Adam & Eve

[qfnol31]

I'm still being lazy, but I think Robert Grosseteste has some great stuff on how genetics might work, even though that's not his point. His book [i]De cessatione legalium[/i] was just released in English translation. I'll see if I can find the reference.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1340684805' post='2448957']
I once read a genetics thing that said that at one point in history, all humans alive were the ancestors of every single living being today.. meaning every one of the 7 billion people in the world today has the genes of Bob of X thousand years ago, and also Sally of X thousand years ago, and basically the rest of the population of X thousand years ago. Doesn't this lend to the fact that everyone alive today has a soul that was inherited from our ancestors? It may have been only one couple with souls at the time, but eventually, on down the line, it became the whole living population. Where's the conflict in that?

I may have grossly misinterpreted what I read, though.. Genetics confuse me..

Edit: I just reread what I wrote, and I don't think I made any sense... Again, genetics confuse me..
[/quote]
We all have one father and thus a continuous chain of patrilineal ancestors, one in each generation. So-called Y-chromosomal Adam is the most recent common ancestor of all human lineages patrilineally. However, for each hundred or so patrilineal ancestors there are millions of non-patrilineal ancestors that you are connected with. The simplified version is that in each generation you more or less have twice as many ancestors as in the previous generation. Go back just a few centuries and you have millions, maybe tens of millions of ancestors. Basically, it becomes increasingly probable that famous people from just centuries ago (so long as they reproduced) are ancestors of everyone alive today. And geography is deceptively compartmental; genes get around. We all have quite recent ancestors from all parts of globe. Part of why racism is so dumb.
Anyway, my short reply is no; I don't think these things lend credibility to the idea of first parents. Yes, if you go back far enough, and not that far really, every human lineage has either since spread globally or gone extinct. What does this have to do with original sin? If you happened to inherit some "original sin" alleles you're a "true man?" While the lineage of any particular historical couple was going global there would have been many parallel lineages of presumably non-fallen humans. And then, technically, there have been isolated groups of humans that are relatively cutoff from the rest of the world, especially in prehistoric times. Becoming a son of Adam and inheriting original sin, thus being fully human, sounds like coming in contact with a new disease. Congratulations, that invading army that raped your women has incorporated your descendants into Adam. You are now fully human and have an immortal soul.

Maybe the Tasmanians inherited the "stain of sin" from the Koori, who were infected by the Murri, who were infected from a chain of trade going back to New Guinea. The Papuans were infected by Austronesians who picked up the SNP of Adam's sin from contact with mainland people. And so on, all the way back to the Fertile Crescent, or wherever Eden might have been. But this all arseumes a physical/genetic basis of original sin, which I think is confusing and probably untenable.

[Laudate_Dominum]

Did the fiddlers seriously replace "as.sumes" with arseumes? smh

[qfnol31]

Hijack: arseassinate.

/hijack.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1340684805' post='2448957']
I once read a genetics thing that said that at one point in history, all humans alive were the ancestors of . . .
Doesn't this lend to the fact that everyone alive today has a soul that was inherited from our ancestors? It may have been only one couple with souls at the time, but eventually, on down the line, it became the whole living population. Where's the conflict in that?
[/quote]

In case my last post was a bit too haphazard you can think of it this way. Your mom has a pyramid of ancestors under her, and your dad has his own pyramid of ancestors under him. They coupled and produced you, who are at the top of a tree of ancestors that includes both of their pyramids/trees (which increasingly overlap as you go back in time). Of course the numbers would become so extreme in the distant past that it would greatly exceed the number of people who have ever lived (simple binary tree / exponential growth [i]ad infinitum[/i]), but in reality this does not happen because of such things as inbreeding and pedigree collapse. How one might reasonably base the idea of soul inheritance on this is beyond me. The idea of a huge prehistoric population bottleneck roughly coinciding with a "great leap forward" of behavioral modernity would be more reasonable, but still dubious, and far removed from the idea of Adam and Eve as literal first parents. In other words, perhaps behavioral modernity is what pas.sed through the bottleneck of extreme selection pressures over relatively few generations tens of thousands of years ago (I don't actually think this is the case btw). If such a scenario were likely one might still have to tack on the gratuitous as.sumption of miraculous ensouling of this polygenistic Adam & Eve, or else consider the soul to be something that can emerge naturally yet inexplicably. It seems a rather problematic line of speculation in any case.

And I don't know that anyone would stop you from thinking that the soul and original sin are things that are acquired mystically when one is conceived by at least one parent who has Adam and Eve in their genealogy. I just find this to be a bizarre idea with some still stranger implications (some of which are touched upon in my previous post.)

edit: had to add periods to thwart the fiddler. wth.

Edited June 26, 2012 by Laudate_Dominum

[Laudate_Dominum]

And the fiddlers replace mas.sive with marseive. This is irksome.


Testing...

Bass fishing. arseistance. arseociate. Parseamamarsey. Parseamashloddy... Parseamaquoddy.


Interesting. You can say bass but not Marseachusetts.

Edited June 26, 2012 by Laudate_Dominum

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1330433015' post='2393991']
I think I'm sounding dangerously close to the polygenism condemned by Pius XII
[/quote]
Polygenism in the sense of different human races having evolved from distinct ape ancestors is completely false based on overwhelming scientific evidence. But I know that you're referring to the idea that Adam is not an historical person but perhaps symbolizes a group of early humans. I think corporate symbolism is clearly the case in much of Genesis, but this doesn't rule out polyvalent symbolism.
I think considerations of the genre alone make the corporate-symbolic reading very plausible and the "historical breeding pair" reading difficult. I've encountered multiple sources that claim that Humani Generis does not actually condemn this viewpoint but says that it's not yet (c. 1950) apparent how it might be reconciled with Catholic theology. Some claim that exploring the question and trying to reconcile the two is a legitimate theological project. I'm not really sure what to think. The real rain on my parade is the insight from genetics and related fields. And yet here it is:

"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 either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is parseed onto all and is in everyone as his own" Pope Pius XII - Humani Generis 37


edit: please forgive the mauling by PM fiddlers. smh

Edited June 26, 2012 by Laudate_Dominum

[Hubertus]

Thanks for edifying me while confusing me and making me not know what to think anymore all at the same time, Laudate. Maybe I'll just go back to Young Earth Creationism.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Hubertus' timestamp='1340780062' post='2449361']
Thanks for edifying me while confusing me and making me not know what to think anymore all at the same time, Laudate. Maybe I'll just go back to Young Earth Creationism.
[/quote]
If it makes you feel any better the whole story has hardly been presented in this thread so far. When I spent some time looking into the topic last year (around the time this thread came into being) I did come across some good stuff. Not that the issues are resolved or anything. I'm hoping for an official update to, and elaboration of [i]Humani Generis[/i] in the not too distant future.

[Laudate_Dominum]

I wonder what's up with this document. In my reading of it some form of polygenism is taken to be an open question.

[url="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html"]Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God[/url]

"63. According to the widely accepted scientific account, the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in an explosion called the “Big Bang” and has been expanding and razzle dazzleing ever since. Later there gradually emerged the conditions necessary for the formation of atoms, still later the condensation of galaxies and stars, and about 10 billion years later the formation of planets. In our own solar system and on earth (formed about 4.5 billion years ago), the conditions have been favorable to the emergence of life. While there is little consensus among scientists about how the origin of this first microscopic life is to be explained, there is general agreement among them that the first organism dwelt on this planet about 3.5-4 billion years ago. Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution."

"Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called 'an ontological leap...the moment of transition to the spiritual.'"

[cmotherofpirl]

[left][size=4]69. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity)[u] [/u]that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency[u]. [/u]Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” ([i]Summa theologiae, [/i]I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is [i]both[/i] contingent and guided.[i] Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so.[/i] An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles....It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” ([i]Summa theologiae[/i] I, 22, 2).[/size][/left]
[left][size=4][color=#000000][font=Times New Roman]70. With respect to the immediate creation of the human soul, Catholic theology affirms that particular actions of God bring about effects that transcend the capacity of created causes acting according to their natures. The appeal to divine causality to account for genuinely [i]causal[/i] as distinct from merely [i]explanatory[/i] gaps does not insert divine agency to fill in the “gaps” in human scientific understanding (thus giving rise to the so-called "God of the gaps”). The structures of the world can be seen as open to non-disruptive divine action in directly causing events in the world.[i] Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention. Acting indirectly through causal chains operating from the beginning of cosmic history, God prepared the way for what Pope John Paul II has called “an ontological leap...the moment of transition to the spiritual.”[/i] While science can study these causal chains, it falls to theology to locate this account of the special creation of the human soul within the overarching plan of the triune God to share the communion of trinitarian life with human persons who are created out of nothing in the image and likeness of God, and who, in his name and according to his plan, exercise a creative stewardship and sovereignty over the physical universe.[/font][/color][/size][/left]

[Laudate_Dominum]

[size=4]Thanks Cmom. That's basically the view I've tried to express in the creation museum thread and elsewhere. I especially like this part.

"[color=#000000][font='Times New Roman']But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation."[/font][/color][/size]

Edited July 1, 2012 by Laudate_Dominum

[Papist]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1341119561' post='2451080']
Thanks Cmom. That's basically the view I've tried to express in the creation museum thread and elsewhere. I especially like this part.

"[color=#000000][font=Times New Roman]But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation."[/font][/color]
[/quote]

No. That was what I was attempting to convey.

Edited July 7, 2012 by Papist