Human Evolution

[dairygirl4u2c]

Homo floresiensis
homo erectus
homo neanderthalus
and
[url="http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2008/03/11/prnewswire200803111514PR_NEWS_USPR_____D16351.html"]http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prn...___DC16351.html[/url]

the evidence seems pretty strong that humans evolved, don't ya think?

[T-Bone _]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1480752' date='Mar 20 2008, 12:37 PM']Homo floresiensis
homo erectus
homo neanderthalus
and
[url="http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2008/03/11/prnewswire200803111514PR_NEWS_USPR_____D6351.html"]http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prn...___DC16351.html[/url]

the evidence seems pretty strong that humans evolved, don't ya think?[/quote]

Point?

[prose]

Error 404 means we have evolved?

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote][url="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3A*%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7ADBF&q=%22mystery+skulls%22+forbes&btnG=Search"]http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls...amp;btnG=Search[/url]

www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2008/03/11/prnewswire200803111514PR_NEWS_USPR_____D
16351.html[/quote]

also.... homo heidelbergensis
Homo habilis
H. rudolfensis
Homo sapiens idaltu

so is the argument that all these homos are just slight deviatios of the same species of humans, such that evolutio didn't occur but only slight evolutio did?
the argument from those antievolutionists, that is.
obviusly many catholics are proevolution in good faith with the church.

Edited March 20, 2008 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution[/url]
[url="http://news.softpedia.com/news/Top-10-Extinct-Humans-62131.shtml"]http://news.softpedia.com/news/Top-10-Exti...ans-62131.shtml[/url]

Conroy GC, Jolly CJ, Cramer, D & Kalb JE. 1978. Newly discovered fossil hominid skull from the Afar depression, Ethiopia. Nature 276:67-70.

Some others you might find interesting:

Rightmire GP. 1996. The human cranium from Bodo, Ethiopia: efidence for speciation in the Middle Pleistocene? J. Hum. Evol. 31:21-39

Rightmire GP. 1998. Human evolution in the Middle Pleistocene: the role of Homo heidelbergensis. Evolutionary Anthropology 6:218-227.

White TD. 1986. Cut marks on the Bodo cranium: a case pf prehistoric defleshing. Am. J. Phys. Anth. 69:503-509.

Edited March 20, 2008 by dairygirl4u2c

[prose]

There is a lot of evidence of micro-evolution. There has never in history been any evidence of macro-evolution (evidence that one species changed to another).

[picchick]

Could man evolve from man, dairygirl? Couldn't we have adapted and adapted? Sure evolution could have happened. But just because we looked like an ape doesn't mean we were at some time an ape. Maybe it was for some reason better if we looked that way at that time. Then as times changed so did we to adapt to our surroundings

[Farsight one]

[quote name='prose' post='1480821' date='Mar 20 2008, 03:21 PM']There is a lot of evidence of micro-evolution. There has never in history been any evidence of macro-evolution (evidence that one species changed to another).[/quote]

Actually there's plenty of that too. There was a relatively recent event where some biologists nearly came to blows over the debate as to what to call 13 fossil discoveries - either mammal-like reptiles or reptile-like mammals.

I'm on my lunch break and I have to head back to work, but I'll see if I can dig up a source or two on my day off. (12 hour shifts don't give a lot of free time)

Also, the terms "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are Creationist constructs. They don't exist as accepted terms in the field of science.

[prose]

I heard the term macro-evolution from outside of the creationist realm. Weird. It was basically discussing cross species evolution. Totally non-religious event.

[KnightofChrist]

I've heard the term microevolution on Nova many times.

[KnightofChrist]

The question I would ask of catholics is, would Darwinian evolution be compatible with Catholic dogma?

Edited March 21, 2008 by KnightofChrist

[Farsight one]

[quote name='prose' post='1481101' date='Mar 20 2008, 11:13 PM']I heard the term macro-evolution from outside of the creationist realm. Weird. It was basically discussing cross species evolution. Totally non-religious event.[/quote]
Pardon me. I was way too unclear in my statement. They are creationist constructs. other people have begun to use the terms as well, but not in the same way creationists do. A creationist calls micro-evolution change within species and macro-evolution change between species. Scientists(at least the ones willing to use the terms at all) use micro-evolution to refer to one change and macro-evolution to refer to lots of changes over time - basically a whole bunch of micro-evolutions end to end to end.

I've been listening to a lot of debating on the subject.

p.s. - now I'm AT work, where 90% of the internet is blocked, so still no sources.

[CatherineM]

I see nothing incompatible between my Catholic faith and evolution. There is a great painting in our city hall called Genesis that shows a lone man walking across the savanna. The cloud formations look like the ones on the Cistene Chapel ceiling. I have always believed that God allowed his creation to slowly evolve to the point where we were ready or self aware, and he reached down and gave us our souls. I just think that the whole thing is beyond our comprehension, and we should take it on faith. Trying to discover his plan, and how it evolved is really good for our collective brains.

[KnightofChrist]

Yet the Catholic Church teaches Adam and Eve where real persons, created by God directly, all of humanity descended from them, and they where the cause of Original Sin. This means Adam and Eve did not evolve from lower species, but the first humans, and where intelligent and had freewill because they chose to sin. If Adam and Eve descended from a lower species then that life form would be our first parents and not Adam and Eve, making the teaching of the Catholic Church false. Being of a lower species or life does not take away parenthood, Mary Mother of God was merely human, but this still did not take away her parenthood of Christ.

[KnightofChrist]

[color="#C0C0C0"]note:[i]Neo-Darwinian Evolution = D.E.[/i]
[/color]
[b]The Fall[/b]

With respect to the first issue; the “fall from Grace”, magisterial teaching clearly establishes that a literal “first-set” that is, two actual parents, (only 1 male and 1 female) [u]must be accounted for in any evolutionary theory.[/u] [u]In fact, a literal first male (Adam) must precede the first woman (Eve) who is “made” in some physical yet supernatural way from Adam.[/u]

[“SO the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” (Gen. 2:21-22) Emphasis mine.] All subsequent human beings must arise from these two initial parents lest the “fall from Grace” not be attributable to the entire human race.[12] This key concept is appreciable in the following:

[color="#990000"]“The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.”[13]
[/color]
“All men are implicated in Adams’s sin, as St. Paul affirms: ‘By one man’s disobedience man [that is all men] were made sinners’: ‘sin came into the world through on man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned….’”[14]

“St. Paul tells us that the human race takes its origin from two men: Adam and Christ….The first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life….The second Adam stamped his image on the first Adam when he created him. That is why he took on himself the role and the name of the first Adam, in order that he might no lose what he had made in his own image. The first Adam, the last Adam: the first had a beginning, the last knows no end. The last Adam is indeed the first; as he himself says: ‘I am the first and the last.’”[15]

[b]Rejection of Polygenism / [u]Animal Lineage[/u][/b]

Pope Pius XII in reaffirming constant magisterial teaching specifically repudiated polygenism (multiple sets of human parents) in his encyclical Humani generis. Catholic teaching is clear that all people share in the “original sin” of one first couple, Adam and Eve.[16] Only those exegetical methods which employ a low-view of scripture ([u]which itself is incompatible with orthodox Catholicism[/u]) and reject the constant teaching of the Catholic Church can reconcile the completely natural generation of human beings from non-human bi-pedal primates (animals) who at some point become human by the supernatural insertion of immaterial (spiritual) souls. This scenario called for by D.E. is unsatisfactory for multiple reasons including:

1.) D.E. violates the “substance view” of human personhood which the Catholic Church has taught since St. Thomas Aquinas integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity. It holds that the human soul is the “organizing principle” or “form” of the human body (matter) such that the combination becomes a body/soul composite person of matter/form.[17] [u]It is philosophically untenable to posit that God at some point placed a human soul in a non-human bi-pedal primate animal which would already have had its own organizing principle (form) in Aristotelian/Thomistic terms. [/u]Under such a scenario it would be correct to state that the first human person (Adam) had “animals” for parents since in Catholic teaching the soul and the body together constitute the composite person as a matter/form composite unity of body/soul which is indivisible during life. ([u]In addition of course, the notion that Adam had animals for parents is [b]contrary[/b] to Divine Revelation[/u]). The D.E. scenario implies that God would begin the human race by rejecting the truth of the “substance view” of human personhood and then subsequently allow his actual method of human creation to be misrepresented in Scripture and Tradition thereafter as if He had specially created Adam as a body/soul composite entirely new entity.

It also means that God would have dignified a non-human animal by raising it up to the “Image of God” (Imago Dei) through replacement of its animal soul with the spiritual soul of the first man. This is extremely difficult to justify given the multiple biblical texts and copious magisterial commentary which refer to Adam’s Special Creation, body and soul. [b]Moreover, if Adam’s body descended directly that is, was generated physically from animals, then Adam’s parents were “animals” since one is a parent of the entire person not only of the body. This is clear when one considers that the Virgin Mary is truly the mother of God by conceiving and giving birth to Jesus Christ the second person of the Holy Trinity (since Christ is a Divine Person with two natures, one human and one Divine) i.e. she is not only the mother of Christ’s human nature.[18] The scenario which D.E. seems to demand would directly contradict numerous Scriptural references and much magisterial teaching indicating that Adam had no antecedent other than God.[/b] It is fraught with contradictions, as well as irresolvable and unnecessary problems. On the other hand, if D.E. is capable of harmonizing the special creation of Adam, (body and soul) then this objection could be dropped. It remains theoretically an open question from this writer’s perspective albeit extremely problematic.[19] The author knows of no such assertion by D.E. proponents and is aware of no way to harmonize D.E. with the special creation of Adam body and soul. Obviously, I.D. of the human body utilizing a common design with variation on a theme could explain it since it would represent special creation of one first couple. This was clearly the issue which concerned Pope Pius XII in Humani Generis. Subsequent research in biology has not lessened the concern. It has only become more so.

2.) D.E.’s prediction of non-human animal ancestry for Humans (Adam and Eve) is contrary to DNA mutation rate studies, mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome data as well as morphological studies demonstrating that humans have no direct genetic, biochemical or morphological link to bi-pedal primates.[20] The basic scientific research data amassed over the past 15 years is growing; there is no pre-human (lower animal) bi-pedal primate to human ancestral connection. The supposed “missing link” remains undiscovered. This is suggestive of special Creation of Adam and Eve rather than D.E. which calls for common descent with modification from non-human animals. Accordingly, anthropologists should base their conclusions on the data at hand not that which is non-existent and called for by an a-priori commitment to D.E. alone as a total explanation for terrestrial life.[21]

3.) [b]Constant magisterial teaching which holds that humans were directly (Specially) created by God from the “dust of the earth” that is non-living pre-existent matter not pre-existent living animals.[/b]

“Then The LORD God formed (bara and asa are both used in the biblical Hebrew with reference to the creation of humans, connoting something entirely new {presumably soul} and something already existent {presumably non-living matter referred to as “dust”}) man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being;’ Man whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.” (CCC # 362 and Gen. 2:7, Emphasis mine).
[url="http://www.tcrnews2.com/Darwinsworld.html"]SOURCE[/url]

Neo-Darwinian = D.E.

Edited March 21, 2008 by KnightofChrist