Evolution

[goldenchild17]

okay yeah that would be getting beyond what I knows scientifically. I accept the young earth theory, so it wouldn't quite work for me I think. One or the other would have to change a bit either I would need to be convinced of an old earth, or evolution I think would need to fit young earth which I'm not sure it can.

But you say all living things couldn't have come from one thing. I'm not familiar with this one. Would you be saying that there were a number of original beings from which different groups of animals evolved from each, and so on and so forth?

[KnightofChrist]

What about this, what if people just looked like apes millions of years ago, yet they had souls as we do.

Can anyone go back in time and ask one of these ape-like humans “are you a ape, or are you a person?”

I do not buy in to evolution I think for the most part its a joke, within 200yrs man will think something completely different. There are many great flaws in the theory of evolution, which is still just a theory anyway... And it is taught as if it were a law, or can be proven, when in fact, it is not a law, and can not and has not been proven.

What I do think is there is adaptation, life always adapts to its environment.

Adam and Eve did not come from “ape-like” beings or even apes, they were our first parents, created by God, which would mean they had no parents. They can not be our first parents if indeed they had parents, even if their parents where a different species, that would not change the parenthood, of the parents. Adam and Eve may well looked like apes, having souls, but had no ape or ape like parents. They where persons, no matter their genetics.

Edited September 26, 2006 by KnightofChrist

[Aloysius]

I am inclined to agree in a sense... I chimed in here as a voice for the plausibility under Catholic doctrine of certain things. one cannot deny the stages the human body went through before its present state nor help but notice that some of our ancestors in that line, if they had souls, had very wicked souls (they did not care for their sick, they did not bury their dead, they actually ate the brains of their dead... compared to the neanderthals who we are not related to who cared for their sick and old, buried their dead and saved flowers even through the winter to use in ritual burials, et cetera)... which is why it seems to indicate that that stage which is so clearly related to us presently may not yet have been endowed with rational human souls.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075284' date='Sep 26 2006, 12:31 AM']
sure. maybe in the very egg and sperm the genetic mutation already began. it's the DNA code that changes... but in every species there are entire strands of code with superfluous information with one thing right before it that says "do not read the following instructions" and another line right after it which says "resume reading instructions"... if the proteins which say "do not read the following" are missing, then that whole line of genetic code becomes part of the being which was procreated.

it is thus possible that someday a pig will be born with wings.
[/quote]
What? No one has used the Wow... slackers...

[Anomaly]

[quote name='homeschoolmom' post='1075414' date='Sep 26 2006, 07:14 AM']
What? No one has used the Wow... slackers...
[/quote]A most appropriate observation.


But seriously. A soul is created by God and bestowed by God alone. God has chosen at what point in evolution He has chosen to bestow humanity with souls. If having a soul was/is merely a function of the presence of certain DNA proteins outside the direct operation of God, then there would be a big theological problem with Evolution and you fall into a humanist logic trap.

We may be monkey's nephews, but whether they had souls or not was up to God. Whether God created 'Adam' as and unique species in an instant, or chose to bestow intelligent monkey Adam with a soul making him unique doesn't matter much to me. Whether God cut out Adam's rib in a medical operation to create Eve, or Adam's interaction with Eve opened her nature to become souled (through God's intervention) making them the first married couple doesn't really matter.

Physical nature can't create a soul without the will of God.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075284' date='Sep 26 2006, 01:31 AM']
sure. maybe in the very egg and sperm the genetic mutation already began.
[/quote]
I'm sorry, but for some reason, I just read that as "the egg and spam."

No one will ever eat spam again.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Anomaly' post='1075420' date='Sep 26 2006, 08:39 AM']Whether God created 'Adam' as and unique species in an instant, or chose to bestow intelligent monkey Adam with a soul making him unique doesn't matter much to me.[/quote]
The problem is that, if Adam was a "monkey", then he already had a soul, although non-rational. For God to infuse a human soul, he would have to kill the monkey, thereby killing his soul (animal souls are not eternal like man), and then infuse a new human soul. He can't just "graduate" a non-rational soul, because a human soul is a completely separate and personal entity.

It doesn't much matter to me either, except insofar as theology is concerned. But non-Christians take this stuff seriously. I was discussing evolution with a co-worker last month, and he basically defined himself by reason and science. His perception was mostly shaped by Evangelical Christians who are absolutely opposed to evolution. I asked him why it even mattered at the end of the day how we came to be, but he just thought it was blasphemy of science and reason to deny evolution.

[Anomaly]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1075514' date='Sep 26 2006, 09:34 AM']
The problem is that, if Adam was a "monkey", then he already had a soul, although non-rational. For God to infuse a human soul, he would have to kill the monkey, thereby killing his soul (animal souls are not eternal like man), and then infuse a new human soul. He can't just "graduate" a non-rational soul, because a human soul is a completely separate and personal entity.

It doesn't much matter to me either, except insofar as theology is concerned. But non-Christians take this stuff seriously. I was discussing evolution with a co-worker last month, and he basically defined himself by reason and science. His perception was mostly shaped by Evangelical Christians who are absolutely opposed to evolution. I asked him why it even mattered at the end of the day how we came to be, but he just thought it was blasphemy of science and reason to deny evolution.
[/quote]Did you think about your response? If intelligent 'monkey's' gave birth to Adam who looked like them but had a soul, how did that kill a monkey soul?

Besides, I don't think God was the founding member of PETA. Monkeys die as food for others. Is it such a horrible thing if a monkey soul had to move out for Adam's soul?

[Era Might]

[quote name='Anomaly' post='1075602' date='Sep 26 2006, 12:21 PM']Did you think about your response? If intelligent 'monkey's' gave birth to Adam who looked like them but had a soul, how did that kill a monkey soul?

Besides, I don't think God was the founding member of PETA. Monkeys die as food for others. Is it such a horrible thing if a monkey soul had to move out for Adam's soul?[/quote]
Monkeys have souls. When a monkey gives birth to another monkey, that new monkey has a soul as well. Hence, there are two possibilities. Either, as Aloysius suggested, some genetic mutation occurs so that the offspring is a completely different species from the moment of conception (human), and thus is immediately infused with a human soul, or, if the offspring is still a "monkey", then God would have to kill it and then reanimate/infuse the matter with a human soul, since it already had a soul, and a creature can only have one soul.

It has nothing to do with being "horrible", but with being rational. The former possibility is reasonable, although it still presents theological questions. The latter, while also possible, would not be reasonable in my estimation, theologically or biologically.

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075384' date='Sep 26 2006, 04:15 AM']
I am inclined to agree in a sense... I chimed in here as a voice for the plausibility under Catholic doctrine of certain things. one cannot deny the stages the human body went through before its present state nor help but notice that some of our ancestors in that line, if they had souls, had very wicked souls (they did not care for their sick, they did not bury their dead, they actually ate the brains of their dead... compared to the Neanderthals who we are not related to who cared for their sick and old, buried their dead and saved flowers even through the winter to use in ritual burials, et cetera)... which is why it seems to indicate that that stage which is so clearly related to us presently may not yet have been endowed with rational human souls.
[/quote]

Now see this is the problem with scientists finding artifacts, they find one piece of evidence pointing to that perhaps early man ate the brains of their dead, and then apply this to all early man of that species. All that can be “proven” is that tribe, that one group of early man did those things, not the entire species of that particle early man. Some people of our species today do the same things as not burying the dead, cannibalistic acts, and not caring for the sick, ei Terri Savio (not caring for the sick), abortion (not burying the dead), Jeffrey Demure (cannibalism).

Wicked persons have lived threw out history, that does not apply to all personhood of a species, ape like or not.

And it does not amply that because of a few crazy wicked persons, that a species of personhood had no souls and were not good people, maybe they were stupid people, but not wicked soulless apes.

[Aloysius]

they have found much more than just one, dude. the evidence for how that species lived is pretty solid: they lived like animals (not how Adam and Eve were said to live (already agriculturally) when they were expelled from the garden). their brains were not complex enough for language (they can study the imprints off of the skulls)... it is common to find the skulls bashed in (they didn't necessarily eat the brains I suppose, though it's likely, but they did use them as bowls). they lived like animals, they left their sick and old to die, they went in packs, they killed animals... oh, and yeah, they killed off the kind and gently neanderthal people.

anyway, I don't know which state of man's body had a soul... but there are some states of man's body which you would actually be doing a disservice to the whole attempt to preserve the traditional understanding of adam and eve to place them as the first humans.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075714' date='Sep 26 2006, 01:33 PM']anyway, I don't know which state of man's body had a soul... but there are some states of man's body which you would actually be doing a disservice to the whole attempt to preserve the traditional understanding of adam and eve to place them as the first humans.[/quote]
Well, there is no doubt as far as the Church is concerned that Adam and Eve were the first human beings. Whatever evolution may be speculated, there had to be one point at which Adam and Eve were distinguished from non-rational animals that may have preceded them, and became human beings with an eternal and rational soul:

[quote]When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

--Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Letter "Human Generis"[/quote]

Edited September 26, 2006 by Era Might

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075714' date='Sep 26 2006, 12:33 PM']
they have found much more than just one, dude. the evidence for how that species lived is pretty solid: they lived like animals (not how Adam and Eve were said to live (already agriculturally) when they were expelled from the garden).[/quote]

Yes but many parts of the theory of evolution are built upon, one dude, or one skull, or one whatever. People today live like animals, doesn't mean they don't have souls.

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075714' date='Sep 26 2006, 12:33 PM']
their brains were not complex enough for language (they can study the imprints off of the skulls)...[/quote]

Even my chickens have a language, the theory that early man had no language, because scientists believe their brain were not complex all comes down to a guess. Come on if chickens have a language, with their brains the size of peanuts, then early man had a much more complex language, perhaps not as complex as ours, but still a complex language. Imprints don’t really prove anything until we can study a living early man, we can not say they had no language. But no language does not mean no Soul. And does not prove they did not descend from Adam and Eve.

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075714' date='Sep 26 2006, 12:33 PM']
it is common to find the skulls bashed in (they didn't necessarily eat the brains I suppose, though it's likely, but they did use them as bowls). they lived like animals, they left their sick and old to die, they went in packs, they killed animals... oh, and yeah, they killed off the kind and gently Neanderthal people.[/quote]

All this can be applied to our own species, threw out time. There are or have been tribes that use skulls as bowls, left their sick and old to die, killed animals, and wiped out other groups of people.

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075714' date='Sep 26 2006, 12:33 PM']
anyway, I don't know which state of man's body had a soul... but there are some states of man's body which you would actually be doing a disservice to the whole attempt to preserve the traditional understanding of Adam and eve to place them as the first humans.
[/quote]

Adam and Eve were our first parents, they had no parents, all mankind descended from them. Their wickedness and the wickedness of their children is not a disservice, its just a fact, of sin.

[Aloysius]

#1: chickens do not have language. language is something totally species-specific to humans; not even monkeys have or the ability to produce it (linguists give no credence to the money-hungry primatologists who get apes to understand some symbols... the apes do not have the ability to produce syntax; moreover, for every minute of tape you see an ape 'signing' there are hours of conditioning him to recognize those signs... not even apes have language.) You anthropomorphize your chickens by thinking they have language. They do not have language to a lesser degree of complexity: they do not have language at all. they have noises, yes. but nothing that is even one degree of language.
#2: it is not the size of the brain, but the complexity of the circuitry (which they can see in the imprints inside of skulls).

yes, there were only two original parents. this lines up with the mitochondrial history we trace back and the clear fact that homo sapiens began in one point and spread around the world.

the first humans had to have had language and face forward instead of the ground, and many other things otherwise I do not think we can consider them human

I am not merely describing wickedness in this species, I am describing non-human activity...

[KnightofChrist]

I must leave to go to work now but what? Chickens do not have language? Perhaps my chickens are super chickens, but somehow they communicate using their voice boxes, call signs for food, danger, etc etc. I would call that a language... Some kind of language...

Edited September 26, 2006 by KnightofChrist

[Groo the Wanderer]

Man did descend from apelike creatures millions of years ago. Then, when they were advanced enough, God infused them with a human soul. He did this by sending down a huge black, rectangular obelisk. When the apeman touched it, he became self-aware, gained a soul, then promptly picked up a jawbone and beat the wumpus out of a neighbor apeman. Then the apeman threw the jawbone into the air and it became a space station. Still confused why God buried the obelisk on the moon though.

Tis troo! I saw it in a movie somewhere...



[quote name='Aloysius' post='1075765' date='Sep 26 2006, 02:26 PM']
#1: chickens do not have language.
[/quote]


Are you sure? I seem to remember Super-Chicken very plainly saying many times "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred."

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1075661' date='Sep 26 2006, 01:55 PM']
Monkeys have souls. When a monkey gives birth to another monkey, that new monkey has a soul as well. Hence, there are two possibilities. Either, as Aloysius suggested, some genetic mutation occurs so that the offspring is a completely different species from the moment of conception (human), and thus is immediately infused with a human soul, or, if the offspring is still a "monkey", then God would have to kill it and then reanimate/infuse the matter with a human soul, since it already had a soul, and a creature can only have one soul.

It has nothing to do with being "horrible", but with being rational. The former possibility is reasonable, although it still presents theological questions. The latter, while also possible, would not be reasonable in my estimation, theologically or biologically.
[/quote]
I do not think Adam would have been changed into a human at some point after birth. I think a Catholic understanding of evolution would hold that from the moment of his conception he was a human being. Two advanced hominid ancestors would give birth to a fully modern human via some genetic mutation that made the offspring more advanced.

[Aloysius]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' post='1075782' date='Sep 26 2006, 03:51 PM']
I must leave to go to work now but what? Chickens do not have language? Perhaps my chickens are super chickens, but somehow they communicate using their voice boxes, call signs for food, danger, etc etc. I would call that a language... Some kind of language...
[/quote]
then you have a very poor understanding of what a language is. they have a form of communication, a very primitive form of communication, but their brains do not generate anything the likes of which could be called language. I'd have to get out my anthropology notes to give you a very full argument as to the complete and utter uniqueness of language...

bees have a dance called the "tans spracha" by which they communicate where the pollun is. that is a form of species-specific communication that is not language. it is not language by degree, it is simply not language at all.

same thing with what your chickens do. and with what apes do. and all animals. they communicate on a basic level by sounds and other instinctual things, but it is not even language by degree it is just a form of communication. it is not the beginnings of language, it is not a less complex language, it is not a language.

grammer, syntax, the ability to reference anything real or imagined, the ability to spontaneously generate all these things such that it forms a complex whole of ideas and thoughts... animals do not do this in any degree in any form. they communicate by signing for food or signing for danger with intonations and grunts and sounds and snarls and growls, this is not language and this is not even anything which approaches a degree of language.

[Steve in Vista]

[quote name='Era Might' post='1075264' date='Sep 25 2006, 10:01 PM']
I'm not too scientifically savvy, so bear with me, but my point is more about theology than biology.

... I don't see how this can be squared theologically.

Anyone know?
[/quote]

Before we can even begin to examine the subject we should bear in mind the order of things. What I mean is that: Revelation (from God) begets wisdom which in turn begets religion which in turn begets knowledge which in turn begets science in the technical sense. This handmaid (refered to below in the quote from Pope St. Pius X) should serve man's worship (St. Augustine's definition of latreia) of God and not detract from that duty.

PASCENDI DOMINICI GREGIS
ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE MODERNISTS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS X, SEPTEMBER 8, 1907
VENERABLE BRETHREN, HEALTH AND THE APOSTOLIC BLESSING:
…

[St. Pius X's critique here is of the improper inversion of Religion and Science]

Thus it is evident that science is to be entirely independent of faith, while on the other hand, and notwithstanding that they are supposed to be strangers to each other, faith is made subject to science. All this, Venerable Brethren, is in formal opposition to the teachings of Our predecessor, Pius IX, where he lays it down that: "In matters of religion it is the duty of philosophy not to command but to serve, not to prescribe what is to be believed, but to embrace what is to be believed with reasonable obedience, not to scrutinize the depths of the mysteries of God, but to venerate them devoutly and humbly."
The Modernists completely invert the parts, and of them may be applied the words which another of Our predecessors Gregory IX, addressed to some theologians of his time: "Some among you, puffed up like bladders with the spirit of vanity strive by profane novelties to cross the boundaries fixed by the Fathers, twisting the meaning of the sacred text...to the philosophical teaching of the rationalists, not for the profit of their hearer but to make a show of science...these men, led away by various and strange doctrines, turn the head into the tail and force the queen to serve the handmaid."


Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum

Edited September 26, 2006 by Steve in Vista

[Era Might]

Not sure what you're trying to say. It's true that science and revelation go hand in hand. They're both sciences, although one is natural, the other supernatural. But, while acknowledging this, it doesn't get us out of hard questions. A theological difficulty does not necessarily mean that the science is wrong. Our particular understanding of a certain point of theology may be wrong, or the scientific truth may be such that it doesn't really violate a theological truth when taken correctly, or the science may be wrong.

This is the reason why we search for truth, to examine, question, discern, and find what is true in all spheres, natural and supernatural.

[quote]The unshrinking defence of the Holy Scripture, however, does not require that we should equally uphold all the opinions which each of the Fathers or the more recent interpreters have put forth in explaining it; for it may be that, in commenting on passages where physical matters occur, they have sometimes expressed the ideas of their own times, and thus made statements which in these days have been abandoned as incorrect. Hence, in their interpretations, we must carefully note what they lay down as belonging to faith, or as intimately connected with faith-what they are unanimous in. For "in those things which do not come under the obligation of faith, the Saints were at liberty to hold divergent opinions, just as we ourselves are," according to the saying of St. Thomas. And in another place he says most admirably: "When philosophers are agreed upon a point, and it is not contrary to our faith, it is safer, in my opinion, neither to lay down such a point as a dogma of faith, even though it is perhaps so presented by the philosophers, nor to reject it as against faith, lest we thus give to the wise of this world an occasion of despising our faith." The Catholic interpreter, although he should show that those facts of natural science which investigators affirm to be now quite certain are not contrary to the Scripture rightly explained, must nevertheless always bear in mind, that much which has been held and proved as certain has afterwards been called in question and rejected. And if writers on physics travel outside the boundaries of their own branch, and carry their erroneous teaching into the domain of philosophy, let them be handed over to philosophers for refutation.

--Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter "Providentissimus Deus"[/quote]

Those who deal with the natural sciences are concerned with discovering the natural order of the world. Once those facts are discovered objectively, or once something is suspected as fact, then it is examined on a natural basis, and then on a philosophical and theological basis. Grace and revelation build on nature, so in this sense, science comes first, at which point it is subjected to the scrutiny of revelation, knowing that natural truth and supernatural truth can never contradict. But even in the supernatural science of theology, there is conjecture and opinion, so that what was thought previously may be illuminated by the discovery of natural truth, and vice versa.