Why didn't God save Neanderthals?

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grannymh said:
If Neanderthals were true humans, then they would have descended from Adam and Eve who are the first humans on earth.

If Neanderthals were not true humans, then they would be separate from Adam and Eve and could have lived before or after Adam and Eve founded humankind.
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New studies indicate that the split between the ancestors of modern humans and those of Neanderthals happened as long ago as 1 million years ago which would put Adam and Eve more than a million years ago if Neanderthals had a soul and are also descended from Adam and Eve. If Neanderthals were not true humans, that would mean that some of our human ancestors were interbreeding with non-humans who had no soul and that those of us with some Neanderthal DNA have some ancestors after the time of Adam and Eve who were soulless non-humans.
 
Thorolfr said:
New studies indicate that the split between the ancestors of modern humans and those of Neanderthals happened as long ago as 1 million years ago which would put Adam and Eve more than a million years ago if Neanderthals had a soul and are also descended from Adam and Eve. If Neanderthals were not true humans, that would mean that some of our human ancestors were interbreeding with non-humans who had no soul and that those of us with some Neanderthal DNA have ancestors after the time of of Adam and Eve who were not humans.
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Does that mean that some of us have 1-3% non-human forefathers and others are “pure” (descendants of Adam & Eve)? Africans don’t have any Neanderthal genes (and there is a very simple scientific explanation for that), so they are more human.

I find these discussions really crazy. Can’t we leave our body, its development and history to biology and palaeontology and discuss the soul under the heading of religion? Do we need to analyse the spiritual, the soul and anything supernatural with “scientific” tools?
 
Hans_W said:
I find these discussions really crazy. Can’t we leave our body, its development and history to biology and palaeontology and discuss the soul under the heading of religion? Do we need to analyse the spiritual, the soul and anything supernatural with “scientific” tools?
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This is what happens when it is claimed that the story of Adam and Eve is real history instead of a metaphor or a myth. A metaphor or myth can have an element of spiritual truth about our relationship with God without being literally true.
 
You know this may at first sound blasphemous but…
I don’t think we need necessarily regard Neanderthals as sub-human but possibly a race of humanity. They had large brains, buried their dead, wondered about the after life, etc. They couldn’t speak in the same manner we can however, the larynx was too far down in the throat. It is possible for them to have had some kind of language however. In fact, I theorize that they are just as human as you and me. Perhaps our first parents, Grampa Adam and Grandma Eve, were possibly Neanderthals. What makes someone human? Is it shape? No, it’s having a rational soul and being made in God’s likeness. Maybe I’m right,maybe I’m wrong. Just theory.
 
Tom_Baum said:
. . . Are you saying that there was no “physical death” in the world before “We chose ourselves over God” since, in your words, “this choice brought death, in its many forms, into our world”?
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Death has many forms including the ignorance you and I share and the decomposition that our bodies are undergoing.

Through Christ’s death and resurrection we will share in the eternal Life and Truth that is God.

That’s the short of it for now.
 
Thorolfr said:
This is what happens when it is claimed that the story of Adam and Eve is real history instead of a metaphor or a myth. A metaphor or myth can have an element of spiritual truth about our relationship with God without being literally true.
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I cannot speak for other Christian religions.

The Catholic Church holds that Adam and Eve are the real sole true human founders of the human species at the dawn of human history.
 
That’s right. If anything, Neanderthals appear to have been a racial class as we have different races today.

Ed
 
edwest2 said:
That’s right. If anything, Neanderthals appear to have been a racial class as we have different races today.

Ed
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The genome of Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) has been sequenced using DNA from ancient bones and this proves that Neanderthals are not just a race of Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) like different races of humans today. Their DNA is sufficiently different from our own to make them a different species.
 
Thorolfr said:
The genome of Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) has been sequenced using DNA from ancient bones and this proves that Neanderthals are not just a race of Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) like different races of humans today. Their DNA is sufficiently different from our own to make them a different species.
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Does that mean that humans and neanderthals could not have interbred?
 
Regarding the question of interbreeding, here are some informative links which address this from a Catholic position.

Link to article published in Crisis Magazine online: crisismagazine.com/2014/d…e-really-exist

Additional article
hprweb.com/2014/07/time-t…genesis-story/

Informative Catholic website drbonnette.com/

The new expanded third edition of the book *Origin of the Human Species *by Catholic author Dr. Dennis Bonnette includes the article “The Myth of the “Myth” of Adam and Eve” as Appendix One. Appendix Two is “The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution”

http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Human-Species-Third-Edition/dp/1932589686/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=14124676 70&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Origin+of+the+human+spe cies++Bonnette
 
Aloysium said:
So what kind of DNA creates a soul?
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None, they are created by God to endow life to all living material creatures.

So there is no question that Neaderthals had souls. The question becomes, did they have immortal souls created in the image and likeness of God, or did they have sensitive, material souls of animals.
 
Brendan said:
None, they are created by God to endow life to all living material creatures.

So there is no question that Neaderthals had souls. The question becomes, did they have immortal souls created in the image and likeness of God, or did they have sensitive, material souls of animals.
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Good distinction.

The Neanderthals were highly sentient beings which is not the same as having a rational spiritual soul.
 
Thorolfr said:
The genome of Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) has been sequenced using DNA from ancient bones and this proves that Neanderthals are not just a race of Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) like different races of humans today. Their DNA is sufficiently different from our own to make them a different species.
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But they could mate with modern humans. There are two birds alive today that look almost identical but cannot mate.

Ed
 
Layp3rs0n said:
You know this may at first sound blasphemous but…
I don’t think we need necessarily regard Neanderthals as sub-human but possibly a race of humanity. They had large brains, buried their dead, wondered about the after life, etc. They couldn’t speak in the same manner we can however, the larynx was too far down in the throat. It is possible for them to have had some kind of language however. In fact, I theorize that they are just as human as you and me. Perhaps our first parents, Grampa Adam and Grandma Eve, were possibly Neanderthals. What makes someone human? Is it shape? No, it’s having a rational soul and being made in God’s likeness. Maybe I’m right,maybe I’m wrong. Just theory.
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Perhaps. I have a theory that the Nephilim might have been a hybrid of humanity and another hominid, (possibly Neandertal?), with “Sons of God” being decendents of Adam and “Daughters of Man” being the other homonid and God’s declaration of human lives from now on lasting only a maximum 120 years being a way the ancients could explain problems in offspring that arise from hybrids, like how mules are infertile and always male.
 
Thorolfr said:
This is what happens when it is claimed that the story of Adam and Eve is real history instead of a metaphor or a myth. A metaphor or myth can have an element of spiritual truth about our relationship with God without being literally true.
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The Church teaches that there were real first human beings with spiritual souls. That is not a metaphor nor a myth.
 
Ignatius said:
The Church teaches that there were real first human beings with spiritual souls. That is not a metaphor nor a myth.
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The Church teaches that the two original real first human beings with spiritual souls are the immediate founders of all humanity. That is the truth.
 
I tend to go with your point, and that the answer is that we don’t know.

We may hypothesise that since there appears to been some slim evidence that they indulged in ‘ritual’ burial, possibly including some floral expression; and that some simple pattern scratches on stone might allude to artistic abstract ideas, that they might also have had ‘philosophical’ notions and interest in ‘creation’ and a ‘creator’/‘religion’.

As far as the other hominids, such as Erectus, go, I think their ability to conceptualise and communicate would have been closer to that of the higher apes than us.
 
Mount_Carmel said:
. . . we don’t know. . . other hominids, such as Erectus, go, I think their ability to conceptualise and communicate would have been closer to that of the higher apes than us.
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One’s humanity, of course, does not increase or decrease with the person’s ability to conceptualize and communicate.
But, a collective inability to do so so could reflect an incapacity for deceit, making them definitely not human.
We don’t know.
 
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