The Evolution of the Soul

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JeannetteCML said:
I have a thread on the Back Fence with this title dealing with free will and consciousness of animals (humans included), and someone suggested putting it in apologetics. I don’t want to post the same thing in two places, so here is the link:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=169767

🙂
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Jeannette my sister in Christ: I noticed in your post on the other thread that you wrote:

"I was refering to evolution prior to the human soul in my title and that’s why I mention animals. My real question is whether animals have any kind of consciousness or free will… But if you would like to look at the “evolution” of the human soul in Christ that’s fine with me.

I’m not sure how much animals are examples of “listening to God.” I was just at the park this evening watching ducks resting by the shore and they sure like to fight with eachother. It looked like every duck for himself. I think humans have the capacity to go beyond that."

Based on your phrase above which I have highlighted in red, I hope and pray that you don’t believe that animals evolved over time into humans and in so doing developed souls! Tell me that is not your belief?

Assuming that is not the problem, the rest of your writing reminded me of an important Bible verse, Matthew 23:24, where Jesus was scolding the “religious” people of His day, the Pharisees, and He said “Blind guides, you strain out the gnat and choke on the camel”.

Often times we Christians get hung up on straining out “gnats”, or the most minute part of our faith, and miss the all important messages of Jesus the Christ. Deep thought and study of whether animals “have any kind of consciousness or free will” could be a “gnat” for you and some others as well.

As the earlier reply stated, animals and humans are not the same. The difference is animals act upon instinct, and yes many species have enough brain power to learn how to better do that, but they are acting upon instinct none the less. Humans however were gifted additionally by their Creator with intelligence, free will and immortal souls; that makes us different. There is a term of which you are probably aware for humans seeing human traits in animals and that is anthropomorphism. The error in anthropomorphism is the human is “seeing” what he wants to believe, but not what is the truth. We Christians often do that to our detriment.

I hope my reply has been helpful
God Bless!
Mike
 
Mike_Brick said:
Based on your phrase above which I have highlighted in red, I hope and pray that you don’t believe that animals evolved over time into humans and in so doing developed souls! Tell me that is not your belief?
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I believe that only humans have immortal souls and consciousness --so far. But looking at animals and wondering about how we are related to them reguarding our origins has made me curious. Is instinct enough to account for all animal activity? Do you believe in evolution? And if so, to what extent? There are some who believe that what is now the human soul is something that gradually developed over time. I have to admit that much of the “hardware” for a human has indeed developed over time through evolution. So this is why I wonder.

I’m sorry if you consider this a gnat, but it can sometimes be a very foundational thing for me…
 
JeannetteCML said:
I believe that only humans have immortal souls and consciousness --so far. But looking at animals and wondering about how we are related to them reguarding our origins has made me curious. Is instinct enough to account for all animal activity? Do you believe in evolution? And if so, to what extent? There are some who believe that what is now the human soul is something that gradually developed over time. I have to admit that much of the “hardware” for a human has indeed developed over time through evolution. So this is why I wonder.

I’m sorry if you consider this a gnat, but it can sometimes be a very foundational thing for me…
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I too am sorry if I have offended you in my reply to your question. I had no intension of doing that.

I too am curious like you, do you know where the folks that have the belief in the evolution of the soul which I highlighted in blue above, got that belief. What is the basis for that belief?

Please reply, I’m interested
Peace
Mike
 
Jeannette, I’m an old dog trainer from way back. I also have lots of experience with horses and cats.

Reading paragraphs 339, 340, and 356 of the Catechism should help.

Animals can figure things out, and can make choices. But this is not the same thing as free will in humans.

An animal’s choices are ruled by consequences, and they are linear thinkers who can’t reason beyond one or two steps. Animal training is based on that; both the old fashioned (do this or something bad will happen" and the new “do this and you will be rewarded; fail to do it and you will not be rewarded.”

But they cannot make moral choices. They do not have morals. They don’t have the capacity to know God. Only humans have those two abilities. We may not always use 'em, but we’ve got 'em.

We, and animals, can be trained by consequences. “Don’t steal, or you’ll go to jail.” But only humans can be trained with morals. “Don’t steal, because it is wrong. How would you like it if I stole from you?”

Sometimes it looks like animals have guilty consciences, like when your puppy meets you at the door looking guilty, and you go in and find the sofa chewed up. Your puppy is not saying “I’ve been bad.” He is saying, “Mom’s home, and she will be mad at me because there’s fluff on the floor.” He has not made the connection between chewing the sofa and the fluff on the floor; i.e. he does not know that it is his actions that have put the anger-causing fluff on the floor

HTH,
Ruthie.
 
JeannetteCML said:
I believe that only humans have immortal souls and consciousness --so far. But looking at animals and wondering about how we are related to them reguarding our origins has made me curious. Is instinct enough to account for all animal activity? Do you believe in evolution? And if so, to what extent? There are some who believe that what is now the human soul is something that gradually developed over time. I have to admit that much of the “hardware” for a human has indeed developed over time through evolution. So this is why I wonder.

I’m sorry if you consider this a gnat, but it can sometimes be a very foundational thing for me…
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It can only be foundational if you do not believe that God created the heavens and the earth. As for your question, “do you believe in evolution”, I don’t want to sound like President Clinton, but that all depends on what you mean by evolution. If you are asking if all of what you see and can’t see around you started with a big bang out of nothing, (if that’s even possible), no I don’t. If you mean can organisms change and adapt over time, yes I do.

Do you believe that God created humans as humans, or is our existance in the order of things an accident or adaptation of lesser creatures? Let’s think this through together, but we have to be careful as we do so because science can’t explain God or faith.

Peace
Mike

Peace
 
JeannetteCML said:
I have a thread on the Back Fence with this title dealing with free will and consciousness of animals (humans included), and someone suggested putting it in apologetics. I don’t want to post the same thing in two places, so here is the link:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=169767

🙂
Click to expand...
All living things, humans, animals and plants have souls but only humans have immortal souls. The souls of plants and animals die when they die.
 
Pani_Rose said:
Without reading the other discussion…

We are not animals!

Animals do not have souls!
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Sorry to disappoint but we are animals. Unless you disagree with the Doctor of the Church St. Thomas Aquinas. He says that human beings are Rational Animals. More specifically he states that we have the 3 innate capacities associted with our souls. Those being the vegetative (growing, repairing ourselves etc), sensitive (capacity to have, and use our sense perception) and rational (literally ‘to weigh/compare’, learn etc) capacities. We are animals, but we are a special kind of animal…a Rational one, with a soul endowed by God that is immortal and returns to God upon our death.
As for animals having souls…they do to…sort of. Animals are gifted with only (according to Aquinas) the Sensitive and Vegetative capacities. That is, they are not rational like we are rational. They merely sense and grow. They are a slave to their senses. Further, their soul is NOT immortal. It dies when they do.

For more information on the human soul and it’s capacities consult the Summa Theologica, especially Prima Pars (First Part), quaestione (question) 75 and on.
 
Yes, an animal material soul is simply the Form of the body. It is a soul, but not a spirit. An animal is merely the sum of its physical parts, and their soul is just like the equals sign in the equation. It is the metaphysical cause of unity in the animal substance, but nothing is superadded with it, it is material not spiritual.

But with humans, rationality…that is to say consciousness and free will…is in the soul because the human soul is also a spirit…and this, being immaterial, makes the soul live on after death. It must be created directly and immediately by God each time.

Animals are not conscious in the sense were are talking about. They are like organic robots. They do not experience qualia.
 
batteddy… I have a few remarks. First, I am not sure why you are making a distinction between soul and spirit. I agree, you are right, the animal soul is the form ‘attached’ to the matter allowing the creature to exist (to be), and that they are nothing more than a form and an amalgam of physical parts, but what do you mean by “spirit” or “spiritual”.
Second, however, given that they are form and matter they are soul and material (not that soul and form are always equal…they are not, but that is a different topic). Furhter, I do not know why you say “it is material not spiritual”. The form for all beings is immaterial. The form is not something that can be empirically verified. It can only be apprehended by a mind…which all humans have. The reason animal ‘souls’ do not subsist post mortem is because it needs the matter to exist and operate. No matter, no operation, therefore no existence. This is not the case with the rational human soul. It is immortal, and does not entirely rely on material parts.

Other than these comments…good show. You must be doing your reading:thumbsup:
 
Mike, I found this for you: oldandsold.com/articles19/soul-1.shtml I did a good skim on it. :whacky: 😃
By the way, you seem like a very nice person. 🙂

batteddy, I tend to agree with you… It’s easy to say that animals just don’t have consciousness and free will. But instinct is all so MySTeriOuS. Can you really say that there is nothing to animals other than what we observe physically? No pleasure or pain for them? No willful reactions to experiences of such? Is the organic structure all that self-sufficient? I wonder…

For anyone interested, this is good to read, too: newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm …and I am compelled to agree with it.

Thanks to all who posted so far! 🙂
 
Mike_Brick said:
It can only be foundational if you do not believe that God created the heavens and the earth. As for your question, “do you believe in evolution”, I don’t want to sound like President Clinton, but that all depends on what you mean by evolution. If you are asking if all of what you see and can’t see around you started with a big bang out of nothing, (if that’s even possible), no I don’t. If you mean can organisms change and adapt over time, yes I do.

Do you believe that God created humans as humans, or is our existance in the order of things an accident or adaptation of lesser creatures? Let’s think this through together, but we have to be careful as we do so because science can’t explain God or faith.

Peace
Mike
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Mike, I have to talk to you in layman’s terms. That article was a little heavy.

I believe that God created the heavens and the earth… in the sense the He, and only He, is and always has been supporting their existance. Without Him they would not be. However, exactly how he creates them (because He is continuing to create souls etc. even now) is another question. I guess to question what kind of experiences animals may or may not have is not all that foundational. But it makes me wonder how evolutionary history is compatible with the story of Paradise and original sin. But that’s a question for another thread (which I’ve already tried).

I don’t quite understand what you mean by “all of what you see and can’t see around you started with a big bang out of nothing.” God does create of out nothing, yes. And sometimes He uses pre-existing things to form newer things. I would say the Big Bang Theory is plausible. But I wouldn’t say that things in Heaven couldn’t have existed without the Big Bang or that God didn’t have a hand in all of it. You say that you believe that organisms can change an adapt over time… Yes, that’s part of “hard core” evolution. But the other part is that the simple organisms all precluded the more complex ones and that entire new species have been formed continuously by this process of adaptation. For me, although evolution seems the most obvious option considering what all varieties of life have in common with one another, it always seems like such a stretch to say it happened all on its own. It is simply miraculous to me. It’s almost more convincing to me to hear that God created each creature one at a time instantly than that DNA mutations could come up with and prosper the exact gene combinations that make life possible. It’s all very “suspicious” and looks like Intelligent Design.

But what I was really trying to ask you is whether you believed that humans slowly evolved from lower animals or if there was some discontinuity or miraculous break somewhere in there… which leads into your question of whether I believe God created humans as humans… I’m not sure what I think about how the first man and woman actually came about in relation to other animals. But however naturally or supernaturally it may appeared to have happened, I don’t believe is was ultimately an accident. I believe it was always God’s intention to make humans the summit of creation, hence the Incarnation.

Oh, and the person who wrote the article I posted the link to (I don’t know anything about him/her!) seems to think that scientific observation can explain God and faith! I guess we’ll have to see about that.

Peace,
Jeannette
 
JeannetteCML said:
Mike, I found this for you: oldandsold.com/articles19/soul-1.shtml I did a good skim on it. :whacky: 😃
By the way, you seem like a very nice person. 🙂

Thanks to all who posted so far! 🙂
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Jeannette: You seem like a nice person too, misguided maybe, but nice. I looked at the link you sent me, and after a few seconds decided that when I see writings like, “Before doing so, however, I desire to invite your attention again to the inductions and deductions upon which the great lights of evolutionary science lay the greatest stress. I allude especially to such scientists as Haeckel, who fancy that they have eliminated God from the Universe by proving that Man was not specially created out of nothing, but is simply the product of organic evolution”, I knew that I have no time to waste on guys who think they have figured out how to eliminate God from the universe.

You know we have choices to make in life, and time here on earth is limited. None of us knows how much or little time we have. But how we spend the time we do have will determine how we spend all of eternity. For me I have chosen to follow God, who has revealed Himself to us in so many ways, which has been witnessed by countless people before us. You know the God I follow searches us out and wants a relationship with us. We don’t have to “figure” Him out or search very hard for Him; He seeks us.

Now to put time in perpsective, if you you are certain that there is no God, and no opportunity of Heaven, or risk of hell for all eternity, then how you spend your time in this life doesn’t matter. But if you are wrong in that belief, you have wasted every second of your time here, and will spend all of eternity regretting your choice. Think of eternity this way, if you can draw a line that represents eternity. That line would have no visible beginning and goes on forever. Now put a mark on that line that is as long as your life. Even if you lived to be a thousand years old, the line representing your lifetime when compared to eternity would only be a microscopic dot. So how you spend that dot determines how you spend that eternal line, which could be in the presence of an almighty and loving God who only wants the best for us. That’s what I believe and desire for me and those I love. If I am right, I have invested a dot to get eternity. If I am wrong, I have only wasted a microscopic dot.

You have it backwards, in my opinion you are risking all of eternity in mind excersizes, chasing every wacky thought or theory of men. Are you familiar with the story of Adam and Eve as found in Genesis, Chapter One? What was it the devil told Adam and Eve to convince them to violate the one and only requirement put on them after they were placed in paradise? He told them if they did what God told them not to, they would be like God Himself. They fell for it, lost all the goodness they had been given by their Creator, and the world has never been the same.

Have any of your “scientists” changed the entire world in a significant and positive way? I believe and history has shown that one man has changed the world more than anyone else and all the scientists combined and that was Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So thanks for the link, but I’ll put my faith in God through the redeemer Jesus. I will keep you in my prayers.

Mike
 
Mike,

I kind of skipped over that part. You have to learn to do that sometimes. 😃 The author has other interesting things to say. If you read toward the end of the link you would find that the author is Christian and has some fascinating things to say about Jesus. He talks about how much He has changed the world. He has faith in Jesus! My dear friend, you have jumped to conclusions.

If you’re not interested in exploring certain things about the nature of God’s universe or have a hard time reading links I post, that’s fine. I don’t expect everyone to be interested in the things I am or even to have the same intellectual needs. But I have serious questions about the story of Genesis and I need to be intellectually honest. I like to delve deeply into things and use the mind God has given me to pursue His truth. And His truth is vast and rich and to be found in many places.

Also, I myself think it is necessary for some who do not believe in God to have their positions examined and refuted to show that a loving God does exist. Sometimes you have to study their positions to do that. It’s a work of charity. Aquinas and Augustine did as much with the errors and philosophies of their own times.

Peace be with you, and don’t worry so much thinking I am misguided!

Jeannette
 
🤓 :love:

Oh, you broke my heart! :crying: I was all excited about showing you what you asked for and were curious about. And I even found an intelligent person who demonstrated what you were asking about AND who said he believes in God, creation in spontaneous ensoulment, and the whole works! And you read only the mention of his soon to be refuted opponents. And then you not only disreguarded all the rest, but said I was misguided, too! :crying: You called them “MY scientists!?!” This is too sad. 😦 Oh, to be misunderstood! :banghead: (That guy’s not quite right… a little too violent.)
 
JeannetteCML said:
I have a thread on the Back Fence with this title dealing with free will and consciousness of animals (humans included), and someone suggested putting it in apologetics. I don’t want to post the same thing in two places, so here is the link:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=169767

🙂
Click to expand...

The soul is a (created) spirit - so it not material. So it can’t evolve; only beings subject to the the processes of generation & corruption can grow, evolve, die, & the like. Plants, animals, & other organic things can evolve - & the soul is not organic. If it were, it would be subject to corruption & death. 🙂​

Man is an animal with a soul - which is odd; because as to his soul he is like the angels; as to his body, he is like the animals. The thing about us is that we are composed of body & spirit together, so we can’t be reduced to either alone. Unlike the angels (who are created spirits, & nothing else) So we have something in common with both classes of beings, but don’t fit into either.
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

The soul is a (created) spirit - so it not material. So it can’t evolve; only beings subject to the the processes of generation & corruption can grow, evolve, die, & the like. Plants, animals, & other organic things can evolve - & the soul is not organic. If it were, it would be subject to corruption & death. 🙂​

Man is an animal with a soul - which is odd; because as to his soul he is like the angels; as to his body, he is like the animals. The thing about us is that we are composed of body & spirit together, so we can’t be reduced to either alone. Unlike the angels (who are created spirits, & nothing else) So we have something in common with both classes of beings, but don’t fit into either.
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Well said. Perhaps I could agree with you entirely. But the human soul is so bound up with the human body it would seem that it might undergo the same kind of development in tandem. Even Thomas Aquinas cannot explain how the soul continues to exist without the body after death except by the special preservation of God. The body and soul of a human really aren’t supposed to be seperate.
 
Wasn’t Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. a big proponent of the evolution fo the soul?

Speaking of Teilhard, I just recently read Josef Cardinal Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity that was first published in 1967. I was surprised at how frequently and seemingly favorably Ratzinger quoted Teilhard several times in the book.
 
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