Why evolution doesnt matter.

[itinerant1]

Not at all. Why is there a conflict between the non-material, spiritual nature of man’s intellect and the interpretation of the genetics data and the denial of primal human parents (I assume you mean by this a denial that there was a bottleneck of two)? Why is it a logical contradiction to accept both the genetics data and its implications and a non-material, spiritual nature of man?

Your typical response is (1) to show that you have not understood my statements, (2) then proceed to deny everything that was said even though you do not understand it, and finally (3) you write it off a Catholic argument when in fact there is no theology at all involved my post.

That scenario makes it almost impossible to respond to your post. But perhaps that is what your goal is.

Yeah, but wait a minute. Granted, either the capacity for rational thought is either there or it is not. But the physical conditions necessary for rational thought in humans do, in fact, admit of a gradual emergence, as we see clearly in brain development in early childhood. Even theologians themselves admit humans only obtain the “age of reason” by about age seven or so, as then the brain has sufficiently developed.

At the age of reason, but in reality sooner, has the brain developed sufficiently to manifest thought. But since it is a human that is developing from its pre-natal stages, then the intellective soul must be present regardless of stages in brain development. That is, the presence of the intellective soul in humans is not contingent upon stages of the individual’s brain growth and development. To say otherwise, as you have, is to make a false assumption about my position. Hence, you are arguing using a strawman fallacy.

You, as a Catholic, of course, are bound to the position that a embryo or fetus has a soul. It isn’t really a position that can be rationally defended, for an embryo or fetus has no capacity for rational thought.

Argument sufficiently discounted above.

In fact theologians in the past have hypothesized that perhaps the embryo is only “ensoulled” 40 or 80 days after conception.

This is not relevant to my position since medieval biology did not understand much about fetal development.

I deny this. The capacity for intellectual thought clearly fits neatly into a strict developmental continuum when you look at the development of the brain. Therefore it can fit into an evolutionary continuum as well - that all life has the potential for rational thought, but it only arises in fact when there develops, through an evolutionary process, a necessary organ (such as the brain). This is in fact what we see when we look at the evolutionary development of the brain.

It’s an abuse of the notion of potential to say all life has the capacity for rational thought. Rotifers will never have the potential for rational thought. The general trend of evolution has been toward more complex forms, reaching its highest in the hominids. But nothing below the hominids line has a potential for rationality. Bacteria will be non-thinking bacteria till the cows come home.

The only way you can refute this argument is to dogmatically assert that lower life forms don’t have the potential for rational thought because they just don’t. Now I’m sure you will dig in your heels and do just that but don’t pretend you’re using logic and reason - you’re just arguing by assertion.

That is your trademark response. Even though you have presented no real counter-argument.

It may create “irresolvable” problems for the Church but that’s just too bad. It doesn’t create irresolvable problems for science or reason.

Again my arguments seem to raise fears in you about the Church , when actually my argument is independent of the Church and theology. Apparently you are not aware of the decades of discussions that would fill many books involving scientists and philosophers discussing the many problems involved. Only Pollyanna and her ilk, can’t see the problems.

 

[itinerant1]

Addendum: Rather than the presence of the intellective soul being contingent on stages of brain development in the individual, the development of the individual as a human being is dependent on the presence of the intellective soul.

 

[grannymh]

Yeah, but wait a minute. Granted, either the capacity for rational thought is either there or it is not. But the physical conditions necessary for rational thought in humans do, in fact, admit of a gradual emergence, as we see clearly in brain development in early childhood. Even theologians themselves admit humans only obtain the “age of reason” by about age seven or so, as then the brain has sufficiently developed.

Yes, capacity is either there or it is not. But – capacity cannot be measured in terms of material conditions. In other words, capacity is not the same as expression.

You, as a Catholic, of course, are bound to the position that a embryo or fetus has a soul. It isn’t really a position that can be rationally defended, for an embryo or fetus has no capacity for rational thought. In fact theologians in the past have hypothesized that perhaps the embryo is only “ensoulled” 40 or 80 days after conception.

Interestingly, various courts have concluded that an embryo or fetus are human.

The capacity for intellectual thought clearly fits neatly into a strict developmental continuum when you look at the development of the brain. Therefore it can fit into an evolutionary continuum as well - that all life has the potential for rational thought, but it only arises in fact when there develops, through an evolutionary process, a necessary organ (such as the brain). This is in fact what we see when we look at the evolutionary development of the brain.

Capacity is separate from the physical expression by the brain.

The only way you can refute this argument is to dogmatically assert that lower life forms don’t have the potential for rational thought because they just don’t.

It is important to remember that rational thought is also bound with the capacity to freely choose that which may be naturally opposed by basic instincts. For example.
Consider the wild fires in California and the survival instinct. Lower life forms instinctively flee a raging uncontrollable fire. Do they set backfires?

It may create “irresolvable” problems for the Church but that’s just too bad. It doesn’t create irresolvable problems for science or reason.

In real life, genetics with all is assumptions regarding ancient history does not create “irresolvable” problems for the Catholic Church. This is because the Church has total freedom to explore the true, fully complete human being. Materialistic science does not have this freedom. When the rubber hits the road, genetics cannot get beyond an anatomy specimen and questionable assumptions regarding its calibration techniques.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is worthy of profound respect from the moment of conception.

 

[hecd2]

I gave my collection to a cousin who was a biology major. I didn’t have the time for everything when I ventured off into philosophy studies. Now I have time for nature studies again, along with philosophy, and I sort of regret having given away my collections. I just started nature photography and I’m seriously considering starting new insect collections. I have always had a love for entomology and microbiology. I recently bought a fairly powerful microscope and a microbiology text that cost me over $120. It seems well worth the price, though.

Well, if beetles float your boat, not only are you in great company, as Darwin was a beetle man, and at least you have no shortage of new material to collect. Max Barclay, the beetle curator at the Natural History Museum in London reckons that he and a colleague can collect 20,000 beetles in a three week expedition to the tropics. The museum has 8.5 million prepared Coleoptera specimens. I guess Haldane was right.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[grannymh]

However, the conclusion that human ancestry has not passed through a bottleneck of two does not ultimately rest on estimates of rate of genetic change. We simply share more allelic lineages with chimpanzees than can have passed through a bottleneck of two people. The data from which it is concluded that the minimal bottlenecks of Ne is of the order of 1,000 individuals support and are consistent with this, but the conclusion does not depend on them.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

While research conclusions do not ultimately rest on one estimate or assumption regarding pre-human ancestral beings, research conclusions can contain errors because one estimate or assumption is faulty. When one looks at the factors which go into calibration, it is necessary to consider relative accuracy. If one factor is out of sync, the research can lead to misinterpretation.

Furthermore, the principle of synergy must be considered. Thus, simply sharing allelic lineages with the anatomies of other living organisms is not enough information to determine the origin of the modern, true, fully complete human person, like you and me.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is sacred.

 

[grannymh]

However, the conclusion that human ancestry has not passed through a bottleneck of two does not ultimately rest on estimates of rate of genetic change. We simply share more allelic lineages with chimpanzees than can have passed through a bottleneck of two people. The data from which it is concluded that the minimal bottlenecks of Ne is of the order of 1,000 individuals support and are consistent with this, but the conclusion does not depend on them.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

While research conclusions do not ultimately rest on one estimate or assumption regarding pre-human ancestral beings, research conclusions can contain errors because one estimate or assumption is faulty. When one looks at the factors which go into calibration, it is necessary to consider relative accuracy. If one factor is out of sync, the research can lead to misinterpretation.

Furthermore, the principle of synergy must be considered. Thus, simply sharing allelic lineages with the anatomies of other living organisms is not enough information to determine the origin of the modern, true, fully complete human person, like you and me.

Blessings,
granny

All human life is sacred.

 

[itinerant1]

Well, if beetles float your boat, not only are you in great company, as Darwin was a beetle man, and at least you have no shortage of new material to collect. Max Barclay, the beetle curator at the Natural History Museum in London reckons that he and a colleague can collect 20,000 beetles in a three week expedition to the tropics. The museum has 8.5 million prepared Coleoptera specimens. I guess Haldane was right.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

I only wish I could get to London. 8.5 million specimens! I cannot even imagine such a display.

Beetling, as you know, was quite the pastime with Darwin and other college students. I related to Darwin’s story about putting a beetle in his mouth so he would have a free hand to catch a third one, but then lost them all because he put the wrong one in his mouth. Though, I never experienced as dramatic of a situation myself.

 

[itinerant1]

Natural History Museum, London What a great resource! I’m outta here to check out the Alfred Russel Wallace collection.

 

[hecd2]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to address some of Alec’s remarks about an earlier post of mine on monogenism.

hecd2:

If you are going to accept Hawks et al as an authority, then you have to give up the idea that there is a minimal bottleneck at any time in human ancestry after 2 million years BP (and there is no direct evidence for a minimal bottleneck then - merely that the evidence, in their view, doesn’t preclude one).

You then have a number of problems to deal with if you are going to associate this bottleneck with a literal Adam and Eve…

It seems to me to be a distortion of what it means to be fully human to associate the emergence of Homo erectus with the Adam and Eve myth.

With all due respect, Alec, I don’t think Homo ergaster/erectus was as dumb as you make him out to be. Homo erectus seems to have had a humanlike Broca’s area in his brain, and no physical impediments to speech. (One specimen formerly found to have been incapable of speech, the Turkana boy, is now known to have suffered from stunted vertebral growth, which restricted its breathing and therefore its ability to produce speech.)

And with all due respect, you are swimming against the evidence. A (controversial) anatomical ability to make some sort of speech is not evidence for the existence of symbolic speech and abstract reasoning. The notion that H erectus at 2M years BP was fully human in the sense that we would recognise simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Very little that we would recognise as uniquely human is present in the record until 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. Furthermore, my points stand - every human society existing today, and for at least the last 30,000 years, whether isolated or not has created a profusion of complex art, decoration, technology and culture. I cannot see how it makes any sense at all to equate that degree of cognition with a species that does not develop the lithic technology that it inherits from its predecessors for half a million years, and then takes a further *million *years to fully develop Acheulean tools. These are absolutely vast expanses of time when the culture and technology of H erectus stood still. You are welcome to regard H erectus as fully human without any evidence whatsoever - but I think that when we talk about the appearance of fully human people we should expect more than we see from H erectus and H ergaster.

According to the Wikipedia article on Homo ergaster

I’m afraid that I don’t regard Wikipedia as evidence for anything.

Don’t forget, too, that Homo floresiensis, who was closely related to *Homo erectus * but whose brain size was a mere 417 cubic centimeters, was capable of building boats that could travel 50 kilometers, as there was no other way of getting to the island of Flores.

And don’t forget that the origins of H floresiensis are being vigorously debated, but what is not controversial is the notion that if H floresiensis represents a distinct species descended from H erectus and not a group of pathological specimens then it evolved its distinct morphology on Flores.

Glenn Morton has argues that *Homo erectus *was capable of planning ahead at least four days in advance (see Planning ahead – article in PSCF at home.entouch.net/dmd/planningahead.htm ) – unlike chimps who can only plan 20 minutes ahead.

Morton also argues that Homo erectus fed, and took care of totally immobilized individuals who were suffering from an excess of vitamin A, and kept them warm at night (see *The Compassionate Homo erectus * by Glenn Morton at home.entouch.net/dmd/compass.htm ). Chimps never show this kind of compassion.

With all due respect to Glenn, and I have a lot of respect for him, I don’t believe that this speculation has been published in a palaeontological journal. Furthermore, I fully accept that Homo erectus had capabilities which exceed that of chimps - that is obvious. H erectus is a transitional between the last common ancestor with chimps and modern humans and shows some human capabilities in embryonic form. The question is whether those capabilities qualify them to be considered fully human and, given the evidence, the answer is no.

As regards lithic technology, the reluctance of Homo erectus to innovate might simply be due to living in small groups (sometimes two heads are better than one, when it comes to innovation). For that matter, I remember reading that Neanderthal man’s tools stayed pretty much the same over a 50,000-year period at one site in France, and I’m sure you’d consider him human.

I do not regard H neanderthalensis as fully human; and living in small groups is no barrier to innovation for fully human people.

In any event, the key question for religious believers is: did Homo erectus have the intellectual wherewithal to believe in God? Well, why not?

Well, why not for Australopithecus africanus? Surely the question is ‘why’ rather than ‘why not’. Surely the unanswered challenge is to find evidence for the emergence of this capability.

By the way, in an important sense, all this is moot, because it is not possible for there to have been a bottleneck of two at any time in human ancestry since the divergence of the human from the chimp lineage since we share more allelic families with chimps at some loci than can pass through a bottleneck of two.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

I only wish I could get to London. 8.5 million specimens! I cannot even imagine such a display.

Ah - I’m afraid they’re not on display - they are a resource for researchers at the museum and genuine visiting researchers and are kept in carefully controlled conditions in the brand new Darwin Centre extension to the Museum along with the other 62 million specimens.

I highly recommend this book by a now retired NHM trilobite specialist who really illustrates what it’s like to work at an institution like that and what it’s like behind the scenes, complete with gossip, and anecdotes of many of eccentric people he met: Richard Fortey, Dry Store Room No 1. Don’t be put off by the title - the content is fascinating and the writing superb (he is quite a prolific author of popular science books).

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[grannymh]

And with all due respect, you are swimming against the evidence. A (controversial) anatomical ability to make some sort of speech is not evidence for the existence of symbolic speech and abstract reasoning. The notion that H erectus at 2M years BP was fully human in the sense that we would recognise simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Very little that we would recognise as uniquely human is present in the record until 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. Furthermore, my points stand - every human society existing today, and for at least the last 30,000 years, whether isolated or not has created a profusion of complex art, decoration, technology and culture. I cannot see how it makes any sense at all to equate that degree of cognition with a species that does not develop the lithic technology that it inherits from its predecessors for half a million years, and then takes a further *million *years to fully develop Acheulean tools. These are absolutely vast expanses of time when the culture and technology of H erectus stood still. You are welcome to regard H erectus as fully human without any evidence whatsoever - but I think that when we talk about the appearance of fully human people we should expect more than we see from H erectus and H ergaster.

It is so nice to agree with you.

With all due respect to Glenn, and I have a lot of respect for him, I don’t believe that this speculation has been published in a palaeontological journal. Furthermore, I fully accept that Homo erectus had capabilities which exceed that of chimps - that is obvious. H erectus is a transitional between the last common ancestor with chimps and modern humans and shows some human capabilities in embryonic form. The question is whether those capabilities qualify them to be considered fully human and, given the evidence, the answer is no.

I do not regard H neanderthalensis as fully human; and living in small groups is no barrier to innovation for fully human people.

P.S. Would you please point me to the research pertaining to your comment: “…every human society existing today, and for at least the last 30,000 years, whether isolated or not has created a profusion of complex art, decoration, technology and culture.” Thank you.

Blessings,
granny

Human life is meant for eternal life.

 

[NowAgnostic]

Your typical response is (1) to show that you have not understood my statements, (2) then proceed to deny everything that was said even though you do not understand it, and finally (3) you write it off a Catholic argument when in fact there is no theology at all involved my post.

That scenario makes it almost impossible to respond to your post. But perhaps that is what your goal is.

That’s an argument??? More like a desperate appeal to the crowd.

At the age of reason, but in reality sooner, has the brain developed sufficiently to manifest thought. But since it is a human that is developing from its pre-natal stages, then the intellective soul must be present regardless of stages in brain development.

That is, the presence of the intellective soul in humans is not contingent upon stages of the individual’s brain growth and development. To say otherwise, as you have, is to make a false assumption about my position. Hence, you are arguing using a strawman fallacy.

Merely using big words like “strawman fallacy” doesn’t make it so, and gratuitously denying what you have gratuitously asserted doesn’t mean I am making a “false assumption” about your position. Evidently you don’t understand what a straw man fallacy is to begin with.

I of course deny that the presence of the intellective soul is not contingent on brain development, for there is not the capacity for rational thought without such development. This is not a straw man, a misrepresentation of your position, for you have clearly stated it to be above!

You, however, are making an argument based on equivocation which I will demonstrate here. Tell me if this is not a fair summary of your position:

1. Part of what makes a human a human is the fact that the human has an intellective soul, meaning the power of rational thought.
2. But infants do not have the power of rational thought because their brains are not sufficiently developed.
3. But they must have an intellective soul anyway because they are human.
4. of course, changes the definition of human in 1) from having the power of rational thought to merely being a member of homo sapiens sapiens, which is a fallacy of equivocation.

It’s an abuse of the notion of potential to say all life has the capacity for rational thought. Rotifers will never have the potential for rational thought. The general trend of evolution has been toward more complex forms, reaching its highest in the hominids. But nothing below the hominids line has a potential for rationality. Bacteria will be non-thinking bacteria till the cows come home.

They have the potential for rationality insofar as they have the potential to evolve into something with the ability for rational thought, just as an infant as the potential for rationality as it has the potential to develop a functioning brain.

That is your trademark response. Even though you have presented no real counter-argument.

I did present a counter-argument which you don’t know how to respond to. **Your **trademark response is to claim I don’t understand a thing you say and say I haven’t presented a real argument. Now that’s convincing.

Moreover, you never responded to my question as to why, exactly, the presence of an intellective soul in humans is contradictory to genetic evidence for polygenism.

 

[hecd2]

Hi Alec,

I’d like to discuss the paper by Hawks et al. (2000) at mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/17/1/2 . I consider it to be important for two reasons.

First, it makes a good case for the sudden emergence of Homo erectus in the fossil record. Given the abrupt anatomical changes involved, this could have been a case of divinely guided evolution.

Well, there is abrupt in the sense of overnight, and there is abrupt in the sense of over a few hundred thousand years. The appearance of modern human cognition in the last 100,000 years is far more abrupt than this.You have to understand that Hawks and Wolpoff are attempting to make a controversial case against the evolution of Homo erectus from Homo habilis and to do so they claim that habilines and erectus are common descendants from an unknown Australopithecine ancestor. That’s fine as long as they completely discount the existence of habilines that pre-date erectus and ergaster. In any case, the idea of “divinely guided evolution” in the sense of divine manipulation of natural events is a profoundly unscientific concept.

Second, the modesty of Hawks’ language is evident throughout the paper:…All emphases are mine.

I’m sure that Hawks et al are cautious when they need to be, but they also make clear statements when the evidence warrants it, for example the extremely relevant excerpt that I quoted and these: …this is the only bottleneck not ruled out by the confluence of these data sources.

Both genetic and anthropological data are incompatible with the hypothesis of a recent population size bottleneck

You then fault me for not quoting this excerpt:As it turns out, retention of a large number of ancestral HLA alleles precludes effective population sizes of much less than 1,000 at any particular point in time during human prehistory (Ayala 1995 ; Ayala and Escalante 1996 ; Takahata and Satta 1998 ). This minimum bottleneck number, 1,000, also seems to be the minimum effective population size compatible with the maintenance of species viability and adaptability (Lande 1995 ).*Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. *Actually, I didn’t quote it, for two reasons:

(i) the preceding quotes from Hawks et al. give a sample of the massive uncertainties involved in population modeling for two million years ago, as well as the sometimes questionable assumptions that have to be made;

(ii) the excerpt doesn’t talk about *actual *(i.e. census) population sizes, which is what I’m interested in, but effective ones instead.

Well, your reasons are poor - Hawks et al, cautious as they are, state unequivocally that the HLA data **precludes **effective population sizes much less than 1000. Census population sizes are generally greater, sometimes much greater than effective population sizes: if human Ne is minimally 1000 at any point in human prehistory then the census population will be minimally 3000 - 10000.

Regarding Ayala’s 1994 paper at pnas.org/content/91/15/6787.full.pdf+html , allow me to quote a brief excerpt from p. 6791 …I have to say that this kind of argument leaves me cold. For what I want to know, in plain layperson’s English, is this: how small could the founding population of the human race have been, without requiring a miracle (i.e. an actual violation of the laws of nature) to keep it from dying out?

Well, according to Ayala’s work, the answer is that the lineage leading to the modern human could not, arithmetically, have been less than 29 individuals at any time since the diversion of humans from chimps. But when it comes to analysing what the actual minimum can be, whether the argument leaves *you *cold is neither here nor there. The question is whether his argument is valid, and dismissing it without understanding it doesn’t carry any weight.

Improbable occurrences don’t bother me. Improbable events happen all the time. Just look at the origin of life. Accepting the massive improbability of abiogenesis while rejecting a founding population of less than 458-490 individuals for the human race because of some 95% probability cutoff strikes me as a case of straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

What is the probability of abiogenesis?

Perhaps I’m uncommonly dense, but I certainly don’t see anything in Ayala’s paper showing that a small founding population of less than 100 individuals, 2 million years ago, for the human race, would be impossible.

Then you either haven’t read it properly or you haven’t understood what you have read.

I cited two authorities - Dr. Norman Nevin (a Professor Emeritus of Medical Genetics) and Dr. Jonathan Wells (who has a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley) - who believe that monogenism is scientifically possible in the case of the human race. I have no idea what their scientific reasons are, but that’s what they believe. Dare I say that their biology credentials exceed your own. Has it ever occurred to you that there may be something they know, that you do not?

Repeating this fallacious argument from authority is no less of a limp argument than it was the first time you used it. Nevin is no specialist in this area nor is he any more knowledgeable than actual specialists such as Ayala, Hawks, Wolpoff, Bergstrom, Takahata, Satta, Harding, Rogers, Jorde, or Zhao who disagree with him. (Whereas Prof Nevin is a distinguished researcher, words cannot express my contempt for Jonathan Wells who is not an authority in any field of science.)

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[S.J]

I accept that evolution exists, and go a step further and hold that those who deny evolution actually harm Christian credibility. The evidence is clear, no matter how much “young Earthers” want to deny it.

Having said that, one of the problems I do have with downplaying the “special” nature of man is that we are light years ahead of any other living thing that the world has ever known. If we are to use a clock as an analogy and 12:01 am is the most simple, basic fungus and all other animals are at somewhere between 1am and 12pm, humans are at 11:50 pm. It is a Grand Canyon-sized chasm. We are the only living things that can do even the most basic mathematical operations. Wouldn’t you think that by this stage in the evolutionary process of life that chimps and dolphins would be a little further along?

I just find it very hard to believe that we are simply the BIG winner in some random molecular shakeout. From my theistic perspective, God elevated man from the beasts at some stage in the evolutionary history of the world that He set in motion.

 

[itinerant1]

That’s an argument??? More like a desperate appeal to the crowd.

Merely using big words like “strawman fallacy” doesn’t make it so, and gratuitously denying what you have gratuitously asserted doesn’t mean I am making a “false assumption” about your position. Evidently you don’t understand what a straw man fallacy is to begin with.

Non-informative.

I of course deny that the presence of the intellective soul is not contingent on brain development, for there is not the capacity for rational thought without such development. This is not a straw man, a misrepresentation of your position, for you have clearly stated it to be above!

You, however, are making an argument based on equivocation which I will demonstrate here. Tell me if this is not a fair summary of your position:

1. Part of what makes a human a human is the fact that the human has an intellective soul, meaning the power of rational thought.
2. But infants do not have the power of rational thought because their brains are not sufficiently developed.
3. But they must have an intellective soul anyway because they are human.

No, I don’t recognize that as my position. Like I said, you misrepresent.

R. 1: Rational or abstract conceptual thinking is a unique characteristic of humans. What makes a being human, a rational animal, is the intellective soul. The intellective soul is much more than the power or capacity for rational thought. And this is a fundamental or basic fact of classical philosophical psychology through the centuries. The intellective soul is the principle of life, and of all vegetative, sensitive, and rational powers.

R. 2: Infants do not express rational thought because they are in, obviously, a stage of infancy. The intellective soul is present in the development of the infant as the principle cause of its development. When child development reaches a certain and necessary stage in neuro-physiological growth it will be capable of manifesting rational thought. Significant damage to the brain, nervous system, or severe genetic abnormalities can preclude the ability to acquire and or express rational thought. The intellective soul is present nonetheless in the brain-damaged, etc. individual.

R. 3: Humans, strictly speaking do not “have” a rational soul. The human being is one whose nature is characterized as an intimate unity of intellective soul and physical body. There is no living human body without the intellective soul.

1. of course, changes the definition of human in 1) from having the power of rational thought to merely being a member of homo sapiens sapiens, which is a fallacy of equivocation

You have failed to show the existence of an equivocation.

Man’s essential nature, defined as a “rational animal,” entails the power of rational thought, reflective consciousness, free will, and so on. I never limited this definition or any briefer form of the definition to modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens. That is just another one of your misrepresentations.

They have the potential for rationality insofar as they have the potential to evolve into something with the ability for rational thought, just as an infant as the potential for rationality as it has the potential to develop a functioning brain.

I sense an equivocation on “potential”, at best it is an analogous use in one instance, but I doubt it.

I did present a counter-argument which you don’t know how to respond to. **Your **trademark response is to claim I don’t understand a thing you say and say I haven’t presented a real argument. Now that’s convincing.

Non-informative.

Moreover, you never responded to my question as to why, exactly, the presence of an intellective soul in humans is contradictory to genetic evidence for polygenism.

No response was possible because you misconstrued my statements. Hence, there was point in trying to go from “A” to “B”. However, the answer to your question was contained within the understanding of the essential nature of man as a “rational animal” whose intellective powers are those of a spiritual soul. I previously said,

“That is, the intellective or rational soul does not admit of a “gradual emergence.” It is an all or none reality. A primate is either human (rational animal) or it is not. By essential definition, there can be no middle ground or a being that is partially human. The intellective soul cannot partially exist. It either is or it is not.”

The intellective soul, by its very nature, in classical philosophical psychology, being immaterial, cannot have parts as do physical organisms. It is rather the life principle and organizing principle of a living human body. Accordingly, its reality or presence is all or none. The soul, as defined, either is or is not present. There is no becoming possible of the soul itself, only of the human composite under the organizing principle, the soul.

 

[Touchstone]

I accept that evolution exists, and go a step further and hold that those who deny evolution actually harm Christian credibility. The evidence is clear, no matter how much “young Earthers” want to deny it.

Having said that, one of the problems I do have with downplaying the “special” nature of man is that we are light years ahead of any other living thing that the world has ever known. If we are to use a clock as an analogy and 12:01 am is the most simple, basic fungus and all other animals are at somewhere between 1am and 12pm, humans are at 11:50 pm. It is a Grand Canyon-sized chasm. We are the only living things that can do even the most basic mathematical operations. Wouldn’t you think that by this stage in the evolutionary process of life that chimps and dolphins would be a little further along?

I think your understanding of the status quo is incorrect. See this study here for example:
Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students

Jessica F. Cantlon*, Elizabeth M. Brannon1 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

The Author Summary:

Adult humans possess mathematical abilities that are unmatched by any other member of the animal kingdom. Yet, there is increasing evidence that the ability to enumerate sets of objects nonverbally is a capacity that humans share with other animal species. That is, like humans, nonhuman animals possess the ability to estimate and compare numerical values nonverbally. We asked whether humans and nonhuman animals also share a capacity for nonverbal arithmetic. We tested monkeys and college students on a nonverbal arithmetic task in which they had to add the numerical values of two sets of dots together and choose a stimulus from two options that reflected the arithmetic sum of the two sets.** Our results indicate that monkeys perform approximate mental addition in a manner that is remarkably similar to the performance of the college students. **These findings support the argument that humans and nonhuman primates share a cognitive system for nonverbal arithmetic, which likely reflects an evolutionary link in their cognitive abilities.

(Emphasis mine)

Indeed, while humans are unquestionably way ahead of chimps and all other animals in many cognitive areas, the more we learn, the more we see that the man’s capability for language – abstract, meta-representational language – is the “silver bullet” that distinguishes human cognitive faculties from all other species. That doesn’t diminish the gap, but it does tend to isolate and account for that gap on the basis of that feature: concept-driven language.

I just find it very hard to believe that we are simply the BIG winner in some random molecular shakeout. From my theistic perspective, God elevated man from the beasts at some stage in the evolutionary history of the world that He set in motion.

I think bateria are the hands down winner on the Big Evolutionary Contest, hands down. But in the Mental Gymnastics department, we certainly seem to be in a league of our own. Saying “God elevated man” – this was my line as a theistic evolutionist for a long time – is sensible in a ‘consistent with theism’ way, but then, what event is inconsistent with an unseen, unfathomable, omnipotent God?

There’s no ruling that out, as it is an unfalsifiable idea. But really, you can’t rule out young earth creationism for the same reason – God may have made the earth young, but appearing to be ancient, and the *Omphalos *may obtain. The extraordinary and general power of abstract language manages in one stroke to account for a vast portion of man’s “lead” on the minds of other species, and at the same time represents a fairly basic genetic/physiological development that accounts for it all; man “elevated” by wiring developments that form “strange loops” – cognitive interactions that fold back on themselves, making meta-representation a practical reality for that mind. Similar to the “magic” of replication, billions of years before, where an important infliection point in biology was reached when organisms began self-replicating…

The more we learn, anyway, the more focused and less miraculous our "lightyears lead’ becomes, even as we continue to marvel at what wonders we are, intellectually (ahem!). The gap between human and chimp is impressive in many respects, but the mechanisms proposed that would account for that get less and less miraculous as we close in on the problem, and understand more and more of what makes man “special” as a thinker. God may have “elevated” man in this way, but as miracles go, it gets more and more mundane with every new discovery on the subject.

-TS

 

[grannymh]

Basic Math in Monkeys and College Students

Jessica F. Cantlon*, Elizabeth M. Brannon1 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America

The Author Summary:

Adult humans possess mathematical abilities that are unmatched by any other member of the animal kingdom. Yet, there is increasing evidence that the ability to enumerate sets of objects nonverbally is a capacity that humans share with other animal species. That is, like humans, nonhuman animals possess the ability to estimate and compare numerical values nonverbally. We asked whether humans and nonhuman animals also share a capacity for nonverbal arithmetic. We tested monkeys and college students on a nonverbal arithmetic task in which they had to add the numerical values of two sets of dots together and choose a stimulus from two options that reflected the arithmetic sum of the two sets.** Our results indicate that monkeys perform approximate mental addition in a manner that is remarkably similar to the performance of the college students. **

The “Materials and Methods” section in this research paper is interesting.

Training monkeys.
Prior to training on the addition task, monkeys were trained on a numerical matching task in which a sample array of 1–9 dots was presented and they were rewarded for selecting the array that numerically matched the sample set from two choices (see 9]). Monkeys reached a 70% criterion on this numerical matching task before training on the addition task.

For the initial training on the addition task, monkeys were presented with a limited range of addition problems: 1 + 1 = 2, 4, or 8; 2 + 2 = 2, 4, or 8; 4 + 4 = 2, 4, or 8. Monkeys completed ~9,000 trials on this phase of training; however, as reported in the results section, their performance was above chance within the first 500 trials. Next, we expanded the range of addition problems by testing all possible addends of the sums 2, 4, 8, 12, and 16. For example, when 8 was the sum, the addends could be 1 + 7, 2 + 6, 3 + 5, 4 + 4, 5 + 3, 6 + 2, or 7 + 1. Each sum was equally likely to occur as the correct and incorrect choices. Monkeys completed approximately 5,000 trials on this phase of training before we tested them with novel addition problems. Throughout training and testing, we included trials in which the monkeys were not required to add. On these trials, a single set of dots was presented on monkeys were required to select the choice stimulus that corresponded to its numerical value. These single-set trials were analyzed separately from the addition trials as a measure of monkey’s numerical performance in the absence of arithmetic computation.

Task instructions for adult humans.
Adult humans were instructed to press the start stimulus to initiate each trial and then to attend to the number of dots in each set, add them together without verbally counting, and rapidly select the box that contained their sum from two choices. The task was demonstrated by the experimenter for 3–5 trials, the subject practiced the task for 3–5 trials, and then testing began.

 

[hecd2]

“That is, the intellective or rational soul does not admit of a “gradual emergence.” It is an all or none reality. A primate is either human (rational animal) or it is not. By essential definition, there can be no middle ground or a being that is partially human. The intellective soul cannot partially exist. It either is or it is not.”

The intellective soul, by its very nature, in classical philosophical psychology, being immaterial, cannot have parts as do physical organisms. It is rather the life principle and organizing principle of a living human body. Accordingly, its reality or presence is all or none. The soul, as defined, either is or is not present. There is no becoming possible of the soul itself, only of the human composite under the organizing principle, the soul.

That is exactly the line that Dennis Bonnette took with me, but, given the evidence, it is untenable. The evidence is that extant human cognition lies on a continuum with the intellective abilities of other animals and the precursors of modern man, and that modern human cognition emerges gradually and piecemeal in the record. What defines a human being alive today is not an immaterial intellective soul but the fact of being a member of Homo sapiens sapiens. The continuous (rather than binary or discontinuous) nature of the emergence of human cognition is what makes it well nigh impossible to define exactly when individuals that we can regard as fully human appeared which in turn makes it a matter for deep and seemingly unresolvable controversy. The uncertainty is a consequence both of the imprecisions and disagreements in our definitions of what is minimally required for full humanity and that whatever criteria we choose appear with increasing degrees of depth and sophistication in the record over time. We can agree that Homo sapiens after 35000 years ago are fully human; we can agree that Australopithecines 2.5 million years ago aren’t; but in between there is a wide range of interpretation (weighted by scientists towards later dates but by no means unanimously so).

The idea that human cognition is the consequence of some sort of immaterial intellective soul that either is present or is not is an idea that is untenable in the face of the fossil, palaeo-anthropological, neurological and evolutionary biological evidence that has been gathered since the classical notion was proposed. Of course, this idea is not the only classical metaphysical idea that has crumbled in the face of detailed observations of reality.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[edwest2]

And here we have the complete explanation of how nothing created man, he is just another animal, and, finally, the soul is discarded. For those who wonder why there is any conflict at all between science and what Catholics hold to be true, here it is.

Respectfully,
Ed

 

[grannymh]

. The continuous (rather than binary or discontinuous) nature of the emergence of human cognition is what makes it well nigh impossible to define exactly when individuals that we can regard as fully human appeared which in turn makes it a matter for deep and seemingly unresolvable controversy. The uncertainty is a consequence both of the imprecisions and disagreements in our definitions of what is minimally required for full humanity and that whatever criteria we choose appear with increasing degrees of depth and sophistication in the record over time. Alec
evolutionpages.com

Here are some ideas/questions to consider.

The evolutionary emergence of human cognition would be associated with anatomy. Would this be the sentience found in animals?

Could Cartesian dualism be the source of the problem of defining human nature? Since dear Descartes missed the point of Catholic philosophy, it is necessary to be clear about the unique nature of modern, fully complete human beings, corporeal and rational, matter and spirit. I have seen too many assumptions equating Descartes’ brand of philosophy with Catholicism. Yuk.

I am interested in your comments in post 387 “…every human society existing today, and for at least the last 30,000 years, whether isolated or not has created a profusion of complex art, decoration, technology and culture.” and would certainly appreciate source of research. Could the external functioning of humans indicate their internal nature?

As to what is minimally required for a complete human being – the parsimonious answer is soul and body.

Blessings,
granny

All creation is a joy to behold.