Many thanks Tim for this clarification.
I think I am now understanding better your position.
Could you please quote the Bible passage you have in mind?
Then I will try to post a fitting comment.
Albert,
I dare to repeat my reply to your comment above:
The “millions of Homo sapiens” (you refer to) that lived spread all over the earth at the time of the Flood (about 3,000 BC) were not yet accountable and therefore could not “misuse the gift of conscience”: They did not perish in the Flood. Similarly, “the millions of other species who never reached that stage of morality” did not perish in the Flood.
In the Flood perished only about 200,000 people who populated the region where Noah and his family lived, and had corrupted their ways and filled the earth with violence. These people were the only accountable modern humans living at that time on earth, and in this sense the Flood can be considered universal.
I would be thankful to know whether or not you agree to this my reply.
Happy All Saint’s day to you and your family!
The first 11 chapters of Genesis.
The point of the Hebrews even having a genealogy record, past on to all generations, would be God working with humanity, and the humanity that ultimately disobeyed God despite this God’s direct relationship with them.
By “Bible” you refer to:
Are you claiming that there have been humans who were NOT affected by “Adam’s disobedience”?
If YES, who were these humans and what happened to them?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
Yes, there were other humans.
There were almost 2000 years from when they were created on day 6 until the Flood. Plenty of time to populate the earth and transform it several times over.
The Bible does not tell us what happened to the original humans, and a small detail about their families or offspring. Nor can history really. I do not think that the earth was repopulated by any other humans outside of Noah’s family. I would dare say that the original humans are still alive but out of sight of the physical experience.
They would make up in part, the council of God, and the spiritual beings that are part of the conflict between God and Satan.
As a complement to the quotes of Pope Benedict XVI at the introduction of this thread I would like to post a quote of his address in the General Audience of Wednesday, 6 February 2013, just 5 days before he announced his resignation on the morning of Monday, 11 February 2013.
I think this quote reflects very well the status of Catholic doctrine and papal pronouncements, and shows that Catholic faith does NOT require “a literal couple as the origin of our species”.
“I would like to highlight a final teaching in the accounts of the Creation; sin begets sin and all the sins of history are interconnected. This aspect impels us to speak of what is called “original sin”. What is the meaning of this reality that is not easy to understand? I would just like to suggest a few points.
First of all we must consider that no human being is closed in on himself, no one can live solely for himself and by himself; we receive life from the other and not only at the moment of our birth but every day. Being human is a relationship: I am myself only in the “you” and through the “you”, in the relationship of love with the “you” of God and the “you” of others. Well, sin is the distortion or destruction of the relationship with God, this is its essence: it ruins the relationship with God, the fundamental relationship, by putting ourselves in God’s place.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that with the first sin man “chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good” (n. 398). Once the fundamental relationship is spoilt, the other relational poles are also jeopardized or destroyed: sin ruins relationships, thus it ruins everything, because we are relational. Now, if the relationship structure is disordered from the outset, every human being comes into a world marked by this relational distortion, comes into a world disturbed by sin, by which he or she is marked personally; the initial sin tarnishes and wounds human nature (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 404-406). And by himself, on his own, man is unable to extricate himself from this situation, on his own he cannot redeem himself; only the Creator himself can right relationships.” (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience of Wednesday, 6 February 2013.)
This means:
Catholic doctrine requires that the first sin in the history of humanity has consequences for the whole humanity that the other sins don’t have. By contrast it does not require that the first sin is committed by someone from whom all humanity is genetically or genealogically descended.
All right.
But if the Flood happened about 3000years BC (5000 BP), then on the Basis of the available scientific data it is impossible that the earth was repopulated only by humans of Noah’s family.
Instead of assuming that the original humans outside Noah’s family are still alive but out of sight of the physical experience, one can very well assume that these other human creatures were not accountable before the Flood. After the Flood they were transformed by God into accountable humans, who interbred with those descended from Noah.
All the humans existing today originate from these marriages between Noah’s family and millions of these other humans outside Noah’s family.
Could you agree to this?
I do not agree. I do not think that current biological understanding can even guess at how God created humans. Any genetic bottleneck does not even take what the Bible states into consideration, but makes predictions on limited knowledge based on current facts, and theorizes a contrived time frame.
Then there is the assumption that physical biology can explain the spiritual side of biology.
I think one would have to figure out the Biblical account and then figure in our current understanding. I am not anti-science. I am anti-assumption of unknown facts.
For instance the 3 wives could be original created humans carrying all the genetic makeup neccessary for all variations. There is no bottleneck of the physical but of time. That does not go against science because 7,000 years ago the issue was with the male genetics, and had little to do with the female genes at all. God does not tell us how he repopulated the earth, other than the change in language.
@AntoineSuarez
Antoine, I cannot help but wonder whether you and Tim, @Timtofly, could profit from a careful (re-)reading of Teilhard’s vision of the crucial importance of the Noosphere (the sphere where Ideas, or Memes, evolve and are transmitted; as Tim puts it: ‘the spiritual side of biology’) has in forming our Worldviews. IMHO, the most productive way of defining the origin of Humankind is when Homo sapiens’ brains (by some yet unknown mechanism) evolved to use symbols (words) to invent and transmit ideas and thereby create societies that extended beyond mere kinship. Your quotation from Pope Benedict XVI bears this out.
It is almost universally accepted that it was through the formation of societies that humankind was able to fulfill the command in Genesis to “dominate” the earth. Much earlier in the history of evolution, certain insects (ants, termites, bees, etc.) cemented their niche in a changing environment through societies driven soley by biological mechanisms. For Homo sapiens, the driving force was mental (Noos). In insect societies, behavior is not a matter of choice; i.e. they are strictly amoral. Most humans (certainly most Christians) believe they have a true freedom of choice; i.e. a Conscience that can choose to ‘override’ the selfish element in the “struggle for individual survival”. In modern times, however, we find ourselves facing a dilemma when our “individual conscience” is in conflict with “societal conscience”–i.e. what the law allows.
with best wishes,
Al Leo
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Tim, I cannot figure out what do you mean by this.
Could you please explain this point more in detail?
Why 7000 years ago “the issue was with the male genetics”?
Thanks in advance.
In my view, the appearance of writing at about 3200 BC fulfills undeniably all the conditions you enounce.
Do you agree to this?
Not exactly. By the time, Homo sapiens made use of writing to record ideas, I believe they definitely should be considered fully human. However, their ability to produce beautiful cave art, including imaginary figures that appear as part human, part fierce animal, and, most of all, when they buried their dead with ‘tools’ for an afterlife, they undoubtedly were sharing ideas orally. Science tells us that was occurring some 30,000 yrs ago–not just 3,000.
IMHO, Scripture must be read to fit that evidence–not the other was around. Are there not some scientists in the Vatican who hold this view (even if they are not in the majority)?
Al Leo
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Great Albert!
We both agree that at latest by the time of the appearance of writing at 3200 BC God created humankind in the image of God and endowed humans with the sense of accountability toward God and humanity.
Notice that the most pompous burials of the last centuries have probably been those of Lenin and Stalin, organize by an atheist regime. Burials alone do not reveal belief in afterlife and accountability toward God.
How do you prove that cave art and burials are signs of “accountability relationship” toward God and other humans?
“Creating societies that extended beyond mere kinship” requires to acknowledge in principle the Foundation of Law:
Humans are NOT allowed to kill other humans but are allowed to kill animals for food.
This is the command in Genesis 9:3-6.
So the formation of human societies based on “accountability relationship” requires that the gap between humans and apes became as sharp as it is today. Science tell us that this occurred 12000 BC.
Would you agree to this?
From what I’ve read (I can’t recall the location), burial usually meant a belief in the afterlife, and some of the art seems religious. Would that help?
Thanks Randy for your comment.
It would be helpful if you could “recall the location” to discuss the issue on the basis of facts.
Burials may simply reveal mourning for the dead or the inclination to remember them (as elephants also seem to do). In any case, mausoleums like those of Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc. hardly mean “belief in the afterlife” but rather the desire of representatives of totalitarian regimes to preserve the power.
By contrast:
Drawings like those we find in the ancient Egyptian funerary text Book of the Dead (about 1275 BC) clearly reveal awareness of accountability toward God.
Accountancy and contracts were main motivations for writing: Writing clearly demonstrates “accountability relationship”.
Interestingly, Mesopotamians seem to have shared Monotheism, as a belief in one God Marduk, who had different names. One of them, Nabu, was “Marduk of accounting”.
Anyway, it would be nice if you could provide some reference.
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To avoid misunderstandings I repeat the post with my usual username. I apologize for the mistake.
Thanks Randy for your comment.
It would be helpful if you could “recall the location” to discuss the issue on the basis of facts.
Burials may simply reveal mourning for the dead or the inclination to remember them (as elephants also seem to do). In any case, mausoleums like those of Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc. hardly mean “belief in the afterlife” but rather the desire of representatives of totalitarian regimes to preserve the power.
By contrast:
Drawings like those we find in the ancient Egyptian funerary text Book of the Dead (about 1275 BC) clearly reveal awareness of accountability toward God.
Accountancy and contracts were main motivations for writing: Writing clearly demonstrates “accountability relationship”.
Interestingly, Mesopotamians seem to have shared Monotheism, as a belief in one God Marduk, who had different names. One of them, Nabu, was “Marduk of accounting”.
Anyway, it would be nice if you could provide some reference.
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Antoine, the short answer is No, I do not agree. You seem to rely so heavily on the principle that Homo sapiens could only be considered human if they obeyed the precept that: “Humans are NOT allowed to kill other humans.” But you do not address the difficult exceptions most of us take to that rule.
My own experience is an example. In 1943 I took Basic Training in the army Infantry where I was taught the most effective ways of killing Nazi soldiers (or Japs, if I was sent in that direction) Labelling the enemy thusly made it easy to forget that they were human just as much as I was, and, on the whole, just as moral. (In the intervening years, some of my most beloved friends are German and Japanese.) What I was asked to do was to help put an end to the evil, immoral society that the enemy soldiers represented. That is why I make such a distinction between an Individual’s Conscience and their Societal Conscience.
In the matter of interpreting the circumstance of an individual’s burial as evidence for the belief in an afterlife and a Supreme Being, one can make a logical distinction between a Neanderthal burial at 35,000 BP from a Cro-Magnon burial at the same period. The Neanderthal’s reasons most likely were ‘cosmetic’–they did not want a decaying body ‘polluting’ a valuable living space. On the other hand, a Cro Magnon burial with ‘grave goods’ that represented hundreds of hours of careful labor, and surely indicated that they believed the deceased would appreciate these in some afterlife. The tombs of Lenin and Stalin show none of this.
So, you and I seem to differ somewhat on the details of when and how humankind appeared on earth, but we do seem to agree that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, that was promised before time began.
blessings,
Al Leo
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Thanks for your message. I am going to have to look that up! Thanks. I was a bit surprised at reading it myself, so my rash posting will lead to better research, with your kind inquiry. Thanks
This is part of the issue. The Holy Spirit guides us in reading and understanding what God says. We cannot use human understanding and teachings, even if the evidence points otherwise.
That is why I do no agree. Having said that, I am not tossing out human knowledge as long as it backs up Scripture instead of changing it. Nor am I saying my points are even the only view. There is a thread on this site that talks about the genetic bottleneck. And science seems to concede there was at least one if not a few.
My point is that humans did not evolve into the image of God, because that goes against Genesis nor can we find in Genesis any hint of that. We can find evolutionary acceptance of God waiting for the “right” time to insert the image of God into an evolved sapien in non-biblical sources, even before Moses put down the record directly from God. The Enuma Elish has been translated to convey that thought that was around thousands of years before today’s accepted scientific view.
I basically agree with you.
However, you assume that:
This assumption amounts to state that the genetic makeup of the 3 wives of the three Noah’s children was equivalent to the makeup of millions of wives in a large modern human population at about 3000BC.
But then, one can as well assume that after the Flood God made all these millions of modern humans in His Image by endowing them with awareness of accountability toward His commandment.
This corresponds perfectly to Genesis 9:3-6, where God explicitly establishes the universal prohibition of homicide because humankind is made in God’s Image , that is, God establishes a clear difference between the dignity of humans and that of non-human animals.
Thanks in advance for your answer.