Many Christians I know say it's a metaphor and has no objection to evolutionary biology.
Great. Same here, though not locally(I have many theistic evolutionist friends in other places, but I live in a stronghold of pure creationism). That has no bearing on the statistics. I invite you to watch an episode of 700 Club, or listen to one of the many Christian radio stations run by creationists and then try to envision the audience for those programs. There is a large part of that 46%. I can even point you to Catholic and Eastern Orthodox people who reject evolution entirely(and Muslims and Jews, to round out the program). Do you think it was just a crazy statistical anomaly that so many of the GOP candidates for president in this last election were creationists?
If presented thus, the %s would probably be lower.
What part of this is unclear?
Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.
You may not like it, but it's still true. A lot of your fellow citizens believe in creationism, and they are not bashful about it.
Natural selection is something that everyone I know is fine with. Random mutation is something that everyone I know is fine with. But the creation of new species? Not so much. And in this case, we're merely seeing natural selection at play, which is not evolution, in and of itself, any more than a motor by itself should be considered a car.
Until the sub-species is altered in some way to prevent interbreeding(physical isolation, physical inability to mate, behavioral changes which prevent mating, etc), it is indeed not a speciation event. It is, however, evolution("a change in heritable traits over time"). The term "species" is just a convienent label to place on living things in order to categorize them. It is just a snapshot of a particular group of living things at a particular time. All species are always adapting, always evolving. Some can interbreed(even long after they diverged, like lions and tigers), some can't.
Saying that you accept all of the mechanisms of the evolutionary process and yet reject the logical result of those processes is irrational.
When I was in college, I could say that the vast majority of Christians I knew accepted evolution. I currently live in central Kansas, and the situation is completely reversed. I'm sure I know a Christian who accepts evolution who lives here, but I literally couldn't name one off of the top of my head. Given what we know from polling in the US, I would guess that this is not an uncommon situation, especially in less urbanized areas.
And if the universe itself is infinitely old and un-caused, then that too is a violation of the notion of cause and effect every bit as great as that of the First Effect.
The obvious response is that we have evidence of the universe, so until we find evidence that that is not sufficient then there is no need to pretend that some amorphous mind simply popped it into existence.
There is a quantative distinction between an organism engaged in biotic processes and other collections of matter which are not.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but it is just chemistry. Complex chemistry, mind you, but chemistry all the same.
Ok, how about Dr Mengele? Unit 731? Tuskeegee Syphilis study?
The situation has come up and continues to come up; if you didnt realize that, you havent been paying attention.
And we dealt with those by enacting controls to ban them(and killed a bunch of Nazis in response to the first). If you haven't noticed that, then you haven't been paying attention.
Influence != block. It's also worth noting that they're a large enough voting block to influence road construction or military spending. Do they by default "block" those as well?
Since they don't seem to be trying to rewrite educational guidelines to attack the ideas of road construction and military spending, I would say no. Since they seem to applaud runaway military spending while supporting bans on stem cell research(as an example), I would say no. Are you simply ignoring the political and religious landscape of the US?
Is there "research" that you feel should off limits, or are you going all in with Dr. Mengele?
When the situation comes up of some researcher asking to experiment on humans ala Mengele, we'll worry about it. Until then, you are just taking an absurdist position which doesn't exist in the real world.
If you do think some research is off limits, why? Because any reason you offer has its foundations in ethics/philosophy, which is inextricably entwined with religion.
That is incorrect. The ethics of secular humanism, for example, require no reference to religion or religious beliefs. Ethics are ultimately based on human behavior and the ways that we interact with each other. It is a common claim that religions have some monopoly on ethics, but that is just not true. And, yes, I would oppose research which required that avoidable harm be inflicted upon developed humans(and certain animals), but I'm certainly not basing that opposition upon some religious foundation.
I am a trained scientist that certainly understands the reality of the 5 billion year old solar system, the evolution of species, and for that matter the truth of global warming. Yet I still believe whole-heartedly in God and practice my faith within the Catholic Church.
So, you claim to believe in Catholicism and understand evolution, yet you fail to see how the dogma of Adam and Eve is directly contradictory to the evolution of the human species?
Ok - what non-religious country in the past one thousand years do you feel pushed/allowed science to advance better than the Christian countries?
What non-religious country has existed in the past one thousand years? Even the officially atheistic countries were only atheistic by government fiat. Only recently have we seen the rise of a dominant organic atheism anywhere in the world. And those states are indeed doing well in advancing science and education. Here in the US, where our level of religiosity is more in line with Islamic countries, we have a serious problem with people attempting to subvert public education, public funding and public research to suit their religious beliefs.
I sincerely hope that the anti-religious folks keep pushing harder and harder against people that have faith. Eventually, you are going to push people to the point where they start speaking up for themselves.
What planet are you on that you think that religious people are not voicing their opposition now? Did you somehow miss the debates, the billboards, the church signs, the youtube videos, the religious forums, the protests, etc?
So what? They're not blocking the science. You aren't less rational or scientific in your thinking just because someone out there believes crazy things.
These people are a large enough voting block to influence public education and government research. So, yes, they very much do block science. Their influence is growing smaller, but it is still a force to be dealt with in the US.
Now you are talking gibberish. The hypothesis in this case is "god X with properties Y and behaviors Z exists." The prediction is "if god X exists, then based upon the asserted properties and behaviors, we will see measurable effect E." E fails to happen, therefore the initial hypothesis is wrong. Not rocket science.
Do you see how absurd that is? How scientifically illiterate would you have to be to make that statement in earnest?
No, I don't, because it is not.
If you meant something else (as implied by earlier quote) great. Next time, try saying what you mean.
Oh, wow, you really fail at reading. My comment was about the definition of "hypothesis".
And my comment was aobut your blanket dismissal. Fail much?
Oh, wow, you ALSO fail at basic science!
Ah, so when a prediction based upon a hypothesis fails to happen, then that somehow upholds the validity of the hypothesis? Someone is failing here, but it's not me.
Oh, honey, you lack 3rd grade reading skills, too? Maybe I can use smaller words so that woogums can understand it.
If your definition of a god includes the idea that said god interacts with the universe, it's measurable. And if the measurements do not indicate an interaction, then that particular god hypothesis is proven false, and thus MacGyver2210 is vindicated. Only the philosopher's god is immune to such analysis.
Worse than that, it's not even an hypothesis!
I would agree.
What, exactly, do I want both ways? I don't know where you get "bad hypothesis" from. As I clearly stated in my first post, if it's not testable it's not an hypothesis! You seem to agree with that bit. Then again, judging from the rest of your incoherent rambling, you might not understand what that even means.
I was referring to your dismissal of MacGyver2210. Every god hypothesis that is in play in the ID movement(which is the context of this conversation, in case you had forgotten) makes certain claims about the effects that god has upon the universe. Noting that such effects are not in evidence is an effective argument against such ideas. You could just as easily rewrite MacGyver2210's statement as deductive reasoning:
God hypothesis X states that interactions Y and Z happened.
Y and Z did not happen.
Therefore god hypothesis X is not correct.
If the god hypothesis includes historical interaction, then a lack of interaction does disprove it. If the god hypothesis is so ill defined as to preclude any falsification, then it is useless. You can't have it both ways. Either a god hypothesis has a measuable impact upon the universe, in which case it is testable, or it does not, which makes it a bad hypothesis.
Assuming that the first living cell was designed, is it unscientific to explore what predictions could be made from that starting assumption?
Yes, because there are none. It will just be ad hoc reasoning("why is the cell like X? Because that is what this god wanted it to be."). And it will degrade further into brainless dogma. The day ID proponents actually come up with some scientific reasoning from their position is the day it becomes a branch of science. Until then, it's just the rear guard of an increasingly discredited worldview.
I believe that a big cause of the entire pushing religion in school is because science has been used to discredit religion or religious teachings. Had this not occurred, or not occurred in science taught in public schools, it would be a non issue. However, as long as little Johny is coming home saying in science we learned that pastor is wrong and God did not create the world, there will be attempts like this to force the ambiguity or uncertainty to scientific theory.
And this is avoided in what manner? Any discussion of science will inevitably destroy religious beliefs which are built upon irrational and unsupported foundations. Science is killing religion by destroying the natural habitat of the gods: ignorance. Once people have a good explanation of a natural event, they no longer need a supernatural explanation. Some still chalk it up to gods, but over time, the number of those who do shrinks.
I'm only going to reply to this, since everything else you wrote is entirely irrelevant and completely missing the point. Again.
The statement refers to "Adam" and "Eve" as "first parents". Given that the church accepts biological evolution it is obvious that they are not "first parents" in the biological sense. What other sense is there? Presumably the possession of a "soul"? Science does not address the topic of a "soul" so there is no contradiction.
This is precisely what they believe. How do you not understand that by now? They teach, emphatically, literally and, according to their own dogma, infallibly, that there was at one point only two humans, Adam and Eve. Yes, this contradicts evolution. Yes, this makes no fucking sense to anyone who has a shred of biological knowledge. Yes, this seems to fly in the face of their assertion that their beliefs are compatible with science. That is my point. They claim that they accept science. IT IS NOT TRUE. They only accept the parts of science that don't break their belief system. They even tell you WHY they have to reject this part of science, if you bothered to read Humani Generis:
Now it is in 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.
This is why they make such an irrational mess of it! If Adam wasn't a real man who committed a real offense, then the whole doctrine of original sin, and through it, the whole doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus, falls the fuck apart. They cannot admit this bit of science without undercutting their own belief system. I think that you could agree that that is a very strong motive for quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Listen, I'm done trying to teach Catholic theology to people. If you think that I'm wrong, call the local bishop. I'm not even kidding. Call the local Catholic priest and ask if you want, but if you want to settle it once and for all, call a bishop.
That is an unsubstantiated point. The church seems to say that "Adam" differed only with respect to the "soul". Not necessarily in any biological sense, that he may very well have evolved from earlier life. Your latest citation below says this.
Nobody is arguing this! Christ on a stick, get it through your head.
You seemed to be suggesting that the figurative language of genesis was contradicted if Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam were not contemporaries. Scientists like figurative and poetic language too, "Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Noah" just doesn't work as well.
Then you are not reading. You introduced ME and YCA. Neither are a scientific analog to the Christian Adam and Eve OR the Christian Noah and Eve. The existence of ME and YCA have no correlation to those religious beliefs.
Did you miss the quotes around "flood"? Did you miss my frequent use of phrases like the "figurative language of genesis"?
Are you deliberately attempting to obfuscate the issue or is this unintentional? I'm talking about one point of dogma.
Huh? Your citations seem to be consistent with what I have said regarding church beliefs. All seem to be saying that the church accepts the evolution of the physical body; believes that what truly distinguishes "humanity" from previous life is the introduction of the "soul"; believes that humanity is descended from "Adam" and "Eve", the first two with souls.
OK, you can stop right the hell there. You see that bit that you wrote that I bolded? Ignore everything else, because that is what I've been talking about this whole damned time. That bit, that everyone in the human race is descended from two people, is Catholic dogma. It is held as an infallibly correct part of Catholic theology. And it. Is. Wrong. That was my whole point, right there. How have you spent days talking without acknowledging that?
My personal comments are simply it seems that the "soul" is where science and the figurative language of genesis truly diverge. "Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Noah" are remarkably parallel to the figurative.
The soul is indeed another unscientific point. And you can stretch any mythology to fit science with enough effort, like renaming YCA to YCN in order to fit a second myth about a flood. But none of this affects the point. Remember what I said days ago?
One of the major ones would be the belief that all of human kind was decended from a single man and woman.
Your whole song and dance about figurative language never touched this.
Given that the church accepts evolution from single cell organisms your primordial parent interpretation seems flawed.
Evolution as a whole does not undermine the narrative, does it? It does undermine a very specific belief, that Adam was the father of all humankind. That is a crucial point, because that is where the whole Fall/Redemption belief system starts. If Adam is symbolic or metaphorical, then the whole later part of a human blood sacrifice to atone for that Fall or to perfect the relationship or whatever is rendered unintelligible. That is why this church is willing to admit that evolution is true in general while clinging to a completely incorrect idea of Christian monogenism.
As another poster pointed out "Y-chromosome Adam" would not be biblical Adam, rather it would be biblical Noah. According to biblical accounts Noah and his sons were the only male survivors of the "flood".
Then why are you bringing it up in a discussion about the belief in a biblical Adam? And do I need to point out that the Flood myth is also a scientifically invalid idea that has been refuted? There was never a global flood, and there was never just two human beings.
No one is proposing a literal match between biblical Eve and mitochondrial Eve, not even the church. Again, the church clearly states that genesis contains figurative language. Again, my original statement was that I think genetic science and the figurative language of genesis are not far off from each other.
Certainly, once you strip all of the details away and squint hard, they appear similar. This is true for virtually all religions with metaphorical language. Not a vote of confidence.
That is a quite gratuitous interpretations of "figurative language".
It is my own belief that it is rank mythology. Take it however you like.
What I seem to mostly disagreeing with is your interpretation of the vatican statements. You seem to be reading in things that are not there at times.
What I find funny is that I have to explain basic Catholic theology to someone who is at some level defending it. You can go to any Catholic apologetics website and find that out. I can point you to cathechism after catechism. They will all point you to a simple belief: Adam and Eve were literal people who are the parents of all other humans. Any other view is considered heretical by the Catholic church. This was true the entire time I was a Catholic, and it hasn't changed in the intervening time.
The vatican reference you offered previously was clearly referring to humanity as all living persons. Note that the focus of the passage is all living persons inheriting "original sin" through their descent from "Adam". The focus is not on the origin of the human species.
Yes. All living persons have a single ancestor according to the Catholic church. Read the relevant bit again:
For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.
That's quite clear. This is standard Catholic dogma. Adam is the primordial parent, not one of many parents. Of course it also focuses on "original sin" since that is the whole reason for the fall/redemption mythology in the first place.
No. The discrepancy merely tells us that they were not contemporaries.
Bingo. So this couldn't be a scientific reference to an actual Adam and Eve.
The scientific theory is based on the idea that humanity nearly went extinct at some point. And that the few who survived were part of a population descended solely from Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam.
No, that's not true. I don't think you understand the ME/YCA idea yet. Take ME. There were other women at that time who were contemporaries of ME(and, indeed, another woman was the ME at that point as well). All it means is that those other women had only male decendents at some point. Take me for example. My mitochondria is a copy of my mothers mitochondria. As a male, however, all of my children inherited my wife's mitochondria. This doesn't mean that my line doesn't exist. It just means that there was a male decendent in the line. The concept of ME has absolutely nothing to do with the religious concept of Eve. The same goes for YCA.
Given how the churches I refer to believe in evolution from single cell organisms I don't see how this is a problem with respect to the figurative language of genesis.
The problem is really quite simple. Once the creation story is admitted to be a myth, then the whole Jesus Christ redemption mythology falls completely apart. The rest of evolution can be swept under the rug. It doesn't matter if there was an indeterminate history of evolution prior to humanity because that does not undercut the central Christian belief structure.
If you refuse to believe the Vatican, by all means, disregard it. I am not one to stop someone from rejecting anything that church says. But don't pretend that they don't believe what they explicitly teach as dogma.
The existence of Y-chromosome Adam(or Mitochondrial Eve, for that matter) does not imply that there was a single individual who was the parent of all of humanity. This should be obvious simply from the time discrepency(20,000 years apart) and the fact that these people existed in the last 150,000 years. Our species is much older than that. And when these people lived, they were not alone. They were part of a population, not primordial parents.
Slashdot Mirror
He's a young earth believer. Once you've gone that far down the rabbit hole, everything else is up for grabs.
If you want the honest truth, I'm actually a young-earther, which is about as far away from physical reality as you can get
There, fixed that for you.
Many Christians I know say it's a metaphor and has no objection to evolutionary biology.
Great. Same here, though not locally(I have many theistic evolutionist friends in other places, but I live in a stronghold of pure creationism). That has no bearing on the statistics. I invite you to watch an episode of 700 Club, or listen to one of the many Christian radio stations run by creationists and then try to envision the audience for those programs. There is a large part of that 46%. I can even point you to Catholic and Eastern Orthodox people who reject evolution entirely(and Muslims and Jews, to round out the program). Do you think it was just a crazy statistical anomaly that so many of the GOP candidates for president in this last election were creationists?
If presented thus, the %s would probably be lower.
What part of this is unclear?
Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.
You may not like it, but it's still true. A lot of your fellow citizens believe in creationism, and they are not bashful about it.
Natural selection is something that everyone I know is fine with. Random mutation is something that everyone I know is fine with. But the creation of new species? Not so much. And in this case, we're merely seeing natural selection at play, which is not evolution, in and of itself, any more than a motor by itself should be considered a car.
Until the sub-species is altered in some way to prevent interbreeding(physical isolation, physical inability to mate, behavioral changes which prevent mating, etc), it is indeed not a speciation event. It is, however, evolution("a change in heritable traits over time"). The term "species" is just a convienent label to place on living things in order to categorize them. It is just a snapshot of a particular group of living things at a particular time. All species are always adapting, always evolving. Some can interbreed(even long after they diverged, like lions and tigers), some can't.
Saying that you accept all of the mechanisms of the evolutionary process and yet reject the logical result of those processes is irrational.
When I was in college, I could say that the vast majority of Christians I knew accepted evolution. I currently live in central Kansas, and the situation is completely reversed. I'm sure I know a Christian who accepts evolution who lives here, but I literally couldn't name one off of the top of my head. Given what we know from polling in the US, I would guess that this is not an uncommon situation, especially in less urbanized areas.
And if the universe itself is infinitely old and un-caused, then that too is a violation of the notion of cause and effect every bit as great as that of the First Effect.
The obvious response is that we have evidence of the universe, so until we find evidence that that is not sufficient then there is no need to pretend that some amorphous mind simply popped it into existence.
There is a quantative distinction between an organism engaged in biotic processes and other collections of matter which are not.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but it is just chemistry. Complex chemistry, mind you, but chemistry all the same.
Ok, how about Dr Mengele? Unit 731? Tuskeegee Syphilis study?
The situation has come up and continues to come up; if you didnt realize that, you havent been paying attention.
And we dealt with those by enacting controls to ban them(and killed a bunch of Nazis in response to the first). If you haven't noticed that, then you haven't been paying attention.
Influence != block. It's also worth noting that they're a large enough voting block to influence road construction or military spending. Do they by default "block" those as well?
Since they don't seem to be trying to rewrite educational guidelines to attack the ideas of road construction and military spending, I would say no. Since they seem to applaud runaway military spending while supporting bans on stem cell research(as an example), I would say no. Are you simply ignoring the political and religious landscape of the US?
Is there "research" that you feel should off limits, or are you going all in with Dr. Mengele?
When the situation comes up of some researcher asking to experiment on humans ala Mengele, we'll worry about it. Until then, you are just taking an absurdist position which doesn't exist in the real world.
If you do think some research is off limits, why? Because any reason you offer has its foundations in ethics/philosophy, which is inextricably entwined with religion.
That is incorrect. The ethics of secular humanism, for example, require no reference to religion or religious beliefs. Ethics are ultimately based on human behavior and the ways that we interact with each other. It is a common claim that religions have some monopoly on ethics, but that is just not true. And, yes, I would oppose research which required that avoidable harm be inflicted upon developed humans(and certain animals), but I'm certainly not basing that opposition upon some religious foundation.
I am a trained scientist that certainly understands the reality of the 5 billion year old solar system, the evolution of species, and for that matter the truth of global warming. Yet I still believe whole-heartedly in God and practice my faith within the Catholic Church.
So, you claim to believe in Catholicism and understand evolution, yet you fail to see how the dogma of Adam and Eve is directly contradictory to the evolution of the human species?
Ok - what non-religious country in the past one thousand years do you feel pushed/allowed science to advance better than the Christian countries?
What non-religious country has existed in the past one thousand years? Even the officially atheistic countries were only atheistic by government fiat. Only recently have we seen the rise of a dominant organic atheism anywhere in the world. And those states are indeed doing well in advancing science and education. Here in the US, where our level of religiosity is more in line with Islamic countries, we have a serious problem with people attempting to subvert public education, public funding and public research to suit their religious beliefs.
I sincerely hope that the anti-religious folks keep pushing harder and harder against people that have faith. Eventually, you are going to push people to the point where they start speaking up for themselves.
What planet are you on that you think that religious people are not voicing their opposition now? Did you somehow miss the debates, the billboards, the church signs, the youtube videos, the religious forums, the protests, etc?
So what? They're not blocking the science. You aren't less rational or scientific in your thinking just because someone out there believes crazy things.
These people are a large enough voting block to influence public education and government research. So, yes, they very much do block science. Their influence is growing smaller, but it is still a force to be dealt with in the US.
The hypothesis is the prediction.
Now you are talking gibberish. The hypothesis in this case is "god X with properties Y and behaviors Z exists." The prediction is "if god X exists, then based upon the asserted properties and behaviors, we will see measurable effect E." E fails to happen, therefore the initial hypothesis is wrong. Not rocket science.
Do you see how absurd that is? How scientifically illiterate would you have to be to make that statement in earnest?
No, I don't, because it is not.
If you meant something else (as implied by earlier quote) great. Next time, try saying what you mean.
I meant what I said.
Oh, wow, you really fail at reading. My comment was about the definition of "hypothesis".
And my comment was aobut your blanket dismissal. Fail much?
Oh, wow, you ALSO fail at basic science!
Ah, so when a prediction based upon a hypothesis fails to happen, then that somehow upholds the validity of the hypothesis? Someone is failing here, but it's not me.
That isn't even coherent!
Oh, honey, you lack 3rd grade reading skills, too? Maybe I can use smaller words so that woogums can understand it.
If your definition of a god includes the idea that said god interacts with the universe, it's measurable. And if the measurements do not indicate an interaction, then that particular god hypothesis is proven false, and thus MacGyver2210 is vindicated. Only the philosopher's god is immune to such analysis.
Worse than that, it's not even an hypothesis!
I would agree.
What, exactly, do I want both ways? I don't know where you get "bad hypothesis" from. As I clearly stated in my first post, if it's not testable it's not an hypothesis! You seem to agree with that bit. Then again, judging from the rest of your incoherent rambling, you might not understand what that even means.
I was referring to your dismissal of MacGyver2210. Every god hypothesis that is in play in the ID movement(which is the context of this conversation, in case you had forgotten) makes certain claims about the effects that god has upon the universe. Noting that such effects are not in evidence is an effective argument against such ideas. You could just as easily rewrite MacGyver2210's statement as deductive reasoning:
God hypothesis X states that interactions Y and Z happened.
Y and Z did not happen.
Therefore god hypothesis X is not correct.
If the god hypothesis includes historical interaction, then a lack of interaction does disprove it. If the god hypothesis is so ill defined as to preclude any falsification, then it is useless. You can't have it both ways. Either a god hypothesis has a measuable impact upon the universe, in which case it is testable, or it does not, which makes it a bad hypothesis.
Assuming that the first living cell was designed, is it unscientific to explore what predictions could be made from that starting assumption?
Yes, because there are none. It will just be ad hoc reasoning("why is the cell like X? Because that is what this god wanted it to be."). And it will degrade further into brainless dogma. The day ID proponents actually come up with some scientific reasoning from their position is the day it becomes a branch of science. Until then, it's just the rear guard of an increasingly discredited worldview.
I believe that a big cause of the entire pushing religion in school is because science has been used to discredit religion or religious teachings. Had this not occurred, or not occurred in science taught in public schools, it would be a non issue. However, as long as little Johny is coming home saying in science we learned that pastor is wrong and God did not create the world, there will be attempts like this to force the ambiguity or uncertainty to scientific theory.
And this is avoided in what manner? Any discussion of science will inevitably destroy religious beliefs which are built upon irrational and unsupported foundations. Science is killing religion by destroying the natural habitat of the gods: ignorance. Once people have a good explanation of a natural event, they no longer need a supernatural explanation. Some still chalk it up to gods, but over time, the number of those who do shrinks.
How the hell should people know for sure what happened billions of years ago or even that it was billions of years ago?
Start with radiometric dating, maybe?
There are just more and less plausible theories that get selected from based on when a few compete and one turns out to be more useful than the other.
And creation mythology is of zero explanatory value. Hence, it is useless in comparison to scientific explanations.
I'm done. Go debate the church if you think that the position is wrong.
The statement refers to "Adam" and "Eve" as "first parents". Given that the church accepts biological evolution it is obvious that they are not "first parents" in the biological sense. What other sense is there? Presumably the possession of a "soul"? Science does not address the topic of a "soul" so there is no contradiction.
This is precisely what they believe. How do you not understand that by now? They teach, emphatically, literally and, according to their own dogma, infallibly, that there was at one point only two humans, Adam and Eve. Yes, this contradicts evolution. Yes, this makes no fucking sense to anyone who has a shred of biological knowledge. Yes, this seems to fly in the face of their assertion that their beliefs are compatible with science. That is my point. They claim that they accept science. IT IS NOT TRUE. They only accept the parts of science that don't break their belief system. They even tell you WHY they have to reject this part of science, if you bothered to read Humani Generis:
Now it is in 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.
This is why they make such an irrational mess of it! If Adam wasn't a real man who committed a real offense, then the whole doctrine of original sin, and through it, the whole doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus, falls the fuck apart. They cannot admit this bit of science without undercutting their own belief system. I think that you could agree that that is a very strong motive for quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.
Listen, I'm done trying to teach Catholic theology to people. If you think that I'm wrong, call the local bishop. I'm not even kidding. Call the local Catholic priest and ask if you want, but if you want to settle it once and for all, call a bishop.
That is an unsubstantiated point. The church seems to say that "Adam" differed only with respect to the "soul". Not necessarily in any biological sense, that he may very well have evolved from earlier life. Your latest citation below says this.
Nobody is arguing this! Christ on a stick, get it through your head.
You seemed to be suggesting that the figurative language of genesis was contradicted if Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam were not contemporaries. Scientists like figurative and poetic language too, "Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Noah" just doesn't work as well.
Then you are not reading. You introduced ME and YCA. Neither are a scientific analog to the Christian Adam and Eve OR the Christian Noah and Eve. The existence of ME and YCA have no correlation to those religious beliefs.
Did you miss the quotes around "flood"? Did you miss my frequent use of phrases like the "figurative language of genesis"?
Are you deliberately attempting to obfuscate the issue or is this unintentional? I'm talking about one point of dogma.
Huh? Your citations seem to be consistent with what I have said regarding church beliefs. All seem to be saying that the church accepts the evolution of the physical body; believes that what truly distinguishes "humanity" from previous life is the introduction of the "soul"; believes that humanity is descended from "Adam" and "Eve", the first two with souls.
OK, you can stop right the hell there. You see that bit that you wrote that I bolded? Ignore everything else, because that is what I've been talking about this whole damned time. That bit, that everyone in the human race is descended from two people, is Catholic dogma. It is held as an infallibly correct part of Catholic theology. And it. Is. Wrong. That was my whole point, right there. How have you spent days talking without acknowledging that?
My personal comments are simply it seems that the "soul" is where science and the figurative language of genesis truly diverge. "Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Noah" are remarkably parallel to the figurative.
The soul is indeed another unscientific point. And you can stretch any mythology to fit science with enough effort, like renaming YCA to YCN in order to fit a second myth about a flood. But none of this affects the point. Remember what I said days ago?
One of the major ones would be the belief that all of human kind was decended from a single man and woman.
Your whole song and dance about figurative language never touched this.
Given that the church accepts evolution from single cell organisms your primordial parent interpretation seems flawed.
Evolution as a whole does not undermine the narrative, does it? It does undermine a very specific belief, that Adam was the father of all humankind. That is a crucial point, because that is where the whole Fall/Redemption belief system starts. If Adam is symbolic or metaphorical, then the whole later part of a human blood sacrifice to atone for that Fall or to perfect the relationship or whatever is rendered unintelligible. That is why this church is willing to admit that evolution is true in general while clinging to a completely incorrect idea of Christian monogenism.
As another poster pointed out "Y-chromosome Adam" would not be biblical Adam, rather it would be biblical Noah. According to biblical accounts Noah and his sons were the only male survivors of the "flood".
Then why are you bringing it up in a discussion about the belief in a biblical Adam? And do I need to point out that the Flood myth is also a scientifically invalid idea that has been refuted? There was never a global flood, and there was never just two human beings.
No one is proposing a literal match between biblical Eve and mitochondrial Eve, not even the church. Again, the church clearly states that genesis contains figurative language. Again, my original statement was that I think genetic science and the figurative language of genesis are not far off from each other.
Certainly, once you strip all of the details away and squint hard, they appear similar. This is true for virtually all religions with metaphorical language. Not a vote of confidence.
That is a quite gratuitous interpretations of "figurative language".
It is my own belief that it is rank mythology. Take it however you like.
What I seem to mostly disagreeing with is your interpretation of the vatican statements. You seem to be reading in things that are not there at times.
What I find funny is that I have to explain basic Catholic theology to someone who is at some level defending it. You can go to any Catholic apologetics website and find that out. I can point you to cathechism after catechism. They will all point you to a simple belief: Adam and Eve were literal people who are the parents of all other humans. Any other view is considered heretical by the Catholic church. This was true the entire time I was a Catholic, and it hasn't changed in the intervening time.
The vatican reference you offered previously was clearly referring to humanity as all living persons. Note that the focus of the passage is all living persons inheriting "original sin" through their descent from "Adam". The focus is not on the origin of the human species.
Yes. All living persons have a single ancestor according to the Catholic church. Read the relevant bit again:
For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.
That's quite clear. This is standard Catholic dogma. Adam is the primordial parent, not one of many parents. Of course it also focuses on "original sin" since that is the whole reason for the fall/redemption mythology in the first place.
No. The discrepancy merely tells us that they were not contemporaries.
Bingo. So this couldn't be a scientific reference to an actual Adam and Eve.
The scientific theory is based on the idea that humanity nearly went extinct at some point. And that the few who survived were part of a population descended solely from Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam.
No, that's not true. I don't think you understand the ME/YCA idea yet. Take ME. There were other women at that time who were contemporaries of ME(and, indeed, another woman was the ME at that point as well). All it means is that those other women had only male decendents at some point. Take me for example. My mitochondria is a copy of my mothers mitochondria. As a male, however, all of my children inherited my wife's mitochondria. This doesn't mean that my line doesn't exist. It just means that there was a male decendent in the line. The concept of ME has absolutely nothing to do with the religious concept of Eve. The same goes for YCA.
Given how the churches I refer to believe in evolution from single cell organisms I don't see how this is a problem with respect to the figurative language of genesis.
The problem is really quite simple. Once the creation story is admitted to be a myth, then the whole Jesus Christ redemption mythology falls completely apart. The rest of evolution can be swept under the rug. It doesn't matter if there was an indeterminate history of evolution prior to humanity because that does not undercut the central Christian belief structure.
If you refuse to believe the Vatican, by all means, disregard it. I am not one to stop someone from rejecting anything that church says. But don't pretend that they don't believe what they explicitly teach as dogma.
Perhaps this will help you.