My husband, who is not Catholic, will ask me from time to time about certain issues (I'm praying that in time he will convert!). I'm having trouble getting a definitive answer (Catholic based) for him on this. His question is: If Adam and Eve were real people, where do the cavemen fit in? Were Adam & Eve created before or after the cavemen? And if God distinguished Adam & Eve from the cavemen by giving them a soul, does that mean the cavemen did not have a soul? Does the Catholic Church view the evolution theory and Adam & Eve as co-existent? Thank you for any help with this!

-- Cori (chillhouse@comcast.net), November 28, 2003

Answers

I thought all Living thuigns had souls.

At any event, there are three theories.

Either Adam and Eve predate the so-called "Cave men" and thus are their prohenetors, or else God created other men befoire Adam, or else created others after Adam.

Now, I lean towatd the second theory. I beelive Man, a sa race, was mde on the 6th Day and Adam sometuke after the seventh.

But it isnt un reasonable to asume the Cavemen where themselves decended form Adam, After all, they arent as primative as you may think. Even plodding Neanderthal man had a brain twice the ize of modern man, burried their dead, and practiced religion and complexe societal issues. It can be easy, in fact, to assume that humanity was mroe diverse before the flood. but then, thats a theory.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), November 28, 2003.

First of all I would like to say that there is no single, simple, purely catholic answer to your question. Some Catholics would give a more or less fundamentalist answer that Adan and Eve were actual real people others more nor less on the line that I am going to say.... But that does not mean that one set of answers is 'right' or 'wrong' there are many roads up to a mountaintop so long as we get there I think it matters little how we go. Anyway here is my answer....my particular road up the mountain. The story of Adam and Eve was written by people many thousands of years ago. It was never written as something to be taken as literally true. The story of Adam and Eve is simply a vehicle to contain a series of messages to enlighten us. A---dam from the Hebrew means 'First man'. he represents man in his relationship to God just as Eve represents the first woman. They were not meant to be taken as actually real people just people in a story to carry to us the truth. The Catholic Church has no difficulty in accepting the Theory of Evolution...though there are indeed many Catholics who either accept it or dent it.....in either case acceptance or denial of it is not central to the teachings of the Church. For myself I cannot see how one can accept a fundamentalist approach in the light of modern scientific findings. To conclude; I think your husband is quite right to object to a literal reading of this story. But that is what it is a story....a story used to bring us great and beautiful truths....

-- Padraig Caughey (padraigcaughey@hotmail.com), November 28, 2003.

The real question is - were cave"men" actually "men"? That is, were they human beings, or were they non-human primates? From a purely scientific (evolutionary) perspective, we know that not all lines of early ("cave") primates have living descendents today. For example, one of the best known lines, Neanderthal "man", became extinct. So we know that that line of cave "men" were not "men" in the biblical/theological sense, and were not biological ancestors of modern human beings. The same is true of many other branches of the early primate family tree. Therefore, the question of whether Adam and Eve were created before or after most "cavemen" is really irrelevant.

Another fact of primate evolution that should be firmly understood is that human beings did not "evolve from apes" or "evolve from monkeys". No evolutionary biologist has ever suggested such a thing. The only voices who ever raise that ridiculous issue are those of fundamentalist Christians, who raise it precisely because it is ridiculous, and that is the light in which they hope to cast all of evolutionary biology.

The human body did not have an immortal soul until God breathed the soul into it, thereby creating humans in His own image and likeness. The Bible tells us that. Therefore the biological structure which was to become human could not be considered truly "human" until the very moment God performed that act. That was the moment when God created man, regardless of whether God's formation of the human body from non-living matter ("the dust of the earth") occurred instantaneously, or gradually, through an ongoing process of cumulative change, of His own design and creation. The Bible gives no hint of which method God used; therefore it is completely consistent with Christian belief to accept either theory.

What a Christian MUST believe is: (1) God is responsible for the creation of all that exists distinct from Himself; (2) God created human beings by endowing a biological body with an immortal spiritual nature; (3) human beings could not have come into existence by biological evolution alone, since man has a spiritual nature as well as a biological nature, and nothing spiritual can come into existence through a biological process. Other than that, a Christian is completely free to accept the premises of biological evolution completely, or partially, or not at all. Since all other questions regarding evolution are biological, not theological, they have no bearing on Christian belief.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), November 28, 2003.

Hi Cori as far as I understand it a Catholic is free to accept any scientific theory about human origins but must accept that the human race really did descend from an original pair of two human beings. We must also acknowledge that, at some stage, God infused an immortal soul into the human body.

The Cathechism teaches us

“The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents"

But be careful though!

I personally fell into the trap of falling for so called “creation science” because it appears scientific however nothing could be further from the truth. Its utter hogwash based on poor logic and a denial of over whelming evidence. Real scientists, like Paul above have shown this to me and I have really enjoyed learning more about the relationship between FAITH AND REASON.

Like Padraig said “For myself I cannot see how one can accept a fundamentalist approach in the light of modern scientific findings”

No Catholic can belive in creation sceince because it rejects the teachings of the Church in that they take the teachings on creation literaly when the church uses the word figruative. No Catholic can believe in creation science because it isn’t a science at all. Its an attempt to use scientific terminology to explain literal ideas about creationism. I have nothing to back me up here fromn theologians and Im just thinking aloud but I disagree with Paul in that its ok to believe in creationism , it is contrary to "reason" surely Paul. Catholics should not be free to believe in false science surely doesnt that devalue the relationship between faith and reason. I need to think about this some more. In short creationists reject all scientific knowledge and evidence that does not fit their view of the world, yet Catholics do not need to do this. Catholics should not reject or fear science that is carried out in a scientific manner, the Church teaches us this as a truth, yet creationism does exactly this. Therefore it follows logically that a Catholic cannot accept creationism for a number of reasons. Where does this logic fall down Paul ..in that science can never be “proven”?

Anyway Cori what is clear is that there is nothing to fear from science.

More from the Cathechism

“Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth”

"Methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things the of the faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are"

Good luck with that husband of yours Cori!

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), November 29, 2003.

Cori . . . take the last paragraph of Paul's response above; he says a lot with it.

Important to remember that Catholics do not take a "fundamentalist" approach to Creationism.

The Genesis accounts of Creation and the beginings of our "history of covenant" with God are understood by Catholicism, as basic truths of our faith.

If you insist upon their historical or scientific truth, you're going to run into problems. You wouldn't place that kind of yolk upon the Childrens stories of today; and that is basically what we find in Genesis, childrens story explanations of the great mysteries of our foundation as a civilization. They exist better if understood as campfire stories than scientific undisputable fact. They exist for us as explanation of "simple truth's" about our relationship with God.

The Bible is full of "stories." Some of them are short story (Ruth), some are tall tales (Jonah), some are love stories and some are the stuff of legend. The books of the bible are written in many different styles. You have to know the background or historical perspective of each book, before you assign factual truths at face value, to everything there.

If you do, which Creation "story" are you going to believe? The one in chapter one, or the other account in chapter two of Genesis. They both differ, but how can that be if both are grounded in "divine fact." The underlying truth to both accounts is that we were "created" from nothing, by a supreme being who was "good." This differs greatly from other perspectives at the time who believed that the world was formed in epic battles of the Gods and that we were living a world that was basicly "not good."

Numbers can also be misleading if taken as actual fact. Many times, numbers, when they appear in bible take on a symbolic nature. When you see the number 40, it is usually associated with times of peril or testing. 40 years in the desert, 40 days and 40 nights of flood, Jesus fasting for 40 days. We celebrate lent for 40 days. The number seven is a sign of God's perfection. (How many times must I forgive, seven times? No seven times seventy, translated to perfection to infinity, not 490 times. Seven sacraments of the church, seven days in the week) The number 12 speaks of a solid foundation. (12 tribes of Isreal, 12 apostles)

If possible, try to interest you husband in your local RCIA program. It is a very good way for you to settle any conflicts you and your husband have with the way practice of you faiths.

peace

-- Leon (Happy@Thanksgiving.com), November 29, 2003.

Thank you for all your quick responses! Sometimes I feel like I'm on a "slippery slope" when trying to explain some Catholic beliefs. Adam & Eve was one area that I had not read up enough on to answer him. I keep telling him that he's more Catholic than he thinks! He told me that the Catholic belief in Purgatory was "logical"! One of his main objections is that the Mass is too "formal", all the sitting, standing, kneeling, etc. I tried explaining all the parts of the Mass and why we stand, kneel, etc to each one but I think he just doesn't want to go to any service, Protestant or Catholic. Thank you again for all your help! Cori

-- Cori (chillhouse@comcast.net), November 29, 2003.

Jmj

Hello, Cori.
You wrote: "I'm having trouble getting a definitive answer (Catholic based) ..."

I just wanted to let you know that the original poster (Zarove) is not a Catholic and should not have posted without letting you know that. I couldn't rely on his answer.

You got a completely correct answer from a Catholic deacon, Paul M. What he said was supplemented by an important point from another Catholic, Kiwi, who mentioned the fact that we must believe that God first created the immortal soul of one man -- and then the soul of the man's wife -- and that we are all descended from these two "first parents." This is called "monogenism." Pope Pius XII declared, in the 20th century, that we are forbidden to believe in "polygenism" -- the theory that God inserted immortal human souls into a whole "tribe" of sub-humans.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), November 29, 2003.

Well Cori.! Peace to you and your husband!!!! You know I like you and your husband though I ve never met you!!! I think if I was to meet your hubby I would agree with him so much!!!

Often when I go to Mass I think that the people who are there are a pain in the ass!!!It seems so boring amd the people who are there seem to me to be there just because they have to be!!!!

Years ago I read a book by a man called G.K Chesterton a very prominent Catholic convert of his time......

He once wrote a book calles 'The Screwtape Letters'.....

This was a supposed conversation between a senior and a junior devil...

The junior devil tempted the convert to believe that the Church on Sunday was full of idiots.....look how fat she is.....look how ugly he is....look how dishonest he is...ect...ect..ect...

But the Church on Sunday ...or any other day is full of Saints!!!!.....

Look past how people look on the outside ;try if you can to look at their souls!!!!!!

The Church is full of real and most holy sainlts''' But it takes us to have the very real faith to see this!!!

Just so with the Mass but we must view this most profound mystery with the most Profound Faith!!!

-- Padraig Caughey (padraigcaughey@hotmail.com), November 29, 2003.

Reading this thread is very interesting! SEE YOU DO USE THE HSTORICSL CRITICAL METHOD OF BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION! You say that God LIED???!!! The Bible is a MYTH??? Just a STORY??!!! Yet follow what the POPE SAYS???? The POPE has more authority in your church than God's HOLY INERRANT ETERNAL WORD????

Cori: God said in his Word that he created the world in 6 literal days and I believe him. God doesn't lie. There is a wonderful creation ministry called ICR (Institute of Creation Research) www.icr.org They are real scientist who work trying to prove the creation theory of the Bible. Also, I recently read a good book from Ken Ham called, "Evolution: The LIE" It explains how it is impossible for evolution to be the truth according to Christian doctrine whether you are Catholic Lutheran or Baptist. Original Sin is essential to our faith! If God didnt create a perfect world, and man didn't fall into sin, then for what purpose did he himself come to earth and humble himself as a man to saving us? What is he saving us from? The sinful world he created? Makes no sense. Evolution is the religious belief of Atheists! According to Evolution the world evolved through death struggle brutality destruction cruelty the demise of the week. God didn't creat sin!

-- Jeanie (mary_kissmiss@hotmail.com), November 30, 2003.

"God said in his Word that he created the world in 6 literal days and I believe him."

A: Are you aware that a period of 24 hours isn't a "day" anywhere in the universe except on this little rock where we live? On other planets a "day" may be much shorter or much longer than an earth day. In outer space there is no such thing as a "day", since a "day" is the period of rotation of a planet. Why would the infinite and eternal God base the creation of the entire universe on the period of rotation of one little planet in one solar system in one galaxy among millions - which hadn't even been created yet?? Trying to force this verse to refer to 24-hour periods is just plain silly.

"I recently read a good book from Ken Ham called, "Evolution: The LIE" It explains how it is impossible for evolution to be the truth according to Christian doctrine whether you are Catholic Lutheran or Baptist"

A: Mr Ham's book and a dozen like it have one thing in common - their authors' ignorance of BOTH science and biblical exegesis. Anyone with any real knowledge of EITHER the Bible OR science can see through their groundless pseudo-arguments on the face of them. Such books are packaged ignorance. People who read them are either already ignorant of the facts, and become more ignorant by reading them; or, are already knowledgeable of the facts, and read three pages of such a book before tossing it in the trash. I have tossed several.

"Original Sin is essential to our faith! If God didnt create a perfect world, and man didn't fall into sin, then for what purpose did he himself come to earth and humble himself as a man to saving us? What is he saving us from?"

A: Absolutely correct! But what does this have to do with the development of biological species??

"Evolution is the religious belief of Atheists! According to Evolution the world evolved through death struggle brutality destruction cruelty the demise of the week. God didn't creat sin!"

A: Evolution is not a religious belief, any more than photosynthesis is. It is a natural, biological process, nothing more. If it were a belief of atheists, obviously only atheists would accept it. But the fact is, scientists of every religious background recognize biological evolution as the foundation and unifying thread of all biological science. Naturally, scientists who happen to be atheists describe evolution - and everything else - in atheistic terms. But scientists who are believers describe evolution in accurate terms - as one of many highly complex natural processes which could only have been designed by God, and which He set in place to direct and control the diverse elements of His natural creation. What an awesome display of His immeasurable power and glory!

I hate to tell you, but "death struggle brutality destruction cruelty the demise of the week" is going on all around you. In the soil in your back yard; in the pond you swim in; in the woods where you go camping or hiking. Species kill species to survive, and have been given by their Creator all kinds of deadly devices with which to incapacitate their prey. This is the plan of God. It has nothing to do with sin. Animals are not moral agents. They cannot sin. When a lion pounces on a gazelle and rips its head off, it may be violent, destructive, and brutal, and may even seem cruel by human standards, but it certainly is not immoral, nor is it in any way ungodly.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), November 30, 2003.

Jeanie, we will not be more easily persuaded to agree with you if you use lots of capital letters, 8 exclamation points, and 16 question marks. Save the theatrics for youngsters who are impressed by them, please. (Laurent LUG likes them too.)

Jeanie, I see that adding words to scripture runs in the family -- your Lutheran "family." Just as the heretical Father Martin Luther added the German "allein" to Romans 3:28 (to yield justification by "faith alone"), you have added "literal" to Genesis by saying, "God said in his Word that he created the world in 6 literal days ..."

Padraig, I hate to have to tell you this, but "The Screwtape Letters" was written by C. S. Lewis, an Anglican who never could quite overcome his prejudices and become a Catholic.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@Hotmail.com), December 01, 2003.

Paul M. drove the point into Faith's head very effectively: ''Scientists who are believers describe evolution in accurate terms - as one of many highly complex natural processes which could only have been designed by God, and which He set in place to direct and control the diverse elements of His natural creation. What an awesome display of His immeasurable power and glory!''

Yet, science isn't treating of any accomodation to God and His overt creation of the universe. A Creation everybody must acknowledge. Scientists are in the business of studying; working on deep problems, among these the thing we call Creation. They would call it instead Evolution, as a way of proving they aren't constrained by scriptural proofs. Constrained as ''Faith'' is constrained, in a BOX.

It may be evolution is itself a false key to what has resulted on this world. Even such a comfortable theory may yet prove wrong. I'm talking about the thing called Man. The Bible states it simply and with no attempt at sciences or theories. We accept that as the truth; but hardly a literal truth.

Chesterton had a fine insight. He pondered the mysterious cave paintings of prehistoric men. He thought the opposite of what many scientists think. What caused the cave men to draw beautiful pictures inside the cave? But most importantly: If they had evolved from the apes; at what point in evolutionary history did an ape paint pictures on the walls and the roof of a cave? Do monkeys draw pictures anywhere, as an evolved family like we're givin in evolutionary science?

Do monkeys build highways, or a tunnel underneath the English Channel? Do monkeys ferment wine? Build hospitals for the monkey race? No, non of these things.

And-- did APES pray to a God Creator? NO? Why not? The answer is hardly scientific; but it can't be refuted: Because they aren't men!

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), December 01, 2003.

Agreed - except for one point. Creation and evolution are not simply different names for the same concept. Neither are they opposing concepts. On the contrary, evolution (biological or other) is the study of CHANGE over time. Obviously, things cannot change until AFTER they exist. Therefore, evolution cannot even begin to occur until AFTER Creation has occurred. Creation deals with origins; evolution deals with changes in already existing things. Scientists can study evolution - of plant and animal species, of mountain ranges, of solar systems - but in so doing they have not even touched upon the concept of initial origins. Scientists can offer many reasonable theories concerning the gradual changes that occur in living and non-living things. But no scientist can suggest a rational theory of how matter and energy and space and time suddenly appeared from NOTHING. That event is Creation, and science will never explain it because science can examine only the existing, natural, post-Creation universe. The Creation was not a natural event, but a supernatural one, and therefore lies outside the realm of science. Which of course is why the frequently heard expression "creation vs. evolution" has no real meaning.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), December 01, 2003.

Ask yourself this question? If there were other forms of human life(Lucy 3.2M years ago) why was it so necessary at that time for God to create Adam & Eve? And where is the concrete proof the Jesus actually existed and was not a myth like some people say he was.

-- larry sanders (larry@hotmail.com), January 15, 2004.

Some people will say whatever absurd thing enters their minds, we have no contol over them. We can only reject their opposition. They rarely debate the questions. If they ever do, they demand eye-witness testimonies, and-- they are the very ones who construct ''Lucy'' the mother of us all, from a shard of skull or some other bone. For THAT, there is no eye-witness requirement! So much for impartial debate.

At present at least, DNA analysis couldn't disprove any truth God revealed to the ancients. Scientists will assign ultimate authority for their decisions on it. BUT:

Did Lucy pass on DNA to our first parents; or did God give Adam and Eve that DNA credited first to Lucy? Perhaps Lucy passed it on subsequently? When are scientists ever asked to produce concrete proof of Lucy's existence, instead of proof of ape-like bipeds?

To Larry Sanders, if he's interested: --Christ is a historical certainty. We know it beyond any doubt, and ''a myth'' is what nobody ever provides concrete proofs of. You may deny it; but it's a worthless type of objection; nobody influential --not even agnostic scientists has a way of proving that Jesus Christ did not live, die and rise again.

,Something to contemplate: -- You could call Dante a myth all you want; but ''The Divine Comedy'' proves that he's a real author who lived historically. Not only this work, but the testimony of his contemporaries who reviewed and loved the work. You would never dispute his existence, would you?

With the New Testament, as well as all our diverse historical documents, even from pagan sources, why should we deny Christ the same historical reality as Dante's? We shouldn't. But there will always be those who ''know better'', and who believe we are credulous and brainwashed. There's no help for them. They live in darkness, in spite of all the light around them scientific or not.

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), January 15, 2004.

There were not "other forms of human life" preceding Adam and Eve; but there clearly were other anatomically humanoid primates before actual humans existed. These were not "other forms of human life" because a human being is a combination of a biological body and a spiritual, immortal soul. Therefore, no matter how anatomically similar some of these creatures may have been to humans, they were not human beings unless they were descended from Adam and Eve, for God had not breathed into them "the breath of life", meaning spiritual, immortal life. That action by God constituted the creation of the first human beings, regardless of what humanoid creatures may have existed before then.

-- Paul M. (PaulCyp@cox.net), January 15, 2004.

My personal belief is that the Adam and Eve story represents a conscious choice by humanity at some point in history to reject God. I don't necessarily believe there were two people named Adam and Eve and they ate fruit from a forbidden tree (the fundamentalist view).

-- AVC (littleflower1976@yahoo.com), January 15, 2004.

It has nothing to do with a ''tree'' or the literal rendition of what God has definitely revealed. He reveals the truth as:

Our first parents were one man and one woman. They are called by the ancient prophets Adam and Eve. They were created innocent.

They disobeyed God's commandment. We are all a fallen race because of ADAM's sin. Only his sin.

No human being ever descended from any other human ancestors. That is the truth revealed by God.

The Catholic Church places an obligation on all believers to openly accept that truth as the Word of God; and no other belief of men.

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), January 15, 2004.