I don't like it when people try and undermine of evolution in order to promote their own idea instead. The most common example of this I encounter are young earthers; as a look at my archive shows.
But don't let this focus on these "extremists" fool you. Some of the moderate religious positions can also include some rather insidious ideas about evolution that try and undermine its credibility.
In fact, one could argue that these ideas are even more harmful to science. As they're viewed as being more moderate (or at least, not as crazy as whatever Ken Ham said recently), they often don't receive the attention that they should.
So in an effort to rectify this problem, today I'm going to look at a recent paper by a Catholic philosopher which argues for " The Rational Credibility of a Literal Adam and Eve " (which coincidentally is also the title of that paper).
Being based in Catholocism - which nowadays has a rather positive view of science and evolution - you might not expect the author (Dr Bonnette) to do much to undermine evolution. Yet he still does
The argument
The main argument in this paper is an effort to reconcile evolution with the special creation of Adam and Eve (or at least their souls) by God.
The first true human being would have appeared in what is actually a subhuman population. This first true human is Adam, whose spiritual soul was directly created by God. His body would have [grown normally], yet would be itself creatively transformed in its entirety because of its instantaneous activation by a God-created human spiritual soul.
Having come up with an idea that incorporates both evolution and the sudden creation of a soul, Dr Bonnette promptly . . . claims he doesn't have to provide evidence that this actually happened
Again, we must recall that the burden of proof against the possibility of Adam and Eve rests upon the skeptic, not the believer. Recall that the believer has philosophical and theological grounds for his conviction. Given the inherent radical tentativeness of all scientific studies, widespread dogmatic claims about the alleged "scientific impossibility" of our first parents remain premature and ill-founded
As you can hopefully see, it's really just an argument from ignorance.
" You can't disprove my idea Y. Therefore Y is true and God did it ".
In this case, Y being the literal Adam and Eve. Most of the paper is devoted to explaining why a literal Adam and Eve hasn't been explicitly disproven by science. Genetic evidence is considered, attempts to reconcile this idea with evolution are discussed, and so forth. But none of this is really that interesting because it doesn't provide any evidence for Y in the first place; simply try and establish it isn't completely wrong.
The issue
So, if the argument for a literal Adam and Eve isn't interesting, why am I bothering to discuss it? Because it still takes some rather insideous steps to undermine evolution in favour of Dr Bonnettes pet view.
Despite providing no actual evidence for Adam and Eve, he still argues that our understanding of human evolution is faulty for not taking it into account. As such, it must be modified not only to include Adam and Eve; but some of the necessary outcomes of having all humans descend from two individuals.
Like the nature of the realtionships between human and Neanderthals.
Certainly, sexual relations with subhumans would constitute a grave moral evil, a gross perversion of human nature. Such sporadic, illicit sexual relations would have taken place after the Fall, when sin entered the world. Random, isolated acts would suffice to account for the needed genetic diversity proposed by various research papers. Since God might permit, but would never intend, unnatural acts, suggestions that such bestiality occurred on a large scale - as if it were a central part of the divine plan for human origins - are entirely unwarranted. In any case, true humans would have sought sexual union and marriage with their own kind, and such interbreeding would have been both limited in scope and would have tended to terminate quickly. The inherent superiority of human intellection gave these true human beings an overwhelming survival advantage, enabling them gradually to replace subhuman primate populations throughout the world.
In reality, we don't know much about the relationships between humans, Neanderthals and there other contemporaries. Or even if it was our superior, God-given intellect that allowed us to outcompete them. Yet Dr Bonnette knows the truth; and seems to be trying to alter science to fit into his ideas.
And that's the big issue. Dr Bonnette is trying to undermine and alter scientific ideas without any evidence for his alternative. Ok, perhaps I'm being a bit unfair. Dr Bonnette does provide some evidence for why there must be a literal Adam and Eve: because the Catholic Church said so.
The Genesis account of Original Sin by an individual Adam is borne witness through two thousand years of Christian miracles, singularly instanced in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer promised by God after the Fall. This is the foundation for belief by Christians that two literal first parents, Adam and Eve, actually existed at the beginning of human history. Regardless of how literally or figuratively one may read Genesis itself, thus is established the rational credibility of a literal Adam and Eve
The catholic and the creationist
In short, the problem is that this Catholic - despite being generally pro-science - is still working to undermine our understanding of evolution in order to prop up his own worldview. In many ways, it's the same drive behind a lot of young earth creationists.
And that is because they're both elevating their faith based positions to the level of science. In fact, in most cases their elevating them above science. Where there is conflict between the two - as in the case of the literal Adam and Eve - their worldview will trump whatever science says. Young earthers have explicit statements of faith that spell this out. Your average Catholic might not have something quite so formal; but clearly that doesn't stop it from happening.
Now this isn't to say that faith and science can't co-exist within an individual. In many cases they do. Simply that when faith gets special credence on scientific matters, things get messy.
tl;dr
Someone places faith ahead of science, comes up with wacky ideas about evolution. Except they're not a creationist.
References
Bonnette, D. (2015). The Rational Credibility of a Literal Adam and Eve. Espíritu: cuadernos del Instituto Filosófico de Balmesiana, 64(150), 303-320.
