believe. How can we trust anything he writes?

 

[Allyson]

It seems that Mr. Sanford is publishing papers that contains information that even he doesn’t believe. How can we trust anything he writes?

If we are to believe buffalo’s implications some time ago in the thread, this apparent contradiction is just to get around the gate-keepers. Lol. But, I am willing to say that Sanford is using large time frames for the sake of argument.

The problem I hit on after a very cursory skim is that he does not even address the real world data in this computer modeling. We are now finding numerous hybridization events between populations in the gene studies in Africa. It is not like there was just one steady population slowly progressing over time.

 

[rossum]

The problem I hit on after a very cursory skim is that he does not even address the real world data in this computer modeling. We are now finding numerous hybridization events between populations in the gene studies in Africa. It is not like there was just one steady population slowly progressing over time.

Evolution is a parallel process, happening simultaneously over the entire population of the species. Any computer model which does not allow for that parallelism in evolution will give incorrect results.

For example, human adaptation to high altitude living has evolved at least three times: in Tibet, in East Africa and in the Andes. The three adaptations are different, showing that they happened in parallel, as one would expect from the geographical separation of the three locations.

 

[o_mlly]

At the end of the day, what you find confidence in theologically remains theology and personal interpretation.

As Catholics, we are free to reject the literal interpretation of Adam’s Original Sin in Genesis but not the reality that underlies the doctrine. Based on your understanding of the science, what narrative do you propose that replaces the Genesis story but sustains the unchangeable reality that is its subtext, i.e.:

• our original nature is good
• humans beings are selfish and violent
• and act against the good, against God
• the existence of the power of evil is in the human heart
• human beings do not bear within themselves both evil and good from the outset
• we desire redemption
• evil can be overcome
• the monism of evolutionism cannot say that man is curable
• evil is not equally primal with the good
• evil comes only from a subordinate source
• evil comes from a freedom created, from a freedom abused

 

[Dovekin]

Why would we use anything other than the Adam and Eve story?

 

[Allyson]

As Catholics, we are free to reject the literal interpretation of Adam’s Original Sin in Genesis but not the reality that underlies the doctrine. Based on your understanding of the science, what narrative do you propose that replaces the Genesis story but sustains the unchangeable reality that is its subtext,

1 of 2

That is the reason I posted the thread in the first place. I do not have an answer to how to balance the two. I did get some good sources early on to consider referred. It will take further study and thought to have my “solution” so to say.

The main issue that is bringing tension is that, the text on which the Catholic teaching of the origins of man was written at a time when humans were well separated from their origins in evolutionary terms. They were even separated in time by thousands of years from the generations from Adam until the books were written / adapted from other neighboring cultures, if we take the 6,000 years calculation literally. The basic point here is that the people who wrote and compiled the text of the Old Testament did not have the knowledge we have today. They may have found fossils, but they did not know what they meant as far as we know. Our understanding of natural history, based on what we know of the past, is much more complete.

Today, we have many fossils that have been carefully analyzed; we have an ever growing database of modern and ancient DNA of multiple species. We can study the changes over time between these species. There is no question that the theory of evolution has proven its explanatory value. That is why it is a theory and not a hypothesis. What is happening now is that we are deepening our understanding of natural history through the study of DNA. There have been some unexpected results, which is a good thing. It means that we understand more.

 

[Allyson]

2 of 2

What is clear from the facts (the DNA sequences that have been analyzed) is that there was never a point at which there were just two people from whom everyone is descended exclusively. What was happening was a population level change in several locations, and sometime people from those populations interbred. At certain points in that history there were also botttlenecks, but never as small as two individuals.

Meanwhile, we have 1900 years of church theology based on the fall as recounted in Genesis as the basis of the saving work if Christ. The logic behind this account essentially requires just two people to bring the fall, although Genesis 1 just refers to men in the plural without a specific number v. Genesis 2 with just Adam and Eve as the two in a complimentary unity. This is the truth that Pius sought to defend in HG. He focused that defense on the spiritual reality that God immediately create souls. Souls are not subject to evolution or creation by the human parents, which is what Teilhard had been arguing. He was the reason for the encyclical after all. Just Adam and Eve were the first two to have immortal souls accounting to HG, so that much we must affirm as Catholics. The fall came about because of just two people, and that condition passes to all who are their direct descendents. HG affirms that we are all those direct descendents. Paragraph 37 is the main meat of the matter or the holding in the case, to use a legal analogy. HG affirms dualism.

@Neithan This might be a getter answer than my previous attempt

 

[Allyson]

For example, human adaptation to high altitude living has evolved at least three times: in Tibet, in East Africa and in the Andes. The three adaptations are different, showing that they happened in parallel, as one would expect from the geographical separation of the three locations.

Something similar also happened wherever people domesticated cattle for milk. Different populations had different locations for the adaptation for lactose tolerance. This included different locations in the genome for herders in different parts of Africa. It is really fascinating. There is a lot to wonder at in studying the natural world.