Is this what you are talking about?
If not then could you give me some insight as to what part of his theory to which you are referring to? I can’t find anything else in “Origin of Species” that seems to match what you are talking about?
Keep calendars, celebrate anniversaries and feast days, schedule elections, write (and read) histories, think today (-a Sunday in October) what to buy someone for Christmas, or who to invite to a party, talk about ‘the good old days,’ ask someone out on a date, compare one’s new dwelling to the previous one and one previous to that, save for retirement or a child’s college fund, debate what children should be taught in school and whether the girls are dressing too provocatively for their ages or whether spend too much time drinking and not enough helping out around the house; encourage people to vote for or against candidate X,; begin a story with ‘once upon a time,’ look forward to the release of a movie or a book. None of the other primates do such things at all. They CAN’T think in these ways.
As to the bold, they do do some of those things. They certainly know how to ask one another for a date. You want to put mental processes in terms of cultural activities specific to humans. They aren’t humans, but have similar mental processes. It is a matter of degree. They lie, cheat, get angry when someone doesn’t work, enforce law, plan for the future and most most most certainly, “encourage someone to vote against candidate X.” Take some primatology classes a or just read a lot of books on the subject and you will see.
You seem to be implying that materialism is compatible with theism! Does “others” include “some of us here”?
There’s nothing in your quotes that denies the emergence of H. sap from earlier forms or says we should reject this. .
If you keep that same chimp with that same child until the child is twelve and give them IQ tests, the chimp will not score as the average 12-year-old. There’s a reason we call 3 (and 4 and 5 and 6) year-olds ‘below the age of reason.’ They reach it around age seven. Chimps never reach it at all. They have sensitive intelligence but not abstract intelligence. They never develop syntax. They are hopeless with abstract nouns. (It is not their fault; they are not dim but simply not human.)
If you go back far enough you’ll find a mammal whose greatest success in life was staying alive long enough to inseminate a female. He wasn’t interested in talking about elephants or the weather. He didn’t have the mental capacity to do so. You obviously do.
No, it’s a difference in degree.
Mark must be very ancient!
Then the difference between molecular systems and rational beings must also be simply a difference of degree. Is that correct?
Theists believe in a personal God whereas materialists explain everything solely in terms of impersonal objects.
My post # 45 should clear this up. If not, tell me where you have a problem. When we get down to the bed rock of this question we have to be careful. The Church teaches that Adam or any other man must come from a man who is truly human. That would seem to rule out the kind of origin for man that Darwanism would allow. Now how " man must come from man " and still permit " some form " of evolution from an existing animal species is hard to imagin. And the Church simply says that this is a question dependent on futher scientific study and research. That is the way things stand for now.
Julia Mae:
I agree this is the crux, whether it is simply a difference in degree or in kind. You say degree, I say kind. I think I have the better of the argument and you think you do. You have the harder task because you have to explain how the things we do that no other animal does—in shorthand, make artistically, think discursively, associate politically–developed. That’ll be a neat trick when you manage it.
Linus, I grant this but would not introduce it into this argument for the following reason. The Church is talking about the soul, which many outside the Church deny. But they cannot deny that humans make artistically, think discursively, and associate politically. (Lest someone think other animals do this because their societies exhibit order–the beehive, the ant colony, and so on–those are instinctive arrangements that do not change over time. Human societies do. People argue about what is just and who should rule, but no other animal does this.) Those are demonstrable matters. You and I think they involve the soul but we need not introduce the concept of soul to show the vast difference between humans and all other animals. Indeed, anyone who uses the normal distinction between ‘person’ and ‘thing’ is recognizing a fundamental difference between humans and the rest of creation.My post # 45 should clear this up. If not, tell me where you have a problem. When we get down to the bed rock of this question we have to be careful. The Church teaches that Adam or any other man must come from a man who is truly human. That would seem to rule out the kind of origin for man that Darwanism would allow. Now how " man must come from man " and still permit " some form " of evolution from an existing animal species is hard to imagin. And the Church simply says that this is a question dependent on futher scientific study and research. That is the way things stand for now.
I agree this is the crux, whether it is simply a difference in degree or in kind. You say degree, I say kind. I think I have the better of the argument and you think you do. You have the harder task because you have to explain how the things we do that no other animal does—in shorthand, make artistically, think discursively, associate politically–developed. That’ll be a neat trick when you manage it.
For Darwin, this is true for all mammals TODAY too. Evolutionary pressures were not something that happened Way Back When and then stopped. They were, are, and shall remain constant.(This is essential to the theory.) But we know this is false because such pressures are not constant NOW, and that goes for gorillas and elephants as well as humans. Probably ants too. I think it would be a rare time in the history of ants that most of them starved for lack of food and only the “strong” (“fit”) survived. Darwin thought this the DEFINING problem of all organic life but it is not.
This contains a mistake. Materialists do not explain everything. They do not explain consciousness, for example, or how mathematics hooks up with the world, or how an argument could change a scientist’s brain. They only ALLOW explanations “solely in terms of impersonal objects.” That would be fine if they said, ‘This is how we work and others may work in other ways,’ but instead they claim that what this is the only way to really know anything. But it is not the only way to know math, for example—a vast field devoted to non-material objects!. That it fails to account for consciousness or choice should be telling signs AGAINST it but instead materialism tries to explain we’re not REALLY conscious and we don’t REALLY choose; this is all the burping and farting of brains and is no more significant than that. (Which they do not believe even as they say it.)
My quote # 45 makes it clear that the soul of man makes him fundamentally different from other animals in that the soul is the seat of reason which other animals do not have. Of course we can draw out the full ramifications of the reasoning soul of man but my purpose was simply to show what the church teaches on the origins of man, what was permissible for Catholics to hold and believe and what was not permissible. It wasn’t meant to be an " argument " of any kind. Nor was it meant to convince non-catholics of its validity. I just thought it important for any Catholics who might be following along ( who I find sometimes unsure themselves what exactly the Church teaches) to know the Catholic teaching. Regards, you are doing fine.
I didn’t say it would and this misses the point. The issue is: the mental processes function similarly and are different as a matter of degree.
But they do have abstract intelligence, see, this is what I’m trying to get you to understand: you are not educated enough in primatology, or neuro-development, to know that what you believe is just not true. Their abstract thinking doesn’t approach the complexity of ours, but they definitely can use and decipher symbols.
Yes, they use syntax, they create new sentences from words they have learned, and yes, they understand “abstract nouns” if we mean the same thing by that.
The soul does make a human being different from other species. It does not mean that solely as a species, Homo sapiens did not evolve.