Evolution and the Creation of Man (Aquinas 101)

Where does intelligent life come from? Can one reconcile evolution and the creation of man? Does human life simply emerge or evolve from lower forms of life? In this episode of Aquinas 101: Science and Faith, join Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., a Dominican friar from the Province of St. Joseph, as he presents how God intervened in history and did something new to bring about a new kind of creature, which we call the human being – a higher animal than had ever before existed, endowed with a spiritual and therefore rational soul.

Evolution and the Creation of Man (Aquinas 101) - Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.

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This video was made possible through the support of grant #61944 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

*Scripture quotations are from The Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

[gybx]

It seems the Catholics are the only ones willing to even discuss these issues.
Whether people agree or disagree, at least the topic is being discussed openly.

[Phoenixface]

This is troubling for me as a convert with more of a fundamentalist background and as a fan of mythology. It immediately takes me back to the Annunaki.

[donaldmartineau]

I've watched dozens+ of your videos. They were all wonderful. This one on Creation of Man answered many questions for me!Thanks.

[andersonmeneses]

Thanks, TI. Your work is absolutely essential.

[gemmamonroy-dewittchannel]

As a trained Biologist, I used to believe this to be so because I needed to merge what I knew from scientific writings and teachings with what I had learned in Catechism about the story of creation. No longer do I believe this, as I have learned that the scientific communities have extrapolated the information they teach as truth from exaggerations that have been made with the fossil records. I know that all the "human" ancestors like astrolopiticus, that the scientific community claims to have found and what they look like are based on just a few bones and not an almost complete skeleton at all. They also based strongly on the writings of Darwin who was known to be a strong opponent of the creation narrative as he was strongly opposed to religion in all.

[loganrasede]

Finally a good theistic evolution video! I’m naturally better than other people at most things so I’m more evolved for my specific environment or situation. Perhaps we should get all of the most evolved people and start breeding them to create perfect human beings. We’d have to stop the lesser evolved from breeding (we’ll make places or camps for them to go in). Then we can bring the human race back to its former perfection! I told one of my friends about this idea (their a creationist) and he said something about “entropy” and that we shouldn’t do that but they weren’t as evolved as me so I told them that their argument was silly.

[jakec]

I could listen to Father Legge all day. Fantastic video.

[na_haynes]

Connection to the transcendental is evolution of the mind and spirit in the direction of complexity, got it.

[Gwido]

I think and many other people, also priests like father professor Tadeusz Guz, think that animals too continue to live after the death of their bodies. Father professor Tadeusz Guz says that the Church says that animals continue to live after death, and that the Church only does not know if they live as individual dogs, cats etc. or as one soul of dogs, cats etc. It would be confirmed by the saint sister Faustyna Kowalska who had a vision in which she saw all creation worshiping God.

[stephenwatts]

THE CREATION OF SELF DEFINITION.
All of life is a process of deciding Who You Are, and then experiencing that.
As you keep expanding your vision, you make up new rules to cover that! As you keep enlarging your idea about your Self, you create new do's and don'ts, yeses and nos to encircle that. These are the boundaries that "hold in" something which cannot be held in.
You cannot hold in "you, " because you are as boundless as the Universe. Yet you can create a concept about your boundless Self by Imagining, and then accepting, boundaries.
In a sense, this is the only way you can know yourself as anything in particular.
That which is boundless is boundless. That which is limitless is limitless. It cannot exist anywhere because it is everywhere. If it is everywhere, it is nowhere in particular.
God is everywhere. Therefore, God is nowhere in particular, because to be somewhere in particular, God would have to not be somewhere else - which is not possible for God.
There is only one thing that is "not possible" for God, and that is for God to not be God. God cannot "not be." Nor can God not be like Itself. God cannot "un-God" Itself.
I am everywhere, and that's all there is to it. And since I am everywhere, I am nowhere. And if I am NOWHERE I Am NOW HERE

THE CREATION OF SELF DEFINITION.
All of life is a process of deciding Who You Are, and then experiencing that.
As you keep expanding your vision, you make up new rules to cover that! As you keep enlarging your idea about your Self, you create new do's and don'ts, yeses and nos to encircle that. These are the boundaries that "hold in" something which cannot be held in.
You cannot hold in "you, " because you are as boundless as the Universe. Yet you can create a concept about your boundless Self by Imagining, and then accepting, boundaries.
In a sense, this is the only way you can know yourself as anything in particular.
That which is boundless is boundless. That which is limitless is limitless. It cannot exist anywhere because it is everywhere. If it is everywhere, it is nowhere in particular.
God is everywhere. Therefore, God is nowhere in particular, because to be somewhere in particular, God would have to not be somewhere else - which is not possible for God.
There is only one thing that is "not possible" for God, and that is for God to not be God. God cannot "not be." Nor can God not be like Itself. God cannot "un-God" Itself.
I am everywhere, and that's all there is to it. And since I am everywhere, I am nowhere. And if I am NOWHERE I Am NOW HERE

Everything in the universe is consciousness. Space and time in all planes of reality are only projections within universal consciousness. There really is no here or there for everything is at one place where Mind is. Mind does not move at all. Mind simply is (Not to be confused with the brain). Mind is everywhere yet nowhere. Mind is nowhere but Here, Now. We are all existing together as a singularity in one place and time. Everything is one, Here and Now.
Your soul is the reflection of all souls. You are the Other. Without the other, you would not exist. You are defined by your relationships with others. You would need to describe the whole universe in order to define a single person. Therefore every single person is the whole universe. Your soul is both personal and universal at the same time. Everyone is a reflection of yourself. You are in a hall of mirrors where every reflection of yourself appears different. Others you admire reflect the qualities you most cherish in yourself. Others you detest reflect the qualities you most deny in yourself. Each person you see is a different version of you.
The outer world is a mirror of yourself at any place and time. If you want to know the state of your personal consciousness, just look around and see what is happening to you. If you want to know the state of the collective consciousness, just look around at what is happening in the world. Your personal reality is synchronistically orchestrated by your sense of Self at all times. If a critical mass of people expressed their higher selves, they would cause a transformation in collective consciousness and the world reality. Every time a person rises in personal consciousness, he moves the state of the world towards a higher one than before.

TRANSCENDENT WORLD: You are comfortable here when you can experience all possibilities. Your awareness is open. You are connected to the source. Your consciousness is merged with the mind of God.

SUBTLE WORLD: You are comfortable here when you can hold on to your vision. You trust yourself to follow where the mind goes. You aren't bound up in resistance, objections, skepticism, and rigid beliefs. Inspiration occurs as a normal part of your existence.

MATERIAL WORLD: You are comfortable with your personal reality. You take responsibility for it. You read the world as a reflection of who you are and what is happening "in here." As the reflection shifts and changes, you track the changes occurring inside yourself.

If a white man was created by God,
And if a black man was created by God,
Black and white men are equal before God.

If God is reality,
And if reality is consciousness,
Then God is consciousness

The Need to Create, Discover, and Explore.
God becomes a creative source. He gave us our birthright of curiosity. He remains unknowable, but he unfolds one secret after another in creation. At the far edge of the universe, the unknown is a challenge and a source of wonder. God wants us not to worship but to evolve. Our role is to discover and explore. Nature exists to provide endless mysteries that challenge our intelligence - there is always more to discover.
This is your God if you live to explore and be creative, if you feel happiest confronting the unknown, if you have total confidence that nature can be unraveled, including human nature, as long as we keep questioning and never settle for fixed, preordained truth.

God becomes pure wonder. After reason has reached the limits of understanding, the mystery remains. Sages, saints, and the divinely inspired have penetrated it. They have felt a divine presence that transcends everyday life. Materialism is an illusion. Creation was fashioned in two layers, the visible and the invisible. Miracles become real when everything is a miracle. To reach God, one must accept the reality of invisible things. Nature is a mask for the divine.
This is your God if you are a spiritual seeker. You want to know what lies behind the mask of materialism, to find the source of healing, to experience peace, and to be in direct contact with a divine presence.

Unity, the State Beyond All Needs.
God becomes One. There is complete fulfillment because you have reached the goal of seeking. You experience the divine everywhere. The last hint of separation has vanished. You have no need to divide saint from sinner, because God imbues everything. In this state, you don't know the truth; you become it. The universe and every event in it are expressions of a single underlying Being, which is pure awareness, pure intelligence, and pure creativity. Nature is the outward form that consciousness takes as it unfolds in time and space.

This is your God if you feel totally connected to your soul and your source. Your consciousness has expanded to embrace a cosmic perspective. You see everything happening in the mind of God. The ecstasy of great mystics, who seem especially gifted or chosen, now becomes available to you, because you have fully matured spiritually.

The God that brings the scheme to an end, God as One, is different from the others. He isn't a projection. He signifies a state of total certainty and wonder, and if you reach that state, you are no longer projecting. Every need has been fulfilled; the path has ended with reality itself.

[antoniomoyal]

I would have liked the video to explain the rationale of why it is impossible that the rational soul comes from God and not from matter, as the sensible and vegetative souls do.

[mrwater]

Every thought or feeling or anything having to do with consciousness is material.
It exists due to the activity of neurons in your brain. Neurons are physical and material things.

[irodjetson]

When God creates creatures "According to their kind"... What does that mean then? - Also I don't get the notion of how does "survival of the fittest" goes together with intentional "creation" of flying, swimming, etc. animals according to their kind. Why would such specification be there if God didn't create them according to their kind but rather as a whole "nature kind". Not convinced of the argument, I think it could fit philosophically but I don't understand how does it fit revelation.

[domp]

Genesis is a beautiful account of real history!

[samvimes]

Precisely what I believe, albeit put forth a bit more eloquently. Both my parents are Christian, but they also have scientific backgrounds (my mom was a geologist and my dad a biologist). I've always thought that people who argue against evolution are being willfully ignorant. It's hard to deny the evidence that animals gradually changed into new creatures. Evolution is simply adaptation shaped by environmental pressure over eons, it's observable both in the fossil record and in our own timespan with smaller-scale microevolution.

What the "Young Earth Creationists" and similar groups fail to do is make a distinction between evolution as a whole, and the idea of humans evolving from monkeys. We are genetically related, and even just looking at us and earlier hominids, it's pretty hard to deny a connection. As you point out, the difference is the addition of a rational soul. It's likely that God put all the systems in motion, and once hominids had evolved to his satisfaction, he infused them with souls, creating what we call homo sapiens (although I wouldn't be surprised if Neanderthals also had souls, considering they were extremely similar to us and were able to interbreed).

[JohnR.T.B.]

I wouldn't use the word 'intervene' to God, but God grants the birth or creation of the uniquely rational and eternal human soul to the individual human being at conception, as we humans, creation, participate in God's creative work of creation according to his divine providence and purpose. But really it's just my personal way of describing what Fr. Dominic has explained so well and rightly.

When it began or who the first historical 'Adam' and 'Eve' were, who received the rational souls as truly human persons with enlightened immortal souls and given the supernatural grace of heaven, before they immediately screw things up and hence left over to the forces of nature in their enlightened, special, yet forever marred identities which they transmitted to all their descendants as original sin (apart from the ones destined as God's own paths of salvation, namely the Blessed Mother and Christ) unless people receive again the grace of salvation through Jesus, is a technically difficult question to answer or prove. But we can perhaps, use the analogy of human growth, we can't really determine the exact day, or hour, or minute, or second, of when a child has turned into the 'age of reason' and hence can be considered responsible for a personal sin committed, but we know that at a particular time, a baptized boy or a girl sinned knowingly and he or she needs to go to confession to receive grace of forgiveness.

[carlos.sierra]

Wouldn’t greater organisms coming from lesser organisms violate the principle of the cause always being greater than the effect?

[alec]

Well Done! It's what I have always believed.

[georgekurian]

Man didn't came from an irrational animal by Gods work. God doesn't need such an inter animal for his greatest creation that is man.

[DistributistHound]

Thank you Thomistic Institute for this great video. An answer that I synthesize from your videos to the question of how do we know that the soul is not a naturalistic result? Is that complex sistems cannot organize themselves from simple parts, it is plausible that they follow a design that is not result from natural causes other wise we would see other living beings acquiring a rational intelect, the best explanation I can give is that the intelligence we have is likely to come from a higher intelligence rather than from no intelligence... kind off an answer I get from watching your courses. God bless and thanks again 🙌