Where Did Humans Come From?

[BobRyan]

Again, did Thomas Aquinas in your view misunderstand the position of the church?

Thomas Aquinas lived in the 13th century..the dominate church of Aquinas' day had adopted some doctrinal errors.

Paul said this in the first century --
Acts 20:
29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.

Paul instructed Timothy to remain at Ephesus to try and squash the many heresies already arising in the church.

Thomas Aquinas, OP was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, who was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian and jurist -- but was fallible.

 

[JAL]

Thomas Aquinas lived in the 13th century..the dominate church of Aquinas' day had adopted some doctrinal errors.

Paul said this in the first century --
Acts 20:
29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.

Paul instructed Timothy to remain at Ephesus to try and squash the many heresies already arising in the church.

Thomas Aquinas, OP was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, who was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian and jurist -- but was fallible.

Amazing. I can't believe you went so far as to arrogantly assert that you know the church's stance on the Incarnation better than Thomas Aquinas. Laughing out loud!

 

[BobRyan]

You are quite correct. Resolving "inescapable contradictions and absurdities" (Paul Tillich) is certainly, to use your words, "beyond your paygrade and mine."

Step 1.. Find the contradiction in scripture itself before blaming it on scripture or on those who accept the teaching of scripture.

The obvious solution is to start with a set of COHERENT assumptions

The Primitives are these -

1. The Bible is the Word of God.
2. God is not a liar and is infallible as well as infinitely capable
Therefore: God is fully capable of communicating through scripture and very likely does it.

4. Mankind is corrupt - having a sinful nature bent toward rebellion
5. Man is fully capable of inventing absurdities to then blame on God using flawed logic
6. Some humans choose to accept the gospel and are transformed - born again, and under the New Covenant.

 

[BobRyan]

Thomas Aquinas lived in the 13th century..the dominate church of Aquinas' day had adopted some doctrinal errors.

Paul said this in the first century --
Acts 20:
29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.

Paul instructed Timothy to remain at Ephesus to try and squash the many heresies already arising in the church.

Thomas Aquinas, OP was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, who was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian and jurist -- but was fallible.

Amazing. I can't believe you went so far as to arrogantly assert that you know the church's stance on the Incarnation better than Thomas Aquinas. Laughing out loud!

I too thought your post was humorous.

The careful reader paying attention to the detail in my post - will notice I never claim TA did not represent the flawed views of the church of his day accurately. I only claimed that the dominant church of his day had some flawed teaching.

 

[JAL]

Step 1.. Find the contradiction in scripture itself before blaming it on scripture or on those who accept the teaching of scripture.



The Primitives are these -

1. The Bible is the Word of God.
2. God is not a liar and is infallible as well as infinitely capable
Therefore: God is fully capable of communicating through scripture and very likely does it.

4. Mankind is corrupt - having a sinful nature bent toward rebellion
5. Man is fully capable of inventing absurdities to then blame on God using flawed logic
6. Some humans choose to accept the gospel and are transformed - born again, and under the New Covenant.

You don't refute the allegations of flaws. You just deny my conclusions, and engage in special pleading, making exceptions for God. Virtue is virtue, kindness is kindness, love is love - no matter WHO does it, whether it is you, I, or God. Therefore no exceptions are possible. A jerk is a jerk is a jerk.

Charles Hodge, a famous Reformed theologian, admitted that anyone who behaves like the Reformed God would be considered monstrously evil. He then said we must give God a pass because He is God!!!!

Newsflash: Charles Hodge should have admitted it was time to change his theology.

 

[JAL]

I too thought your post was humorous.

The careful reader paying attention to the detail in my post - will notice I never claim TA did not represent the flawed views of the church of his day accurately. I only claimed that the church of his day had some flawed teaching.

Of his day? Officially the church hasn't changed its definition of, or allegiance to, the Hypostatic Union.

 

[JAL]

I show the texts pointing out that Christ was both fully God and a real human

A "real human" is a created soul, correct?

Is it your position that Christ's soul was divine and thus NOT human?

If you say "both" - if you believe He had a human/created soul, then why would you fault the Aquinas view?

 

[JAL]

@BobRyan

Perhaps it will help if I provide my COHERENT view of the Incarnation. As follows.

In a monistic materialism, a thought is a physical current of thought. When a person says, "A thought crossed my mind," it is literally true. Even if you remove the soul from the brain and body, these currents of thought will still flow within the soul. Thinking will continue.

What, then, is the purpose of the brain? (Theologians of today still don't know). Simple: the brain helps route these currents of thought in patterns mentally beneficial - patterns conducive to sight, sound, smell, touch, hearing, conscience, reproduction, emotional balance, etc, etc, etc.

Imagine removing one cell of your brain. Or rather, one "cell" of the soul itself. What happens to it? Torn from the flow of knowledge and understanding, it becomes ignorant all over again. It must begin learning and thinking all on its own.

Therefore: the Father simply removed one such material piece of the enthroned Son and mated it to a zygote in Mary's womb. And, if I want to make SURE that a person is ignorant, I can hopefully find a way to "scramble his brains," turning him into a vegetable. Thus the Father possibly had to scramble this piece of the Son before placing it in Mary's womb. In this manner the piece became fully ignorant, having to re-learn Hebrew from scratch.

Like I said, this was pretty much a joke to explain. No incoherent theories needed.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

I've heard that the biblical case for souls is reasonably solid ... I myself believe in a tangible soul removeable from the body.

Listen, I have no problem with those Christian brothers and sisters who believe that we have souls which survive the body. I disagree with them, obviously—the biblical argument for that belief is weak—but it's just not a doctrine that I find important enough to challenge those who believe it. Since it doesn't jeopardize one's salvation, as far as I can tell, knock yourself out.

I do find it curious that you believe the soul is tangible (i.e., perceptible by touch), but that is not a relevant topic for this thread. I might have to hit you up on this in another venue.

How do you resolve the reductionist issue? I mean, consider a dead particle of matter. Accelerate it as much as you want, then decelerate it as much as you want, redirect it any direction you want. When all is said and done, what do you end up with? A dead particle. Right? So, how do you get consciousness out of all this?

I'm currently leaning toward emergentism, which is a kind of non-reductive physicalism. So, mental states and physical states would be metaphysically distinct while maintaining the supervenience of mental states on physical states. "A property of a system"—a property like consciousness—"is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their interaction, while it is itself different from them. ... Emergent properties, laws, and principles appear when a system is studied at a higher level of organization (holistic instead of atomic level)." Consciousness emerges from large neural networks, but it is not an attribute of any single neuron (Wikipedia, s.v. "Emergentism").

So, we seem to hold very similar perspectives, at least on this score, given that you are "a monistic materialist committed to a non-reductionistic view of matter."

 

[Tolworth John]

Don't underestimate God's power and wisdom.

As a creationist I am in awe of God's creation.
In evolution I see contempt for life, waste, pointless suffering and purposelessness.

 

[JAL]

At post 376 I used "my friend Mike" to illustrate the incomprehensibility/incoherence of two natures. You deflect on this point:

1. I assume you are not about to tell us that your friend Mike is God ...
2. The human nature of Christ was created at His birth and the whole point of it - is that His human nature was not just a duplicate of His God nature.

Despite the deflection, at least in point #2 you admit your loyalty to two natures. When we contemplate something, we normally ask, What is the NATURE of this object? Nobody asks this in the plural, "What are the NATURES of this object?

For example the nature of water is H-2-O. Nobody would speculate two opposing natures:
...(1) The first nature is H-2-O
...(2) The second nature EXCLUDES H-2-O

In ALL contexts such a self-contradictory account is immediately dismissed as pure nonsense. The ONLY place where such language is accepted is among orthodox Christians speaking to each other about the Hypostatic Union.

Are you going to deflect on this point again? Will you continue to insinuate that Scripture teaches that which, at least to the human mind, appears to be nonsense?

 

[JAL]

I'm currently leaning toward emergentism, which is a kind of non-reductive physicalism. So, mental states and physical states would be metaphysically distinct while maintaining the supervenience of mental states on physical states. "A property of a system"—a property like consciousness—"is said to be emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their interaction, while it is itself different from them. ... Emergent properties, laws, and principles appear when a system is studied at a higher level of organization (holistic instead of atomic level)." Consciousness emerges from large neural networks, but it is not an attribute of any single neuron (Wikipedia, s.v. "Emergentism").

So, we seem to hold very similar perspectives, at least on this score, given that you are "a monistic materialist committed to a non-reductionistic view of matter."

Sorry if I'm being too hostile, but even as you feel that souls are a weak postulation, I similarly feel skeptical that consciousness "emerges" from dead particles. I mean, we're talking about something incredibly sophisticated and mysterious: self-awareness, creativity, intuition, humor, joy, sadness, anger, conscience, time-consciousness (sense of duration), memory, playfulness - the list goes on and on. Did I mention the most important one? Self-propulsion! Let me explain.

My soul moves/pushes/pulls the body by free will. If I punch you in the face, you cannot blame a mere machine (my body), you must blame free will as the primary impetus for the push (or at least the primary impetus for moving the brain). The body/muscles can lend extra momentum mechanically, but such mechanics cannot be the primary controlling impetus if you really want to blame ME and my free will for the transgression.

So to salvage your position, in my view, you would have to say that self-propulsion by free will is one of these "emergent" properties. Are you saying that a dead particle somehow becomes self-propelling? That's hard to believe, right?

 

[The Barbarian]

Don't underestimate God's power and wisdom.

As a creationist I am in awe of God's creation.

But you don't approve of it.

In evolution I see contempt for life, waste, pointless suffering and purposelessness.

Fortunately, God does not. This is his creation, and it works as He intended it to work. Evolution is an observed reality. His purposes are good, even if you don't approve of them.

 

[BobRyan]

you admit your loyalty to two natures.

No doubt "The MAN Christ Jesus" Acts 2:22 1 Tim 2:5 -- as well as "our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" Titus 2 -- where the God nature is not merely another name for human nature.

But for that - we have actual Bible texts - it not a matter of just making stuff up. I am holding myself to the same standard of scripture I apply to your arguments.

Are you going to deflect on this point again? Will you continue to insinuate that Scripture teaches that which, at least to the human mind, appears to be nonsense?

I have repeatedly shown where scripture shows that due to the incarnation, God the Son has both a human and divine nature. My argument has never been that the mind of man is infinite and can fathom every single thing that scripture says - God does.

My argument was that you can't just make stuff up... It has to have basis in scripture as proof of it. Otherwise 8 billion people can make up 8 billion alternatives to anything the Bible says - it would be chaos.

 

[BobRyan]

As a creationist I am in awe of God's creation.
In evolution I see contempt for life, waste, pointless suffering and purposelessness.

Good point. Even atheist evolutionists like Richard Dawkins admit to that same point - evolutionism's story line for its doctrine on origins is very inefficient and not at all praiseworthy. What the Bible claims God did is far superior - only the atheist evolutionist claims there is no infinitely capable God to do such an amazing thing. They don't claim it is "smarter" to have a long drawn out billions of years long process of death and predation to slowly crawl to the end point.

I similarly feel skeptical that consciousness "emerges" from dead particles. I mean, we're talking about something incredibly sophisticated and mysterious: self-awareness, creativity, intuition, humor, joy, sadness, anger, conscience, time-consciousness (sense of duration), memory, playfulness - the list goes on and on

So then that is another point where we agree.

 

[JAL]

No doubt "The MAN Christ Jesus" Acts 2:22 1 Tim 2:5 -- as well as "our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" Titus 2 -- where the God nature is not merely another name for human nature.

You twice mention the word nature. How is that a response? What does that word even mean, when written by someone who believes in the humanly incoherent/incomprehensible theory of two natures - shown incoherent most recently at post 411, not to mention 376? No one could possibly know. You're pretending to respond while not saying ANYTHING, nothing coherent anyway. Completely non-responsive.

If you have a clear objection to anything I said, state your point. Otherwise hold your peace.

I have repeatedly shown where scripture shows that due to the incarnation, God the Son has both a human and divine nature.

You have repeatedly "proven" that Scripture teaches something humanly incoherent/incomprehensible?
Newsflash: One cannot "prove" a humanly incomprehensible claim.

I have repeatedly shown where scripture shows that due to the incarnation, God the Son has both a human and divine nature.

If you're going to use the term "human nature" at least admit that a human being is a created soul. Yet you DENIED the Aquinas view, and therefore DENIED "human nature". This makes you a heretic in the eyes of the church. At least the two of us have that much in common.

My argument has never been that the mind of man is infinite and can fathom every single thing that scripture says - God does.

Sure. I understand quite well that you're trying to stand on both sides of the fence. This is also known as a contradiction.

My argument was that you can't just make stuff up...

God became man. That's what Scripture teaches. I didn't make that up. I'm just the first person to provide a coherent explanation.

 

[DialecticSkeptic]

Sorry if I'm being too hostile but even as you feel that souls are a weak postulation I similarly feel skeptical that consciousness "emerges" from dead particles. I mean, we're talking about something incredibly sophisticated and mysterious ...

I don't understand the difficulty you're having with this, sorry, because I know we see it all the time. For example, bacteria are single-celled life. The atoms of which it is composed are not alive, nor are their electrons, nor the cytoplasmic membrane with its glycoproteins, filaments, phospholipid bilayer and such, the polyhedral protein shells and their enzymes, the flagellum, and so on—but all of it together constitutes living bacteria. Life emerges from constituent matter that is not itself alive. It's definitely mysterious, but as a religious person I am comfortable with mystery. I have no idea how all these things which aren't alive constitute something that is itself alive, but they do. The heavens declare the glory of God and so do single-celled life.

My soul moves/pushes/pulls the body by free will.

On your view, sure.

But on my view, it is the holistic you that is moving. There is no differentiation between an external body and an internal soul on my view. All that you are, mind and body and all entailments (e.g., free will), is a single, unique human soul.

If I punch you in the face, you cannot blame a mere machine (my body). You must blame free will as the primary impetus ...

Again, that follows on your view.

On my view, though, I would blame you for the transgression—the holistic you as a single, unique soul.

The living you who is composed of atoms and molecules that are not alive.

So to salvage your position, in my [estimation], you would have to say that self-propulsion by free will is one of these "emergent" properties.

That sounds like a convoluted way of saying "consciousness" is one of these emergent properties. And yes, it is—as I said in my previous reply.

Are you saying that a dead particle somehow becomes self-propelling?

No. Consider again (or for the first time) something that I said in my previous reply and its implication here: "Consciousness emerges from large neural networks, but it is not an attribute of any single neuron." The same thing with bacteria: no individual dead particle is itself alive, but all those dead particles together constitute something that is alive. The same thing with you (on my view): That one particular atom in your left pinky finger is not alive, but all those atoms together comprise the living you.

 

[JAL]

I don't understand the difficulty you're having with this, sorry, because I know we see it all the time. For example, bacteria are single-celled life. The atoms of which it is composed are not alive, nor are their electrons, nor the cytoplasmic membrane with its glycoproteins, filaments, phospholipid bilayer and such, the polyhedral protein shells and their enzymes, the flagellum, and so on—but all of it together constitutes living bacteria. Life emerges from constituent matter that is not itself alive. It's definitely mysterious, but as a religious person I am comfortable with mystery. I have no idea how all these things which aren't alive constitute something that is itself alive, but they do. The heavens declare the glory of God and so do single-celled life.

We see it all the time? Dead particles coming alive? That claim doesn't make sense to me. Therefore I must conclude that ALL living things - yes even plants and bacteria - have innate life (sentience). Regular protoplasm is not sentient (or rather is negligibly so in my view), hence this innate life MUST be a God-given soul.

But on my view, it is the holistic you that is moving. There is no differentiation between an external body and an internal soul on my view. All that you are, mind and body and all entailments (e.g., free will), is a single, unique human soul.

This conclusion is not unreasonable - it's just that I can't seem to get there from dead particles. I don't care how you assemble them, or "holistically" examine them, it's still just a bunch of dead particles in my view. Now, if you reassured me that all these particles are sentient/alive from the getgo, then you and I would have more in common. And maybe that's what you ARE saying, maybe I'm just misreading you.

 

[BobRyan]

You twice mention the word nature. How is that a response? What does that word even mean

It refers to ontological term. It means they are not the same sort of entity.

written by someone who believes in the humanly incoherent/incomprehensible theory of two natures

Your complaint "is WITH the text" as has been shown repeatedly.

You have repeatedly "proven" that Scripture teaches something humanly incomprehensible

Again you admit you object to the text and at the same time admit that the nature of infinite God is incomprehensible to finite human.

Am I suppose to object to that?

What I object to - is making stuff up then arguing that some guy in the 13th century made something up so it must be ok for you to do it as well.

You have free will and can make stuff up if you like - but it is not a compelling form of argument. As for the two natures of the incarnate Christ - well there is a few billion christians on planet earth that agree with me and apparently you as well -- that this is what the Bible teaches.

 

[Confused-by-christianity]

I was curious as to how divided posters are on this topic. As a former Catholic, now Lutheran, (who is still unsure if I’m in the right church) I learned from the writings and some communication via email with Edward Feser, that humans may have started as part of a population of hominids but that God gave Adam and Eve souls, making them human. Then their offspring interbred with these other hominids and so on. I’m probably oversimplifying Feser’s theory and it’s been a long time since I’d read it, but what are your thoughts on this idea?
Or do you believe we came from Adam and Eve, whose children interbred with one another and so on?
Other theories?

God made everything. Plants, into animals, into an animal that can make a moral freewill decision (rather than just follow instinct). Once a moral decision is made, the animal is capable of worshipping god - choosing to love god (human). If it can choose to love god, it can understand being loved by god. this opens the siritual world up.

Maybe that's what the fruit on the tree in the garden means? A moral awakening that leads to lots of errors and poor decisions but in return, we get to know and love god. ?????

?????