Translation: stick with your unchanging dogma and don't let scientific evidence and/or sound reasoning sway you... because scientific theory changes to account for new evidence, and your attempt to rationalise your beliefs with modern science may be later be challenged beyond your ability to assimilate the new theories.

"The analogical point of the Genesis story was to teach a doctrine, not to relate a history. The truths are not in the facts"

I'm always intrigued about how one determines exactly which bits of the Old Testament are allegory and which are the immutable word of God. The bits in Exodus cited as a basis for discrimination against homosexuals are taken verbatim as Gods words, whereas many other passages of Exodus relating to less convenient rulings from God apparently only applied for that time, or were not meant to be taken literally. How can you tell?

Interesting if a little convoluted analysis though. Good read.

He disfrutado mucho leyendo el artículo. Es tremendamente divertido y, sinceramente, cuenta las cosas con mucha claridad.

It depends what you mean by an ape ?

So pre-rational humans evolved from apes?

Perhaps by the ability "to abstract concepts from percepts" you mean the ability to look at five sparrow, four elms, and a rock and say, "The sparrows and the elms are living things and therefore unlike the rock. The sparrows are birds and the elms are trees, and the sparrows are in the same category 'birds' as hawks, while the elms are in the same category 'trees' as oaks. Sparrows, hawks, elms, and oaks have the property 'living' in common with each other but not with rocks." It is difficult to imagine having half that ability (in a certain sense, at least). For one thing, it requires language and a significant amount of prior learning to do that. Take any human baby (whether Adam, Eve, or a newborn child in the 21st century selected by grossly immoral researchers), put him or her in the care of, say, gorillas, and the ability will never develop. This is one reason why the Church's "official" account of Adam and Eve includes preternatural gifts from God, one of them being inborn knowledge. It is also why the allegedly "scientific" account of the OP is entirely implausible. It requires Adam and Eve to invent a language, figure out all abstractions on their own, and also achieve a state of moral development such that they can be held so fully accountable for sinning that their transgression causes misery for the entire human race.

It is not difficult at all for me to imagine abstract thought developing stepwise. Very humble animals recognize food from non-food. They recognize threatening animals from nonthreatening ones. Cat's don't say, "That is a mouse, and I am going to catch it an eat it," but unless you feel all nonhuman animals are purely automatons with nothing taking place in their brains, something must be happening when a cat recognizes a mouse. Some very rudimentary form of thought must be taking place in the brains of birds and snakes. A higher level must be taking place in the brains of cats and dogs. An even higher level must be taking place in the brains of dolphins and chimps. The fact that there is a major gap between man and the second, third, fourth, etc., most intelligent animals does not imply to me that as humans evolved, intelligence and the ability to think abstractly could not have progressed stepwise and had to appear full blown in the "first humans." If you google "animal cognition," you will find all kinds of information on rudimentary abstract thought being observed in nonhuman animals.

But it is not difficult for

"Please explain, since others have not, what it means to have half this ability (to abstract concepts from percepts)."

I still haven't seen an answer to this question. Noah Luck responded to it, but didn't really answer it. He seemed either to dismiss it, or to have a substantially different understanding of what it means to abstract concepts from precepts.

Let me append some questions of my own for Ye Olde Statistician (or anyone else who wants to tackle them). Are all living things except human beings simply organic machines or automatons? Is an emotional attachment (often very much like love, if not truly love) to, say, a dog appropriate, or is a dog essentially just a very complex organic automaton? Do animals make free choices? Do they have free will?

Do only rational souls have personhood? This conversation has shaken my theological belief that only humans, angels, and God can refer to themselves as "I." You stated sensitive souls have emotions. Does that mean animals can say, "That hurts me," or "I feel pain?" If so, do animals have personhood?

Does the Catholic Church have suggestion a suggested date for when this is supposed to have happened ? I assume after humans and chimps split some 6 million years ago. Before the "great leap forward' ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity

Assuming the great leap forward is real.

Hi Michael. No, of course you wouldn't have been taught this, it is speculative and certainly not settled dogma. It is just an option available to reconcile the doctrine of original sin and the current scientific evidence. With regards to the immortal soul thing, it is a part of Catholic thought that the presence of sapience/abstraction ability necessarily involves an immaterial soul which can survive after death, as Thomists would argue that abstraction necessarily is an immaterial action. Whether that required another incremental mutation to have occurred in Adam and Eve, or whether their existing mental capacities were sufficient to acquire this new ability (which is certainly given by God in the Catholic view of things), I am not certain about