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

[opop]

Having said all of that, isn’t it quite possible on a spiritual plane that every child begotten of a human with an immortal soul would also have an immortal soul? Isn’t it possible that this is the nature of the gift?

If I understand you correctly, your proposition is that God could refuse immortal souls to some humans, but not to those who have theological humans as parents. Well, yes, perhaps. At least I don’t see a contradiction in the theory. But the whole thing seems a bit too far-fetched to me. Polygenism seems to imply much less strange assumptions. Furthermore, your proposition doesn’t deal with the whole incest thing I pointed out.

 

[KevinK]

It’s almost universally acknowledged, since antiquity, that mankind was created as he is today.

That’s a real howler.

 

[Cruciferi]

It could be the truth.

 

[KevinK]

Universally acknowledged? Hahahahaha.

 

[Cruciferi]

A theory is a theory. God will probably surprise us with the truth. Wait until the next mass extinction and take notes

 

[Ridgerunner]

there is also the fact that genetics and experience show us that brother-sister incest is not a viable option. It produces disabled offsprings and the gene pool is therefore too small for successful breeding.

No offense, but I’m not sure this is necessarily true. It depends on whether there are defective genes or not. I remember being told that all Tennessee Walker horses are descended from just two horses that had that peculiar gait.

Thoroughbreds are exceedingly interbred. Some cattle are. In fact, for high-end breeding bulls, they “line breed” them to ensure there are no genetic defects that express themselves even after repeated “incestuous” breeding.

 

[PetraG]

Well, yes, perhaps. At least I don’t see a contradiction in the theory. But the whole thing seems a bit too far-fetched to me.

Well, except that “far-fetched” isn’t much of a yardstick, since it implies we’re in some position to judge what is or is not plausible. Make yourself a Jew born in 5 BC. Are you buying that God was incarnate of a virgin named Mary? C.S. Lewis pointed out that the thing about the truth is that it is so often something you would have thought utterly implausible, except that there it is.

Furthermore, your proposition doesn’t deal with the whole incest thing I pointed out.

OK, consider this passage:
Cain said to the LORD: “My punishment is too great to bear. Look, you have now banished me from the ground. I must avoid you and be a constant wanderer on the earth. Anyone may kill me at sight."
"Not so! the LORD said to him. If anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged seven times. So the LORD put a mark on Cain, so that no one would kill him at sight.
Cain then left the LORD’s presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Gen. 4:13-16

If Cain and Adam and Eve were the only human beings, who is it that Cain is worried about killing him?
Is it not more plausible that there were other people, but of the people living then, Eve was the mother of all the “living”–that is, all those with souls at the time and all who would be the ancestors of the human race?

Likewise, others have posited that if the human genome had no flaws in it, there would have been no need for a divine prohibition on incest at that time. If God could preserve Cain from harm, God could protect the human genome for some period of time. That moral law would have arisen later when there were enough people that there was no need to marry close relatives and when the genome might have accumulated the kinds of mutations that make it genetically dangerous for siblings to have children together. By this theory, the moral prohibition on incestuous marriage would have only arisen later.

Suffice it to say that we, in our limited understanding, can come up with some alternatives in ten minutes, if we are so inclined. That doesn’t include things we did not think of.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That’s a real howler.

Not sure. The older I get and the more I read, the more literally true the bible seems to be. I remember, for instance, reading that prior to the Big Bang theory, skeptics thought the bible was clearly erroneous in saying light preceded creation of sun and stars in time.

But if one believes the Big Bang theory, that’s exactly true. Right before it, there was no light. No radiation, no matter as we know it to be. Then suddenly light began, then matter began to form, then coalesce, then become more complex. Eventually, matter coalesced enough to form stars.

So the bible was right on that one, and the astrophysicists were wrong.

In what else, then, might the bible be literally true, and our science wrong? It doesn’t mean we have to believe in a 5000 year old universe like the Fundamentalists. A “day” to God might have been a billion years.

 

[PetraG]

Universally acknowledged? Hahahahaha.

Other than the effects of global intermarriage, in what way has Homo sapiens changed in the last 11,000 years? As far as I know, DNA analysis of 28,000 year old Cro-Magnon samples show them to be consistent with we modern humans. Anatomically and genetically, they would fit right in.

 

[PetraG]

The older I get and the more I read, the more literally true the bible seems to be.

I think of the Bible as like stories you tell to children…stories that are true, but because of their limited to capacity to understand–or because of the limited scope of the point you’re trying to make by telling the story–the facts you include are a fraction of the whole story. If you tell a child that she and her brothers or sister came after her parents got married and because their parents loved each other, that is true. It leaves out some details that are very important but that would only confuse (and perhaps distress!) a small child whose imagination isn’t ready for more of the whole truth and because the child’s mind isn’t capable of more than just a little bit more of the whole truth.

If you tell the whole story to someone who cannot comprehend the whole story or more of the story than you are telling, the scenario the person will construct in his or her mind will be less true than a more limited story more suitable to their capacity. Alternatively, if you include a lot of facts that have nothing to do with your point, your audience will be distracted by the non-essential details and might lose or misconstrue your main point entirely.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Maybe so, or maybe so in parts. But it’s also possible that the bible story is more literally true than we think and we just haven’t yet discovered the ways in which that’s so; like light preceding matter.

Certainly, we could not, in human form, survive direct contact with the mind of God any more than our bodies could survive a cannon load of sand fired at us from two feet away. But that doesn’t mean there are no stupendous truths in the bible.

Something I have often wondered about is the mechanics, if you will, of miracles. Is it possible they’re all natural events set up to occur from all eternity at a particular point in time. So, for instance, did God plan for Thera to blow from all eternity, just as Moses was standing on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea or Reed Sea or whatever it was? And was a wind set-down planned form all eternity to coincide with it?

Is it possible that in His glorified body, Jesus could so align the atomic particles in His body that He could walk through a solid door? Science tells us, of course, that atoms are almost entirely empty space.

Things like that seem more marvelous to me than God suddenly changing the way nature works then changing it back again.

Someday, on the other side of Jordan, we’ll know.

 

[PetraG]

Maybe so, or maybe so in parts. But it’s also possible that the bible story is more literally true than we think and we just haven’t yet discovered the ways in which that’s so; like light preceding matter.

Certainly, we could not, in human form, survive direct contact with the mind of God any more than our bodies could survive a cannon load of sand fired at us from two feet away. But that doesn’t mean there are no stupendous truths in the bible.

Something I have often wondered about is the mechanics, if you will, of miracles. Is it possible they’re all natural events set up to occur from all eternity at a particular point in time. So, for instance, did God plan for Thera to blow from all eternity, just as Moses was standing on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea or Reed Sea or whatever it was? And was a wind set-down planned form all eternity to coincide with it?

Is it possible that in His glorified body, Jesus could so align the atomic particles in His body that He could walk through a solid door? Science tells us, of course, that atoms are almost entirely empty space.

Things like that seem more marvelous to me than God suddenly changing the way nature works then changing it back again.

Someday, on the other side of Jordan, we’ll know.

I like C.S. Lewis’ observation that God, being capable of knowing and seeing and fully comprehending all time and all that exists simultaneously, knew and did everything from all eternity. That is the perspective of God.

 

[opop]

Likewise, others have posited that if the human genome had no flaws in it, there would have been no need for a divine prohibition on incest at that time. If God could preserve Cain from harm, God could protect the human genome for some period of time. That moral law would have arisen later when there were enough people that there was no need to marry close relatives and when the genome might have accumulated the kinds of mutations that make it genetically dangerous for siblings to have children together. By this theory, the moral prohibition on incestuous marriage would have only arisen later.

Yes, it seems a possibility.

Suffice it to say that we, in our limited understanding, can come up with some alternatives in ten minutes, if we are so inclined. That doesn’t include things we did not think of.

Yes, we should be careful and I admit that monogenism (at least “theological monogenism”) is not completely ruled out until now. However what I don’t see is why we should lean more toward monogenism rather than polygenism if: 1) Polygenism implies less assumptions than monogenism (-> Ockham’s razor) 2) The theological commission admits theological polygenism as a viable option (even if they don’t use the expression “theological polygenism”).
So even if monogenism is still also a viable option, it seems there is no scientific nor theological reasons to defend it. It is the less plausible option.

 

[PetraG]

\

Yes, we should be careful and I admit that monogenism (at least “theological monogenism”) is not completely ruled out until now. However what I don’t see is why we should lean more toward monogenism rather than polygenism if: 1) Polygenism implies less assumptions than monogenism (-> Ockham’s razor) 2) The theological commission admits theological polygenism as a viable option (even if they don’t use the expression “theological polygenism”).
So even if monogenism is still also a viable option, it seems there is no scientific nor theological reasons to defend it. It is the less plausible option.

Without it, there is the problem of explaining what God meant in Genesis by the Fall. Was there a fall from a state of innocence and an historical act of defiance of the known will of God or not? How is the redemption of humankind to be understood, if there was not a Fall of humankind?
By Ockham’s razor, I think it is polygenism that needs to be ruled out, not the other way around.

 

[Hereiam]

What do you think?

 

[bobperk]

That document written by the ITC, even though chaired by Cardinal Ratzinger, is non-Mageserial. It has no weight at all.

 

[opop]

Without it, there is the problem of explaining what God meant in Genesis by the Fall. Was there a fall from a state of innocence and an historical act of defiance of the known will of God or not? How is the redemption of humankind to be understood, if there was not a Fall of humankind?

Well yes, there is a fall. In a polygenist view, the fall was a sin committed, not by two persons, but by the whole community of humans present at the time. I don’t know what kind of things those guys were up to, but it should have been some sort of massive rebellion against God, organized by the whole society of the time.

 

[stephenSTOSS1]

I have read the four part article they wrote that summarizes their theory. I found it to be problematic. The Pontifical Bible Commission tells us that in order to correctly interpret any part of Scripture, the whole Canon of Scripture must be taken into consideration. The interesting thing is this, in the entire 4 part article only one passage of Scripture was referenced, and it wasn’t even relating to Adam and Eve.

Thomisticevolution.org is a non-profit that gets its funding from the Biologos Foundation, a branch of the John Templeton Foundation. These are Foundations seeking to integrate science with the Bible. This is a noteworthy goal, but what happens when science seems to conflict with Scripture, as the the research about so-called mitochondrial Eve includes assumption that ignore the Genesis account of Adam and Eve’s creation. This assumption is leading to the proliferation of dangerous interpretations concerning Adam and Eve.

I found thomisticevolution’s writings to be problematic. The priest who runs it has a PhD in biology, but he seems to be ignoring, or isn’t aware of the problem with said research. I advise caution.

 

[steve-b]

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?

Humans (Adam & Eve ) were made last. Made to the image and likeness of God.

As far as 1st day to 7th day , as Peter said, to the Lord a day is like a thousand years and thousand years like a day. 2 Peter 3:8 RSVCE - But do not ignore this one fact, - Bible Gateway

if a thousand years, why not a billion years? It’s “like”. It’s an analogy. So 7 days don’t have to be taken in a wooden literal 7 days, 24 hours to a day.

Do I believe there is a first pair? Yes.

And A lot can happen in that span of time.

 

[opop]

That document written by the ITC, even though chaired by Cardinal Ratzinger, is non-Mageserial. It has no weight at all.

Even if it was not magisterial per se, it’s far from true that it has “no weight at all”. The ITC is the top adviser of the magisterium. And I think that if the top theologians say that polygenism is ok, we can trust them. Furthermore, Humani generis is not infallible. So it clearly seems that the monogenist-vs-polygenist question is still an open field that can be legitmately debated among theologians.