The Origin of the human Family (part I)
The hottest topic in the entire area of faith & science is undoubtedly the origin of (the hu)man (family): are we created directly or evolved (by secondary causes)? This post aims to provide an answer to this, first and foremost from the perspective of scientific observations and logic, but certainly also from theological reasoning, church tradition and from morality. At the end, the implications for the relationship between science and faith (specifically the catholic church) are also discussed. [NB the title tries to be a reference to both On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (from 1859) and the encyclical Humani Generis (on the human family) of Pope Pius XII (from 1950)]
Introduction
The blog post titled Why Science & Religion? argues that a mutually fruitful encounter is possible between both thematic areas. (Natural) sciences, which describe and explain [NB the distinction between the two concepts is important: everything that happens can be (scientifically) described, but only what is subject to underlying laws can one explain in terms that it had to happen. Example: I am walking down the street, trip over a stone and fall on my face. A camera can record all this and in this way my location can be determined at any time. However, only after I have stumbled can my movement be mechanically explained (predicted) because then I no longer have any influence on it since I have lost my balance] how the (material) world works namely has theological consequences (and guiding metaphysical starting points); and religion, which deals with things like metaphysics, the meaning of life and happiness, starts first of all from the material reality. In short, subjects that touch on both science and religion have something to offer to both areas. The strength of (natural) science(s) (namely its falsifiability through experiments) also brings with it practical and intrinsic limitations, especially where it concerns historical events. Moreover, science is indebted to christianity in terms of worldview, universities, 'the West' and much catholic support. Religion also has its limitations, of course, as the main inputs are specific revelations with their need for interpretation; hence the great amount of disagreement about it among people. Listening to each other can therefore benefit both, science keeping the right direction, and belief receiving correction or confirmation and thus more appreciation and/or depth. The Logos (→mind) and the Word of God (→Bible) are both names for Jesus for a reason, who moreover said: “without Me you can do nothing”?!
This post therefore seeks to address the theme of the origin of man (the human family) from both science and religion in order to arrive at a complete and consistent picture of this origin, including what we can learn from it.
Part I (here) will describe the generally accepted view of this origin namely (theistic) evolution and the theological questions it leaves open. Clarity about the terms used is very important too in this.
Part II (next post) looks at the scientific state of affairs, specifically also the theoretical possibilities of the proposed mechanism.
Part III (after that) then considers what this means for open theological questions, also from the perspective of church tradition (Bible) and morality (view of God). The appendix contains a list of quotes from church history to indicate how people have traditionally thought about this theme.
I) Creation by evolution
The generally accepted view of both the ordinary and the more informed believer is that it is not about how, but that God created the world (and man), and so that there is no objection to the scientific evolution paradigm and that the church has never condemned evolution. On the contrary, Humani Generis has explicitly allowed research into the physical origin of Adam and also more recently popes have held positive views about evolution, right? More so, St Augustine (354-430 AD) already warned many centuries ago against a too literal (scientific) interpretation of Holy Scripture (Genesis) and doesn't the book have two different (and contradictory) creation stories, implying the same thing?! And is creation not more impressive if it seems to happen all by itself (naturally), as it is too complicated to originate on its own anyway? In other words, if it is clear that Life and its Development are nothing less than miraculous, then the way of creation doesn't matter anymore?!
Yet an essence, a sine-qua-non of creation remains that cannot be false as seen from faith: God created the world i.e. it has a starting point, it is not eternal [NB though St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD) claims that even for an eternal universe it would depend on a Creator for its existence] (reflected by the Big Bang and that the universe is not in thermodynamic equilibrium) & He created mankind in His image (there is one human race with a single origin and a radical difference from the animals that is a-material since God is also spirit); and finally, the doctrine of the fall: the first humans rebelled and were excluded from paradise (God's concrete presence) which introduced war, suffering, death and destruction into human history [NB eating the Tree of Life made them immortal in 'Eden', right?]. Probably (but not mandatory) there were just a few people, otherwise God, as in the story of Noah or Lot (Cain!), could have continued with the incorrupt remainder.
From the scientific viewpoint, the general history of Life mainly follows from the comparison of DNA (especially mitochondrial) and fossils. Due to the uncertainty of the first and the inescapable lack of (complete) specimens of the second, it is not self-evident to connect the dots of (mainly recent) history; yet a very plausible story [NB a good example is "A little history of almost everything" by Bill Bryson from 2003] may be put together about roughly when, where and how Life emerged, developed and spread. How relatively recently (about 200,000 years ago) a small group of Homo Sapiens first emerged in East Africa, quickly spread over the world and began to use more complex tools, to keep funerals and to paint; so very much like modern people.
With the possible exception of finding the exact bones of 'Adam' and 'Eve', it is moreover difficult to see what science (and/or faith?!) can say more about this short (and very exceptional?) specific part of the history of the origin of man. In other words, end of the problem! Right?
Ia) Open questions & ambiguities
For many, scientists as well as believers, this is indeed the end of the story. For sufficiently others this story is a lot less satisfying and leaves a lot to be desired.
•for example, what about the difference between 'creation' and 'providence' (also called primary and secondary causality)? The first is supernatural and causes something essentially new while the second makes use of laws of nature and expresses itself as 'circumstancial coincidences'. The first must be finished (except for incidental miracles) otherwise no reliable natural laws can exist and therefore no science; theologically, that would amount to pantheism.
•related to this, how can evolution (as a scientific theory, which cannot create), yet have a goal (pursuing an increase in complexity)?
•and what about the image of man as a unity of body, soul and spirit? The soul is the life principle of the body and the mind is unique to man; did God create Adam by replacing or transforming the mortal soul of an animal into an immortal spiritual soul? But if a body can have different souls, where is the unity between the two?
•or did God already ensoul Adam at his (immaculate!?) conception in the womb of an animal? Can then an animal produce (and educate) a human? Or did maybe also the animal soul slowly evolve into a human soul, with (semi-immortal??) animal-people as a result?!
•but doesn't a degradation of either the unity of man himself or the distinction with the animals then have no consequences for the sanctity of the human body, which manifests itself above all in the life that is weakest, around conception and death? [NB even Thomas Aquinas was wrong about the ensoulment of man; interestingly, Serbian abortionist Stojan Adasevic repented after an apparition of St Thomas and then suggested that the saint had come to correct his mistake]
•connected with that, is our sexuality still sacred, or but only something animalistic?
•and the indissolubility of marriage, is that only symbolical if also the creation of Eve from Adam's side is no more than a nice image?
•and how can the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 be in conflict with each other if all those church fathers were of a different opinion? Were they not intelligent enough to see the problem? [NB FYI, their view was that Genesis 2 is day 6 of Genesis 1 described in more detail; that the plants mentioned are only cultivated plants and that the coming forth of the animals is a past tense, so that it was already done before]
•but if the church tradition was wrong on this fundamental point, which other points need to be reconsidered?
•regarding morality, doesn't evolution (the struggle for existence / survival of the fittest) turn egoism into a good thing? [NB Charles Darwin (1809-1882 AD) in On the Origin of Species says: “egoism is the basis of my theory”; and later in 1871 in The Descent of Man he even says: “not far in the future the civilized races will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savages in the world.”] Is Christian morality then opposed to that of (unchristianly??) created nature?
•related to this, could a good, loving God have created the world through death and suffering? The great amount of suffering in the world is already causing many to lose faith in God. How can suffering be not merely a consequence of (human) original sin, but an intrinsic part of the intended order of creation?
•all things considered, is it really so strange that many have seen evolution theory as invalidating creation? And that because of this many have even lost their faith in God?!
Ib) Scientific Concepts
Let us first consider what this word 'evolution' actually means:
1) possibly nothing but development, changing a system over time (like billiard balls on a table), something that natural science in general describes: from the initial conditions and the laws of nature it can be predicted how the system looks like in the end. The system at beginning and end doesn't essentially differ i.e. they have the same information content. Evolution in this sense also concerns the development of living things from a fertilized egg to an adult one which also takes place according to fixed laws of nature and thus retains information (stored in the DNA of the creature).
2) Furthermore, it may mean the natural variation of species, that descendants of a population differ to some extent from their parents (also called “micro-evolution”) and therefore be more or less successful than them. This also preserves information, the descendants together have the same genetic information as the parents. Severe selection in the gene pool can even lead to degeneration or decrease of genetic information of a species. Natural variation can also make a population split into two different subpopulations letting evolution take on the meaning of 'common descent;' each sub-population obviously then has less genetic information than the original.
3) In addition, the origin of life may be meant from non-living matter. This requires an increase of information because living systems are necessarily complex.
4) The same goes when evolution is understood as an organism changing into a new life form with different and possibly more information. Together with the splitting of populations, this would theoretically make the whole diversity of life possible from the first simplest organism.
a) a sub-concept of this is the descent of man from ape-like creatures ('primates'). [NB regarding the information increase of this: (the classical maximum of) the information from human DNA (with its more than 3 billion base pairs) is 750 MB, in other words it just fits on a normal CD; chimpanzee DNA as 'closest relative' differs (at least) 4% from us.]
5) Furthermore, 'evolution' may refer to the specific Darwinian mechanism of random variation and natural selection as an explanation for the origin of the whole wealth of diversity. [NB the commonly used term "survival of the fittest" is, properly considered, no more than a tautology]
6) Finally, evolution can also indicate a paradigm in which everything advances on its own. Again this is theologically equivalent to pantheism which conflicts with the scientific endeavour.
I myself will use term 4) for evolution: that the history of life "developed" from few, simple organisms to many different complex organisms. Theologically there is a difference with 4a) but not scientifically. 5) is called Darwinism. 6) will not be given further attention, 1) turns the concept into an empty shell and 2) is unproblematic and generally accepted. About the origin of life 3) there is a fairly general consensus that this is a scientific mystery (despite the 'very plausible story').
Fred Hoyle (the scientist who gave the Big Bang its name, 1915-2001 AD) even said: ”the probability of life (spontaneously) appearing is 1 on 10^40,000, big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.” According to Hoyle it is therefore no longer useful to talk about Darwinism or even about a theory of common descent if the spontaneous emergence of life is impossible?! And so consequently Hoyle gave up his atheism and became a deïst.
To (possibly) better understand his train of thought, we need to look into more detail at the concepts of randomness, coincidence and chance and how they relate to the concepts of providence, design and intention. They are indeed not necessary opposites as Stephen M Barr (cosmologist and catholic, born 1953) claims.
Randomness, understood as an uncorrelated series, is a practical scientific concept on which statistical tests can be performed. An unguided (unplanned / aimless) process on the other hand is a philosophical claim that there was no intelligent will behind it. Any process can (but need not) be considered unguided if it (seemingly) produces nothing special. As an example the many improbable events can be mentioned that shape our lives. The alternatives would (often) have been just as improbable and no less special. A random (uncorrelated) sequence, however, should be considered planned if it causes a very specific order. [NB the question then is to what extent arbitrary is still an appropriate name. . .] A good example is the emergence of the earth from the 'arbitrariness' of the Big Bang as cosmology describes it. The Anthropic Principle (see post of the same name) expresses how special that process must have been [NB of course assuming that it happened, we were after all not there ;-), see also the blog post Why Science & Religion?] This principle has made such an impression on scientists that it made some even give up their atheism. The Anthropic Principle uses scientific theories (because it concerns a process of nature), but is, as a series of exceptional incidents, not itself scientifically explainable (as a process that occurs naturally, by itself) [NB that the 'multiverse' theory tries to do this is irrelevant].
Evolution, as a random (uncorrelated, historical) process, so does not need to be unguided, but is considered compatible with divine providence as a series of miraculous events. This would, like the Anthropic Principle, even undeniably point to God as creator. Theologically, it wouldn't really differ from what is called 'progressive creation', the supernatural intervention of God at different points in history (during the six 'days' of Genesis 1). As a scientific explanation this is however not acceptable, because then it is no longer a process that automatically, naturally, occurs as (neo-)Darwinism claims. And so it is quite logical to reject evolution as a scientific process on the basis of impossibly small chances as Hoyle has done.
The central concept in science, namely, is the conservation of information, that a spontaneous increase of information is too improbable to occur on its own. It needs no explanation that the emergence of life, or of complex organisms from simple ones, requires an enormous increase in information. In everyday life, information is often lost (the normal entropy processes such as the destruction of a book), but can also be found (if it was put in before, see again The Anthropic Principle); it can also be created (by writing something down yourself) or destroyed (by erasing the written text again), but it cannot arise or perish (spontaneously increase or decrease). [NB see also the extensive scientific presentation on www.originality-of-species.net]
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