Science & Religion

[StAnastasia]

Can you believe the Human Genome Project?
If we can all descend from a single common female from 140,000 years ago, is it that farfetched that we all descended from Adam & Eve however long ago they lived?

We are descended from “Adam” and “Eve” and the other 3,000 - 10,000 breeding couples alive at the time. We are not descended solely from one couple named “Adam” and “Eve.”

 

[tonyrey]

Yes, and I can’t accept absurd stories as factual history

What about the fairy tale of the pretty particles which worked prodigious miracles that enable them to understand themselves and explain** everything **in terms of themselves? That takes a lot of beating! :ehh:

 

[tonyrey]

We are descended from “Adam” and “Eve” and the other 3,000 - 10,000 breeding couples alive at the time. We **are not **descended solely from one couple named “Adam” and “Eve.”

Is that a fact or a belief?

 

[SGWessells]

I believe the topic of convergence is important for two main reasons. One is widely acknowledged, if as often subject to procrustean procedures of accommodation. It concerns phylogeny, with the obvious circularity of two questions: do we trust our phylogeny and thereby define convergence (which everyone does), or do we trust our characters to be convergent (for whatever reason) and define our phylogeny? As phylogeny depends on characters, the two questions are inseparable. … Even so, no phylogeny is free of its convergences, and it is often the case that a biologist believes a phylogeny because in his or her view certain convergences would be too incredible to be true. … During my time in the libraries I have been particularly struck by the adjectives that accompany descriptions of evolutionary convergence. Words like, ‘remarkable’, ‘striking’, ‘extraordinary’, or even ‘astonishing’ and ‘uncanny’ are common place…the frequency of adjectival surprise associated with descriptions of convergence suggests there is almost a feeling of unease in these similarities. Indeed, I strongly suspect that some of these biologists sense the ghost of teleology looking over their shoulders.
(Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, pp. 127-128 (Cambridge University Press, 2003).)

Morris also wrote, in that same volume, “We may still be unique, but paradoxically those properties which define our uniqueness can still be inherent in the evolutionary process. In other words, if we humans had not evolved then something more-or-less identical would have emerged sooner or later.”
So although Morris is Christian, his claim is that convergence is inherent in the evolutionary process, not necessarily put there by God; and that if something like humans would have turned up sooner or later, that’s different from God determining from before the foundation of the earth that humans would emerge at a particular place and time and bear his image.
Morris’ view is also not the consensus of evolutionary biology. Steven Jay Gould in particular scoffed at the idea that any species could be an inevitable, or even very likely, product of evolution, and Dawkins says the same. In fact, the existence of progress in evolution is hotly debated. I for one don’t see how you can say that there is progress without specifying a goal or end point by which to measure it. But the process itself cannot provide such a measure without begging the question. Nor does every path of species development proceed along the same trajectory; for example, the ancestors of whales descended from aquatic animals, yet returned to the water.
Nor can we say humanity is the intended end product, or an end product at all, of evolution without claiming, with no scientific evidence, that the process has in fact ended or culminated in us. So even if Morris is correct that some intelligent species like us would have evolved eventually, he can’t say evolution would come to an end if it did. That fact in itself creates an unbridgeable gap between evolution and Christianity. If homo sapiens evolves into another species, why didn’t Jesus wait and become incarnate as one of them?

 

[You]

The conditions necessary to preserve any fossil are rare; you have to have a certain type of soil and climate condition, a certain type of death, a burial sudden enough that predators didn’t feast on the bones, a steady climate dry enough to preserve them and isolated from the destructive forces of nature and history. The really amazing thing is that we have as many bones as we have. And you know what else is amazing? None of them are found where the trilobites or T-rexes are. They are exactly at the chronological level they ought to be to conform with evolutionary predictions.

I was particularly thinking about Lucy. Her bones did not dissolve away over the last 3.2 million years. So that conditions in that area were good for early hominids to live in and excellent for preserving bones. Yet, instead we have one or perhaps a dozen skeletons there where we should expect to see hundreds of millions of skeletons of early hominids as well as billions of skeletons of animals.

 

[Elizabeth502]

We are descended from “Adam” and “Eve” and the other 3,000 - 10,000 breeding couples alive at the time. We are not descended solely from one couple named “Adam” and “Eve.”

Good grief.

Give posters on the forum more credit for intelligence. Even Pius XII in Humani Generis acknowledged the figurative language in Genesis. That would imply an understanding that Adam need not have been a “first name,” a proper name, but rather a symbolic one, given its meaning. Ditto for Eve.

Sometimes it appears that you imagine that we are all children here, and you are the adult.


Apparently, I’ll have to repaste what I posted earlier, with inclusion this time of the part about figurative language. Without distinction, I include comments from a few documents-- a couple of popes – referenced from the article below.

For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own" (Humani Generis 37).

The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).

For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries…It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

it should be remembered that the sacred writers, or more truly ‘the Spirit of God who spoke through them, did not wish to teach men such truths (as the inner structure of visible objects) which do not help anyone to salvation’; and that, for this reason, rather than trying to provide a scientific exposition of nature, they sometimes describe and treat these matters either in a somewhat figurative language or as the common manner of speech those times required…

On Science and Religion:

As the Catechism puts it, “Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things the of the faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are” (CCC 159). The Catholic Church has no fear of science or scientific discovery.

catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution

And as with all scripture study, what is important about scripture are the truths, much more so than the independent verifiability of every fact within particular historical time frames. The dispute of an individual fact does not invalidate Truth.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

St Anastasia

We are descended from “Adam” and “Eve” and the other 3,000 - 10,000 breeding couples alive at the time.

And you were among them, so you would know?

 

[SGWessells]

SGW

Other religions have risen and prospered equally rapidly: Mormonism, for example, or Scientology, or the Cargo Cult. Rapid dissemination is not necessarily evidence of truth, only of popularity.

Rapid popularity is sometimes evidence of truth.

Not if it’s only evidence sometimes. You still have to have other reasons why it’s evidence at one given time but not another.

 

[SGWessells]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SGWessells
You can’t pick and choose which words of a Bible verse must be taken literally and which you can ignore.

Ahimsa: “Why not? The Bible makes no such restriction.”

Because you have a preconceived notion of what you want the Bible to say, which is what determines which verses you take literally and which you don’t. But that is begging the question (i.e. assuming what you want to prove), which is a logical fallacy.

 

[grannymh]

We are descended from “Adam” and “Eve” and the other 3,000 - 10,000 breeding couples alive at the time. We are not descended solely from one couple named “Adam” and “Eve.”

I am so tempted to reply…
Good thing there is a ban…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW
**
Not if it’s only evidence sometimes. You still have to have other reasons why it’s evidence at one given time but not another. **

Other than in its first centuries of being persecuted by the Jews and the Caesars, when has it been unpopular?

The evidence is not based strictly on its popularity, but on the hope that it offers to all mankind without exception. That makes it popular, but also makes it fair in the love it urges for all toward all. Christianity is a reasonable religion, more reasonable than atheism to be sure, since it affirms a natural law that should be obey with our common sense, while atheism denies any fixed morality without a fixed foundation to support it (namely, God).

With atheism every man is his own moralist: a recipe for moral anarchy. Ask the Marquis de Sade.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW

**Because you have a preconceived notion of what you want the Bible to say, which is what determines which verses you take literally and which you don’t. But that is begging the question (i.e. assuming what you want to prove), which is a logical fallacy. **

Certainly not all verses of the Bible are to be taken literally. Is that your argument?

Do you think Christians are obliged to take the “days” of creation as 24 hour days?

 

[Lui]

What about the fairy tale of the pretty particles which worked prodigious miracles that enable them to understand themselves and explain** everything **in terms of themselves? That takes a lot of beating! :ehh:

I already said that there aren’t just two options: either believe everything is by chance or we all are the descendants of Adam and Eve.

Is that a fact or a belief?

A fact you can choose to not believe

And you were among them, so you would know?

Were you there when Jesus was crucified?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Lui

**I already said that there aren’t just two options: either believe everything is by chance or we all are the descendants of Adam and Eve. **

The only alternative to everything is by chance is everything is by design.

 

[Lui]

The only alternative to everything is by chance is everything is designed.

The question is designed by who or what? There are not only the two options: either all is by chance or it is designed by Abraham’s God.
In other words, the opposite of NOT believing in the Adam and Eve story is NOT believing everything was designed by chance.

 

[ASimon]

Lui

**I already said that there aren’t just two options: either believe everything is by chance or we all are the descendants of Adam and Eve. **

The only alternative to everything is by chance is everything is by design.

No. There is a 2nd alternative. That the origin event was designed, and everything that came after that is by chance.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Lui
**
Were you there when Jesus was crucified? **

No, but others were, and we have their word for it.

Whose word does St. Anastasia have for the several thousand Adams and Eves?

She certainly doesn’t have the words of Moses.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

No. There is a 2nd alternative. That the origin event was designed, and everything that came after that is by chance.

Why would the original event be designed, but no other event designed?

What principle of logic are you following there?

 

[Lui]

She certainly doesn’t have the words of Moses.

I agree with you there because Moses was a fictional character.

 

[ASimon]

ASimon

No. There is a 2nd alternative. That the origin event was designed, and everything that came after that is by chance.

Why would the original event be designed, but no other event designed?

How should I know? I don’t even think there is any such designer. But if you must stipulate there has to be one, any characteristics you ascribe to him after that are only going to be baseless presuppositions.

Occam’s Razor’s is the logical principle. Given competing hypothesis, it’s recommended that you select the one that makes the fewest assumptions. That’s atheism. Deism basically makes one assumption. Theism makes a mountain of assumptions. Among them is the idea that a Creator designed the origin event, knowing, and predicting every detail or every minute event and outcome that followed.