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January 04, 2006
Adam, Eve, & Inbreeding
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
My question is this: Every once in awhile the issue of Adam and Eve comes up in my classroom. I inform my students that Adam and Eve were real people who were truly the first parents of the whole human race. At this point they ALWAYS ask (something to the effect of), "If that's true, then why didn't their children come out deformed because of the genetics issue [i.e., blood lines intermingled, too close. etc.]?" My response to date has been along the lines of, "If God created the universe, He certainly could have done something to suspend the way that genes normally operate or prevent genetic mutants from resulting." Do you have anything better?
There are a number of possibilities here.
One, as you mentioned, is that God specially intervened in order to keep harmful recessive traits from becoming dominant in the offspring. God is in control of our genetics, so he can have any particular set of genes inherited by the children if he chooses to intervene supernaturally.
Another possibility is that the harmful recessive traits that are in the population today weren't in the population back then. One might speculate that original sin didn't do a tremendous amount of genetic damage (apart from its role in giving people disordered desires) and that the recessive traits that now cause problems with inbreeding weren't yet in the human genome.
One could also argue that God made a whole bunch of genetic changes in Eve (more than flipping a Y chromosome to X) so that she was sufficiently different than Adam genetically to avoid the recessive defects problem. This, however, only pushes the the problem a generation or two down the line, when it would re-emerge unless God kept miraculously supplementing the genome with each generation.
I am also given to understand that the problem with inbreeding is not nearly as severe in most cases as popular imagination would lead one to suppose. In other words, it isn't a given that your kids will be deformed if you marry someone whose bloodline is too close to yours. Pop culture--according to this argument--has magnified perception of this threat out of proportion to the magnitude it has in reality. Certainly the inbreeding/birth defect connection has not been nearly as prominent in historical consciousness. If you read the classical accounts of why incest is a sin, for example, you don't find Thomas Aquinas citing birth defects as a reason. Incest was held to be sinful (after the human race got going) on entirely other grounds.
On the other hand, maybe there were a large number of birth defects among early humans. Maybe Adam and Eve had lots of kids with severe birth defects, most of whom died. Infant mortality was certainly frighteningly high in the ancient world compared to now, and there have been a lot of people with birth defects in history. Perhaps Scripture only mentions the children who survived and whose birth abnormalities were sufficiently mild that they were themselves able to reproduce and contribute to the propagation of the human race.
One last note. This one may not be appropriate depending on the nature of your classroom, but you may want to be aware of it for your own information.
When Pius XII dealt with the subject of evolution in his 1950 encyclical Humani generis, he didn't treat the question of polygenism (the idea that there were more than two individuals at the dawn of humanity) in the same way he treated other aspects of the question. He hedged his bets a bit on this subject.
While he said that Catholics did not have the liberty to advocate polygenism, he didn't say that the reason for this was that polygenism was totally and irreformably unable to be reconciled with the sources of Catholic dogma. Instead, he said it was because "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" (HG 37).
This leaves open the possibility that a way of reconciling polygenism with the sources of dogma might eventually be found. Since his time many Catholic theologians have conjectured that there are ways in which polygenism can be reconciled with original sin (e.g., saying that Adam and Eve represent the early human community which as a whole turned away from God at the beginning of our history and thus committed original sin, passing it on to us).
A number of years ago the German conference of bishops published A Catholic Adult Catechism that was published in English back in 1987 by Ignatius Press. This catechism contained a section on evolution that said it was possible to reconcile polygenism with the Church's teaching if certain points regarding original sin were maintained. I am also given to understand that this Catechism was also reviewed by the Vatican (after the debacle of the Dutch Catchism), which did not mandate a change in this section.
It is further to be observed that, in John Paul II's statements on evolution (such as the famous speech to the pontifical academy of the sciences) he is quick to reaffirm all of the things Pius XII said about the limits on how evolution is compatible with the Catholic faith except on the subject of polygenism, where John Paul II said nothing at all.
JP2 was not saying that it's okay for Catholics to go ahead and advocate polygenism, but he was conspicuously silent in reaffirming his predecessor's stand on this issue and may have been holding the door open for one of his own successors to revisit this issue and take a different position.
It is possible that, one day, a pope may issue a new statement on evolution and say that a way has been found to reconcile polygenism with the sources of faith.
But that hasn't happened.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to speak of Adam and Eve in monogenistic terms, and there has been no Vatican declaration on any level (so far as I know) that polygenism is compatible, but there is a greater degree of reserve shown by the pope on this subject in recent years, and the Vatican has let pass local magisterial statements--like that of the German conference of bishops' catechism--that displayed openness to polygenism.
If you're teaching a bunch of school kids, I wouldn't go into all this with them. It could well interfere with what their parents want them to be taught, and parents have the ultimate say in such matters. But for your own benefit you may want the additional background as a way of gauging the degree of firmness that the Holy See is presently placing on this topic.
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Comments
Jimmy's posts are always good. This one is GREAT.
Posted by: Ed Peters | Jan 4, 2006 12:20:50 PM
Seems like in the OT, it was common for a person to seek a spouse from among their own kin (that is, cousins). My understanding is that, in Hebrew, the word for "sibling" and "cousin" is the same.
Izzat right?
While marrying one's blood sister or brother might have been proscribed, marrying a close relative seems to have been quite accepted. Abraham often referred to Sarah as his sister, which technically, she was (actually a half-sister).
Lot's daughters had children by him order to continue the family line. The fact that they had to get him drunk and deceive him in order to accomplish this, though, demonstrates that this was not socially accepted.
In the Song of Songs, the Lover refers to his Bride as "sister".
So, it seems that further back in time, it was socially accepted, much as bigamy was.
It would not have taken that many generations from Adam & Eve to establish a number of different lines of cousins.
Posted by: Tim J. | Jan 4, 2006 1:35:47 PM
I have heard our priest say during Mass that the story of Adam and Eve is just a parable and were not real people.
Posted by: Javier | Jan 4, 2006 1:51:16 PM
And then there are the over one million Conservative Jews who do not consider the first five books of the Bible to be historic i.e. Adam and Eve were mythical characters.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0401torah.asp
IMHO, there was a tribe of original intelligent humans. Of the tribe members, only one family tree survived the rigors of climate change, the rigors of life without modern medicine, proper sanitation, housing and electricity.
And as per a Catholic theology professor at a major Catholic university:(with some added comments on our "parents" original sin to complete the A&E reveiw.)
"The story of Adam and Eve is only symbolic.
This story was composed in the 900s BCE and functions as an etiology (explanatory myth) . In the 900s Israel was self ruling, under King David
and Solomon. The people were no longer at war and the question" Why are we not happy?" may have risen. The short answer is sin. (Look at 1 Kings 11 for some clues into why the story depicts Eve sinning first and then tempting
Adam [Solomon]).
7. Original sin is therefore only symbolic of man's tendencies to sin.
Yes, I teach Original Sin as symbolic of the sins of our origins -- in our
families and in the broader society, both of which affect each person
profoundly. The "sins of our origins" approach helps to account for certain
patters of sin in particular families and societies.
8. Baptism does not erase original sin since the sin does not exist. Yes, the old "laundry of the soul," approach to Baptism is no longer
accepted.
9. Infant Baptism is only a rite of initiation and commits parents and godparents to bringing up the child in a Christian home.
Yes, but, since baptism is now celebrated at Sunday Eucharist, all the
members of the parish family are encouraged to pledge their support and care
for the faith life of the newly baptized. (A manifestation of this is
persons volunteering to teach other people's kids the basics of
Catholicism.)
Posted by: Realist | Jan 4, 2006 1:55:39 PM
I think Jimmy did a very good job in giving advice. However, I don't agree with the last part on polygenism. That is unknown and unknowable. And given the type of theologians we've had over the last 40 years, I would not put much credence in what they say.
The once you start accepting polygenism, you must also start accepting evolution as a fact. It should be remembered that it is still just a theory and many scientists are starting to even question it. Intelligent Design has got many materialists in panic mode.
Canadian Catholic journalist David Warren has some excellent comments on religious Darwinists.
http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?artID=552
Posted by: Lorenz | Jan 4, 2006 2:23:01 PM
Speaking of inbreeding, here's Realist, giving us proof positive that first cousins should not marry. Am I the only one who thinks his loop-tape is getting old?
Posted by: bill912 | Jan 4, 2006 2:28:34 PM
Holy smokes. Is realist a Catholic? Is realist, God forbid, a catechist?
Adam and Eve's historicity is de fide, you cannot reduce them to symbols and remain Catholic.
It does not follow, however, from the historicity of Adam and Eve that we have no other ancestors--ancestors who were not fully human and with whom Adam and Eve's children may have intermarried (answering the question about Cain's wife from the land of Nod).
Consider the scientific thesis of X chromosome or mitochondrial Eve, who seems to have lived about 200,000 years ago. It would seem that all humans alive today have her in their family tree, but it is probably not the case that she was the only ancient human female in existence at that time--it's just that all other lines of descent have died out.
What's particularly interesting to me about X-chomosome Eve is that her male counterpart, Y-chromosome Adam (as he's called, but whom I believe should have a different name) seems to have lived about 100,000 years later. This would seem to be an obstacle to the historicity of the couple, but we must remember that the genetic bottlenecks these two individuals represent do not form the only possible ones, just the most recent. So we could posit, for instance, that the most recent male universal ancestor, had an earlier ancestor who was in fact X chromosome Eve's mate, or that an even earlier couple were the primaeval parents of Genesis.
If you think about, even Genesis points this out; we're all descended from Eve as our latest universal female ancestor, but, according to Genesis, our latest universal male ancestor was not Adam, but Noah.
I would argue that the best name for Y-chromosome Adam is actually Y-chromosome Noah.
The older thesis of pre-Adamic man has never been fully repudiated by the Church, but it is de fide that any pre-Adamic lines of descent which do not include descendants of Adam and Eve have died out.
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 4, 2006 2:30:14 PM
98% of the Bishops living today trace thier episcopal ancestry to Scipione Cardinal Rebiba (d. abt. 1560).
This could be 100% in a few years. This does not mean that Rebiba is the origin of the episcopy nor was he the only bishop.
The fact that we trace our genetic ancestry to a "single stem pair" (Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma) doesn't seem to mean much.
Posted by: Pseudomodo | Jan 4, 2006 2:46:52 PM
"The fact that we trace our genetic ancestry to a "single stem pair" (Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma) doesn't seem to mean much."
This is true, but a lot of people get hung up on filling in the rest of the blanks on the family tree. It is only necessary to posit that the rest of the entries on that generation and before were not human in the same way Adam and Eve were in order for us to escape the caricature that there were only two hominids on the planet at that time and to escape from the whole inbreeding question.
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 4, 2006 2:57:27 PM
If inbreeding always resulted in a huge number of birth defects, most purebreed animals would be born in terrible shape.
Instead, the only problems with them tend to be results of what they were selected for. (Pugs and persians have nasal problems, etc).
Growing up, we had barn cats. We tended to get them by picking a few kittens from a litter that someone else's cats had. Huge incestful group. only one litter came out deformed/unable to move. (After that litter, we got a barn cat from family out of state to add to the genetic pool)
Posted by: Sailorette | Jan 4, 2006 3:00:32 PM
I am going to show my ignorance here, so bear with me.
I believe that Adam and Eve were real people. But cannot Genesis be interpreted as our creation story (ies) as there are two versions in Genesis. Rather than taking the story literally, can we not say that the truth behind the story is real in that God created the world and all of the creatures in it? That God infused immortal souls to Adam and Eve as the first persons (along with many other, non recorded persons)?
I think that you can reconcile the creation story with all of the genetics issues if you don't interpret Genesis literally.
Help?
Posted by: Brian Day | Jan 4, 2006 3:25:57 PM
Um, if Adam and Eve are simply symbols, doesn't the whole theology of marriage and Our Lord's references to Adam and Eve become suspect?
Also, I'd remind you all that Polygenism at the time also had a racialist aspect, consigning blacks and such to subhuman status.
Posted by: Kevin Jones | Jan 4, 2006 4:01:32 PM
The remark on polygenism is seriously misleading. A greater reserve on behalf of disciplining theologians is hardly evidence of a change in teaching teaching. By that token, all the undisciplined dissidents in high places, and higher education, are a testament that heresy may be approved in the future. Women priests, anyone?
Rather than sifting through tea leaves, let's look at what Pope Pius XII actually said, authoritatively, in Humani Generis:
"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."
Could he be more clear? Catholics may not advocate polygenism, because it denies the historical and theological reality of our descent from a first couple. To deny the historical existentence of Adam and Eve is to overthrow the faith.
The real reason for the reticence on the question is that the condemnation of polygenism puts the lie to evolutionary theory. No respectable secular evolutionist belives in a first couple for all humanity. For the pope to be forceful on that subject when he discussed evolution would be to diss the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, chock full of Neo-Darwinists, if reports are to be believed. It's an appeasing attitude, not theological wisdom, which makes one refrain from mentioning defined truth.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 4:44:39 PM
Therefore, there is no liberty for even speculation on polygenism. The Pope allowed the discussion of evolution, while counseling that theological sources raised the gravest concerns in the question. This seems to be what Mr. Akin is counseling with regard to polygenism. We can discuss possible ways to reconcile it with faith, which is nothing other than the liberty of investigating the question.
The Pope denied that we even have the liberty to attempt to investigate how polygenism was possible. He denied that there was even a possible reconciliation, while he said that people would seek such a reconciliaton for evolution, which not advocating it as fact because of grave concerns.
Moreover, it goes without saying that the very notion of original sin, defined at the Council of Trent, will be chucked by such a reading. Have we not seen the redefinition of original sin in our day?
Moreover the historicity of Genesis is abandoned.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 4:51:29 PM
I note that birth defects can not be the only reason for incest taboos, as you frequently run across the line being drawn somewhere that would not benefit -- such as parallel cousins, where the sibling parents were sisters, or brothers, being taboo, whereas cross cousins where the parents were brother and sister, are actually prefered marriage partners -- and sometimes that make no genetic sense at all -- stepparents and stepchildren are not genetically related any more than the original marriage that made them steps was.
Posted by: Mary | Jan 4, 2006 4:51:54 PM
I doubt destructive reflexive genes existed prior to the fall and probably not in Adam and Eve, they lived real long after all.
Posted by: Kosh | Jan 4, 2006 5:20:03 PM
Mr. Akin made an unfortunate ommision from his quote of Humani Generis, namely, what the Catholic Church teaches with regard to original sin. With that ommission, one is free to redefine original sin, as he pointed out that some "theologians" have done.
Unfortunately, obedience to the teaching magisterium of the Church does not allow us such liberty. The Catholic faith requires us to believe in an individual Adam, whose sin is passed on through generation to us all. It is indeed no ways apparent how one has polygenism without eliminating belief in an individual Adam whom he are all descended from. This is because it is logically contradictory to such a belief. We are either all descended from one individual , or not. The Catholic faith requires the former, as the encyclical pointed out. The encyclical clearly states we must hold that original sin?
"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.""
Now are are we to reconcile that? Are you going to make Adam a polygamist? Regardless, you're still stuck with everyone descended from one individual man, which harpoons any naturalistic evolutionary explanation, which is the only reason polygenism is an issue.
All of the "proposals" that Mr. Akin forwarded denial that individual Adam. It is indeed in no way apparent how such an approach is reconciliable with the Catholic faith. One will with great difficult reconcile contradictories, unless one is in the service of a theological Hegelianism, which some early theologians accused the "new theology" of fomenting, which incidentally, was addressed by that same Humani Generis. Could it be? Is it any surprise these errors are returning today?
The incessant "hope" that the Catholic faith will eventually be changed or readapted, evidenced with contraception, woman priests, no first parents, polygenism, etc., represents a spirit contrary to that of the historic church. The faith is the same truth, yesterday, now, and forever.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 5:37:23 PM
In short, "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 parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents." Period.
What, you mean I can't be trendy and accept neo-Darwinism to appear respectable in the eyes of the world? That's right.
You are bound, as a Catholic, to reject that fundamental polygenistic premise of neo-Darwinism.
Which takes priority for you, dear reader? Darwin, or the clear 2000 year faith of the church? Which will succumb to the other?
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 6:04:35 PM
No one has just one ancestor; the number doubles with every generation. Ancestors of the 100th generation back, which takes us back about to the time of Christ number 2^100 for every person. Now, of course, most of the entries on a single generational row for any individual would be repeats, since there have never been that many people on the planet.
There are two key questions:
1) Could we have human ancestors prior to Adam? The question is closed by Humani Generis.
2) Could we have non-human ancestors prior to Adam? This question is very much open and hinges on our definition of humanity. We must concede that lower order animals of different but similar species can interbreed with varying degrees of success--think of horses, donkeys, and zebras, for instance.
The physical processes of evolution are not contrary to Catholic interpretation of the Bible, since the definition of the time of the 6 days of creation is completely relative to the frame of reference of the observer who reported this to Moses, and the process whereby man was shaped from clay is not explicitly described. What is contrary to Catholicism is the notion that blind chance and nothing else shaped humanity.
If we accept that man passed through intermediary stages of development in the process of being shaped by God from the clay, then we can easily imagine any number of generations of non-human ancestors prior to Adam and Eve emerging into full humanity, and we have an answer thereby for the emergence of the wives and Cain and Seth without resort to an incestuous hypothesis. Given the small numbers of individuals involved, the Adamic lineage could be completely incorporated into the root stock of pre-humans within a few generations, allowing all of the resulting people to be descendants of Adam and Eve, and fully human thereby.
This theory does not contradict Humani generis condemnation of polygenism, since it maintains the unique identities of Adam and Eve and their status of the ancestors of all of humanity.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 4, 2006 6:11:02 PM
Mulo,
"All resulting people," but not all humans. Your theory posits an unfallen and fallen race of human beings existing simultaneously, as well as a segment of unfallen humanity who didn't need to be redeemed. Christ therefore didn't die for all. Moreover, if breeding is what passes down original sin, you have to have original sin pass through the male. Which is not possible in your theory, as that requires a direct line of assent from all of us to fallen men and eventually to Adam and Eve.
It also makes Adam and Eve partial parents of humanity, not the first parents. Rather, we are descended from several unfallen Adam and Eves, as well as a sinful pair.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 6:22:34 PM
And, according to your view, we do have human that are not descended from Adam. Therefore we have the bizarre view of an unfallen person in original justice marrying a fallen individual. That hypothesis is not only ad hoc, but also morally repugnant.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 6:24:11 PM
Original sin was passed to all men by generation. If there were people other than Adam and Eve, then it is impossible for original sin to pass to them by generation. Therefore every human person existing now or in the past, is directly descended from Adam and Eve.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 6:26:03 PM
Generations of unfallen people living and dying before Adam and Eve, or alongside them. So in actually, the real Adam and Eve, the first humans in the world, didn't fall at all. Unfallen men leaved quite pleasantly, and when some men fell later on, decided, in their vast fulness of wisdom and integrity, to breed with sinful man and produce sinful offspring. Who new?
Posted by: Breier | Jan 4, 2006 6:30:20 PM
I'm strongly inclined to agree with Breir. We have no evidence of anything inhuman that bred with humans. That line of reasoning seems to be available only to support a particular view of evolution. That is, we are supposing such a situation without any evidence of it in order to support a secular world view. That seems wierd. Actually more than wierd.
Posted by: Nick | Jan 4, 2006 7:02:53 PM
We have no evidence of anything inhuman that bred with humans.
"When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. . . . At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown."
Genesis 6. Probably in the running for the most cryptic passage in the Bible.
Posted by: Mary | Jan 4, 2006 7:11:05 PM
Also, why is incest a problem? Marriage laws have obviously changed over time. I can easily see the fall resulting in a change of law. As for my above comment I find the following abstract interesting:
http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/human_biology/v075/75.4hunt.html
The biologists can comment but I believe this means that no great apes can interbreed in thier natural ranges. Considering I can't find any mention of great ape interbreeding I'm inclined to believe we don't know of any. Any biologists that can comment?
Posted by: Nick | Jan 4, 2006 7:11:11 PM
Ah...let me clarify then. Nothing of the terrestial realm that is inhuman mating with humans? Is that better :)
Posted by: Nick | Jan 4, 2006 7:12:31 PM
There couldn't be any races of unfallen human beings, so polygenism would require a race of beings looking like and genetically close to humans, yet without rational souls. These would just be advanced beasts. In attempting to solve the problem of incest, polygenism creates a far greater problem, that of bestiality.
Posted by: Rhys | Jan 4, 2006 7:54:12 PM
I don't think you've followed the argument, or perhaps, don't want to do so.
The argument is not that human people not descended from Adam exist or in fact ever existed in either a fallen or unfallen state. The argument is that before man was formed some similar creatures existed as part of the process by which God formed Adam, and that these creatures could offer a possible resolution to some of the more cryptic passages of Genesis while simultaneously reconciling Genesis with what we know of the fossil record.
I posit a primate race biologically very similar to the first Man, Adam, with whom Adam's son could interbreed but not one inspired by the breath of God with a rational soul. All of the descendants of Seth and Cain would in fact carry the debt of Adam's original sin, but would also have inherited his humanity by virtue of descent from him.
Given that the entire population of all genetically compatible hominids at this point would have probably amounted to no more than a few thousand individuals, it would have been only a few generations before all hominids genetically viable with modern humans had interbred with the sons of Adam and thereby produced fully human but fallen offspring.
The non-human but related hominid leftovers of the process whereby Adam was shaped would be absorbed thereby into his stock. No unfallen humans would have ever existed, since the key to humanity would rest in descent from Adam, the same inheritance including original sin.
Just because something can breed with one species does not make it a member of that species, and the species of the offspring is also a matter of conjecture.
This line of reasoning has been offered to square the testimony of the Bible with 100 years of science by Catholic and non-Catholic geneticists and other scientists. Better versions along similar lines can no doubt be offered, but refusing to consider the origins of man in a Catholic context in light of the evidence of geology basically yields the entire scientific establishment over to the enemies of the Church without a fight.
The challenge of apologetics is not to deny science, but rather to show that no contradiction between faith and reason exists except for those determined to be threatened by one or the other.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 4, 2006 7:58:22 PM
In attempting to solve the problem of incest, polygenism creates a far greater problem, that of bestiality.
Which brings up the issue of why bestiality is wrong. Is it wrong because animals don't have rational souls or is it wrong because such "unions" with any currently existing species would be by their very nature sterile (or both)? Which, of course, is about as relevant to real world ethics as whether it would be okay to marry an alien from outer-space, but still...
Posted by: Publius | Jan 4, 2006 8:09:42 PM
Why do so many people have trouble believing monogenism?
Polygenism gives me the heebie jeebies.
Posted by: BillyHW | Jan 4, 2006 8:48:19 PM
Therefore we have the bizarre view of an unfallen person in original justice marrying a fallen individual.
Breier,
I believe many of the church fathers held that it was not Eve's sin but Adam's that caused the Fall. Theoretically, this means that an unfallen Adam could have continued in his marriage with a fallen Eve. I have no idea what other conditions would apply to this counterfactual.
Posted by: Kevin Jones | Jan 4, 2006 9:36:59 PM
I always beleived that whilst adam and eve were the first humans to be created, they were not the only ones. Nothing there states that they were the only ones created by god.
Posted by: Tim | Jan 4, 2006 11:17:40 PM
Here is the quote from HG referring to polygenism that Jimmy provided us:
"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" (HG 37)
First of all, the double "no" part should actually read "...it is in no way apparent..." -- I have an older printed copy and a newer printed copy of the encyclical, and there is no double "no" in that sentence. Apparently, the electronic copy of the encyclical given on www.vatican.va contains a "typo," or copy-error, or whatever it should be called (if someone knows for certain that I am incorrect, then please notify me).
Here's the thing that concerns me: I have to wonder if the 1950 English translation of the encyclical is not quite right. What if the sentence quoted by Jimmy should actually have been translated from the Latin (assuming it was translated from the Latin "typical edition") as follows [I've made this suggestion in a combox on this blog before]:
"it is apparent that in no way can 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"
NOW, that would leave us all, including Jimmy I think, with a different impression as to whether polygenism might could in the future be reconciled with Catholic teaching.
Back in October of '05, I visited a religious community with a nice sized library. And the library contained a copy of the 1950 AAS! I rejoiced; but alas, the Latin edition of the encyclical Humani Generis was not included (or at least I could not find it within that tome; I admit to not having formally studied Latin), nor did it contain an edition of HG in any other language.
Personally, I think this whole polygenism business is a rather interesting and important matter. No Latin edition of HG is available on the Web (at least insofar as I have ever been able to determine), and my main hopes of finding it in the 1950 AAS have been dashed. If any of the interested readers here has the research resources available to him/her (I live in a small town) then perhaps you could help us out. I think it is high time that the Latin typical edition of Pope Pius XII's important teaching document be located, and the relevant paragraph subjected to a fresh re-translation into English. Depending on what turns up, I would then like to invite Jimmy and/or other Catholic apologists to re-address this matter.
Such an approach would, of course, do little to settle the matter from the perspective of "pure science." And it might turn out that the original English translation was spot on, and that the late Pope did leave a loophole of speculation, of sorts. It would be nice to know one way or the other.
Thoughts and suggestions?
Posted by: whosebob | Jan 5, 2006 12:56:40 AM
mulopwepaul writes: No unfallen humans would have ever existed, since the key to humanity would rest in descent from Adam, the same inheritance including original sin.
This actually makes a lot of sense to me--can anyone find it to be problematic? Science seems to consider "human", any specimen of the species homo sapiens from the point of the appearance of homo sapiens . This is regardless of how evolved their intellects might actually have been in the earlier days, and much is dependent on the ever-argued criteria for "intelligence". It's also possible that an "intelligent" specimen might not be quite advanced enough in some way to have God decide to give it a rational soul. Suddenly, God created one that was advanced enough. Or perhaps two, since we might need to include Eve in there as well. This would effectively be the creation of humans. Any progeny were thus "humans", because they inherited their humanity from this/these original human(s). And the other specimens weren't bibically "human" in the same way and are therefore not "unfallen humans" at all.
However, now that I think about it, I tend to want to reconsider the idea that the new "humans" humans probably interbred with the unfallen members of homo sapiens. Not that I'd technically consider it to be bestiality since they would all be homo sapiens , i.e. the same species. We've always defined bestiality as interspecies "relations", without considering that our times are now different, in that today, every homo sapiens is also a human , when this might not have always the case. We defined "bestiality" as it applied to our own practical usage and never saw a reason to question or refine the term.
BUT I find the interbreeding idea problematic in light of the knowledge that God intended--and always has intended--marriage to be the joining of two "human" beings. So if we accept that God has His own definition of "human", we'd still want to go consider going with this definition when we consider who joined with whom.
The only way I see to get around the problem of "interbreeding"--if we want to consider that it happened--is to say that, in this case, like divorce in Old Testament times, interbreeding might have existed due to as-of-yet unrevealed or un-pondered truths, or lack of knowledge among early homo sapiens concerning who was human and who wasn't. And God made the best of the situation and fit it into His plan. And we'd still have the original idea intact, that Adam and Eve--two humans that did join together--are our ancestors, if we use Mulopwepaul's theory as to how non-humans and humans would have borne human children.
But I'm still not completely awake yet today...
Posted by: Karen | Jan 5, 2006 4:28:59 AM
I'm not committed to the human/hominid interbreeding theory as opposed to the incest theory either, but it does explain why the genetic record shows no population bottlenecks within the overall breeding population of the human species below a few thousand individuals.
If Adam and Eve were in fact the source of the entire genetic inheritance of humanity, we would have to push their historical existence back at least one million years further to the very emergence of homo sapiens in the fossil record in order to account for the genetic diversity we observe within homo sapiens today.
Scripturally, I don't see a crushing problem with this, but it is merely an argument from our current ignorance about the genetic diversity of humanity at the point of speciation. If we do accumulate enough DNA evidence from that far back we might still need to resurrect the human/hominid single tribe hypothesis to explain the diversity we find there as well.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 6:39:25 AM
As a fiction writer, I once plotted out a Perelandra/alt-genesis type scenario where God created a race of shapeshifting critters as custodians of the planet, who were supposed to vacate it and receive their own world when it came time for the Adam and Eve counterparts. The last custodian "couple" were chosen by God give birth to true humans, the heirs of creation, before they left. Unfortunately, the female of that pair was sort of a Lilith figure and things got a bit pear-shaped from there...
The Egyptian Pharaonic dynasties produced a number of reasonably mentally competent and physically sound rulers from essentially sibling-marriages (and the one really deformed Pharaoh recorded by history, Akenaton, was the result of the result of a Pharaoh's marriage to an Assyrian princess). The only explanation I was given for this in school was that the Pharaonic dynasties started out with fairly sound genes.
Posted by: derringdo | Jan 5, 2006 6:55:36 AM
The discussion seems to be viewing the difference between a human with a rational soul, and a transitional "hominid," as fairly minimal. As if the possession of a rational soul was simple something gratuitious to our nature, like divine grace. For if you're positing a hominid almost "just like us," like a Neanderthal, I return that such Neanderthal also has a rational soul.
The real question is whether or not you think human beings are qualitatively different from animals, and not simply quantitatively soul. For if you think the latter, you're naturally going to minimize what having a "rational soul" means.
I sense a desire to have one's cake and eat it too. "Hominids" so like humans that you'd want to marry one, but there not humans! Such a view appears incoherent to me. Any "hominid" that you can have a speaking relationship with has a rational soul. Or are we to say that the descendants of Adam coupled with a chattering transitional ape?
A true apologetic would respect the sources of faith, and the unanimous consent of the Fathers on such a question as monogenism, without having to liquidate the faith in the name of appeasing science.
By all means reconcile evolution with science. But as Pius XII said, you don't have liberty to accept polygenism to do so.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 8:19:20 AM
One should also consider the clear teaching of Genesis, that there was found no suitable mate for Adam, and therefore Eve was made. Also, that anything so genetically similar to Adam that it's offspring is human, itself must have a rational soul. Why? Because a rational soul isn't something superadded to our physical human nature, our specifically built for that! A hominid without reason is a dead beast. We survive based not on natural endowments, but on our reasoning ability.
Also on this view, we have whole tribes of "hominids," but don't worry, we won't call them human! Perhaps, indeed, some of them are still around today? After all, their existence doesn't bother the doctrine of original sin, because they're not human. Indeed, it appears if we say two of them together, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Maybe people we consider to be "men" are actually hominids. Or were people so close to the garden of paradise and original revelation happy with marrying an irrational creature? For that is what your "hominid" is, a beast with no reason. Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh? One shudders to think of such things.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 8:26:35 AM
Hmm, we can have to creatures of the same species, homo sapien. Man, which means homo sapient, by definition has a rational soul. Or are we to think of people exactly like us physically, but not having a soul? That is a serious error of Christian anthropology. It fails to consider what it means to have a soul, what it means to have reason, which is the immaterial part of man. Such a view seems content to think that we could have our souls taken away and continue to be what we are. Am I the only person who finds this, to speak mildly, highly problematic?
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 8:31:33 AM
The issue here is not monogenism--we all agree that all humans are descended from Adam. The issue is whether our entire heritage is from Adam or whether other genetic contributions are possible.
Continuing to brand this question polygenism merely avoids the question.
I suppose the incest theory is slightly less appalling, but the Bible doesn't say that Cain and Seth's wives were great conversationalists, only that they existed. We should not impose modern notions of marital equality that are only products of the last two or three centuries.
In fact, after Eve, no woman is considered worth mentioning in Genesis, except the wives of Cain's descendant Lamech (not the descendant of Seth named Lamech whose son was Noah), Adah and Zillah, whose children were respectively the domesticator of cattle and the first smith, and Zillah's daughter, Naamah, until we come to Sarai and Milcah.
Genesis 6 is crystal clear that something non-human was breeding with the daughters of man. It is not inconceivable to think that that something had females with whom the men of that time produced offspring.
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 8:40:55 AM
Actually the Bible doesn't even claim Seth had a wife, only that he begot a son, implying sex, but not necessarily marriage, unless we're determined to foist a Christian morality on the fallen descendants of Adam before even the covenant of Noah.
Kingd David had concubines, for crying out loud; let's not pretend to be shocked by the idea that the preliterate descendants of Adam did not share our sexual taboos.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 8:57:29 AM
We don't have to imagine homo sapiens without a soul, we can imagine the transition from homo habilis to homo sapiens occuring in a single individual or pair of individuals. These individuals would then have been reared in the community of these hominids--whether or not they were later completely alone. The genetic difference between two species, as I pointed out far above, does not always preclude fertile offspring from parents of two separate species.
Adam was alone prior to Eve in that there was no "suitable" partner for him in his unfallen state. What his fallen descendants may have done sexually is a different question, no matter how repugnant we may think it in the abstract from our own perspective--one in which all close hominid relatives are now extinct.
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 9:08:48 AM
A non-human breeding with a human, if such were possible produces a hybrid of , not a true blue human. One could equally call it a non-human. So in reality none of us would be humans, but rather, mostly human, part non-human.
As for Genesis, that's either angels or the sons of Seth. The fact that men were the offspring indicates the latter.
Posted by: | Jan 5, 2006 9:09:08 AM
So in short, man coupled with irrational animals, but surprisingly, all their offspring where just men. Men with souls can breed with irrational animals that cannot reason, and produce perfectly human offspring. As if one could mate with a gorilla and produce Lindsey Lohan. Are are to consider half-human hybrids also in those days?
Posted by: | Jan 5, 2006 9:17:53 AM
The anonymous explanation offered of Genesis 6 are the two most popular explanations of the text, but neither interpretation is mandated.
The question of hybrids is semantic. If I breed a horse and zebra, and then breed the resulting offspring exclusively with horses for 20 generations, are the results horses, zebras or hybrids? If we say they're hybrids, then really all animals are probably hybrids since we have to presume that there was interbreeding in the process of speciation, and the entire concept of species gets left behind, which is probably best for this discussion, since it's a scientific construct which cannot measure spiritual distinctions.
My answer is that all descendants of Adam are fully human by virtue of the dignity of their descent from him--full stop.
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 9:21:22 AM
Considering all the comments on beastiality and incest, commentary also probably made in the past by many of our Jewish brothers and sisters regarding Adam and Eve, it is no wonder Conservative Jews have given up on considering Genisis to be a reliable source of their religious roots.
Here is some added commentary from http://camassia.notfrisco2.com/archives/005495.html
"Augustine's perspective of perfect humans falling; resulting in "original sin" is one perspective. Irenaeus offers a different view; that of humanity being created imperfect,and progressing towards perfection. The analogy he uses is that of an infant; the "fall" becomes the actions of immature children, not willful rebellion by adults.
This results in Irenaeus seeing evil as an essential part of the progression; part of the plan (think Job), rather than coming out nowhere as Augustine seems to suggest. That always troubled me; Augustine insists that God could not have created evil...that seems to put some serious limitations on God, doesn't it? I'll go with Irenaeus and Job. Unfortunately, most of Christendom is rooted in Augustinian (the former Manichean) thought. Any surprise that dualism is such a popular solution to the problem of evil?"
Posted by: Realist | Jan 5, 2006 9:45:18 AM
And if we're prepared to argue that anyone whose genetic material is not 100% from Adam and Eve is not truly human and not possessing a soul, we'd better put our thinking caps on and think REAL hard about what we'll do when the human/animal chimaera which are currently being researched in vitro results in the birth of a baby with spliced non-human DNA in its genetic make-up.
This will be a grave abuse of human dignity, but it is almost certain to occur in the next 20 years, so let's all sharpen our pencils, shall we?
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 9:47:41 AM
Apart from people of the present day, consider the direct offspring of one of Adam and Eve's descendants, and one one of the non-rational souless animal hybrids which you posit. Is not that offspring half-human, half soulless beast?
Or are you claiming that it's possible for a non-human irrational animal to contribute genetic material to its offspring, but yet for that offspring to be fully human?
The problem is that there is a qualitative difference of kind between rational animals, who have spiritual rational souls which are the seat of their rationality, and irrational creatures. A horse and a donkey maiting have a certain parity, even though their offpsring is sterile. There is no such parity between man and an advanced irrational ape hybrid. One expects either no offspring, or sterile offspring, or hybrid offspring.
And what of that hybrid offspring? Does he get half a soul? Part original sin, part beast?
I tend to think that this conversation is engendered by discomfort over Pius XII's teaching that the spiritual soul of man must come from God. Because in the evolutionary view, a spiritual soul is gratutious, everything is to be explained on materialistic terms. Consequently rationality, increasing grades of intelligence, requires no such "soul." Presumably a man doesn't either, except we have to square evolutionary views with basic Catholic dogma. So we'll tack on a soul to our material hybrid and call it a man.
What's the difference between this soulless beast and man in the Image of God? Who knows? But we'll posit that they can produce fully human offspring.
This macabre fantasy world illustrates to me why revelation on our origins, as we find in Genesis, was a good thing. Far from this fantastic tale of half-rational man-beasts is the purity of the Genesis account. As for incest, since people were living for hundreds of years, one could easily marry a much younger sister or brother whom one had not grown up with, so to speak.
In any event, I view the view advocated as polygenism papered over. Instead of men before or during Adam's time, we have "hominids," who are just like men, of course, they even mate and produce them, but these ones don't have souls. Very convenient.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 10:19:24 AM
If by "very convenient" you mean you cannot show it to be contrary to dogma, then I'm flattered.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 10:26:32 AM
I look at it like this - you either inherit a soul or you don't. We're assuming you do. Think of it this way - if you split a drop of water in half, are you left with two 1/2 drops of water? No, just two drops. They're smaller, but souls transcend empirical measures of quantity. That's how it would go with this hypothesis.
As to the possibility of chimeras of the future, yikes -- let's sharpen our pencils, indeed.
Posted by: Karen | Jan 5, 2006 10:27:09 AM
... And at least I am assuming that Adam and Eve and the other non-"humans" are all very close, genetically--possibly even from a common tribe. That Adam and Eve were superficially indistinguishable from the rest of the non-humans, and that we're not talking about homo sapiens mixing with something ape-like. There just had to be some starting point at which God finally decided a couple of the specimens were capable of holding a rational soul. Don't know whether that's what mulopwepaul is also thinking, though.
Posted by: Karen | Jan 5, 2006 10:33:07 AM
The more I think about, the more I incline to agree with Karen, that the physical shaping of hominids into mankind was probably so complete prior to the emergence of Adam that there would have been almost no physical difference between Adam and his progenitors and hominid contemporaries, perhaps something in the neurochemistry, if we knew where to look, but not anything that biologist would consider basis for classifying as separate species.
Rational thought is mediated by the physical structures of the brain, but it is not accomplished solely by the physical structures of the brain; rather the rational faculties of the mind are phenomena of the soul expressing itself through the physical intermediation of the brain. Brain damaged people do not cease to have rational souls, although those souls have lost the physical ability to express their rational attributes. The ensoulment of Adam included (among other things) the ability to exercise rational faculties in the morally self-aware way which is the formal essence of humanity, not in the mere existence of any particular neurological complexity.
We're not going to find the rational soul with a CAT scan. Therefore we can believe that hominids indistinguishable from Adam by human faculties could have existed without the dignity of a rational soul inspired by God. This allows us to posit an Adam and Eve more in line with the 200,000 year marker indicated by mitochondrial Eve.
PVO
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 10:47:27 AM
This is a field I have studied in great depth for quite some time.
The quick and easy response to the question is, Adam and Eve possessed ALL possible genetic codes, and gave birth to all manner of races. In other words, Adam and Eve probably had black, white, asian, arabian, and all other possibilities as children. Keep in mind that every time you have a child, that child possesses exactly 1/2 of the genetic code of you and your spouse, which means that in that one child, 1/2 of the code is lost. Since Adam and Eve had hundreds of children (they would have to have in order to both Caine and Able to have had wives and living near cities, but this brings up my theories regarding human longevity prior to the flood), it stands to reason that those children would have retained most of Adam and Eve's genetic code. As more and more children came to possess similar traits, the various races were formed (black tended toward black, oriental towards oriental, etc).
In regards to inbreeding, since every generation contains exactly 1/2 of the genetic code of the parents, the genome in each generation becomes more and more prone to breaking down. We know this through the observations of animal breeders. However, as breeders know, it is necessary to prevent such a break down by bringing fresh genetic stock.
In any event, if you would like a fresh look at Genesis, the longevity of man, evolution, and antedeluvian society, check out my theory here:
http://fredtalk.fredericksburg.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=180327&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=all&vc=1
Posted by: Discomike | Jan 5, 2006 10:54:37 AM
While it is most true that the rational soul is spiritual and immaterial, it does not follow that there could exist a viable race of individuals just like man physicially, but with no soul. The design of man is in tandum with his rationality, hand in glove. Or do you envision people just like us, who lived, inexplicably, like gorillas? I suppose one could imagine a kind of Planet of the Apes scenario, out of which people suddenly become self-aware. Is that what you have in mind?
That there was a race of human beings with souls.
And a race of zombie-like savage beings without souls.
When the two mate they produce human offspring, but God just decides to give a rational soul to the kids with a human being parent. There's nothing in our physicial nature which has any connection to our rationality. And even if we're not brain-damaged, we still behave like a chimanzee if we don't have a soul "super-added" to us.
And self aware people chose to mate and raise children with zombie hominids.
Hey, it'd make an interesting B-movie. I will refrain from ladening it with the theological censures it so richly deserves.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 11:56:19 AM
Or maybe we can have people who act just like us as well, and don't have souls! Or else you have rational, speaking, gifted, still close to the the resonance of the manifold lost preternatural gifts of paradise, chose to couple with speechless, civilizationless, moraless, irrational, driven by instinct, hominid barnyard animals.
Also, according to this particular view, we mightactually lose our souls and keep on living. So perhaps some people are in heaven now and still behaving, say, irrationally. Why is this? We've posited that one can lead a fully human life, brain function and all, without a soul. So clearly the loss of the soul need not ential the loss of those other things. So death is no longer the separation of body and soul, because the soul is not the principal of life, is it? If the soul is an "extra" we get for the human body, it is not essential to it.
See how far we stretch the faith, liquidating the history of our origins, in service of the foreign creed of materialistic evolution.
It goes without saying that none of this would ever be done if people weren't driven to water-down their faith to the bare necessities in order to reconcile it with a highly tendentious physical theory. One wonders why they're not so eager to modify evolutionary theory, or admit the possibility, so pregant in sacred scripture, of the miraculous origin of man?
I guess according to this view, which sees Adam and Eve as an island of rationality amidst a brutal irrational, non linguistic tribe, the rational soul is akin to a dominant condition sexually transmitted to one's offspring. As long as the soul-carriers mate with the soulless, they'll produce hominids with souls. So gradually the souls spread from generation to generation...
Why do I feel like I'm sitting around a Gnostic Campfire story?
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 12:09:14 PM
Question:
Can animals demonstrate affection?
If no, then why do people keep pets? Perhaps because they imagine an affective bond between them and their pets. It is not impossible to imagine fallen man convincing himself of a similar relationship with the hypothesised hominids.
If yes, then why do you feel the need to caricature any hominids which may have existed as zombie-like?
The absence of a human, rational soul would not preclude the highest form of animal behaviours--cunning, group sympathy and dominant-submissive posturing which, truthfully, is what we see most often in the day-to-day behaviour of humans when they fail to live up to the full dignity of their humanity.
Another question would be: do you believe there are not many Catholic geneticists who would love to show the genetic evidence for a literal interpretation of the English translation of Genesis if they could? Do you believe that faith has been so completely evacuated from the scientific community that not even the Vatican Pontifical Academy is competent to perform its own independent analyses of the genetic and fossil records? Do you believe that the Church would be unable to generate or would decide to conceal evidence that documented the miraculous emergence of humanity without genetic taint from pre-human forbears, if such evidence existed?
I will spare this notion the theological contempt it so richly deserves.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 12:38:22 PM
I don't think that a human beings immortal soul is (or can be) inherited - it is created directly by God. So IMO it would be possible to posit a race of hominids who gradually evolved (not saying I necessarily believe this) and at some point God decided to infuse an immortal soul into two of them.
Their genetic material was probably optimum to avoid interbreeding. I don't think it would be necessarily a problem for our faith, though, for humans with immortal souls to mate with the biologically identical (or nearly identical) hominids that did not have the immortal souls. The immortal soul is created directly by God, so he simply chose to infuse souls into those who were descended from one with an immortal soul. In a handful of generations or so, everyone living would then have an immortal soul.
Posted by: Dave Mueller | Jan 5, 2006 12:54:06 PM
Breier,
Can we be so sure that there would be a wide gulf intellectually between the humans with souls and those without? Is it theologically necessary to say that ALL beings with rational capability must have immortal souls?
Posted by: Dave Mueller | Jan 5, 2006 12:58:23 PM
PVO,
Do you believe a hominid without a soul could speak English?
The material evidence you ask for proves my point. I am maintaining that, a priori, there are certain teachings of revelation which, as Pius XII says, command the greatest reserve and care of evolutionists, lest they transgress the boundaries of sacred revelation.
One doesn't need proof of the origin of Man to learn basic truths from Sacred Scripture of the origin of Man.
Irrational animals have the ability and instincts to survive on their own. Man, physiological man, does not have that ability. He has neither tooth, fur, or claw sufficient of himself, his skill, his survival, is his reason, his rationality. Take that away from him, and you have a helpless creature indeed.
As for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that is an establishment organization, and from what I've heard, hostile to the least critique of Darwinism, say from intelligent design. It is perhaps, in the full sense of the words, neither pontifical nor scientific.
Anyhow, let the
But this argument needs to go back to first principles, the basic difference between human beings and irrational animals. It is there that this will be resolved. If you think man little more than a moralized primate, you may decide one way. If one sees a qualitative, vast, and anti-Darwinian view of the difference between man and the the natural world, perhaps another. But to posit the soul as an "extra" which physical man doesn't need is to posit a dualism foreign to Christian teaching. Or to claim that people who act "irrationally" are acting like they would without souls, that is, without deductive or inductive reason, or the ability to communicate with speech, is to minimize the difference that man makes. In any event, you may have the last word.
Posted by: Breier | Jan 5, 2006 1:25:23 PM
Part of the basis for our disagreement seems to be that Brier posits rationality as binary condition, either a creature is a gibbering bundle of instincts or it is a cooly rational warrior-poet in the classic sense.
The most intelligent animals demonstrate degrees of rationality and decision making analagous to the most severely retarded humans still capable of self-expression--about the cognitive level of a one-year old.
Mere problem-solving ability, then, is not the hallmark of a rational soul. We in fact do not have a clinical psychiatric definition of any qualitative distinction between animal and human intelligences. Quantitative differences are great, but the qualitative ones which we know must exist are obscured by our inability to study animals' internal thought processes. We know that animals capable of communicating have never communicated higher psychological states such as penitence, optimism or theological rapture, but, once again, we're arguing from ignorance, not knowledge...
What we do have, though, is the revealed knowledge that God created man in his own image and breathed life directly into him, and that dominion was given to man in view of his spiritual likeness to God. The exact nature of this spiritual likeness has been further revealed through Christ to hinge on our ability to love God and His creation unselfishly through our redemption by Christ and the aid of the Holy Spirit.
It has been posited by Breier, but not proven, that this essential ability must have had a physical/genetic/physiological basis or manifestation which would distinguish Adam and his descendants physically and unmistakeably from the other primates of his time, and made repugnant, if not physically impossible any sexual interaction.
I would argue that God has set us a pretty trap by arranging for all the genetic evidence to point towards evolution from prior hominids if in fact he created Adam ex nihilo directly from the clay.
I don't, for instance, think we have to believe that the children of Adam and Eve were any more sophisticated socially, spiritually or technologically than the average tribesman in Papua New Guinea, nor do I believe that a most clever animal, if given a pleasing form, would not be able to ingratiate itself into the company of the first fallen men, if the creature resembled them closely enough.
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 1:26:03 PM
Indeed it is odd. People aren't positing evidence of homid interbreeding they're positioning theories in order to suit thier prejudices. It just seems odd on a supposedly religious blog.
Posted by: Nick | Jan 5, 2006 1:30:30 PM
"It just seems odd on a supposedly religious blog."
Isn't Genesis supposedly religious?
Or is this just an indirect way of asking that we stop discussing this?
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 1:39:13 PM
No, Mulopwepaul, I think you have the point of disagreement in the wrong place. Your argument here seems to emphasize that. If there was something other than humans and still less than them they were, in essence, intelligent animals. Why would humans mating with animals be superior to incest? Especially at a period when there was no law against it? This is true no matter how closely related the two species were.
Also, you have failed to provide any sort of evidential support to your argument. I can’t find anything that shows that homids interbreed (1). That’s a problem for the “Others” theory. Can you provide evidence that would support your position? Why should we support your position in the absence of evidence when a strict reading of Genesis does not support your theory? While we should accept that our understanding of scripture may be flawed we would only do that in the face of evidence to the contrary. There in none in this thread so far.
(1) This of course does not mean that such evidence doesn’t exist.
Posted by: Nick | Jan 5, 2006 1:39:34 PM
http://www.soa.ilstu.edu/anthropology/theses/laas/
Primate interbreeding is well documented.
The existence of non-human hominids is well documented:
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/hab.html
As is the interbreeding of homo sapiens with concurrent hominids:
http://rafonda.com/interbreeding_between_species.html
The question which serious Christians have to answer is how the story of Genesis can be squared with the physical evidence. I offer one solution, but merely rejecting the physical evidence is not sufficient.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 2:01:56 PM
The big problem with the incest theory is that it would require significant bottlenecking of genetic diversity, which we simply don't see within the genetic material available.
We would have to push Adam and Eve back beyond the emergence of any remotely modern human fossils in order for the amount of diversity we see in the human genome to have risen from one pair only.
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 5, 2006 2:33:51 PM
To Breier,
God can see things we can't see. A non-human hominid might have been superficially indistinguishable from Adam and Eve and could have had many of the same abilities they did. But God saw something else in this certain pair, so that's the point where He decided to give rational souls. The difference might not be scientifically quantifiable, or scientifically quantifiable *yet*. Perhaps Adam and Eve came from the same family--even nuclear family--but Adam and Eve just had that special *something* we can't put a finger on. We already know that God has mysterious ways of electing special "people".
To Nick,
Why would humans mating with animals be superior to incest? Especially at a period when there was no law against it?
Well, like I said, these days we have the term "bestiality" referring to interspecies relations, predicated on the assumption that every homo sapiens is also a human, *when maybe that was not always the case*. Our definition of bestiality is practical for us today , but it might fall short in ancient times.
God might have his own definition of "human" apart from science's definition, which is that all homo sapiens are humans. For lack of any better ideas, I use "homo sapiens" and "bibically human" to distinguish between these two very close specimens.
I don't think we're saying that "bestiality"--if you want to call it that--or incest, is better than the other. Like I said, maybe they didn't have enough revealed Truth, maybe they didn't ponder the Truths they did have, maybe they didn't have knowledge about who was human and who wasn't, etc. Similarly, they divorced all over the place in the OT when it wasn't God's will, for the same reasons.
We're not valuing one over the other; rather, just like divorce in OT times, for whatever reason God let either happen and incorporated it into His plan.
Or neither. ;-)
Posted by: Karen | Jan 5, 2006 4:02:04 PM
Karen,
You seem to be reading the rationality out of mankind. All I can figure out is that what you mean by "rational soul" is the capacity to receive divine grace. Apparently the classical philosophical distinction between man as rational animal, and others as irrational, is incorrect. There really is no observable, qualifiable differences between man and beast.
I would like to know how you square this view with the magisterium's teaching that man's soul is the substantial form of his body.
Posted by: | Jan 5, 2006 5:36:53 PM
Back to original sin: if this doctrine is false, why do we baptize infants?
Baptism of infants pre-dates the development of the doctrine by centuries. The cause-and-effect appears to be that the development may have stemmed from those Christians meditating on their practice, but can not have been the other way.
Posted by: Mary | Jan 5, 2006 5:56:48 PM
What a thrilling discussion! I'm so tired of hearing the 6-day-literalist straw man bashed in the media in the battle over Intelligent Design.
I could have sworn I heard a few years back a major apologetics source say, in answer to a question, that the only thing the Church requires us to believe is that all of humanity descended from a single pair of human beings, into whom God personally breathed the first souls, and who fell and gave us Original Sin. I thought it was fascinating, enlightening, and answered all the questions I had regarding evolution.
If correct, it seems from this statement that either God put on a great deception by burying fossils for our amusement, or else dinosaurs really existed, "for God, a day is a thousand years and a thousand years a day," and mankind really did have a long evolutionary line of varyingly similar predecessors. At some point, God breathed a rational soul into two of these creatures, creating the first true human beings, destined to become children of God Himself. These two had children, who intermarried (most likely) or possibly married others that God created whose other progeny died out so we all exist only from Adam & Eve, and that's it!
This made so much sense of all that I saw at the Smithsonian Mus. of Nat. History this summer ... that there were so many lines of hominids, and they died out except for one branch, which became "suddenly" advanced, due to an "unknown" cause. It makes sense of the apparent bottleneck in the human genome, and it makes evolution itself Intelligent Design!
I saw in the discussion at some point someone saying that the most advanced non-rational creatures are somewhere very close to a very retarded human being. There is one thing missing - Chesterton noted in The Everlasting Man that of all the animals on earth, not even the most advanced chimpanzee has ever ... *created*. Never a single cave drawing or original communication (i.e., they can parrot signs taught to them, but can't make original signs). Never a real likeness of an object created (so much for chimpanzees throwing paint). Therein lies a crucial difference between a rational soul and a non-rational soul. Made in the image and likeness of God, we are "create"-ive, and made to love, that is, for self-donation for the good of another.
Thanks for the break from housework and diapers!
Posted by: Joselyn | Jan 5, 2006 7:08:20 PM
Your last source is especially misleading since it does not propose to present evidence so much as to present the possibility. Again I refer to the abstract I mined:
No great ape genus has even two sympatric species. Moreover, despite a separation of 1.6 Ma, West African chimpanzees have not speciated from P.t. troglodytes nor P.t. schweinfurthii. It is notable that no two contemporaneous species of hominin were separated by significantly more than this interval. A biological—as opposed to an ecological or geographical—species definition would place all hominins in a single, phenotypically diverse species. Since divergence from the chimpanzee, "species" distinctness in hominins may have been maintained by temporary allopatry and centripetal niche separation. The hominin lineage may have evolved as a single, phenotypically diverse, reticulately evolving species.
That's powerful stuff. Your also supposing special knowledge of exactly what Adam and Eve were and a purely naturalistic explanation of them. Those are both suppositions I'm not willing to grant.
Posted by: Nick | Jan 5, 2006 8:15:39 PM
The last source I posted is not in fact dispositive, in the sense of proving genetic similarity (in fact we have not yet successful recovered any DNA from specimens older than 100,000 years), but the gradual emergence of archiac Homo sapiens (Homo heidelbergensis) from Homo erectus is universally understood to indicate a slow genetic leak of the H. sapiens genome into the existing H. erectus populations. This in fact is the basis of the mult-regional theory, which takes this to extremes and posits the emergence of modern humans in several areas roughly simultaneously. This would be pure polygenism in scientific form. Monogenism only requires us to understand that authentic humanity was achieved only once, and that all hominins existing at the time of Christ had descent from those parents.
What many want to extend into that requirement which is not mandated is the belief that all hominins existing by the time of Christ were _solely_ descended from a common human ancestor. This cannot be squared with the existing genetic diversity within the human genome unless:
1) God miraculously accelerated the genetic drift of humans; or
2) Adam and Eve lived at a time so far back that the definition of the unique rational nature of humanity must either be lowered to levels barely distinguishable from that of modern great apes, or we must believe that a tribe of intellectually modern humans coexisted with their relatively far more primitve contemporaries without leaving any artifacts as testimony to their overwhelming superiourity.
"A biological—as opposed to an ecological or geographical—species definition would place all hominins in a single, phenotypically diverse species."
This interpretation, on the other hand, would _require_ us to consider the possibility, indeed near certainty, of inter-hominin breeding between all varieties of hominins existing from at least 1.5 million years ago to the present, it does not do away with that possibility at all.
It is difficult however to posit a rationality in the sense we usually take to be uniquely human in the recovered artifacts of the hominins of 1.5 million years ago.
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 6, 2006 7:42:29 AM
There appear to be several loose interpretations of scripture floating around, giving way to strange theories of humans interbreeding with non-soul possessing high beasts, or human-like aliens. Neither of these theories makes sense, has any evidence whatsoever, or can be supported metaphysically. Let me explain:
The notion of a non-souled rational beast is a complete contradiction. Rationality is a function of the soul. Aristotle proved this quite adequately, and St. Thomas Aquinas cleared the matter quite thoroughly. The succinct explanation is thus: no organ can sense its own function as it functions, such as the eye cannot see itself “seeing”, nor can the ear hear itself “hearing”. However, the intellect can think about the process of thinking as it thinks. Because it is capable if analyzing its own functionality, it is necessarily not locked into the realm of the physical, logically placing rationality as a purely spiritual function.
Man has a rational soul, which means that the intellect survives death. Beasts have a functional soul, which dies with the body. Barring the biological difficulties in cross-breeding a human with an animal, the creation of a soul in such a being is impossible, not to mention the devastation it causes to the metaphysical purpose of human creation.
Now, at least once, the question of the Nephilim has been raised. It is very difficult to ascertain what is meant in Scripture by these people, though we are not without any clues. It would appear that the Nephilim were giants. Genesis 1-6 states, “1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
There is an abundance of archeological evidence of the existence of giants, including bones, written accounts, and cave paintings. If Adam and Eve possessed the entire genetic code, then they would also have possessed the code for gigantism (which is a rare condition existent today) … the difference between now and then could be the density of the atmosphere (which could also have something to do with the longevity of man’s life), which would have provided the buoyancy needed to allow the giants to live healthy lives.
If we accept that the Nephilim were giants, then Scripture begins to make a little more sense. The Nephilim probably formed a tribe of righteous people (sons of God) who then intermarried with beautiful women who fell away from God’s grace (daughters of man) (which very much echoes Augustine’s “City of God; City of Man”), and the “men of renown” would have been the cross between giants and “normal-sized” people, who were probably faster than giants and stronger then men, making them quite powerful.
This is all conjecture, of course, but it makes a lot more sense than man breeding with apes or aliens.
Posted by: Discomike | Jan 6, 2006 8:08:27 AM
Hmmm, looks like a theologian with a PhD in Anthropology is needed for this discussion.
Posted by: Realist | Jan 6, 2006 8:20:32 AM
"Barring the biological difficulties in cross-breeding a human with an animal, the creation of a soul in such a being is impossible, not to mention the devastation it causes to the metaphysical purpose of human creation."
You will need to prepare yourself to be devastated, then. Experiments on clones containing both human and animal DNA are already underway, and it only a matter of time until one is brought to term with such an overwhelmingly proportion of human DNA as to be physically indistinguishable from its human donor.
The metaphysics may be distasteful, but that is the current course of our physics. Declaring it inconceivable will not stop it from happening; indeed it will make it more likely since the above line of argument would declare such resulting creatures inhuman and therefore property without rights.
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 6, 2006 10:27:09 AM
Furthermore, positing that Adam and Eve possessed the entire extant genetic code makes them a different order of creatures than humanity today, since we would then be positing creatures with duplicate genetic sequences for every possible genetically determined trait we observe today.
It's not just a matter of tucking the duplicate codes into sections of the genome whose function we don't currently understand and then being embarassed as science gives us an increasing small section of the total genome on which to hang the argument; the position of genetic sequences within the chromosomal sequence is critical for their activation or inactivation.
We would have to believe that God left enough duplicate codes in Adam and Eve to account for almost all existing genetic diversity, and that He then managed the orderly transference of these genetic sequences into proper position over a number of generations so that the gradual expression of the genetic variations could be orchestrated over that time to create the diversity which we otherwise could not attribute to a breeding population of less than a few thousand individuals.
This is a genetic problem an order of magnitude more complex than the alleged unlikelihood of genetic compatibility between man and the other hominin subspecies in the fossil record.
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 6, 2006 10:42:11 AM
There is a vast difference between cloning and the conception of a new being through natural means. In cloning, DNA is surgically implanted in the nucleus of a cell. In genetic splicing (such as the spider-pig, the human-milk bearing bovine, glow-in-the-dark mice, etc) certain aspects of the genetic code are implanted in an already existent animal. The spider-goat is no less a goat, but has an added gene. Nothing was replaced, but something was added. However, just because the goat possesses spider-genes, the goat can no more mate with a spider than a dog can with a fire-hydrant.
Human and animal splicing experiments are grotesque and degrading to the dignity of man, however, that does not mean that they are impossible … IN A LAB. In other words, this sort of splicing cannot ever occur in nature, and requires direct intelligent intervention to take place. Unless you wish to posit that early man was conducting genetic experimentation to produce ape-man, then you must accept the fact that man and ape sperm and eggs are completely incompatible, and even if an ape egg was directly inseminated with human sperm, the genetic material will not mix to form a new species. So, comparing what can be done in a lab with what “may have happened” in nature is an apples/oranges comparison, and an illogical course to follow.
How e’er it be, the gap between humans and animals is as vast as the gap between animals and plants. While it may be possible to genetically alter the condition of a normal human body to take on certain animal characteristics, the humanity of the poor creature in question would remain intact. But as I said before, this isn’t a question of what can be done in a lab (violating the natural order) which does not reflect what occurs in nature, and as such, it would have to be demonstrated through natural means that such hybrid ape-men can or have occurred without direct, intelligent intervention. And to take it a step further, to posit that God is the master of all, and is fully capable of directing such a union is a cop-out and unscientific (which tends to be the argument of evolutionists against creationists).
Posted by: Discomike | Jan 6, 2006 11:19:07 AM
Sigh.
We're not talking about apes. We're talking about creatures in the fossil record who resembled us more closely than horses resemble zebras.
Declaring interbreeding between two such similar creatures impossible is merely wishing, especially given the existence of so many transitional specimens in the fossil record.
God of course is omnipotent, but his grace is sufficient and not to be tempted. We should only look for miraculous explanations after physical ones have been exhausted. The incest theory demands generations of miracles merely to avoid a scenario which some find distasteful.
PVO
Posted by: Mulopwepaul | Jan 6, 2006 11:35:38 AM
Positing that Adam and eve possessed the “entire extant genetic code” (sic) does not make them a different order of creature at all. To say so is ridiculous, for it denies the very notion of heredity to which evolutionists so dearly cling.
We know, for a fact, that every generation of creature loses exactly ½ of the genetic code of its parents. We know this because we can count the chromosomes from each parent that are included in the genetic code itself as they are handed down to its offspring. Taking the most recent specimen of a species we can, if one was to trace the lineage of this creature back several generations, we would find a more complete genome. It is a fallacy of logic to claim that something came to be the way it is by improving upon its own design, when the design of the creature holds no inherent intelligence, in order to explain the vast differences amongst certain orders of animals. It is far more likely that the genetic make-up of these creatures held a more complete blueprint than do existent animals simply because we know for a fact that 50% of the code is lost with each generation. Rather than claiming that black people are black because the hot sun in Africa burned them to a crisp over thousands of generations (which echoes that utterly disproved theory of spontaneous generation for obvious reasons), it is much more logical to say that people of a similar genetic disposition tended band together, and so a “race” was created. If one were to make such ridiculous claims as the blacks became black because the sun made them that way over thousands of generations, then those same people would have to claim that Asians had slanted eyes because their eyesight was poor, which left them with a genetic squint (this is an actual racist belief propagated by the Brits during WW II), and the French have bigger noses because it was genetically necessary for them to develop a better sense of smell, and so forth. This is backwards thinking. It makes much more sense that certain genetic traits developed amongst a peoples because they settled and area and intermarried, losing some recessive genetic traits and maintaining dominant ones. As such, White French people will not produce a black child because the black skin pigmentation has been bred out of them, not because blacks somehow acquired the trait of colored skin, and it is this line of reasoning that brings us to the conclusion that the further back we go, the more complete the genetic code, which leaves us with Adam and Eve possessing the entire genetic code, fully capable of producing EVERY race of human in any given child.
Posted by: Discomike | Jan 6, 2006 11:46:07 AM
Positing that Adam and eve possessed the “entire extant genetic code” (sic) does not make them a different order of creature at all. To say so is ridiculous, for it denies the very notion of heredity to which evolutionists so dearly cling.
We know, for a fact, that every generation of creature loses exactly ½ of the genetic code of its parents. We know this because we can count the chromosomes from each parent that are included in the genetic code itself as they are handed down to its offspring. Taking the most recent specimen of a species we can, if one was to trace the lineage of this creature back several generations, we would find a more complete genome. It is a fallacy of logic to claim that something came to be the way it is by improving upon its own design, when the design of the creature holds no inherent intelligence, in order to explain the vast differences amongst certain orders of animals. It is far more likely that the genetic make-up of these creatures held a more complete blueprint than do existent animals simply because we know for a fact that 50% of the code is lost with each generation. Rather than claiming that black people are black because the hot sun in Africa burned them to a crisp over thousands of generations (which echoes that utterly disproved theory of spontaneous generation for obvious reasons), it is much more logical to say that people of a similar genetic disposition tended band together, and so a “race” was created. If one were to make such ridiculous claims as the blacks became black because the sun made them that way over thousands of generations, then those same people would have to claim that Asians had slanted eyes because their eyesight was poor, which left them with a genetic squint (this is an actual racist belief propagated by the Brits during WW II), and the French have bigger noses because it was genetically necessary for them to develop a better sense of smell, and so forth. This is backwards thinking. It makes much more sense that certain genetic traits developed amongst a peoples because they settled and area and intermarried, losing some recessive genetic traits and maintaining dominant ones. As such, White French people will not produce a black child because the black skin pigmentation has been bred out of them, not because blacks somehow acquired the trait of colored skin, and it is this line of reasoning that brings us to the conclusion that the further back we go, the more complete the genetic code, which leaves us with Adam and Eve possessing the entire genetic code, fully capable of producing EVERY race of human in any given child.
Posted by: Discomike | Jan 6, 2006 11:46:14 AM
The allegation of the so-called “fossil record” is so completely unfounded that it cannot even be appealed to as evidence. There is NO evidence for a progression of animal to brute to man. None! There is no evidence of an intermediary species. In fact, such “evidence” posited by the pro-evolution crowd as “Piltdown man”, and “Neanderthal man” (just to name a couple) have been proved to be hoaxes. Java, for instance, consists of a (gibbon's) skull cap and a human leg bone, and nothing more. The so-called “Nebraska man” was a complete “reconstruction” of an ape-like man based upon a pig’s tooth!!!
You cannot appeal to a record that does not exist, and to argue from such a stand-point only weakens your position.
As for the incest theory, it is not only genetically feasible, it is observable and repeatable, which is why it is a theory … which is more than can be said for evolution or interspecies marriages which produce half-human/half-animal hybrids. No observation and no repeatable experimentation drop it back to the level of hypothesis. Really, it isn’t even worth pursuing.
Posted by: Discomike | Jan 6, 2006 11:55:50 AM
Not to muddy the already roiling theoretical waters, here, but I don't recall anyone factoring in spontaneous genetic mutation.
Happens - All. The. Time.
Posted by: Tim J. | Jan 6, 2006 12:12:02 PM
Happened to me this morning. I hate that.
Posted by: hippo354 | Jan 6, 2006 1:27:05 PM
"Positing that Adam and eve possessed the “entire extant genetic code” (sic) does not make them a different order of creature at all. To say so is ridiculous, for it denies the very notion of heredity to which evolutionists so dearly cling."
The problem is that observed genetic drift occurs so slowly that the only ways to generate the genetic polymorphism we see worldwide would be either:
1) for Adam and Eve to have lived so far back in time that their existence was either at such a primitive level that it would be difficult to demonstrate rational thought substantially different from that of animals, or
2) their genetic codes possessed multiple copies of the significant human alleles to account for the amount of genetic variation we do see in modern humans, or
3) God or some unknown agency was accelerating the rate of genetic drift between the time of the emergence of the earliest morphologically modern humans and the time of our earliest retrieved genetic samples, c. 100,000 years ago.
The standard genetics we're taught in school assumes that only two alleles are possible at any particula locus, resulting in at most 3 outcomes depending on dominance. In fact some genetic loci in the human race can be occupied by dozens or even hundreds of significantly differing alleles. Adam and Eve together, like all human couples, together could only have carried at most 4 in the proper locus for any particular trait.
In order for a recent Adam and Eve to have "naturally" propagated the amount of genetic diversity we observe, they would have had to pack the additional alleles away in some section of the genome which had no other survival value than storage, and then moved them into the proper loci in the course of sexual reproduction, so that their various children could demonstrate the variant alleles in their proper loci.
PVO
Posted by: | Jan 6, 2006 2:05:11 PM
The fossil record is full of intermediary cases:
http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/gran.dolina.html
http://matt.pope.users.btopenworld.com/boxgrove/sitehomo.htm
http://www.msu.edu/~heslipst/contents/ANP440/heidelbergensis.htm
Indeed, it looks like nothing so much as a series of intermediaries, which is the biggest problem with an incest theory which posits some dramatic morphological distinction between Man and other hominins.
Posted by: | Jan 6, 2006 2:37:49 PM
Having had a chance to fully digest DiscoMike's post I see that he denies the authenticity of both Neanderthal Man and Java Man.
Would DiscoMike care to substantiate these remarkable claims?
PVO
Posted by: mulopwepaul | Jan 6, 2006 4:23:35 PM
Do we have a Canopy Theorist?
Posted by: Tim J. | Jan 6, 2006 5:51:51 PM
The following is lifted directed from http://www.creationism.org/vonfange/vonFangeTimeUpDownChap08.htm
In 1912 the famous Piltdown skull was found in a gravel bed in southern England by Charles Dawson. It created a sensation since it clearly was a creature halfway between man and beast. Evolutionists were ecstatic.
While a few scientists were skeptical, it was accepted by scholarly opinion throughout the world. It is no exaggeration to say that one could fill a very large room with learned articles and books about Piltdown Man, including 500 doctoral dissertations! In 1953 - 41 years later - careful examination revealed the Piltdown Man to be a very crude forgery consisting of a recent human skull combined with the jawbone of a female orangutan, appropriately dyed with chemicals to give it the appearance of great age and slightly modified to fool the expert paleontologists of the British Museum.
The Piltdown hoax illustrates an eagerness to believe in anything that might help to support the theory of evolution. One can almost picture men in museums all over the world hurrying with gray paint and brushes to paint out that branch of the human tree on the day the hoax was exposed. The next day, Piltdown Man had never existed. All the supposed family trees in the textbooks before 1953 show how Piltdown Man fit into the great story of human evolution.
No orthodox expert would dare to propose a recent beginning of man which would correspond to the Biblical account. Although various authorities have pointed out that the variability found among human fossils is really no different from the amazing variability found among people today, little or nothing is made of this fact in the textbooks. White, middleclass scientists should not necessarily make themselves the model from which fossil bones are judged and compared (Custance, 1968, p.26-31).
In the business of studying human fossil remains, astonishingly different reconstructions have been made from casts of the same skull fragments. As someone has noted, the features of the ape or the philosopher may be constructed on the surface of the same skull (Time , 5/17/1973, p.75-76).
It is of more than passing interest in the consideration of fossil man than an anthropologist stated several decades ago that living style and habits, climate, and diet can influence the anatomical features of the skull to the point that experts may place such species into different genera. An additional factor of great significance is the physical degeneration and extraordinary physical variability that occurs among isolated inbred populations (CRSQ , 1968, 5:1, p.5-7).
It is not well known that when 'primitive' Java man was discovered in 1891, two other skulls were found in the same formation and of the same age which were no different from skulls of modern Australian aborigines. The news of the modern skulls found with Java man was not made public for twenty years because they were not what the man was looking for (CRSQ , 1964, 1:2, p.9).
In 1963 Dr. Leakey found a fossil, which he named Homo habilis , at the lowest level of strata where he was working. Homo habilis was much like modern man. The problem was that Homo habilis seemed to be much more advanced than fossil remains which had been found higher up in the strata. Since evolutionary theory requires a sequence of primitive to more advanced, the find became very controversial. On occasions such as these, explanations become very creative but strained in order to cling to evolutionary theory. Dr. Leakey suggested that all anthropology works be rewritten. A widely accepted 'solution' was that Homo habilis and the more primitive creatures were contemporaries, and that the search would continue in still older strata for the ancestor of Homo habilis (CRSQ , 1966, 3:1, p.14). Hope springs eternal!
Neanderthal man is a story by itself. When the first discovery was made about 1856, science at last thought it now had the overwhelming evidence it needed to show the intermediate stage between man and ape. Texts today still faithfully illustrate this famous beetle-browed, bent-kneed, subhuman slob. There was only one apparent slight drawback. Its brain on the average was more than 13% larger than the brain of modern man. It was still considered, however, to be the perfect illustration of an important step in the evolutionary sequence of man. Neanderthal man was still cited as the most compelling proof of evolution just a few decades ago (Time , 6/21/1968, p.34).
The famous names of early evolutionary theory made much of Neanderthal man, and texts published today still reflect their views. Haeckel proposed to solve the world riddles once and for all with Neanderthal man. Lyell and Huxley pointed confidently to the Neanderthal skull as evidence that there had been a low-caste, half-human creature, intermediate between man and ape (de Santillana, 1969, p.71; Victoria Institute , 1866, 2:72).
It is interesting thatTime , May 17, 1971, proclaimed that the primitiveness of Neanderthal was unwarranted. Except for physical ailments, he could walk the streets today and be unrecognized. One writer commented that in later centuries historians may declare all of us insane, because the incredible blunder about Neanderthal man was not detected at once and was not refuted with adequate determination.
It is a tragic commentary on the scientific community that the following must be said. Back in 1872, Virchow, probably the greatest biologist of his day and the founder of medical pathology, cited evidence that the peculiarities of Neanderthal man were due not to a special place in the chain of evolution, but rather to a bad case of rickets. An authority reported in Nature , 1970, that every Neanderthal child's skull studied so far showed signs compatible with severe rickets.
Again back in 1872 another medical authority declared that Neanderthal skulls showed medical problems, and that similar skulls of modern man may be found in any medical school (CRSQ , 1968, 5:1, p.5-7; 1970, 7:4, p.232-233; 1964, 1:2, p.9). The obsession to 'prove' evolution with Neanderthal man was so overpowering that it took more than 100 years for the scientific community to face up to the obvious truth that Neanderthal man was fully human.
Hard work for the past 150 years has brought scientists no closer to finding the so-called 'missing link' between man and animal than when the search began. Every year or two another article appears in National Geographic with spectacular new discoveries about human evolution. Without exception they are without substance. The fossils are either fully human or fully apelike with nothing in between.
In the great eagerness to believe preconceived notions of what must have been, fraud and a great deal of humbug have been produced to fill the need.
Posted by: DiscoMike | Jan 6, 2006 8:40:47 PM
Now, in relation to the problems with the "pre-homo sapien" hoaxes is the problem concerning the process of fossilization itself.
Evolutionists point to the alleged "fossil record" to support their theories, but what they don't realize is that the so-called "fossil record" (which they claim as a time-line) is deep in circular reasoning.
1) The fossil record pre-supposes a gradual burial process which eventually preserves skeltal structures.
2) Evolutionists believe that the stratification process takes millions of years to develop, thereby creating a helpful little time-line.
3) All radio-carbon dating on objects over a certain age are pre-programmed with the pre-supposed "age" of the fossil according to its geological "age", and the machine sipts out a number plus or minus a few million years.
What this means is that the supposed age of a fossil, according to radio-carbon dating process is entirely contingent upon the pre-determined age of the fossil according to it's geological age. That pre-asserted age is paramount to their calculations, and without it they wind up with "indeterminate" results. Circular reasoning.
Now, what these same "scientists" fail to recognize is that organic matter breaks down rather rapidly ... including bone. As that is the case, the only way for fossilization to take place is rapid burial. This integral component to the process of fossilization is quite substantiated, especially given the fact that we have fossilized eggs (both hatched and unhatched), fossilized plant matter, fossilized fish in the act of eating another fish, fossilized footprints, fossilized rain drops, and fossilized fecal matter. These things could not be preserved without being buried in an instant.
If the so-called fossil record was not generated over millenia, but pretty much "over night" (perhaps 40 to be exact), then the alleged "geological age" (which is based purely on speculation anyway) of the strata layers is false. And this, without even mentioning the difficulty supporters of the "geological fossil record" have in explaining anomolous out of place fossils (human remains in "older" strata than dinosaurs, for instance).
As I said before, the hypothesis of evolution doesn't have a leg to stand on. It has NOTHING. No evidence whatsoever. None!!!
Posted by: DiscoMike | Jan 6, 2006 9:02:27 PM
As for the canopy theory ...
I am not a strict adherent to that particular theory because it does have its problems. However, I do hold a modified version of it which increases the atmospheric density of the earth about 2.2 times.
I will admit, however, that I believe that the earth is quite young and that man and dinosaurs probably co-existed. In fact, I will go so far as to say that dinosaurs were probably wiped out by the flood.
Posted by: DiscoMike | Jan 6, 2006 9:27:20 PM
What this means is that the supposed age of a fossil, according to radio-carbon dating process is entirely contingent upon the pre-determined age of the fossil according to it's geological age
Got any evidence for that?
The carbon dating actually goes by the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 in the fossil. What input does the "pre-determined age" have in the matter?
Posted by: Mary | Jan 6, 2006 9:32:35 PM
DiscoMike,
What are your educational degrees in? Have you written any books? Journal articles?
Posted by: Realist | Jan 7, 2006 8:05:01 AM
I haven't a clue exactly how God created us or how long ago.
I at least have the grace to admit my own ignorance.
I will agree with DiscoMike that this extrapolation of whole hominids out of a handful of bone fragments seems to me not very different from reading tea leaves.
In the words of Hermione Granger, it "seems very wooly. Alot of guesswork, if you ask me.".
Posted by: Tim J. | Jan 7, 2006 8:34:10 AM
I've always been a little disturbed by the idea that Adam and Eve's children engaged in brother-sister marriage. Isn't that against the natural law, yet didn't God make it necessary if He only created one first couple? (If there had been two first couples, the sons of one could have married the daughters of the other, and vice versa.) I know that God allowed divorce and polygamy under the Old Testament dispensation, but I would have thought that incest was too wicked to be even temporarily permitted.
I hope this post isn't too irreverent. I wouldn't dare to question God's wisdom, but I wonder if anyone has ever provided a full explanation of why He acted as He did in this case.
Posted by: James Kabala | Jan 7, 2006 8:40:18 AM
Well, I may as well throw this out there...
There are things that God allowed, or even commanded, in the Old Testament that strike me as morally repugnant.
Incest, the slaughter of whole towns...
But I am judging from the perspective of a 21st century Catholic. I would never question the wisdom of God's plan, but saying that it simply comes down to doing whatever God's will is at the moment seems inadequate.
Were an angel to appear and order me to go next door and wipe out the neighbors, I would assume either that the angel was really a demon, or that I was hallucinating.
But, apparently Old Testament folk didn't feel that way. I have always been a little surprised at how compliant Abraham was when he was commanded to offer up Isaac. It did not seem to him quite the morally repugnant shock that it is to me.
Something has changed. Obviously, God does not change. So, what has?
I think the answer might be that PEOPLE have changed. We have, in some sense, grown up a bit as a species, under God's watchful care.
When my children were 4 and 8 years old, spanking was a live option when they got willfully out of line. It was not only permissable, but (I would argue) necessary. Not pleasant, but a fact of life, and something that never troubled my conscience.
They are now 14 and 10. Spanking is no longer appropriate. Why? I have not changed. The Rules have not changed. The children have changed. To deliver a spanking to a 14-year-old who is now bigger than his mother, would be a clear indication that SOMETHING was seriously wrong.
I think this may be true of the human race as a whole. The expectations and the punishments were different, because WE were really different. Once it was appropriate to wipe out almost all of us in a flood, but God vowed not to do it again.
It offers a bit of hope that we may, at least in some ways, be heading in the right direction.
Posted by: Tim J. | Jan 7, 2006 9:05:29 AM
Note that Sarah and Abraham were half-siblings.
St. Augustine wrestled with the notion too.
His conclusion was that incest tabooes were a way of extending bonds throughout society. If you married your sister, your father would be your father-in-law, and you were already related to him. If you married an unrelated woman, you acquired a different father-in-law, and other in-laws, but when that was impossible, incest was not forbidden.
(Yes, he used "father-in-law" not "wife." Such was Imperial society.)
He also pointed to the myths of the pagans, to the brother-and-sister marriages among them, as evidence that once such marriages were practiced.
Posted by: Mary | Jan 7, 2006 9:11:07 AM
For some reason, when somebody suggests exploring inbreeding between Adam and Eve, I cannot help but imagine Cain and Abel looking like that banjo kid from "Deliverance".
Posted by: JonathanR. | Jan 7, 2006 10:12:37 AM
from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0401torah.asp
"Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation."
Posted by: Realist | Jan 7, 2006 12:38:55 PM
George Washington, the American patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Thomas Jefferson. The entire American Revolution probably never occurred. The same is true of the Civil War. And Abraham Lincoln, far from being the fearless President who preserved the Union and freed the slaves, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.
Posted by: Tim J. | Jan 7, 2006 1:42:34 PM
Tim J.,
After Crossan tells him what to think Realist will respond.
Take care and God bless.
J+M+J
Posted by: Inocencio | Jan 7, 2006 3:07:07 PM
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