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Does anyone besides me see a contradiction between the Oparin/Urey/Miller hypothesis and Pasteur's abiogenesis?

Both are taught in high school biology as scientific fact.

Andrew,

Orthodox churches have pews?

As always, while I disagree with your conclusions, I respect and enjoy reading your thoughts on this.

Might I only say, once again, that I am not advocating for a young earth theory and I do believe that one can hold to your position on the billion year old earth with man as a later creation while still believing in a literal Adam and a literal Eve. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

God bless!

Gordo

Doc,

You gotta remember that HS Biology and Chemistry were a looong time ago for me! I still get my p and s orbitals confused!

Can you splain? (or sum up)

Gordo

From Wikipedia:



The Oparin/Urey/Miller hypothesis:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

Wikipedia articles, view discretion is advised.

Basically, Pasteur found that non-living material cannot give forth life. Oparin/Urey/Miller propose that methane, hydrogen, water, ammonia, and electricity create certain amino acids. Therefore these amino acids became life. Life from lifelessness.

Perhaps you are both right!

In my understanding the Church expects us to understand the "inspiration" of the text to include any clear literary forms originally intended by the human author. Since it is clear that "Adam" is the same word in Hebrew as "man", and he is "adamah", i.e., "from the earth", and Eve means "mother of all the living", there does seem to me to be a didactic purpose on the part of the original author, beyond simply telling "a tale".

Whether this is appropriately called "myth" or not, I don't think we should understand it as "fiction". Rather there is a mystery being communicated here, which John Paul II (the Great) spent a long time trying to explicate in the catecheses he gave us known as the "theology of the body". In his view these early chapters of Genesis speak a great deal about man, his nature, and his destiny. JPII even mentions that, understood properly, there is a mythical quality about these passages. (I don't think he was trying to be terribly dogmatic about it, just acknowledging the possibility, rightly understood.)

That doesn't have a great deal to do with evolution directly, but I think that the idea that there is something in man that is in common with the rest of God's creation, as well as the idea that, nevertheless, God took man's formation as His own special project, are both there.


Again, perhaps you're both right! In my understanding, we Catholics really come to think about "Adam" as a historical individual thanks to St. Paul (the passage someone helpfully posted earlier in this thread), and his vision of Christ as the New Adam. That is, we believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ as did St. Paul, and we have from him the correlation: "just as through one man... so through one man....". I have read modern Jewish reflections on Genesis, and they don't have the need to see Adam as a single individual, viewing him more as "everyman". But, of course, they don't believe Jesus is the Christ.

The Council of Trent (normative for me, anyway) used these understandings to teach that original sin is passed on to us by generation, not emulation. As Andrew said, no one had yet theorized about evolution, so they couldn't address that issue. That is where Pope Pius XII felt the need to make the point he did in Humani Generis (also quoted above somewhere in this thread).

Fr. Stanley Jaki, eminent Benedictine physicist and theologian, in various of his works, but very nicely in Bible and Science (1996), invokes St. Augustine's De Genesi ad Litteram, Bk I, where the saint pleads that where some item mentioned in the bible is known, even to pagans, to be other than as depicted, as when it is known mathematically or by experience to be false, that Christians should thereby realize that some sense other than the literal sense should be understood, lest they give occasion to heretics and pagans to ridicule our Faith and Scriptures.

That is a paraphrase, from memory, since I don't have the book to hand.

(Fr. Jaki also comments that this was, in fact, the passage Galileo used with the Holy Office to plead that he be free to pursue his work. Ironically, Galileo's theology was brilliant, but he couldn't actually prove his physical theories, simply hint at them. Nobody else could, either, for about 200 years!)

Michael

Dear Gordon,

I do not believe I am arguing at all from a "modernist" position in suggesting that there are mythic elements in Genesis. I unhesistatingly accept the inerrancy of scripture. While you may not agree with Andrew and I about how literally we take some of the narrative in Genesis, I think it is inaccurate to lump us in the category of higher critics. I think a consistently literal reading of Genesis would indeed point to a young earth, which is completely untenable.

God's Word can be expressed in mythic language. Let's not be afraid of the word myth, and assume its use has to do with liberalism or higher criticism.

Andrew's quote of Origen is highly instructive. Allegorical and symbolic interpretations of the scripture are indeed a legitimate part of our orthodox Christian heritage. Even the other Fathers who took everything literally will also assert the allegorical interpretation of scripture.

The existence of a literal Adam and Eve would not imply that the narrative in Genesis is literal history, or that we should look to the narrative for scientific explanations of the universe.

I do understand Gordon, you are making a point that the historical reality of Adam and Eve is crucial to our understanding of the fall and original sin, and hence, redemption. I am challenged by that. And I admit that I do not have a good explanation for these truths, or at least, cannot explain them well, without positing a literal Adam and Eve.

But I do think that there are some problems that come along with taking Genesis too literally that can really be a stumbling block for faith.

God bless, my friends!

Lance

I just wanted to say that the discussion in this thread is highly instructive. So, I thank everyone for their contributions.

Joe

Michael McD


I just want to be clear that I don't have a problem with a single source for humanity, in other words I think there is an "Adam". What I don't go along with is a literal reading of Genesis, and I do find myself in agreement with the interpretation offered by Origen. I think what Genesis contains are mythic elements used to describe the underlying truth of the story - people are created in the image of God, meant to be with God, but have been endowed with free will and can therefore turn away from him.


That's an interesting quote, and I will have to look in to that book. I had never heard of Fr. Jaki.

lance


Or a literal understanding of the genealogies which point to Adam in my opinion.

PS Also, one area of higher criticism I will say I do think is right (and this is really unrelated), is the documentary hypothesis.

PPS Has anyone read the OT book by Fr. Boadt?

Andrew

I find it illuminating to think that if there are mythic, didactic elements in Genesis, they are the work of the Holy Spirit in the final analysis!

For a short biography and pretty good bibliography, check out Wikipedia entry for a start:

Stanley Jaki [en.wikipedia.org]

I've read a number of his works, and the only one that I found a bit "dated" was his 1969 Brain, Mind and Computers, since being a programmer, the field has advanced well beyond where it was in the Sixties. Not that Fr. Jaki's insights are "dated", just that the materialist arguments are couched differently.

Michael

I addition to Jaki's work which I enjoy very much, I also have found Anglican priest and theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne's work very helpful to me in thinking through the science of faith.

Mary

Well, speaking as a Catholic, we must believe that the teaching of Pius XII and the council of Trent that polygenism is false, is preserved from error. Any "scientific" findings that would try to prove polygenism true would simply be false.

Council of Trent
Decree Concerning Original Sin:

(#2.) "If anyone asserts that the transgression of Adam injured him alone and not his posterity,[7] and that the holiness and justice which he received from God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has transfused only death and the pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul, let him be anathema, since he contradicts the Apostle who says: By one man sin entered into the world and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.[8]

(#3). If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam, which in its origin is one, and by propagation, not by imitation, transfused into all, which is in each one as something that is his own, is taken away either by the forces of human nature or by a remedy other than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ,[9] who has reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification and redemption;[10] or if he denies that that merit of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church, let him be anathema;

Regarding the so-called "Augustinian view" of original sin, I was wondering what evidince from the wrtings of the early church fathers you could cite which teach that unbaptised infants can be saved. All of the early church fathers that I have come across explicitly teach that unbaptised infants cannot be saved, and yet almost all Orthodox Chruches teach that unbaptised infants can be saved. This clearly indicates to me that the early church fathers believed in the Catholic concept of Original sin. How can Orthodox Churches teach that unbaptised infants can be saved when this teacing can not be found in the teachings of the early church?

dstan51,

Why would God create a fetus and then let it spontaneously abort and condemn it to hell?

That's why St. Augustine was wrong. Many embryos abort before the woman even knows she's pregnant.

St. Gregory of Nyssa has a letter on the unbaptized infants who die. I will try to find it.

Well, this is why I am not in communion with Rome, because I think that Trent is wrong. So, according to Trent, I am anathematized.

Joe

The text of St. Gregory of Nyssa is "On Infants' Early Deaths," where he says unequivocally that such infants are saved because they are without sin. He considers unbaptized children to be without sin until they reach the age of reason. I'm not sure if this text is online.

Joe

With respect...

I'm not sure it's that simple. Do we actually always know why God does or allows all things?

I think that there is a need for caution in simply asserting "that's why St. Augustine was wrong". The best you can say is St. Augustine was being overly cautious, if that's what you mean. God made nature, and natural processes do not always achieve their natural ends. Why does God allow that?