Hello Antoine,
Thanks for keeping the conversation moving foward.
You said:
I get the impression you are misunderstanding what I write.
Instead, Antoine, it may be that I do understand what you write, but that in my understanding I critique it where it seems to differ significantly from established Roman Catholic teachings. Is that an option for you to consider also? Please leave it open as a possibility, in case you might not be aware of your apparent deviations from Catholic teachings.
If I was mainly interested to read Roman Catholic standard, I wouldn’t be reading what you write. I would just go to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and read what they say there. Yours, however, appears to be a novelty approach to Catholic teachings, just as was Teilhard de Chardin’s “evolutionist” version of Christianity, a version which has largely failed and was censured by the Vatican.
Is this a fair assessment & comparison with your views, since you’ve promoted Teilhard in this thread, and surely have entertained Teilhard’s ideas, granted, not all positively, here with another unorthodox Catholic, who is a Teilhardian?
“The behaviors of lions, chimps, orangutans, and bonobos I refer to are well established physical evidence. Question 1: Are you doubting this?”
No, I am not doubting the existence or evidence of behaviours and actions of lions, chimps, orangutans, and bonobos. Of course not! Why would you even make this otherwise trivial claim?
Question 2: Are you claiming that such Homo sapiens creatures (that were not accountable beings in the image of God) were committing crimes and sins?
No. Yet rather than being problematic for Christianity, that is instead YOUR problem in promoting a novelty Catholic evolutionist position as a philosophical physicist. It’s not a problem for historical Christianity, which doesn’t teach about Homo Sapiens the way you are doing now. “Christianity” as “we” know it throughout history starts with “Adam”, not with Homo Sapiens. Do you disagree?
It sounds like you’re trying to do something similar to what S.Joshua Swamidass is doing. Let me suggest that is a bad and heterodox idea.
You wish to start with Homo Sapiens , which shows you’ve drunk the “natural history of religion” Cool Aid by atheists and are now trying to repackage it for Christian evangelicals here at BioLogos. That’s how it sounds, sorry. No doubt you will emphasize to me how that is untrue, and merely my false impression from your words above. Your anthropology appears to start with Homo Sapiens, rather than with Christ.
“Before God made Homo sapiens in the Image of God, the Homo sapiens creatures did such actions but they were not aware of being morally responsible and therefore accountable toward God for them.”
That’s a “thought experiment” that doesn’t come from Scripture, right? You’re speculating, iow, right? If not, then please quote the source material from Scripture supporting your position. I don’t think the support you need to justify your “philosophy” about this is actually there.
““selfish” in the sense that the actions they lead to are criminal and sinful”
No, that’s retrodiction and awkwardly mixing fields of interpretation. There was no “law” given for pre-Adamites to violate, as you know. Your view is thus evolutionarily fantastic – it makes things up and then suggests they might be historical – but there’s no clear moral teaching evident in it. Indeed, evolutionism as an ideology has been used to viciously attack Christian morality, claiming that “sin is natural”. The view of “sin is natural” sounds very similar to your position, even though I don’t doubt you wish to embrace the Vatican’s teachings on this topic.
Now that I have answered your two questions, quid pro quo:
Question 3: Do you mistake lions, chimps, orangutans, and bonobos for human beings?
Social sciences and humanities study human beings, not zoology. Why are you asking me to comment on animals, when the topic is human beings? It makes your position sometimes sounds animistic this way, Antoine, not RC Christian. It thus seems that you leave the spiritual tent, talk to the “secular science” audience, then wish to re-enter the Christian tent as if the same language makes sense and should be adopted. Yet it doesn’t and won’t be adopted that way.
Previous questions unanswered from above:
Question 4: Is this the offering, or if not, who are the other main figures (e.g. Novak & Coakley, Fuentes)?
You have offered NO names of scholars who you draw on so far to me, Antoine. Are your thoughts so entirely novel that you’re the only one suggesting these things, that you cannot point to anyone before you who was arguing the same thing as you are now? I doubt it. So will you please help by stating where you got these “ideas” from? It seems all atheists and agnostics so far that you take your language from, with a bit of Catholic supervenience on top of it. Forgive me please that I have not read all 1,455 posts in this thread, in case you’ve already shared the names of those you draw on for your ideas as presented here now.
Question 5: Why otherwise the “scare quotes” around “selfish” than that you mean to equivocate “selfish” with “sin”?
Again, I don’t think there actually is “scientific” evidence for your claims. Certainly it wouldn’t be a physicist sharing the evidence with us anyway, right, since that isn’t the most relevant field? Instead, you are asking me to take onboard your “philosophy”, it seems. And frankly, I don’t see coherency in your evolutionary philosophy regarding humanity as presented so far, which appears to veer away from Christian standards. Yes, I could be very wrong about your veering, but so far have not seen you acknowledge being aware of it.
In short, please don’t ask me or others to follow you into heresy due to a European “philosophical stance” that you are asking people to take along with you today. I hope that is not what you’re asking for here. Instead, I would suggest you promote the teachings of the Church Fathers, rather than “selfish evolutionary mechanisms” as if that idea were inevitable and brilliant. Sorry, it’s not.
Question 6: “Was Etienne Gilson a “selfish evolutionary mechanisms” or “selfishness intrinsic to the mechanism of evolution” kinda guy? Was Bergson? Is Margaret Archer?”
No, none of them was or is. Only you embrace “selfish evolutionary mechanisms”, Antoine, as part of your theological anthropology, it seems. But you can of course directly say otherwise, and I would express remorse at having misunderstood, if that’s not actually true about your “offering” here. Thanks for moving the conversation forward.