Reconstructed discussion whether belief in literal Adam & Eve is warranted

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No, it’s not the only option, and I don’t need to see any documents.
It’s the only option for those who want to believe what the Church teaches and share in the communion of faith.
But I will ask Ken Miller how he handles the Adam and Eve question. As a Catholic and a biologist, he will no doubt recognize the genetic impossibility of the descent of all humans from a single breeding pair.
It’s only impossible in the minds of those who believe in the naturalistic theory of evolution.
With God,nothing is impossible.
 
Why would anyone who would bother to say the creed smirk while reciting it?
Because some people like to be be subversive of the faith from within the Church,pretending to accept Catholic teaching while they subtly undermine it with their own interpretations.
 
If someone could visit this thread and offer some thoughts, I would be thankful.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=342173

It’s not an anthropological thread, but it does involve a literal interpretation of Adam and Eve, and The Fall. My claim here is that The Fall is based on Akkadian texts (see Ratzinger In the Beginning) which in turn are dismissed as mythology, and therefore there is no such thing as original sin (as Judaism also holds), and therefore no need for a Redeemer.

Thanks
 
If someone could visit this thread and offer some thoughts, I would be thankful.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=342173

It’s not an anthropological thread, but it does involve a literal interpretation of Adam and Eve, and The Fall. My claim here is that The Fall is based on Akkadian texts (see Ratzinger In the Beginning) which in turn are dismissed as mythology, and therefore there is no such thing as original sin (as Judaism also holds), and therefore no need for a Redeemer.

Thanks
I did visit the thread. Interesting but not relevant to me.

One could always start with the question of life after death. Working backwards, one would find various philosophies and religions with answers or no answers. Regardless, life after death would assume a deity, so one needs to find out about such. At this fork in the road, I chose Catholicism and worked backwards through their teachings to the source Who was Jesus Christ. He said He was God. Actually, He said a lot of things which made sense.

However, the only way His crucifixion and what He said about it would make sense was if there was a very serious reason for it. And the only thing that is really and truly serious is life after death. Working backwards from the New Testament writers, one finds that the really serious reason concerning death and life was that the representative of the human race had chosen to defy God. Christianity says that Adam is the name of that real person who set everything described above in motion.

Blessings,
granny

Bible means – basic instructions before leaving earth.
 
Where there is a conflict between evidence available from the natural world and arguments based on philosophical reflection or pure reason, one needs to make a judgment about the relative strength of the evidence from the natural world and the philosophical reasoning.
The evidence from the natural world is one thing,but the naturalistic and mechanistic explanations provided by science are another matter. The theory of evolution only makes sense for those who,knowingly or unknowingly,accept the naturalistic view of nature that science takes,and the non sequiturs that pass as causal connections,and the genetic and structures commonalities between species which are taken as proof of common ancestry.
 
The existence of a literal Adam and Eve implies that all humans alive today descend from a single pair of parents who are the first representatives of a new species and who represent a sharp demarcation between humanity and other animals. The molecular and palaeontological evidence indicates otherwise.
The Church does not teach that Adam and Eve were the result of a bottleneck,or that they were descended from another species,it teaches that they were created as being the first humans,and that they are the only genetic source of the human race.
 
To hecd2 re posts 276-282:

Alec,

Well, I expected a very detailed and strong response from you, and you did not disappoint me!

Unfortunately, I think we are beginning to go over the same ground.

What I see developing in comments on this thread are three positions:

(1) Divine revelation trumps certain present claims of natural science. Specifically, this occurs when a claim made on behalf of natural science crosses the epistemic boundary between natural science and theology. A prime example would be a natural scientific challenge to the Catholic Church’s definitive teaching that Adam and Eve actually existed as the two first true human parents of the entire human race.

(2) Certain evolutionary theories appear to trump the truth of divine revelation.

(3) Some deny that divine revelation requires belief in the literal reality of Adam and Eve.

There is no doubt that Catholic teaching demands the literal reality of Adam and Eve, as has been superbly documented by masterjedi747 (post 287). You appear to place primary emphasis upon natural science in determining whether belief in a literal Adam and Eve is warranted, but you also mention #3. While #3 has been brought up in other posts, the key issue remains the reality of Adam and Eve as first parents.

Clearly, and understandably from your perspective, what you see as compelling scientific evidence against a literal Adam and Eve primarily moves you to dismiss all possibility of Adam and Eve. Despite the extensive philosophical and scientific arguments you present, you do not address the evidence of miracles supporting Catholic belief and teachings. As GrannyMH so aptly points out (post 284), ā€œDivine Revelation trumps.ā€ The fact that you cannot accept this sort of evidence is unfortunate, but does not make it go away. The more one studies the details of these extraordinary phenomena, which God alone appears able to produce, the more difficult it becomes to discount and ignore them.

In addition to other sources I have previously mentioned documenting the miracles that fill Christian history (posts 237-238), I suggest The Whole Truth about Fatima: Science and the Facts by Frere Michel de la Sainte Trinite (Immaculate Heart Publications, English edition, 1989), vol. 1, pp. 323-356, which describes in great detail the miracle of the sun at Fatima in 1917, examining relevant scientific, philosophical, and theological aspects.

St. Thomas was well aware that miracles cannot compel belief. The Fatima ā€œmiracle of the sunā€ will always tempt agnostics to appeal to something like ā€œcollective hallucinationā€ (meaning, everybody was suffering from mental illness!) or that space aliens arranged the whole episode using natural technology too advanced for our understanding. Still, especially for those who accept God’s existence, at some point naturalistic explanations become less intellectually credible than acceptance of a genuine miracle. As I said in posts 237-238, *ā€œWhile no one can force anyone to believe anything, Catholics may rightly ā€œwarrant their beliefā€ in the Catholic Church based on this continuous history of miracles, beginning with the Resurrection itself – miracles largely filled with Catholic specificity.ā€ *And Catholic teaching affirms Adam and Eve.

Does natural science regulate philosophical and theological science, or does theological and philosophical science regulate natural science? (I am sure we both see nuances here, but the central contest should be evident.) In cases where a claim is made about an issue pertaining to both natural science and theology, which discipline must have the last word? The Catholic scholastic tradition holds that theology is the supreme science, the ā€œqueen of the sciences,ā€ and that philosophy is ā€œtheology’s handmaiden.ā€ I am sufficiently predeluvian to be happy with that scenario!

As I have said before, you are not merely speaking on behalf of natural science here, but also a philosophical position through which you interpret natural science (pragmatic verificationism?). If one wishes to speak with the authority of natural science alone on any topic, then all philosophies must be set aside. But that is not possible. The method of natural science itself necessarily presupposes, as I have pointed out before, absolute acceptance of such philosophical first principles as identity, excluded middle, non-contradiction, sufficient reason, and causality – as well as epistemological realism.

That is to say, every scientist presupposes that observations are what they are, that they cannot both be and not be what they are, that phenomena have reasons and explanations, and that we can make accurate observations of the extramental world. If you fudge on these first principles at any level, you undo the very method by which you built up the scientific models which led to your ā€œfudging.ā€

This all means that you cannot do science by itself. It either operates on blind faith, or else, presupposes some philosophical ā€œframeworkā€ in which its findings are accepted. Yes, that means that philosophy is regulative of natural science in a certain foundational sense – and why any ā€œfindingsā€ of natural science which challenge its very presuppositions are absurd and impossible.

Continued…
 
To hecd2…continued from post 307:

That also means that we must bring contending philosophies to the table in any discussion of scientific evidence as well as such claims as a literal Adam and Eve. I do not propose to reargue here the points I made in posts 260-261. Your materialist and sensist philosophy does not see the same world which my Christian one does. Still, I would make two observations:
  1. The point of Christian philosophy (Thomism, if you insist) is that true human beings possess intellective powers which are essentially superior to mere sensation, which (sensation) they share with beasts. This means that above and beyond the mere animal ability to grasp the physical, sensible qualities of physical objects, the human mind can penetrate to the very essence of things – understanding their intrinsic natures, including, as Eddington expresses it in his book, *The Nature of the Physical Universe.
This is what marks man’s entrance into a world undergoing biological evolution: A creature appears which is able to understand his own presence and role in a world whose myriad entities he grasps in their very substance and nature, not merely – as in the case of brute animals – as collections of physical appearances or images to which they instinctively or reflexively react. Sensism and materialism allow no such radical distinction between man and brute. Christian philosophy sees a qualitative leap to true humanity in this essentially distinct intellective mode of cognition. For a sensist to grasp and affirm an essential difference between mere sensation and true intellection is an oxymoron.
  1. You appear well-versed in the writings of both Aristotle and St. Thomas. That is why the following quote from you (post 280) surprises me:
*"So we turn to your claims about the existence of a spiritual dimension and about how consideration of philosophical species indicates that a substantial form exists, separate from any material form and sovereign over it, and which determines our intellect and free will, and provides us with personal immortality. This is a very pretty concept, but there is not an iota of evidence in support of any of it. As I have pointed out several times, if we shed all of our preconceptions and our desires for the world to be as we would like it to be, we must conclude that none of these beliefs is warranted. *

ā€œFirst, the evidence for human faculties is quite unequivocal: no human faculty exists that does not depend on neural activity. No human faculty exists that cannot be affected by physical effects. No human faculty of self-consciousness or consciousness of the external world or abstract thought or speech or reasoning or prayer or poetry or music or morality or free will exists in the absence of a physical brain.ā€

If you know Aristotelian hylemorphic doctrine, the human spiritual substantial form is not a thing in itself, operating entirely separate from the organism of which it is the form. Form and matter are co-principles of one and the same human organism. Since the (passive) intellect takes as its object the impressed intelligible species, and since the agent intellect forms that species by a process of abstraction from the phantasm which is formed in the imagination as a result of the impressed sensible species coming from the external senses, it is clear to all Aristotelians that no operation of the intellect is possible in this life without extrinsic (NOT intrinsic) dependence upon sense faculties and material organs, such as the brain – since external sense stimuli and organic operations are presupposed to provide the data on which the sense and intellective faculties act.

Arguments for the spirituality of the intellective soul are based on the intelligible objects formed by the intellect – its mode of knowing, NOT because it can operate when the brain is not functioning. Materialist arguments against the spiritual soul fail to grasp its proper operation, and why that operation is intrinsically spiritual. No empirical evidence by itself can disprove what pertains to the reality of spiritual faculties.

Without spiritual faculties, modern human sciences would be impossible, for they depend necessarily on concepts and judgments, which cannot be derived from organic powers. Similarly, while I grant that fossil evidence for human activity varies over time, you claim (post 278) that such evidence precludes a first true human being. I already answered this in my above-mentioned posts when I said:* "The fact that gradual improvement in tool making or other activities takes place over time does not prove that a radical line of demarcation is not present. *

ā€œAt some point in time, true man became present. Before that he was not, and what we find are simply signs of complex sentient behaviors of lower animals, including subhuman primates.ā€ I also pointed out there that the stable nature of man is consistent with the fact that his powers are not always in act, and that their sudden appearance would be mixed with evidence of purely sensory abilities which he shares with brutes. The fact remains that spiritual souls cannot ā€œgradually emerge,ā€ since a primate either has one or not.

The need that there be a first true human (Adam) at some point in time, with a spiritual soul directly created by God, remains.

Continued…
 
To hecd2…continued from post 308:
**
As to your extensive comments from molecular biology** (posts 276-279), they say precisely what I have already written (posts 265-266). First, *"…careful reading of your posts suggests to me that your conclusion about the scientific consensus is not based on the question of effective population size, but rather on other aspects of specific genes." Your careful efforts (post 277) to show that ā€œā€¦ the concept of a human population increasing from two to 10,000 in ten generations is not practically tenableā€¦ā€ *suggest to me that the project may actually be possible in principle. You grant the mathematical possibility, but then cite various refereed papers arguing that such rapid population growth would be unheard of according to natural scientific experience and estimates.

May I respectfully suggest that God might be able to arrange the needed conditions – not necessarily by miracles, but by providence – in a time so short and so deeply hidden in the recesses of prehistory as to be totally unobservable to modern scholars? You assume that you have demonstrated that a bottleneck of two is impossible. Inductive arguments do not demonstrate impossibility, only improbability. Furthermore, a person can be shown to be mistaken about contingent empirical claims without having to cite a scientific paper. God does not write in refereed journals.

Regarding aspects of specific genes, I had already conceded: ā€œYou have built a powerful case to prove that other specific genes in the genome indicate in various ways that a bottleneck smaller than one thousand appears impossible.ā€ In anticipation of your impressive response, I had also written: *"… I am confident you will inundate me with much more supporting evidence and ā€˜absolute certitudes,’… the difficulty is that we may find out something ā€˜surprising’ about gene behavior in the future – just as we did in the case of Ayala’s 1994 claim. *

ā€œMoreover, there is an inherent uncertainty ā€˜built into’ any attempt to determine absolute certitudes about specific distant past events based solely upon microscopic analysis of present evidence, especially when much of the science is of very recent vintage and entails many assumptions and estimates. Unlike Catholic dogma, this is not the stuff of divine revelation.ā€

What is apodictically clear, though, is that the Catholic religion teaches the reality of Adam, regardless of what secular scientists may speculate about human origins. As I indicated early on in this post, the theological basis is certain, and, in Granny’s immortal words, ā€œDivine Revelation trumps.ā€

That is why I said at the beginning of this post that we are beginning to go over the same ground.

That is also why I still maintain that it is reasonable for 21st Century, educated people to believe in a literal Adam and Eve.
 
The belief in ā€œAdamā€ and ā€œEveā€ is also consistent with a 13.7 billion year old earth.
It is actually most inconsistent. It can be argued scientifically that those 13.7 billion years don’t exist. If they don’t exist and creation happened only thousands of years ago then a more logical and superior scientific theory would be: ā€œAbrupt appearance of all species [or kinds] by a common designer using DNA.ā€ Direct C-14 dating of the fossils in the Geologic column supports the ā€œAbrupt Appearanceā€ theory of origins with variation within kind.

Not only are there good arguments and data challenging the 13.7 billions year or what
ever it will be tomorrow or next year, modern biological facts of life and physical laws militate against the theory of evolution and long ages as well as direct dating of the fossils. Again as I have repeatedly pointed out, Moses sizzles while Darwin fizzles so why do so many scientists ā€œbelieveā€ in the theory of evolution? I think I know why but I’d like to hear the reasons other than the propaganda in the brochure that says ā€œWhy scientists believe in Evolutionā€ as stated on the front cover of a ten page brochure published by the American Geological Institute.šŸ™‚
 
It is actually most inconsistent. It can be argued scientifically that those 13.7 billion years don’t exist. If they don’t exist and creation happened only thousands of years ago then a more logical and superior scientific theory would be: ā€œAbrupt appearance of all species [or kinds] by a common designer using DNA.ā€ Direct C-14 dating of the fossils in the Geologic column supports the ā€œAbrupt Appearanceā€ theory of origins with variation within kind.

Not only are there good arguments and data challenging the 13.7 billions year or what
ever it will be tomorrow or next year, modern biological facts of life and physical laws militate against the theory of evolution and long ages as well as direct dating of the fossils. Again as I have repeatedly pointed out, Moses sizzles while Darwin fizzles so why do so many scientists ā€œbelieveā€ in the theory of evolution? I think I know why but I’d like to hear the reasons other than the propaganda in the brochure that says ā€œWhy scientists believe in Evolutionā€ as stated on the front cover of a ten page brochure published by the American Geological Institute.šŸ™‚
There is a proponderence of evidence that the cosmos is billions of years old.
There is a proponderence of evidence that Man did not evolve and that typical evolutionary theory is wrong.
 
It is actually most inconsistent. It can be argued scientifically that those 13.7 billion years don’t exist. Since these billions an billions of years are no- existent then creation could have happened only thousands of years ago. Then a more logical and superior scientific theory should be used by the scientiic community might be: ā€œAbrupt appearance of all species [or kinds] by a common designer using DNA.ā€ Direct C-14 dating of the fossils in the Geologic column supports the ā€œAbrupt Appearanceā€ theory of origins with variation within kind.

Not only are there good arguments and data challenging the 13.7 billions year or what
ever it will be tomorrow or next year, modern biological facts of life and physical laws militate against the theory of evolution and long ages as well as direct dating of the fossils. Again as I have repeatedly pointed out, Moses sizzles while Darwin fizzles so why do so many scientists ā€œbelieveā€ in the theory of evolution? I think I know why but I’d like to hear the reasons other than the propaganda in the brochure that says ā€œWhy scientists believe in Evolutionā€ as stated on the front cover of a ten page brochure published by the American Geological Institute.šŸ™‚
This is a more detaiIed response to St. Anastasia and modernists theologians. I will pit the writings and arguments of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, a doctor of the Church against any of the assumptions and speculations that have been drawn about the six days of creation or Adam and Eve and original sin by the skeptical theologians of the 19th and 20th century including Fr Zahm of Notre Dame UN. It seems that atheists and many Christian academicians have been deceived by the silly and false assumption that because all species have a similarities [homology] they must have evolved over a long period of time which is also an assumption based on unprovable and often disproved chronological data from Lyell, Darwin and K/Ar - Ar/Ar radiometric dating].

Now what are some of those similiarities as noted? Well let’s go right to the 10 page brochure by the American Geological Institute entitled, ā€œWhy scientists Believe in EVOLUTION.ā€ Right on the front cover is a sort of tree of life for the evolution of man from ~65 M years ago up to the present. At the bottom are the artistic rendurings of two four legged rat-like critters then a lemur [Ida I suppose] then two more chimp-like critters in assending order followed by a hairy man-like creature with hands, then ancient man like Neanderthal and Cromagnon then three faces of modern man, oriental, African and caucausian. The similiarities are: All have four appendiges incuding the mastodon, Llama, sabre tooth tiger and a couple of mammels [Oh yes and a bat-like critter thrown in for good measure.] Now what then are the similairities amongst all these artistic rendurings?

Why all have four appendages for locomotion, they also have two eyes, two ears, a mouth with which to consume food for energy and a nose with which to to breath.

The first conclusion is that so what does that prove? Nothing! The above shared characteristics and much more are all necessary and would be the logical way that an intelligent designer would have created all those in the animal and insect kingdom etc. using DNA as the method of creation and pro-creation. No proof for evolution here. No evidence against the six days of creation here.😃
 
CONTINUED:

But right under the lowest critters on this imaginary evolutionary ā€œtotum pole of lifeā€ is an apparent Triceratops with its horns sticking through the top soil where the big rat-like critters are walking [our ancestors of course]. Dinosaur are claimed to be 65 million years old [12 million years old in 1925 at the time of the Scopes trial].

Well, to check to see if this ā€œtotum pole theory of lifeā€ is valid I began my own investigation over 25 years ago. Of course I too began with a bais. I ā€œbelievedā€ that Christ and the early church fathers were correct in requiring us to believe in essentials of Genesis 1-11 but would science support a literal scripture? On the other hand the modernists opponents of Genesis 1-11 claim and ā€œbelieveā€ 1-11 as simply a story coming from primitive tribes to try and explain the origins of life.

The results are now in: (1) That Tricertops at the bottom of the totum pole and all dinosaurs which several teams from Texas to Alaska have C-14 dated from 1990 to the present are " consistently" only 22,000 to 31,000 radiocarbon years old at the most; that’s a huge 2400 times younger age than claimed by main stream scientists. But are these RC correct?

The magnetic force field around the earth has a half-life of about 1500 years. Thus, 1000’s of years ago there could have been much less C-14 produced in the upper atmosphere due to that protective magnetic shield thereby making these RC ages for the dinosaurs way too old. However, more research is needed by future generations to test this hypothesis. Nonetheless, dinosaur bone collagen etc. are the same age as collagen in saber tooth tigers (12,000 to 28,000 RC years), one giant bison @ 31,000 RC years, most mammoths (10,000 to 40,000 RC years etc.) and Neanderthal bones.
(29,000 to 40,000 RC years BP).

(2) Based on their fossil footprints together in several locations in the USA dinosaurs and humans have coexisted in time as proven by Cat-scan studies of the Cretaceous limestone matrix in which the impressions were made . The Cat-scan was of a similarly sized footprint, also 11 inches long and titled the ā€œSir George series.ā€ A Cat-scan of a carved human footprint from the 1930’s with five toes like the Delk print, also in limestone, gave NO lighter colored areas characteristic of much higher density caused by pressure of toes etc. Again the evidence can be found in the following Youtube presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXDBX99qePA&feature=related** DELK dinosaur & human prints***

Thus there is NO 65 millions years between dinosaur and man based on C-14 dating of both bones and fossils iln teh strata; dinosaur and human footprints together; and, distinct dinosaur depictions World-Wide from Israel to Cambodia to the US. http://www.dinosaursandman.com/

Again as has been pointed out in other threads the late Dr. Larry Azar of Iona College, NY, without even knowing the above hard evidences, came up with a book based on his studies of evolution claims entitled, ā€œEvolution and other fairy talesā€ (2006-Amazon).

Thank you St. John Damacene, another church father who wrote in De Dacronibus that ā€œdragonsā€ alias dinosaurs lived in his time about AD 725. He wrote that they were not ghosts and that they laid eggs and were 35 feet or more long.šŸ˜‰ Moses was right and Darwin got it wrong.
creationism.org/crimea/engl/al1.htm

God bless our church fathers and the doctors of the church who believed without seeing the scientific evidences that support Genesis 1-11 šŸ™‚ and refutes evolution.

These discoveries of the past 25 years including sedimentology studies as I have pointed out in previous threads has opened the doors wide for governments, universities, research organizations, individaul scientists and theologians to break the shakles of a bankrupt theory. They can now greatly expand their research into how the history of our little planet, the solar system, the universe originated and developed with the understanding that the universe could be over 100,000 times younger than the 13.7 billion years now taught as a fact. Abrupt Appearance by an Intelligent Designer would then be the favored scientific theory of origins instead of wasting precious time and money trying to figure out how we evolved out of chaos.:cool:*
 
So… StAnastasia, did Ken Miller ever get back to you?
this has been one interesting thread. unfortunately, i have a dislocated elbow in sling waiting for a surgery decission so am typing with one hand at an unfriendly computer.

please note that this thread was started before ban on evolution and atheism threads in this forum. so now one needs to be careful about posting.

i don’t remember stanastasia’s question, but i do love reading her thought-provoking posts.
 
I am not familiar with either the science or theology on this issue, so I am at a disadvantage at even understanding what is being said. One thing that I do know is there are sufficient motives to accept the Revelation in the Catholic Church, and my sole interest is in keeping with orthodoxy.
 
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