I think it might have been Spike Milligan who said that he had an aversion to eating anything that might be smarter than he was.Freddy:
I think some whales have been aged to be over 200 years old. Hopefully we won’t hear them singing “good bye and thanks for all the fish.” lol
I think the church’s present position regarding Sacred Teaching is to neither confront nor harmonize and, most certainly, not adjust her eternal truths to the temporary findings of the scientific community. Eternal Truth does not accomodate to “near truth”.
The findings of the scientific community are not “temporary” in the way I think you mean. Science is a cumulative enterprise. A good example that is thematic to human origins is the analysis of ancient Neanderthal DNA. When I was studying Anthropology in college, the study of ancient genomes did not exist, and I had a prof who was of the opinion that DNA from bones and fossils could not be recovered. The question that no body had an answer to at the time was: did we interbreed with Neanderthals or totally replace them? Just a few years later, scientists were able to get DNA from Neanderthal bones, and they started with the easy part to recover and analyze because it was small - Mitochondrial DNA. The haplo group for Neanderthals does not exist in any modern person tested, which suggested total replacement of Neanderthals by humans. Then, after they were able to sequence an entire genome from a Neanderthal, it was conformed that Neanderthals were not totally replaced. Their DNA makes up a small portion of every person who is not 100% of African heritage. Neanderthals never returned to Africa after their ancestors left Africa.
Derivative knowledge, knowledge partially dependent on the truth of something else, e.g. Divine Revelation, cannot claim to be the same in quality. That is, referring to an absolute truth does not impart the quality of absolute truth to that which is derived. When referring to he authority of Divine Revelation as supportive, the scientific community, not the church, claims the truth of their derivative claims.
As @TheLittleLady noted in post #7, some recent research disagrees.
Yes, constant adjusting of our understanding. Some things are axiomatic, ie creeds, but adjustments to our understandings happen there as well. God’s involvement in the creation of true men is now understood as taking more than a day, a prior understanding based on a different understanding of reading. The core truth still persists.
You are misrepresenting the series of events I recounted. There was a question that could not be affirmatively decided based just on the fossil record. It was hotly debated, but there was no way to resolve it on just the bones. Once the technology was developed that could extract ancient DNA from bones, researchers were able to look at mtDNA, which is small an not nearly as complex as Nuclear DNA. The researchers still needed to make capturing that DNA more efficient. In the mean time, the results of the first test was published, but they never claimed that it was DEFINITIVELY AFFIRMING replacement. The same researchers did the mt DNA research gave a final resolution to the question once they had the whole genome. The answer could then be given: we did not totally replace Neanderthals.
OK. One is always safer in claiming a non-universal. Still. the truth of this claim is dependent on the truth of all the antecedent claims and ultimately on the scientific method itself.
Yeah but it’s ambiguous: what is it in this context exactly and how are you applying it?
It’s not held as a binding definition by the magisterium and successor popes have not referred to it as if that was the intention. When a pope makes an ex cathedra statement, the language includes some solemn and clearly stated intention, such as “We teach, declare and define” or “in order to remove all doubt” for the faithful. [I’m basing that on memory of the declarations that are not disputed or have their infallibility affirmed by the magisterium, such as the immaculate conception, the assumption, and priestly ordination.]
Wakanda? I had to Google it. Fun.
It definitely does accumulate quickly, and as it does, we can fairly say that we know more than we did before. I would like to see how the latest research from the CNN article pans out. At one point researchers thought that the % of Neanderthal DNA in any genome was up to 4%, but that number was revised down to 2%. What ever % came back into Africa, it is likely to be much smaller than 2% the farther you live from historical trade routes. African populations have far more genetic diversity than the rest of the world, and new discoveries have been made like the oldest know Y-Chromosome family. That is an interesting story, since it started with an African American woman who was researching her family history. She got a male cousin who was descended from the ancestor who came from Africa to agree to testing. It turned out that his Y was from a population that was not then identified. Eventually that Y showed up in Cameroon.
This makes sense. Neanderthal genes are not some alien population separate and apart from all of humanity. It makes sense to think of the difference as the accumulation of mutations and adaptions during a period of physical separate from the original population creating a specific genetic group. The gene variant goes back to a certain time and place, which tells us about our history.
Well, that’s fine. Others may take it as the ramblings of a lunatic. Anybody’s individual response to any statement is personal to themselves, and your insistence upon your interpretation explains why in your original post you said that you:
However, the rest of your OP seems carefully to explain why you also think that Pope Pius XII was wrong, placing you in the awkward position of being compelled to hold as true something you know to be untrue. I guess we assumed that you posted the dilemma in the hope of finding some way of reconciling these contradictory views, and have offered various possible solutions. One seems to be that we can distort Pope Pius’s words to conform to a possible scientific scenario, and another is that we need no longer take Humani Generis as a definitive statement of Catholic belief.
Social learning from extant individuals requires only the faculty of memory and the ability to mimic. Animals can do both. Remembering and moving to better places to forage as the seasons change does not seem to me a significant change in the way the animal interacts with the world. If there is a study of animals who, w/o intimate contact with human beings, evidence more than memory and mimic, I should like to read it.
@Allyson To add some nuance: whether or not a proposed scientific scenario distorts Pope Pius’s words is a personal interpretation of his implicit intention, nor do we have to accept that it was ever a binding definition.
Yes, I think you could say that I am looking for a middle road between the two of those. One point in which I think Humani Generis fails is that Pius does not name name and bring receipts when he spends a lot of word salad on explaining the errors paragraph 37 is meant to stand in opposition against. I know that Teilhard De Chardin was one of the figures in question. At minimum, the resolution would have to not fall into the errors that are what prompted the encyclical in the first place.
In which case papal infallibility fails
Until another Pope makes a statement of equal formality in order to add nuance, paragraph 37 is the Church’s binding definition.