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rossum
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However, no newly fertilised human zygote has ever been observed to produce such artefacts. That might put you on thin ice theologically.
Reconciling Humani Generis with the human genetic data showing that there never were just two first parents
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o_mlly
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I don’t think so. An unconscious human being, like a zygote, cannot produce artifacts of a rational soul.
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Allyson
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My statement of the current scientific understanding of human origins is factually true. There is no falsehood. It is not a theological statement, if that is what you are trying to imply.Allyson:
False.
How would you have phrased the question in my OP?
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Freddy
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Then it gets confusing. Some consider Neanderthals to be a different species. But a different species having a soul? That sounds like a non starter. So if they had a soul using the definition of rationality but they couldn’t have a soul because they were a different species then either the definition of soul is incorrect or they most definitely weren’t a different species.
If the definition of soul is incorrect then that opens up a Pandora’s Box of problems.
If they were the same species and had souls then they must have been direct descendents of the first couple. Which puts them back at least to the point where Neanderthals and Homo sapiens split around half a million years ago. Which gives us another problem as mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived around 150,000 years ago (with a brief nod to those who take a more fundamental approach and consider her to be 6,000 years old).
This is an example of the type of problem that always arises in discussions like this. Those (the majority) who are obliged to follow where the evidence leads are all on the same page, despite obvious theological differences (indeed, this thread was meant to be an attempt to solve the apparent dichotomies between the science and the theology). Whereas those who deny the science are, quite frankly, all over the place. There is no consensus other than ‘You are denying God!’
You will post something that contradicts Ed’s claims. He will post something that contradicts yours. And Buff will link to something that contradicts everyone’s (including his own, for heaven’ sake).
Never the twain…
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Huiou_Theou
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There is a subtle difference between a spirit and a soul; a Soul can be mortal, but a spirit is not. All Animals have souls, but only Humans, Angels, and God are understood to have a spiritual principle in their soul.
St. Thomas Aquinas believed that the spiritual principle in human beings was PUT there on top of a pre-existing soul; – Hmmm – I could make a hypothetical example by claiming a child is vegetable / fetus until it suddenly gets a spirit added to their flesh.
St. Thomas’ work is not ex-cathedra, either; so don’t take it as official church teaching !
But “common law” clearly originating from St. Thomas is used in the abortion debate in the U.S. Supreme court records of “Roe v. Wade”; There Thomas’ theory is claimed to be pre-existing “common law” which rules murder begins for certain at “quickening.” The court neglects to tell the full origin of the law, but gives credit only to the english courts; – eg: A midaeval woman would be gulity of two crimes should she kill a child after it began to move. (animation/animal). Before then, she was guilty of only one crime.
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Dovekin
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This really is not a problem. As someone has pointed out repeatedly, the parents of mitochondrial Eve and grandparents and so on are all proper candidates for Adam and Eve. Most recent mother of all is not the only mother of all.
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Freddy
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I think you’ll find that most people here would consider the soul to be immortal.Freddy:
There is a subtle difference between a spirit and a soul; a Soul can be mortal, but a spirit is not.
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Freddy
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I think it might have been rossum (a long time back - and I’m not referring to just this thread). But that leads to a problem in regarding the definition of a ‘rational soul’. There must have been ‘rational’ humans (however you’d like to define rational) without souls living alongside rational humans with souls.Freddy:
This really is not a problem. As someone has pointed out repeatedly, the parents of mitochondrial Eve and grandparents and so on are all proper candidates for Adam and Eve. Most recent mother of all is not the only mother of all.
The definition of soul then becomes circular. 'What’s the definition of a rational soul? It’s that possesed by rational animals. And what’s the definition of a rational animal? It’s that which posses a rational soul.
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Huiou_Theou
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I didn’t go anywhere with the statement. It’s simply a fact that involves the idea of whether male-ness is by definition dominiant or not; I don’t know if you are male or female, so I can’t tailor my response to be sensitive to your particular needs. I have a transgender daughter, (Y chromosome); and that is due in great part to abuses by her mother that were sanctioned by a judge who has an anti-male agenda. As GK Chesterton pointed out, all the theories that male dominiance is about neanderthal men doing violence to women and dragging them off by their hair – the evidence is just an “art” painting on a wall, where two people crawled a very long way to draw a picture. How is art related to actual violence?
“We” can all only agree to leave behind things which aren’t dug up again; even by “archaeologists.”
Were you abused by a Y chromosome you didn’t want; or do you mean you felt subjectively abused, or that you were objectively abused?
I was abused by a woman, so – I hardly think I’m legitimizing abuse; but I am calling attention to certian scientific facts about genes and dominance.
As an aside, I’m preparing to sue a judge for what she’s done to me totally against the law in establishing a woman as the religious head of our household. The transgender child also very neary hates “her” mother; and the sucide issues are a problem in Oregon.
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Allyson
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First, I am very sorry that you have gone through what you have gone through. Abusive relationships are bad regardless of the gender identities of those involved. I certainly did not intend to open a can of worms that deep.
I just happened to note that you made the comment about Castii Connubi being a very “unpopular” Encylclical in the content of a husband’s priority over the wife, which in itself did not fit into the topic of the thread. Since I have been through a toxic abusive relationship with someone I care about (so, no, not an unwelcome Y as you put it, but it was objectively abusive in just about everyway by the end and I stayed way too long), I had to point out what has become very obvious to me about certain expectations that are placed on subordinates in a power based relationship. The same applies to the parent child relationship, etc. (Been there, done that). There always need to be a balance.
I think, that if you want to continue this line of discussion further, this thread would not be the place to do so. I will keep you in my prayers.
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o_mlly
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Your confusion would end when you realize that “species” are not a discovered category of being but an assigned one. Otherwise, you will continue to be trapped in your circular thinking.
I’ll pass on your other, as usual, snide remarks. Some posters put up original and good comments. Others do as well but, like yours, in their posts that which is good is not original and that which is original is not good.
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Freddy
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As are all species. And Neanderthals are considered sufficiently different from Homo sapien to be asigned a different species name. A species that split from our line approximately half a million years ago.Freddy:
Your confusion would end when you realize that “species” are not a discovered category of being but an assigned one.
If they had a soul then the argument that all humans with a soul are direct descendents of the original couple (however you’d want to define them) means that that couple must be at least as old as that split.
If they didn’t then there were rational animals that had no soul. And I don’t think there is any doubt about their rationality. So there must be something other than a soul which makes them such.
Which position.do you tend towards? Neanderthals with or without souls?
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o_mlly
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Why the passive voice,i.e., “are considered”? Who considers Neanderthals to be so? Do you claim the scientific community has reached a consensus on the rationality of Neanderthals?
Your logic evades me.
As we have yet to demonstrate that Neanderthals were not rational (with evidence in hand of rationality – ceremonial burials), inferring from ignorance that the “original couple” were not Neanderthals is unwarranted.
The issue remains in the realm of doubt. To wit:
o_mlly said:
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Allyson
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They are sufficiently different to be assigned a new subspecies. We also know from the fact that next to no X chromosomal material was successfully passed along that, when we interbred with Neanderthals, they were already sufficiently different from us that we can infer that not all of the hybrid offspring were fertile/highly fecund.
Many scientists do argue that they have all the same kinds of behaviors that we call human including the ones you list. The real question is where you you draw the line of what is an artifact or rationality? If you include Neanderthals, the the original couple was a species of the genus homo that pre-existed both Neanderthals (humans that evolved in Europe after ancestors left Africa) and homo sapiens (humans who evolved in Africa from ancestors who remained).
I am still curious about how you would have phrased my OP.
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gama232
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There are birds alive today that cannot interbreed due to geographic distance. Then Neanderthals, who are supposedly separate from modern humans, are able to pass their genetic material on to some of us via interbreeding? How is that possible? Then Denisovians are being added to the mix:
And Neanderthals walked upright like we do:
And Neanderthals walked upright like we do:
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Allyson
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I think you must have posted this comment or parts of it before because I just had déjà vu. You must have your favorite quotes list…
On Neanderthal’s specifically: Neanderthal fertility problems - Cosmos Magazine
Yes. Given enough separation between two populations of birds that were once one species, when they meet again, they can be genetically different enough to not interbreed or only produce infertile offspring like when you cross a horse with a donkey. They create a mule, but all mules are sterile regardless of the biological sex.
So, when Neanderthals and Human met 500,000 years after their divergence from a common ancestral population they were at the edge of being able to successfully hybridize. Some of these offspring were fertile and some were sterile. This is what happens with Ligers. Typically, males are sterile if they exist at all. (See Haldane’s Rule).
On Neanderthal’s specifically: Neanderthal fertility problems - Cosmos Magazine
Yep. They are a genetically distinct population from Neanderthals and modern humans, but we only know them through their genes extracted from a few small bones. We do not have any idea of what they looked like.
Many hominids walked upright. It is a calling card we look for in identifying potential human ancestors. Not all of them are ancestors, and not all of them interbred with modern humans. It is also not new news that Neanderthals walked upright. That was understood before I was born.
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Freddy
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Why are you linking to articles you don’t believe? ‘A group known as the ‘super-archaics’ in Eurasia interbred with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor about 700,000 years ago’.
You don’t accept that whatsoever.
Maybe we need a short recap about what you and @Buffalo have been posting. Your comments tend to get lost in the flurry of cut ‘n’ paste. So here’s a summary:
You asked us to listen to Cardinal Schönborn who is quoted thus: “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true…” a position directly opposed to yours. You said you’d follow his views on the matter. Are you going to do that?
Buffalo linked to a phys.org article that says at one point: ‘The researchers say that the discovery, of ghostly remains of gene neighbourhoods that once existed in a 550 million year old ancestor, suggests that the earliest animal was more complex than previously thought.’ Neither of you believe that or most of what was written in the article.
Buffalo wants us to listen to John Sanford. Who either lied in court about his beliefs re the age of the earth or lied in a published paper.
Then a link by Buffalo to what a Mr. Abel wrote about water being available for billions of years. You and Buffalo won’t go past a few thousand. And he wrote this on his kitchen table because his impressive sounding department (one of many in his organisation) turns out to be a small suburban house.
Then Buffalo denied that plate tectonics and cosmology etc are not empirical sciences because they can’t be repeated and observed.
You quoted Pope Benedict saying that evolution took place over ‘vast amounts of time’. A position you strenuously deny.
Buffalo stated yet again that macro evolution at the species level was impossible but Behe, one of the leading lights of ID emphatically contradicts this.
You use Catholic Answers as a source for your claims yet people like Trent Horn from CA contradicts your views at every level.
Buffalo linked to an article that suggested that mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam possibly lived contemporaneously. About 200,000 years ago, a timeline which you both reject.
You linked to another paper by Sanford in which he states that the earth is billions of years old and man’s ancestry goes back millions. You believe none of this.
You mention trees that we can buy that are ‘millions of years old’. But you work with thousands of years as a maximum.
You asked that we should ‘send that interpretation to Pope Francis. See what he says’. There was no need. He was quoted as saying the evolution was no problem as long as we accept that God is involved. You simply ignored that. You say ‘That’s why I quote Popes’ but when someone else does it’s apparently the wrong pope…
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gama232
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You are confused only because you have assumed a specific date range for the age of the earth that I have never mentioned. You are careful to ignore other points I have made. Or to extract only those fragments that support your thinking about what I have never defined. I trust others reading have not made those errors.
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Freddy
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Who considers them to be different? I guess everyone who uses the term Homo neanderthalensis which is their sub species name.Freddy:
Why the passive voice,i.e., “are considered”? Who considers Neanderthals to be so? Do you claim the scientific community has reached a consensus on the rationality of Neanderthals?
Your logic evades me.
As we have yet to demonstrate that Neanderthals were not rational (with evidence in hand of rationality – ceremonial burials), inferring from ignorance that the “original couple” were not Neanderthals is unwarranted.
And I’m not suggesting the Neanderthals were not rational. The evidence suggests that they were. So either there were human who were rational and did not have a soul or they did have a soul and were therefore descended from the original couple. So that couple must go back a half million years.
And are you suggesting that Adam and Eve were possible Neanderthals?
‘…inferring from ignorance that the “original couple” were not Neanderthals is unwarranted’.
We are not descended from Neanderthals and they are not decended from us. So that is a surprising comment to say the least.
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Freddy
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From everything you have ever posted (over a very long time) it is plain that you believe the earth to be a few thousand years old. That age has been used in very many posts in which you have been involved and you have never once denied it.
You believe that the bible is to be read literaly and creation happened over a six day period.
If that is not the case then here is your opportunity to put the record straight once and for all.
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