Were there others present at the time of Adam?

[donsnow]

That’s ok. We **know **it wasn’t Ultimately, the flagellum doesnt much mind

Sarah x

Good afternoon, Sarah,

Feeling fiesty, are we?

Actually, I know no such thing. However, I do know that every research discovery of any science from any time, is provisional to future findings.

God loves you,
Don

 

[donsnow]

Chris,

Adam and Eve had three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth.

The story of Adam and Eve is basically a myth-this is from my priest. Several writers over many years wrote the story of the creation to attempt to explain how we came about. We do not know how or when God created man. He could have created thousands at once or ten.

There was no word “cousin” in the Arabic language, close relatives were called brothers or sisters. This is where the misunderstanding that Jesus had brothers originated from.

You designate yourself as “atheist”. Can you prove there is no God or do you just not believe?

Good evening, GKCT,

With all gentleness and respect, your priest was wrong. The Magtesterium, not the local priest, is the teaching authority of the Church. And, we have posts quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church that the existence of an actual couple, known as Adam and Eve, remains an article of faith for Catholics.

For reference, see shocktrooper’s post # 48 on page 4 of this thread. Or check paragraph 390 of our CCC.

God loves you,
Don

 

[TMC]

The Church has no problem with evolution, and recent Popes have expressed an openess to the idea of polygenism. Yes, there are theological issues that have to be addressed, but that is no reason to reject science, as some of our protestant brothers have done.

 

[shocktrooper]

The Church has no problem with evolution, and recent Popes have expressed an openess to the idea of polygenism. Yes, there are theological issues that have to be addressed, but that is no reason to reject science, as some of our protestant brothers have done.

TMC, can you give me a quote from a pope (when they were/are pope) that is open to the idea of polygenism? And in an official authoritative Church document?

Thanks.

 

[donsnow]

The Church has no problem with evolution, and recent Popes have expressed an openess to the idea of polygenism. Yes, there are theological issues that have to be addressed, but that is no reason to reject science, as some of our protestant brothers have done.

Good afternoon, TMC,

I don’t understand, after post # 100 on this page, which quoted from Humani Generis 37, you can state the above. Or, did you not read that post?

In passing, I go along with Robert Gould in his Ever Since Darwin, that the fossil record is not that impressive. I further submit, that in my opinion, the reams of evidence to which appeal is made by skeptics, atheists and others who support polygenism and other theories contradicting an original pair of parents … all that evidence is merely circumstantial. It’s all based on conjecture from scanty fossils and DNA evidence open to different interpretations. None of it is fact.

Let me state this plainly: I do not reject science. I just deem science, the UN, the American Congress, etc as lesser authorities than the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Our Church has been here before science, the UN and our Congress were organized. And, I believe it’ll be here after all of those become by words in history.

In closing, I agree that the development of of the earth and the life upon it can be described as evolution. I also believe that the same information declares the handiwork and glory of our Creator, God Most High the Holy Trinity.

God loves you,
Don

 

[atheistgirl]

Or check paragraph 390 of our CCC.

390 says the following:

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses 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.

I dont see that as having to mean a literal Adam and Eve. Rather, at some point in the past, man was given a soul by God, and at some point, man (figutative) turned away from God and sinned.

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, and indeed still requires nowadays in everyday life, even amongst most learned people" (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus 18).

Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36).

It seems the ‘‘soul’’ is the real issue fro the church, not whether Adam and Eve were a literal couple. And in a way that’s a good position to hold, because the current state of our knowledge is that mtConEve evolved tens of thousands of years before yChromAdam.

I find that ironic and a bit comical Eve came before Adam in the evolutionary sense, not the scriptural sense.

Sarah x

 

[TMC]

TMC, can you give me a quote from a pope (when they were/are pope) that is open to the idea of polygenism? And in an official authoritative Church document?

Thanks.

The Church last spoke on this topic in 2004 when the International Theological Commission, chaired by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, issued the document Communion and Stewardship. That document said (in para 63):

While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution.

 

[TMC]

Good afternoon, TMC,

I don’t understand, after post # 100 on this page, which quoted from Humani Generis 37, you can state the above. Or, did you not read that post?

I read it, but I have also read what the Church has continued to teach in the intervening years.

In passing, I go along with Robert Gould in his Ever Since Darwin, that the fossil record is not that impressive. I further submit, that in my opinion, the reams of evidence to which appeal is made by skeptics, atheists and others who support polygenism and other theories contradicting an original pair of parents … all that evidence is merely circumstantial. It’s all based on conjecture from scanty fossils and DNA evidence open to different interpretations. None of it is fact.

This is your opinion, although I disagree with it. It has no bearing on what the Church teaches, however. The Church does not require Catholics to accept modern evolutionary science, but modern evolutionary science does not conflict with the Catholic faith.

Let me state this plainly: I do not reject science. I just deem science, the UN, the American Congress, etc as lesser authorities than the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Our Church has been here before science, the UN and our Congress were organized. And, I believe it’ll be here after all of those become by words in history.

Again, you are free to take any scientific stance you choose, but the Church does not mandate (or even suggest) that Catholics adopt an anti-evolutionary viewpoint, or even a monogenetic viewpoint.

In closing, I agree that the development of of the earth and the life upon it can be described as evolution. I also believe that the same information declares the handiwork and glory of our Creator, God Most High the Holy Trinity.

God loves you,
Don

Here we agree, but I wonder how this statement squares with your other statements.

 

[atheistgirl]

In passing, I go along with Robert Gould in his Ever Since Darwin, that the fossil record is not that impressive.

You mean Stephen Jay Gould. He’s the guy Project Steve is named after. He was a dyed-in-the-wool evolutionist.

He wrote Wonderful Life - based on the work he did on the Burgess Shale.

He proposed punctuated equilibrium, and based on his work he was the first to propose that rather than a tree like structure, evolution could best be depicted as an out of control bush like structure with myriad branches going nowhere and simply dying out.

It was he who stated if we rewound the tape of life, and played it again, we more likely than not would not make it.

Sarah x

 

[donsnow]

390 says the following:

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses 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.

I dont see that as having to mean a literal Adam and Eve. Rather, at some point in the past, man was given a soul by God, and at some point, man (figutative) turned away from God and sinned.

It seems the ‘‘soul’’ is the real issue fro the church, not whether Adam and Eve were a literal couple. And in a way that’s a good position to hold, because the current state of our knowledge is that mtConEve evolved tens of thousands of years before yChromAdam.

I find that ironic and a bit comical Eve came before Adam in the evolutionary sense, not the scriptural sense.

Sarah x

Good morning, Sarah,

Well, I’ve given the context of my viewpoint on the previous page of this thread, in my post to TMC.

What I’m mulling over, is that we are categorized as Homo sapiens sapiens, by the people who have cobbled together a quite arbitrary format of the different hominids. I need to research to find out if there are other Homo sapiens on that list. I’m considering that all the others evolved and that God specially created Homo sapiens sapiens from one parental couple.

Also, I think that our understanding of this universe is not written in stone. Our biological discoveries are open to interpretation of the data. Very little is certain; much is “could be”. At my age, I have seen science modify its findings several times about different discoveries, especially the medical arts. So, naturally, I take it all with a grain of salt.

So, in my opinion, the jury is still out on DNA findings.

God loves you,
Don

 

[shocktrooper]

The Church last spoke on this topic in 2004 when the International Theological Commission, chaired by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, issued the document Communion and Stewardship. That document said (in para 63):

TMC, I don’t see anything in that paragraph that allows for polygenism. We are not talking about evolution here. We are speaking directly about polygenism and how it is not allowed for Catholics to believe.

And again, this is not a document produced under the Magisterium, and the pope did not say this as pope. I think you would agree that we all say things we shouldn’t and then, when put in a position of authority and when our responsibility grows, our rhetoric becomes more conservative and less liberal.

Pax Christi.

 

[donsnow]

I read it, but I have also read what the Church has continued to teach in the intervening years.

This is your opinion, although I disagree with it. It has no bearing on what the Church teaches, however. The Church does not require Catholics to accept modern evolutionary science, but modern evolutionary science does not conflict with the Catholic faith.

Again, you are free to take any scientific stance you choose, but the Church does not mandate (or even suggest) that Catholics adopt an anti-evolutionary viewpoint, or even a monogenetic viewpoint.

Here we agree, but I wonder how this statement squares with your other statements.

Good morning, TMC,

Well, Cardinal Ratzinger was not on the Magesterium when he issued that statement; and the Mageserium, not that commission, is the teaching authority of the Church. And, the Magesterium, at paragraph 375 of our Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The church interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice.”[sup]250[/sup].”

250 Cf Council of Trent (1546): DS 1511

So, the Magesterium teaches an original parental couple, created by God.

I have already stated, in so many words, that evolution and creation are two different views of the same data. I don’t reject evolution nor have I claimed that it contradicts Church teaching.

I would say that paragraph 275 of our CCC does indeed suggest a monogenetic viewpoint.

As far as I have written, my closing statement summarizes my other statements, because all those statements were written in the light of my closing statement.

God loves you,
Don

 

[donsnow]

You mean Stephen Jay Gould. He’s the guy Project Steve is named after. He was a dyed-in-the-wool evolutionist.

He wrote Wonderful Life - based on the work he did on the Burgess Shale.

He proposed punctuated equilibrium, and based on his work he was the first to propose that rather than a tree like structure, evolution could best be depicted as an out of control bush like structure with myriad branches going nowhere and simply dying out.

It was he who stated if we rewound the tape of life, and played it again, we more likely than not would not make it.

Sarah x

Hi, again, Sarah,



Yes, and how I did not see the correct first name on his paperback book in my book shelf, I’ll never know.

I like his statements, because his view of evolution certainly does not contradict Church teaching.

You have a good day.

God loves you,
Don

 

[shocktrooper]

Good morning, TMC,

Well, Cardinal Ratzinger was not on the Magesterium when he issued that statement; and the Mageserium, not that commission, is the teaching authority of the Church. And, the Magesterium, at paragraph 375 of our Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The church interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice.”[sup]250[/sup].”

250 Cf Council of Trent (1546): DS 1511

So, the Magesterium teaches an original parental couple, created by God.

I have already stated, in so many words, that evolution and creation are two different views of the same data. I don’t reject evolution nor have I claimed that it contradicts Church teaching.

I would say that paragraph 275 of our CCC does indeed suggest a monogenetic viewpoint.

As far as I have written, my closing statement summarizes my other statements, because all those statements were written in the light of my closing statement.

God loves you,
Don

Thanks, Don. I just wanted to make a friendly correction. It was paragraph 375 that you were referencing and not 275. God bless.

375 The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”.250 This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.251

376 By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die.252 The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman,253 and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called “original justice”.

Pax Christi.

 

[atheistgirl]

I like his statements, because his view of evolution certainly does not contradict Church teaching.

Actually, his entire view of religion and evolution contradicted church teaching. But he was an incredibly respectful, thoughtful and kind man, and believed science and religion had nothing to fear from each other, as they were, in the phrase he coined, no overlapping magisteria. He believed they had nothing to fear from each other, but equally, nothing to say to each other.

Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that souls represent a subject outside the magisterium of science. My world cannot prove or disprove such a notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my domain. Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I surely honor the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding moral discussion and for expressing what we most value about human potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical and intellectual struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us.
As a moral position (and therefore not as a deduction from my knowledge of nature’s factuality), I prefer the “cold bath” theory that nature can be truly “cruel” and “indifferent”—in the utterly inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse—because nature was not constructed as our eventual abode, didn’t know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers of the latest geological microsecond), and doesn’t give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then become free to conduct moral discourse—and nothing could be more important—in our own terms, spared from the delusion that we might read moral truth passively from nature’s factuality.

stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

Sarah x

 

[rdscheirer]

As I have posted here before- scientificaly we have an “Eve” - that can be traced back 4 hundred thousand years by Mitochondrial DNA- it is only transmitted by the female. Could it be that God waited until we humans could grasp what he means? Physcobiology shows us that in the remote past -(cave dwellers) - had a vague notion of a god in that they worshiped or at least venerated the animals they killed for food- that there was something more than just the animal they killed to eat that it was made available to them by some unknown force.

If you see the paintings at Lisceaux(sic) you will see what I mean.

 

[donsnow]

Thanks, Don. I just wanted to make a friendly correction. It was paragraph 375 that you were referencing and not 275. God bless.

375 The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original “state of holiness and justice”.250 This grace of original holiness was “to share in. . .divine life”.251

376 By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die.252 The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman,253 and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called “original justice”.

Pax Christi.

Good afternoon, shocktrooper,

Thank you.

Oh, dear .

God loves you,
Don

 

[donsnow]

Actually, his entire view of religion and evolution contradicted church teaching. But he was an incredibly respectful, thoughtful and kind man, and believed science and religion had nothing to fear from each other, as they were, in the phrase he coined, no overlapping magisteria. He believed they had nothing to fear from each other, but equally, nothing to say to each other.

stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

Sarah x

Good afternoon, Sarah,

Well, he does contradict church teaching, thank you, ma’am.

Intellectually, I can respect different viewpoints from mine. I can and do pray for those who don’t believe like I do. I operate on Jesus’ saying, “I have not come to condemn the world, but to save it.”
I try to follow His example and wait for the Holy Spirit to prompt and lead me, before I jump in to “save” anybody. That’s happened a few times, so, I know the difference.
In the meantime, while I wait, I try not to tempt anybody to say “no” to Jesus Christ because of my poor eveangelization.

God loves you,
Don

 

[donsnow]

As I have posted here before- scientificaly we have an “Eve” - that can be traced back 4 hundred thousand years by Mitochondrial DNA- it is only transmitted by the female. Could it be that God waited until we humans could grasp what he means? Physcobiology shows us that in the remote past -(cave dwellers) - had a vague notion of a god in that they worshiped or at least venerated the animals they killed for food- that there was something more than just the animal they killed to eat that it was made available to them by some unknown force.

If you see the paintings at Lisceaux(sic) you will see what I mean.

Good evening, rdscheirer,

Well, thank you for the scientific Eve, but I don’t worship science. It has no god. I worship the God Most High the Holy Trinity of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and I’m Catholic because the Church does have God.

So many people seem to render to “science” an authority it does not warrant. In spiritual and life matters, the Church, not science, is my authority. And, in the matter of human origins, science has less authority than human history. Which human history has a little less authority on human origins than the Church.
Because, God did originate, create Homo sapiens sapiens, of that I’m sure.
Yesterday I Googled Homo sapiens sapiens and found four or so other hominids which biologists consider Homo sapiens, but which are not labeled such by the media.

In my mind, I give preference to the Church’s teachings and have a dim view of science’s teachings, because science is a useful tool, but can be misused by human bias and attitudes. And, with all the anti-religion bias among people in the science evolution scene, I discount that objectiveness of their findings.

I wish other Christians were as open minded to science as I am, and defended their Christian faith in a practical matter.

God loves all of you, lurkers, too,
Don

 

[edwest2]

390 says the following:

The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses 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.

I dont see that as having to mean a literal Adam and Eve. Rather, at some point in the past, man was given a soul by God, and at some point, man (figutative) turned away from God and sinned.

It seems the ‘‘soul’’ is the real issue fro the church, not whether Adam and Eve were a literal couple. And in a way that’s a good position to hold, because the current state of our knowledge is that mtConEve evolved tens of thousands of years before yChromAdam.

I find that ironic and a bit comical Eve came before Adam in the evolutionary sense, not the scriptural sense.

Sarah x

Science cannot assign attributes to the soul and cannot locate it. So from a scientific standpoint, the soul does not exist. The Church teaches Adam and Eve were our first parents.

Peace,
Ed