What make you think That Adam and Eve are real despite the evolutionary change or chance and widespread of the Neanderthals and Homosapians

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With the scriptures tell a much different history of the migration spread, what evidence or arguments could you say would convince me that Adam and Eve are real?
 
Adam and Eve were created elsewhere and placed here. There were no other humans.
 
The bible is not a science book. It explains the who and why but not how.
 
I see the Creation story as relaying real history but in a mythological style. There really were a first true man and a first true woman. They sinned and didn’t repent. We inherited our fallen nature from them. All true men and true women are descended from them.

We can’t know the resolution absolutely, but the Creation story and our current understanding of human evolution aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. For what if human-like beings did evolve in large numbers, but were merely biologically similar, lacking a rational soul? Basically, really, really intelligent animals, but lacking the leap to rational being. Then God ensouls Adam and Eve at conception as ensouled beings (or even makes them separately), the first true humans. After the Fall, they’re cast out, and the children of Adam and Eve take mates from the biologically similar but still lacking ensoulment humans (as opposed to incest)? And their offspring pass on the true human, fallen nature, until everyone left standing is true human as its passed through the population. All true humans still are descended from Adam and Eve, received original sin from them, etc…

This even could have been before the split between our line and the Neanderthal line. (Not necessarily, just saying it’s possible. It could have still been after).

Noah, Abraham, etc… come much later.

What Catholics cannot accept is that there are true men and women not descended from Adam and Eve and that the figures of Adam and Eve in the Bible themselves symbolically represent a community and a community sin.
 
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Wesrock said:
What Catholics cannot accept is that there are true men and women not descended from Adam and Eve and that the figures of Adam and Eve in the Bible themselves symbolically represent a community and a community sin.
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Well I think there is some proof that all men are descended from a single female. For me I have always taken the adam and eve story as when humans first became self aware. When god gave those first humans free will.
 
Good thing there’s not already 3 or 4 active Adam & Eve / evolution threads already going on CAF . . . . . . . .
 
Much of the book of Genesis is complied as many generations’ legends about how the world came to be, imbedded with details that explain how the world is the way it is, and Adam and Eve is one of those; it allegorically gives details about the origins of humans and creation, i.e. the naming of the animals points to man having precedent over them, which is true, even though this single event never happened. Adam and Eve may not have ever been historical figures at all, at least not as we would think of them; they are a literary device for authors
 
I believe the Bible. I think Genesis is more literal than figurative.

Also, as far as I know, no creation story has mentioned evolution. It’s almost universally acknowledged, since antiquity, that mankind was created as he is today.

Also, I believe somewhere along the way God would’ve mentioned how he ensouled apes. :man_shrugging:t2:

Darwin 3:19

“For you were made from apes, And to apes you shall return.” 😝
 
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It may surprises you, but actually Catholics are not obliged to believe in Adam and Eve. They only have to believe that the first humans, whatever their number, committed the original sin. In its document Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, published in 2004, the International Theological Commission, chaired at that time by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, stated that polygenism was a viable option.
 
opop said:
It may surprises you, but actually Catholics are not obliged to believe in Adam and Eve. They only have to believe that the first humans, whatever their number, committed the original sin. In its document Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, published in 2004, the International Theological Commission, chaired at that time by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, stated that polygenism was a viable option.
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This is not completely accurate.

We are obligate as part of Church doctrine to acknowledge the existence of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and that these two were the first to sin. We are free to believe that there were other human-like entities at this time, but in Catholic parlance, the soul is what makes us truly human, and it is the presence of the soul which distinguishes our first parents as separate from their potential evolutionary brethren.
 
As stated, we’re obligated to believe in a historical first man and a historical first woman who sinned, not that man in general collectively sinned. We are free to understand the related history to be told in a mythological style.
 
I’ve always wondered: If Original Sin can be inherited from TWO individuals (“Adam and Eve”), then why not three, or four, or 10,000? After all, the original sin didn’t involve Adam only. It’s not as if Eve’s fall from grace was due to Adam, even if we call it the “Sin of Adam.”

I’ll accept what ever Catholic teaching requires, but we shouldn’t go around saying we believe in a literal Adam and Eve because Genesis demands it. After all, as Catholics, we’re already free to believe Genesis 1-3 is a symbolic and mythical story. It’s not as if the sacred writer knew the scientific details of creation. He probably wasn’t aware of the historical details, either. Why should we think he had the correct view in ascribing the Fall to only two humans?

The only reason we must believe in a literal Adam and Eve (as two first parents), if we have to believe it, is not because it is in Genesis per se but because it is included in the doctrine of Redemption as suggested by Paul in the New Testament (then again, he is also assuming the historical details of the Genesis story). So beyond that, it comes down to what the church teaches…

…which leads to the important (and often over-looked point) that Humani Generis, though promoting monogenism (single couple/two parents), only did so because it did not seem apparent how any other theory could be reconciled with Original Sin. Well, what if there are alternative theories one day? And what if it is proven that all humans indeed descend from a large population of humans?

Can polygenism be reconciled with Original Sin?

I’m not trying to be controversial. But it is my personal opinion, considering how theology develops over time,that we could very well see a more robust articulation Original Sin that allows for polygenism. There are already Catholic theologians who do so, and they haven’t been called out by the Vatican yet!
 
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If you have doubts about the scriptures, which are well attested to as having been revealed by an infinite and unchanging God…

Then why no doubts about what flawed man has written regarding the flawed and ever-changing subject of science?
 
why/how again? That reads like a slogan as opposed to any kind of argument. God did things - real, tangible things.
 
Significantly, Pope Pius XII makes no mention of the Genesis text in his encyclical, because for Catholics, the disputed question over the historicity of Adam and Eve does not involve a debate over whether the biblical text should be interpreted literally or not. As we have discussed in earlier essays in this series on evolution and Christian faith, for the Catholic Christian, biblical interpretation is a work of both faith and reason that seeks to read the sacred text in line with all truth, theological and scientific, both of which have their source in God. It is a task that is guided by the Holy Spirit who continues to work within and through His Catholic Church.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge that the International Theological Commission chaired at that time by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, published a theological statement on evolution that is open to polygenism. In its document, Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, published in 2004, the Commission acknowledges that the scientific evidence points to a polygenic origin for our species: “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” (no. 63). We will discuss this scientific evidence in the next essay in this series on evolution and Christian faith.

The Commission then makes the following theological claim: “Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention” (no. 70, my emphasis). This suggests that both monogenism and certain types of polygenism remain viable theological opinions for Catholic theologians seeking to be faithful to the doctrinal tradition.
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http://www.thomisticevolution.org/d...city-of-adam-and-eve-part-i-theological-data/
 
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With respect to the immediate creation of the human soul, Catholic theology affirms that particular actions of God bring about effects that transcend the capacity of created causes acting according to their natures. The appeal to divine causality to account for genuinely causal as distinct from merely explanatory gaps does not insert divine agency to fill in the “gaps” in human scientific understanding (thus giving rise to the so-called "God of the gaps”). The structures of the world can be seen as open to non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world. Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention.
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The present text was approved in forma specifica, by the written ballots of the International Theological Commission. It was then submitted to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the President of the Commission, who has give his permission for its publication.

INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION:
COMMUNION AND STEWARDSHIP: Human Persons Created in the Image of God

So it was approved by the now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, when he was head of the theological commission. If this language suggests anything, it at least indicates thinkers high up in the Church are willing to talk about polygenism in the context of Catholic teaching.👍👍
 
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From the song, Woodstock. Lyrics by Joni Mitchell, 1969

“We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden”
 
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