Tag: evolution

Did early humans with and without souls once co-exist?

This is the final part of the three-part question about religion and science that I’ve been answering in this series of posts. (The phrase “middle of the lake” comes from my book Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology, and Biblical Interpretation. It describes the attempt to address questions simultaneously from the non-overlapping perspectives of science and religion. The text of the book is available free online through the link provided.)

Q. This is more of a question that is posed along the border of religion and science, “from the middle of the lake” (assuming there is a middle). If God did use evolution and at some point along the line injected a soul into prehistoric humans as the Catholic Church maintains, wouldn’t that mean that there would have potentially existed simultaneously on the earth a mixture of “soul-possessing” hominids and “soulless” hominids separated by some small evolutionary difference (or maybe just geography)?

It is indeed the Catholic position that God grants souls to humans whose bodies come from evolutionary development.  As Pope John Paul II said in his October 22, 1996 address “On Evolution” to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

“Man is called to enter into a loving relationship with God himself, a relationship which will find its full expression at the end of time, in eternity.  . . . It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity. . . .  If the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God.  . . . As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.”

In other words, the Catholic Church does believe and teach that the human soul is created directly by God, even if “the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously.”

But when do humans receive their souls? The Catholic teaching regarding the individual today is that God grants a soul at the time of conception. But what about the very first humans?

The conclusion seems inescapable, if we are going to ask questions along these lines, that once “living matter which existed previously” had developed to the point where individual beings could be recognized as fully human, God granted them souls.  (I’d personally like to think that God granted souls to an entire early human community at once, in a sort of prehistoric Pentecost.)  But then the further conclusion is equally inescapable that, as you say, “there would have potentially existed simultaneously on the earth a mixture of ‘soul-possessing’ hominids and ‘soulless’ hominids separated by some small evolutionary difference.”

Of course neither science nor religion is in a position to shed any further light on this question.  Science cannot detect or verify the presence of a soul.  The Bible, for its part, says in Genesis that “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”  This indeed sounds like an organic origin for the human body and a divine origin for the human soul or spirit.  But the Genesis account represents all of humanity through a single figure (as an NIV translation note explains, “The Hebrew for man (adam) . . . is also the name Adam), so it doesn’t provide any details about early hominid communities with and without souls.

And so I can’t really say much more in answer to your question.  Indeed, the attempt to answer it confirms for me what I describe in Paradigms on Pilgrimage as “the wisdom of not spending too much time in the middle of the lake before swimming back to one side or the other.”  This is why, in my Genesis study guide, when groups get to the story of Adam and Eve, I acknowledge that there has been “much debate about how the events recounted here relate to scientific descriptions of human origins” and I encourage participants “simply to state how they understand the story of Adam and Eve:  is it literal?  symbolic?  allegorical?  something else?”  “Each person can then be encouraged to hold their own views on this question confidently and humbly,” I continue, “and engage Genesis on a literary level in this study.  This should be a level on which people who hold different viewpoints can have a profitable discussion.”

Still, you have certainly been very thoughtful about the “middle of the lake” implications of the Catholic view (which many outside the Catholic tradition may hold as well), and I thank you for sharing your reflections on it.

A question about science and religion

The following question about science and religion was recently submitted to this blog. Even though the writer invites me to “edit the length . . . for space considerations,” I find the whole question so thoughtful and articulate that I’d like to run it in its entirety here, and address its three points in a series of posts.

Q.  In your book Paradigms on Pilgrimage you state that “science, in seeking to explain origins, answers questions of what, when, and how, but responsibly remains silent on questions of who and why, which are instead the purview of religion and philosophy”. When you discuss Brian Alters’ book Defending Evolution, you speak sympathetically of his view that in its pursuit of knowledge science is properly “methodically naturalistic,” limiting itself to what can be observed and measured, as opposed to being “metaphysically naturalistic” and denying the existence of God or the supernatural.

These views seem to be held by many modern intellectuals including S. J. Gould who wrote that the “net of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work that way (theory)…[while the] net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap.”

In light of the above, I have a few questions that you might be able to answer through a couple of posts.

First, although it seems intellectually satisfying to isolate religion and science into separate domains with a shared border, it doesn’t seem to fully fit the picture. Though religion typically answers questions of who and why, it would seem to transgress into the realm of science in many areas. Considering that science looks at the empirical realm, any time the Bible maintains that miracles occurred, it steps into the realm of science. Jesus either had a human father or he didn’t. He also either physically died and rotted somewhere or he was brought to heaven. Either way though, those are measurable phenomena in the empirical realm that the Bible answers supernaturally. Of course, miracles are merely a suspension of the way the world normally operates but that is the point, if the spiritual world is real there should be empirical consequences and “facts” that science can never explain. Is it accurate to maintain that the two domains of science and religion really are so separate or is it more of an ideological goal to strive for to achieve clarity in thinking?

This part of the question is answered here.

Secondly, I would agree that it would be difficult to expect scientists to employ anything other than methodological naturalism in their work. If they didn’t, for every attempt to explain natural phenomena they would have to add the possibility of supernatural causation or involvement which would definitely be unproductive. However, isn’t it possible that in being methodically naturalistic scientists might be blinding themselves to certain physical facts that don’t fit their paradigm which would in turn lead to wrong conclusions and theories about the physical world? For example, in the case of origins, in one direction, I don’t think that scientists would rightly ever conclude that God exists because they were unable to explain the origin of the universe or of life. Appealing to the supernatural is off limits in science and is usually viewed as lazy investigation. In the other direction though, assuming that God did create the universe and life, there will come a time when scientists, because they are methodologically naturalistic will be looking for something that isn’t there. They will be trying to explain in physical terms something that can only be explained supernaturally. Beyond just origins though, isn’t it possible that scientists have already constructed theories that aren’t getting the full picture because they are methodically naturalistic? Do you think that methodical naturalism in any sense encourages metaphysical naturalism or is that only a “straw man” constructed by modern creationists?

I respond to this part of the question in this post.

Finally, this is more of a question that is posed along the border of religion and science, “from the middle of the lake” (assuming there is a middle). If God did use evolution and at some point along the line injected a soul into prehistoric humans as the Catholic Church maintains, wouldn’t that mean that there would have potentially existed simultaneously on the earth a mixture of “soul-possessing” hominids and “soulless” hominids separated by some small evolutionary difference (or maybe just geography)?

I answer this last part of the question here.

Feel free to edit the length or format of my questions for space considerations.

Thank you!