Evolution, Adam, and the Catholic Church

Abstract

Evolution, Adam, and the Catholic Church Kenneth W. Kemp (bio) Key Words Science and Theology, Evolution and Theology, Paleoanthropology, Adam and Eve, Monogenesis, Human Exceptionalism, Human Antiquity, Human Origins, Genesis We read in our central theological texts—in Genesis and in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in the decrees of the Council of Trent and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church—references to Adam. We see him depicted on the walls and windows of our churches. Was he a historically real person, genealogically the father of us all? Or is he the father of us all only in the way that George Washington was the father of his country? Or is he not even a real person at all, but only a literary character, like Gilgamesh or the Good Samaritan? I will address three questions connected to the idea of a historically real Adam. The first is the question of whether the human race evolved from a prehuman species—the question of Adam and his ancestors. This is, of course, a general question about anthropogenesis, one that will arise no matter what position one takes about Adam. The second is the question of whether there was a single human couple who were the ancestors of all other human beings who ever lived—the question of Adam and his cousins. The third is the question of whether we can say anything about when Adam lived—the question of Adam and the cavemen. The term “cavemen” is, of course, not a scientifically approved taxon and I am not really focused precisely on cave-dwellers, but on what scientists used to call hominids, and at the moment are [End Page 22] calling hominins—those of our ancestors, and their relatives, who are not also ancestors of the great apes. These three questions—the questions of animal ancestry, of singularity, and of antiquity—are all mixed questions, answers to which will have to draw on, and draw together, the conclusions of science, philosophy, and theology. I. Adam And his Ancestors, or, The Question of Animal Ancestry Where did Adam and Eve come from? A. The Scientific Extension of Common Ancestry to Man The general idea that biological species originate by descent with modification from earlier species, Darwin pointed out in his work On the Origin of Species in 1859, explains a wide array of facts: the distribution of plants and animals in time and space (paleontology and bio-geography), the morphological and embryological similarities found in superficially quite different species (e.g., the structural similarity of bat wings and whale flippers), and the fact that biological species, unlike, say, chemical elements, can be neatly classified as groups within groups. Does this theory also explain the origin of the human race? Darwin argued that it does. He recognized, of course, that the defense of his thesis would be a two-part task, and he discussed, in The Descent of Man, both bodily structure and mental faculties.1 Following his example, I will address the two points of comparison separately. Darwin began with the human body and cited, as evidence for animal ancestry, “three great classes of facts”: “That man and all other vertebrate animals have been constructed on the same general model, [that] they pass through the same early stages of development, and [that] they retain certain rudiments in common.”2 Subsequent research has only added to the evidence cited by Darwin. When Darwin wrote of a “general model” shared by various species of living things, he was referring to morphology, such as the skeletal similarities just noted. More recent research has revealed the same pattern of similarity at the biochemical level. The protein cytochrome-C is [End Page 23] found in both animals and in plants. Differences in detail increase as one goes from man to monkey to mackerel to moth to marigold. And similarly for chromosomes. Most primates have twenty-four pairs. Although humans have only twenty-three, there is strong evidence that human chromosome-2 is the product of the fusion of two separate primate chromosomal pairs. The antievolutionist objection that common features merely show evidence of a common designer who used...