Pints With Aquinas - 114: Did Adam and Eve actually exist? With Fr. Nicanor Austriaco

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

Today I sit down with Dominican priest Fr. Nicancor Austriaco to discuss evolution, genesis and Adam and Eve. Fr. Nicanor Austriaco is a Catholic priest in the Order of Friars Preachers. Born in the Philippines, he earned his Ph.D. degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After completing his doctoral studies, he was a fellow of the International Human Frontier Science Program at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University College London. ... Seriously if I kept going you'd be reading longer than it took to listen to this podcast. He's a smart dude, okay? Show notes (as always) at PintsWithAquinas.com SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, my name is Matt Fradd. So if you could sit down over a pint of beer, right, with Thomas Aquinas, and if you could ask him any question, what would it be? Today we're going to try and get three or four questions in. We're going to say to Thomas Aquinas, OK, big guy, I want you to tell me about evolution, whether it contradicts Genesis, and whether or not there was an original Adam and Eve.

Yes, yes, yes. Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Today, we are joined around the bar table by Father Nikanor Austriaco. Yes, that took me about 15 minutes to get that down, so I'm very proud of myself. Father Nick for short. Father Nick is about 223 times smarter than me, I think, and maybe you. I'll let him explain his background before we get right into today's topic. But as I say, we're going to discuss things like evolution and Adam and Eve. All right. Does evolution contradict

God's existence, you know, or does it contradict Genesis at least? Well, what about an original Adam and Eve? Can we still say that that's possible? And if so, how? It's a really fascinating discussion. So if it's nighttime, grab yourself a beer but you know what you might be better today to get five shots of espresso because this is a big one uh difficult one you know also i got a i got an email recently from a friend who said he was listening to pints with aquinas riding his bike he said at some point he got so into it, he nearly got hit by a car. So if you're riding a bike, put the bloody thing down and pay attention. Because as I say, this is a difficult one, but you're going to learn a lot and you're going to love it. Be sure to check out the show notes. I'm going to throw up in there some videos to Father Nicanor's talks on evolution and so you

can delve deeper if you want to. Sound good? I hope so because I couldn't hear you if you just said no. Here we go. Good morning, Matt. Terrific. Lovely to make contact with you. It's good to have you. I'm sorry. This is the first week of research labs. So my students and I are busy trying to get the lab up and running for the summer. So sometimes it's unpredictable how long it's going to go, but I was just able to get out. So we're all set. Before we jump into today's topic, tell us a little bit about you and your education and your background. So I am first a priest. I'm a Catholic priest who by the providence of God is also a molecular biologist and a theologian. I was born in the Philippines. I'm a Catholic priest who, by the providence of God, is also a molecular biologist and a theologian.

I was born in the Philippines. I'm a naturalized American citizen. I came here to the United States to do my undergraduate degree. I went to the University of Pennsylvania where I completed a degree in bioengineering. I then returned to Thailand because that's where I grew up. I grew up in Thailand. And I spent a year there teaching in the fifth grade. And it was in that year, actually, that the Lord began to show me that a life of service is a life of incredible meaning and joy. After my year of teaching, I returned to the United States, and I joined the laboratory of Lenny Garente at MIT, where I completed my PhD in molecular biology for studies that showed that aging is related to genes.

At that point, however, I encountered the Lord. I encountered the Lord at MIT, of all places. How did that happen? On the 7th of May, 1996. And that's all I'll say, because otherwise I get choked up. Oh, fantastic. Okay, continue. So I met the Lord and it changed my life.

And within a year, I requested to join the novitiate of the Order of Friars Preachers, the Dominicans. And I've been a Dominican for 20 years. It's been the great joy of my life, really, to be a friar preacher. I belong to the province of St. Joseph, which is the eastern province of the United States. I was ordained to the Holy Priesthood 13 years ago. Actually, yeah, 13 years, 14 years ago now, actually, 14 years ago. And my first assignment after I was ordained to the Holy Priesthood, because I already had a doctorate in biology, was to be assigned to our college here, Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, which is the only institution of higher learning

that is administered by the Dominican friars in the United States. So I'm here. I have now a professor in the biology department and the theology department, because a few years ago, I completed a pontifical doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. I'm a geek for God. That's what I do. I think for the Lord and for his holy church. And so my interests now are running a cancer biology laboratory. My students and I, in fact, today are just beginning our summer research where we're looking for, we're trying to understand genes that are important for the development of different kinds of cancers, particular cancer of the prostate and certain blood cancers and brain cancers.

And then we're trying to look for new chemotherapeutic agents that will prevent our gene from working. And hopefully that will contribute to the growing arsenal of chemotherapeutic drugs that patients will have in the decades to come. I'm also a theologian, so I work in moral theology in the field of bioethics. And because I'm a theologian, so I work in moral theology in the field of bioethics. And because I'm a theologian who works in biology, I also spend a lot of time thinking about how evolutionary theory impacts and challenges the Catholic intellectual tradition, especially the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and how we can develop that thought in order to advance truth. Fantastic. That's wonderful. Thanks so much.

What do you say to people who say that faith is irrational, and they would look at you as someone who's both a molecular biologist and a theologian and be scratching their head? Well, often a lot of people will say, how do you put it together? And I say, well, St. Thomas helps me to put it together because philosophy, especially good philosophy, that's realist in nature. In other words, philosophy that tries to understand things as they really are. And biologists are trying to understand living things as they really are. So biology is a realist. In some sense, it's a realist account of the world. In other ways, it can be nominalist. And a nominalist account is a belief that real things don't have real natures.

a lot. But for the most part, Aquinas provides a theological and philosophical synthesis, a framework in which I can think about both my science and my faith. And he helps me, even though he, you know, he was thinking 800 years ago and he didn't know anything about evolution. He didn't know anything about atoms. He did, he didn't know about reality and he was able to, the formidable intellect that God had given him allowed him to penetrate that reality, to grasp the basic structures of that reality. So it helps us today in the 21st century to kind of think through exactly what we are doing when we're working in the lab or when we're looking and peering into the heavens. Terrific. Well, what I want to do today is talk about evolution and God and then evolution and Genesis. And then the bulk of what I want to talk about is the idea of Adam and Eve and polygenism.

So, I want to start with a quotation from a Jesuit, Father Jack Mahoney, who said, I argue that with the acceptance of the evolutionary origin of humanity, there is no longer a need or a place in Christian beliefs for the traditional doctrines of original sin, the fall and human concupiscence resulting from that sin. So, I want to get to, as I say, polygynism and original sin and Adam and Eve eventually, But to start off with, let's talk about evolution and whether that contradicts God or Genesis. Okay. So, when my students and I go to conferences, they forget that their professor, their PI, so I'm called the PI, principal investigator, that's the head scientist of a lab. They often forget that their PI is a priest. They're so used to that. Walking around in a big Dominican habit and a rosary.

Well, actually, so when I go to conferences, I go in my Roman clerics only because the Dominican habit is so weird. And it's not quite clear. Sometimes they think I belong to the KKK. Oh, dear. Yes. they think I belong to the KKK. So with Roman clerics, they know exactly who I am. And so my students are often surprised because others will go up to them and say, why are you hanging out with a priest? And they'll say, and my students will respond, well, he's our PI. And that often generates intrigue, confusion at some points. And one of the first questions that they ask my students is, does he believe in evolution? In fact, that's probably the first question they often get.

And I think they ask this because there is a stereotype in our country, especially, much less so in the rest of the world, but certainly in our country, that many individuals of faith are creationists. And so it's not surprising that my students are asked this question. And so when my students are asked this question, they say, of course he does. He believes in evolution. It's not that he believes in evolution. He will say that, and I will say this, I will say that the evolutionary account is the best account with the most explanatory power to explain the diversity and origins of life and the mechanisms of life

as we see it today. And that God chose, and this is a philosophical and theological claim, that there are reasons why God chose to create through an evolutionary process rather than through a process involving what I would call special creation, which is an instantaneous creation that someone might think, you know, someone might take from, say, a literalist reading of Genesis. So I don't think it's evolution or creation. I think it's creation. But then there are two different ways that God could have created. One is the way that most people who would self-identify as creationists will see God as creating. He created over a short period of time. He created all of the biological kinds as we see

them today, and they have not really changed much other than the variations that we see in a normal population like ours. And then there's the evolutionary account that will posit that God creates through a gradual process where he invites his creation to participate in his causality. And Aquinas actually, Aquinas provides a theological account to explain why this would be actually fitting for God. So, it's not evolution or creation. I think it's creation. It's either creation through evolution or it's creation through special miraculous intervention, if you'd want to put it that way. And because of the scientific evidence and the explanatory power for the evolutionary account, I hold to the evolutionary view of creation rather than special

view of creation that a creationist would tend to propose. Would you say that the scientific understanding of how the species developed, we could think of that as a sort of maybe a material cause, but from a theological point of view, we're talking about the efficient and final cause? Because it seems to me that even if, let's say, some of those Protestants are right, who believe in instantaneous, you know, seven-day creation. And it's not just Protestants, so we have to be very careful. That's true. That's true.

I do have some haters who write to me. I mean, we have brothers and sisters who are creationists who, and if you're a Protestant, you are driven primarily from the evidence of Scripture read literalistically. But for Catholics, there are Catholic creationists who don't only read Genesis literalistically, but also take their cue from their reading of the Fathers. And the Fathers of the Church are, for the most part, creationists because there was no other option. And so, as I point out, Aquinas is a creationist because he didn't know what we know today. And there are reasons why we can think that if he knew what we knew today, he would attempt to synthesize it into the Christian intellectual tradition in the same way he worked mightily to synthesize Aristotle into the Christian intellectual tradition. And yet, obviously, many of the church fathers viewed the opening passages of Genesis poetically.

Except for Augustine. Well, Augustine... I think in honesty, you have to say that the fathers read the openingathers, they will see it primarily as this historical, scientific, as in an actual account of what happened. They had no other narrative. scripture, it is not surprising that they would have seen this as an accurate representation of what actually happened at the beginning of time. And so when I teach this in class, when I discuss this in class, I point out that the only reason why we are challenged not to read it literalistically is because reason, i.e. reason working through the mechanisms of science, has uncovered additional evidence that suggests that a literalistic reading of Genesis is actually not a true reading. Well, it is a reading of genesis that in fact is not warranted because

as we explore the writing of the text we discovered that the text was written primarily not to convey history or science right to convey theology so i agree we got to be intellectually honest when reading the fathers we don't want to make them say or think something that they weren't to fit what we now understand about the creation of the world. But that said, I mean, you've got Origen of Alexandria talking about, you know, day and night are made on the first day, but the sun wasn't created to the fourth. I mean, that's something he addressed, and Augustine addressed something similar. So, one of the things I think is that the F fathers also would take this, and Origen is the exemplar for this. He is going to look for deep spiritual meanings that are hidden within the literal narrative that sacred scripture presents to you. So it is true that the fathers will go deeper behind it

to look into what God is trying to tell us about who he is and about how he calls us to love him. Nonetheless, they will still base this spiritual reading on a literal reading, which in their view is historical. So, you see, it's not an either or for them. They're going to begin looking at this as history, but they're also going to see, rightfully so, that God has worked through history to reveal who he is. So, they're going to go deeper than this, and they're going to say, what does this narrative account mean in a symbolic or spiritual way? And how is God trying to tell us something else about who he is, rather than just what you see superficially through the historical narrative?

And you can see this, for example, when you look at artwork, right, you can look at a piece of art and you can talk about the art, but you can also talk about what the art means at a deeper level and what sort of emotional response it calls you to, what sort of ideas does it bring to the fore. All of this is in play when you're reading The Fathers. But at the heart of it, they're still thinking that this is a historical narrative for the most part. Okay. All right. Well, sticking to that point about artwork, I suppose you could say, you know, you could look at a beautiful painting like the Mona Lisa and you could explain it by, you know, innumerable collisions of paint and canvas, which gradually develop from indecipherable shapes and images to the, you know, painting

of a beautiful woman. That is a way to describe it, but that doesn't do away with the painter. Would you say something similar with evolution or no? Well, I think, well, with sacred scripture anyway, and let's begin with sacred scripture. I think one of the things that is very clear is that sacred scripture, because it is sacred scripture, because it has God as its primary author working in and through human authors, what you have is that you have a text that is incredibly rich in meaning. And the literal reading of the text has privileged status, but that we can therefore go deeper into that text. So in the same way that you can look at the Mona Lisa, you can look at the Mona Lisa as

atoms. You can look at the Mona Lisa as a mixture of pigments. You can look at the Mona Lisa as a painting of a woman. You can look at the Mona Lisa as an exemplar of a particular age in art history. All of these are true. And I think it's really interesting that we are tempted to reduce the Mona Lisa to, say, atoms in a void. But I think one of the things that Aquinas has taught me is that we are challenged to look at all the levels of reality, all the levels of meaning, in order to

extract what is truly true. And so in the same way, sacred scripture has that. And once we realize that sacred scripture has so many meanings, and that we are challenged because God is the, in a sense, he has given us sacred scripture, he has given us reason, and so we are challenged to bring both of them together using reason. We can try to figure out how to bring the account in Genesis, not in line with evolution, but to make them, to remove the apparent contradictions in the account of creation that is presented in Genesis and the account of creation that is presented to us through an evolutionary theory, first proposed by Darwin, but has now been built upon by over a hundred years

of biological thinking. Okay. Well, let's move on to Adam and Eve. And if it's okay, I'd like to read two short quotations to kind of set the stage here. One is from Humanae Generis by, who was it, Pope Pius XII. And then I want to read a short quotation from the Council of Trent. Okay. So, here's the one from the Council of Trent. This is in the decree concerning original sin. It says, If anyone does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted,

and through the offense of the prevarication incurred the wrath and indignation of God and thus death with which God has previously threatened him. And together, and it goes on and on and on, let him be anathema. All right. So that seems to like fly in the face of what Father Jack Mahoney said earlier about we can't hold to this anymore. And then secondly, from that encyclical, Humanae Generis, he says, when, however, so he's been discussing evolution, now he's getting down to Adam and Eve, when, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the church by no means enjoy such liberty, for the faithful cannot embrace that opinion, which maintains that either after Adam,

there existed on the earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam, and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own. Okay, so that was a lot, but I just want to set the stage because there's some people who wouldn't be familiar with those texts. And now I want to ask you whether or not we can continue to hold to an original Adam and Eve in light of what we understand concerning, I guess, molecular biology and the origin of the species and how we evolved.

Jesuit priest from Father is actually, I would say, the consensus among most Catholic Christian theologians who are working today. The assumption here is that the evolutionary account has raised insurmountable difficulties for a classical understanding of how we came about. So I think, you know, I want to make it very clear that it's not, Father is not the exception here, okay? When I travel and talk to different people, theologians and philosophers of science who are working on this question pretty much assume that there's an incompatibility between evolution and the Church's teaching on original

sin and Adam and Eve. So I'm just going to point that out, number one. Number two, those two documents that you read, the decree on original sin from the Council of Trent and then Humani Generis form part of a single tradition. And if you look at Humanae Generis, and I believe that's paragraph 37, one of the things that you can see in paragraph 37 is that it's making references directly to the decree from the Council of Trent. Because the idea here is that an account of our origins that does not take, that opposites the appearance of numerous unrelated couples to each other, at first glance does not appear to be reconcilable with the teaching of the Council of Trent on original sin. And I think an honest examination of the science of 1950, when Eumani Generis was promulgated, reveals this. Because in 1950, the predominant account

based primarily on archaeological fossil finds proposed that human beings in different parts of the world evolved independently of each other. So this is called the multi-regional hypothesis. And so the idea is that European human beings and Asian human beings actually evolved independently of each other from non-human ancestors. And that marriage and mating between these two populations of individuals then generates what we have today, this common population of people who live all over the planet. And in 1950, this was the standard paradigm in biology. And that would make it very difficult for us to reconcile that account with evolutionary theory, primarily because one of the things that we say in the church is that Jesus is Savior. And we also say that one of the reasons why we say that Jesus saves is he takes upon our human nature.

And so we say that he saves our human nature by taking it upon himself. And then that deep, intimate union with divinity saves us, actually. And he raises us up above the angels, and that his act of faithful obedience, which tragically leads to the crucifixion but exultantly leads to the resurrection, is part of that salvific mission of the Savior. So one of the things that the tradition is very clear about is that we are saved because we have a nature that Christ assumed. And so in an account in 1950 where Asians evolved independently from Europeans, Jesus, who was an Asian, would have had a different nature than the nature that Europeans had. And this would cause

theological problems. It would cause theological problems because we're not quite sure if that nature is really the same. And I think the best way to ensure a common human nature is to say that we are descended from the same original parents. So that's how I see what was happening in 1950. Now, in 2018, we know that the biology is different. We know that the best evidence now, not only from archaeology, but primarily from genetics, has revealed that every human being today is descended from a common population of human beings. And so we have an account for this human nature that we all share that is not only rational, but common in origin. So I'm just going to say that.

Now, with regards to whether or not the 1950 document was definitive magisterial teaching, I always point out that the International Theological Commission, for those of your listeners who are not familiar with the International Theological Commission, the International Theological Commission is a Catholic Church's, in a sense, best theologians, in 2004, I believe, I think it was 2004, published a document under the chairmanship of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who was president of the International Theological Commission. Of course, Cardinal Ratzinger, within a handful of years, would be raised to the Petrine. He would be raised to the Petrine See. He would become Benedict XVI,

one of the smartest, most brilliant popes, Catholic minds in a millennia. If you read the International Theological Commission's document entitled Communion and Stewardship Human Persons Created in the Image of God, what is very striking is that this document, when it refers to the origins of our kind, is open to the possibility that the humankind is descended from more than one couple. Okay. And there are references in that document. So when people say, you know, should we read Eumani Generis as definitively closing off the conversation on whether or not there had to be one couple,

I think that the best, the International Theological Commission shows us a way forward. It says, look, we can talk about more than one couple as long as we can reconcile that account with original sin. Nonetheless, I think we can still talk about Adam and Eve. Well, before we do that, I just want to kind of agree with you and get your take on this. You know, when a Pope writes an encyclical and he's defining something for the church to believe, such as when John Paul II had something to say about male priests and only male priests, the language is very forceful, you know. But here, it isn't. Like here, Pope Pius XII says, now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled. For that reason, I've heard people say that it's not necessarily a definitive

teaching or it isn't a definitive teaching. Well, I think he's drawing, he is outlining the playing field in which Catholic theologians can play. He's basically saying that, look, if you're going to talk about more than one couple, you must be able to explain how your account makes sense of what Trent said regarding original sin. Yeah. What do we mean, though? I mean, St. Paul talks about Adam and his sin and things like that. Like, to some Catholics listening, they might think all of this is just a bunch of backpedaling in light of modern science, you know? We should take the Bible at face value, but oh, now we can't because of Darwin, and now we might be getting rid of Adam and Eve,

and they might think, well, where does this end? Isn't this just sort of whittling the faith down to nothing? Well, I think it's very important that we realize that this is an act of faith and reason. I mean, I'll give you an example that is less contentious today. Usury. So, usury is borrowing money and asking for interest. So, if you read the sacred scripture, the Savior is really very much against usury. And yet we have no problems with Santander Bank. We have no problems with Citicorp Bank. And so what has happened is that the development of economics has made us see that usury is still a sin.

And usury is the unreasonable charging of interest for the lending of money. And usury, I would propose to you, and I think I'm not alone here, usury is the reason for the financial debacle of 2008. The exorbitant greed of individuals who were making money using financial instruments that were, let's just say, questionable, and exposing numerous people to unnecessary risk is usury. So usury remains a sin. Nonetheless, we now understand in light of economic theory that not all lending of money and the asking of interest for the lending of money is unreasonable. And so the church has used faith and reason to come to terms with economics. All I'm saying is that we're doing the same thing with biology, right? And I don't think most people, most Catholics in the United States would have

problems with banks today because of what sacred scripture says about usury. And the reason for that is they have come to see that some usury, well, that usury is always and undeniably a sin, but that some forms of lending for interest do not constitute usury. And in the same way we're doing this with Adam and Eve. New things that we learn, things that reason reveals as human beings struggle to search for truth, challenge us always to go back to sacred scripture, to look at sacred scripture, to try to understand what God was truly intending to tell us and to teach us about himself and about the world he created. and that he does this both through sacred scripture and he does this through reality. And so, faith and reason has to constantly work to understand both of these together, not apart, not in conflict, but together as a synthetic union, so that we will truly understand what was going on. Okay. I just, I want to try and be fair to the kind of criticisms bubbling up in people's minds who are listening right now.

So someone might say, but isn't this a slippery slope? I mean, some people might look at sacred scripture and see what the New Testament authors had to say about homosexuality and say, well, yes, certain homosexual relationships and acts are immoral. and acts are immoral, but as we have begun to think more about relationships, we can and should agree that some homosexual relationships are moral if they're monogamous and lifelong and so forth. Well, I mean... Now, I think this is apples to oranges, but I just want to throw that out there, and you tell us why. It is apples to oranges because the nature of the complementarity of men and women is not something that new science is going to contradict. In fact, you know, biology, if you ask my students, biology is all about sex and sex is all about reproduction.

And sex is all about reproduction. So in fact, the to both articulate exactly what is true and exactly what is not. And so just to say that there are contemporary challenges to the tradition doesn't mean that all challenges are legitimate and that all challenges are equal? And we simply have to trust in the process of faith and reason that God has given us to discover truth. Okay. Good answer. Next point. Next point. Well, let me just ask you a yes or no question.

And maybe the answer will be I don't know. Was there an original Adam and Eve, man and woman, or were they groups of humans from which we evolved? At this point in time, I have come to see that I think we can make a reasonable argument to propose that there was an original human being, Adam, and we are descendants of this one individual. Okay, well then do me this, because you said earlier that you taught fifth graders. Pretend I'm a fifth grader, because when it comes to this topic i pretty much am uh maybe in true to mystic fashion why don't you give us the strongest argument that's put forth by scientists who tell us that humanity you know developed and evolved from communities and then show why we can still hold to an original atom does that make sense yeah so i'm talking to my fifth grade class. I'd say, look, about 120,000 years ago, there were communities of human-like individuals.

In that community, a single person acquired the biological capacity for language. And when that individual living within a community acquired the ability for language, he acquired the ability to think like we think today. human beings different from the other animals in the world, we say that the primary difference between us and the dogs, the cats, and the kangaroos is that we are able to think in a way that they cannot think. And that is to think about ideas and concepts. And like, you know, in the fifth grade, I had to teach the concept of half, a fraction. And that's very hard to teach because there's no such thing as a half in itself. Half is a concept that you have to understand in relation to a whole. And so these abstract concepts are things that dogs, cats, and kangaroos can't think about. They can think about eagles. They can think about, you know, hunger.

But they can't think about half or love. They can't think about unjust behavior. They can react to apparent unfair exchange, but they can't think about it. And so I'd say, and I'll tell my class, look, 100,000 years ago, amongst these 10,000 or so humans, one of the humans became a human person. And that human person had the ability for language. And since all of us have that ability for language, we know that we had to inherit it from that person. So, we inherited it from that single human being. That single human being is Adam, and we're all descended from Adam. Is this point about language have to do with the immaterial, not just immaterial, but the soul,

which can think abstractly? Yeah. So, what I would say there is that in this population of 10,000 of our ancestors, one of them acquired a mutation that, and I'm going to use philosophical, Thomistic language here, the mutation altered his matter so it was apt to receive a rational soul. altered his matter so it was apt to receive a rational soul. And so he became the first human to have a rational soul. And that rational soul enabled him to think in a way that the human-like individuals around him could not. And so he was a person when those around him were not. And so his descendants, those of us who can speak are rational and are persons, which is why we know we're all descended from him. And we do not know of a single human being who is not capable of language.

And one of the things that's striking is that there is a consensus that all human language share architectural features that suggest that they're descended from one language, really, you know, the language of Adam, basically. So this is why I point out that if we look at language as a sign of our rationality, and the best language scientists propose that language appeared in a single person, then that single person properly speaking is Adam. So where did Eve come along? We don't know about that. Okay. So what's your theory, though? I mean, you've got to have a

theory to put this together many i mean they're oh yeah i mean you can i gotta tell some there are many that biologically you know you could talk about how this atom mated with uh a human-like individual who could not speak to him but but who still looked like him, but who was everything, everything like us, except for the capacity of rational thought and, and hierarchical language and that their children, half of whom carried his genes and half of whom carried hers. And so half of them could speak, half of them could not. And so his children would, the ones who could speak would then mate with each other and their children would be speaking. And so what would happen is you would have a population of speaking

individuals next to a population of individuals who could not speak. And the speaking individuals would have an advantage over the non-speakers and so over time what would happen is they would have more kids over the non-speakers and what you have today is basically all of their descendants what's the basic argument that says that language shares characteristics that are similar that they must have evolved from the same person uh maybe i phrased that incorrectly i'm sorry yeah the nature of grammar okay so the grammar there it's really striking that all 7 000 extant human languages have underlying principles that suggest that their grammar has common roots which makes sense because think about how a

newborn is learning language. That newborn, I don't know if you know, for example, that newborn babies cry, the rhythm of their cries depends upon the native language of their mother. Okay. Break that apart for me. That's incredible. So newborn babies whose mother spoke French try in a different way from newborn babies whose mother spoke English because the cadence of the language is different. So what happens is that there are biological structures. We are evolved to instinctively acquire language. And so there are biological reasons to think that language, so that the language organ, so the very famous

linguist Noam Chomsky at MIT will talk about language as a linguistic organ. And he'll say, look, just like kidneys, you know, all of us have the same kidney. They all do the same thing. We have a language organ and that the language organ is able to speak any human language. So the baby, you know, the baby has to be biologically evolved so that he can acquire whatever language his parents speak so if he lived in timbuktu then he would acquire that language if he if he was born in cody wyoming he had acquired english so there are biological structures that are in play that allow him to quickly and naturally acquire that language so the languages themselves are also um they share common underlying structures and so we we believe

that they are all descended from one language i mean english and french are modern day latin right so yeah so in that same way all languages evolved and there's a thought that all languages evolved from one primitive language the the language of the original person human beings a hundred thousand years ago that's fascinating i just want to make a point here because this can get pretty complicated and obviously you're breaking this down for us so that we can try and understand it um but it's easy it's easy to take something like this and mock it, right? Like I imagine an atheist listening to this and thinking, oh, for goodness sake, just do away with the man in the sky idea that you have

and just accept that there is no God and that evolution isn't directed by a mind and so forth. But I just want to say, like you can take any aspect of any kind of discipline and mock it. You know, like the idea that material is 99 point whatever empty space or vibrating energy and that sort of thing. Like, if you hear that without knowing the science behind it, you can mock it. And if someone's trying to break it down for you in a way that's, you know, understandable. Do you see what I'm getting at? I have many atheist friends. Most of them do not mock science.

They do not mock faith. They're intrigued by it. Each human being is struggling to understand who he is and who he is called to be. Now, there are a few, you know, atheists who... You don't spend a lot of time on YouTube, do you? I'm sorry? You don't spend a lot of time on YouTube, do you? Because the atheists there are pretty bloody, you know, mocking, condescending.

Yeah, but I'm working with the atheists who, from at MIT, the atheists at Harvard, I'm working with those atheists who are honestly searching. Now, there are some there who mock, but amongst the scientists that I know, those who are genuinely open to truth, they're intrigued by the possibility that there are dimensions of reality that they don't understand. And I think a genuine scientist who is humble is open to the possibility that he doesn't understand everything. You know, one of the tragedies of social media is basically everyone has a pulpit. Yes. And everyone has a pulpit.

And they're not thinking about what they're saying from the pulpit. Everyone wants to be famous. They want to be famous. They want to go viral. And tragically, the more unreasonable and the more bombastic you are, the more chances you go viral. So, you know, I don't like viruses. So I work with those. So I work with people who are genuinely trying to understand the world around them. Now, one of the things that my friends and my acquaintances who are scientists will tell me is that they didn't realize how sophisticated theology can be. They did not realize how sophisticated philosophy can be. And so when they encounter a sophisticated, robust, well-thought-out philosophical and theological synthesis, it makes them stop in their tracks.

It makes them think. All of the caricatures that we have of the new atheism, they simply are caricatures. You know, philosophers and theologians who spend 2,000 years struggling with the very questions that atheists are thinking about. And this is why I challenge believers. I say many of the believers that I know who mock scientists or atheists do so because they are scared. Charles Thaler in his wonderful book, Secular Age, points out that both sides are tempted to think that the other side is true. So, believers who are scared, you know, who are terrified that atheists may be right, tend to be themselves of the mocking variety. So, I say, look, if you really have faith in Jesus Christ who rose from the dead, then you know that they cannot be right. And so there has to be a patient listening.

You have to be able to listen to them and figure out where they're coming from. And then you have to be able to speak their language and to translate the gospel into words that they can understand. Because if you use the word grace to a non-believer, this makes no sense. He has grace in his life, but it's never been pointed out to him. So my challenge has always been to both sides. Unfortunately, if you go on YouTube, you can also get wacko believers, right? So there may be wacko atheists, but there are wacko believers as well. Good for you. Good for you.

I think you're spot on and uh yeah the the conversation has to become uh yeah yeah the other side is not evil right that's it yeah i mean it's it's such a it's an easier world when you can do that right when you break the whole world down into good guys and bad guys idiots and intelligent people and one one of the things that i've seen is that the tend to demonize the other side. Yes. And that we're no more immune from this than atheists are. I mean, I think of those videos, God is not dead. You know, they tended to paint the atheist as a sort of idiot mocking sort of character, a character of an atheist? Demons are real, but atheists are not demons. All right. So my view, because I've spent so much time as a microbiologist living amongst them, is that, yes, there is a 1% that is unreasonable. There's a 1% that is ideologically driven,

maybe more than that. But there are genuine individuals who are too busy trying to discover a cure for cancer to read and think sophisticatedly about the big questions in life. And so what they do defer to the hardcore atheist philosophers. They have never really encountered a sophisticated believer. And I think one of the things that especially Catholics have to do is to be able to present the gospel of Jesus Christ in an authentically reasonable way that is humble, that is able to address science in all its integrity, to challenge science when science needs to be challenged because it is tempted to ideology, but to also to receive the challenge of science when science says that maybe we don't understand something as well as we thought we had. And so there's a humility that is called for. Unfortunately, humility doesn't go viral. So an age that is being driven primarily by the number of tweets, the number of retweets, and the number

of friends you have, this does not bode well for a sophisticated, humble conversation with faith and reason. Those are such great points. Yeah, Jesus had 12 friends. I think I've got like 20,000 on Facebook and it means nothing. Yeah, but you see, it's not important how many friends he had. It's important that we have him as our friend. Speaking of faith and reason, when you were a molecular biologist, you said you had this conversion experience. Were there some of your friends who were just totally scratching their heads again, looking at you thinking, how on earth can a reasonable, scientific-minded person like yourself start to believe in the supernatural? Were there people in your life who thought that?

Of course. Oh, okay. There were many people. To this day, I have scientific friends who think I'm weird. Right. But we still have a... But what we have, you know, I go to science meeting, and I have scientists come up to me, and they'll whisper in my ear,

I believe in God too. And then just walk off. What a creepy thing to do to somebody. At night, what happens is I have atheist colleagues who will say, you know what? I've always wanted to talk about God. But I always thought that believers were stupid. Clearly, you can't be that dumb. So can we talk about faith?

Can we talk about reason? I love it. We have an honest conversation. We have an honest conversation. who is saying unreasonable things in order to, maybe because he is a fundamentalist and he does not believe in a dialogue between faith and reason for theological reasons, or because, again, he is trying to get the number of tweets up. So, again, you know, so... I'm finding that atheists are a lot less willing to accept that label. Like, more and more, I'm hearing atheists who have said they have been atheists begin to say, you know what, I'm not sure that word really sums me up.

I think there is something more to the universe. And so that's been nice to see, I think. Well, what's happening is that our culture has been inundated with a tsunami of purity. So, you know, Republicans want pure Republicans. Democrats want pure Democrats. There are Catholics who want pure Catholics. So we're inundated by this demand for purity that is radicalizing and alienating those in the middle who are not sure. happens is that I, my goal is to go into that fuzzy middle where I think most people are, who are trying to figure out exactly what they believe in a world where they are surrounded by and inundated by new information every day. And they're trying to organize that information. So, all I can say, all I can say is

that I have many atheist friends who will say they're atheists, but they're still asking. I have believer friends who are worried that the atheists are right. So, they're scared, and they may be asking, but they're whispering, right? How do you live in that middle space? Because you sound like somebody who's incredibly confident of your Christian faith. Because I know Jesus is alive. All right. Right?

I mean, I have no doubt. So, I know the gospel is true. So, how do you relate to Christians, though, who are questioning their faith and are wondering that the atheist is right? Just by saying that Jesus is alive, I'm not sure how convincing they might find that. No, that's not what – for me, I am confident because I know the Savior. Sure. So what I have to do is I have to lead them through and exercise the adventure of faith and reason and patiently listen to them to help them to articulate. First of all, give them the language that they need to articulate their doubts. Many believers don't know

why they doubt. Yes, exactly. Don't even know how to explain the doubt. Right. Or to formulate a question that gets to what they're doubting. So I have to explain the doubt. So I, and, and so I will go, all right, let's talk about evolution. You think, and I tell them what they think they're, I was like, this is what you're scared of. And they go, oh my goodness, you're right. Now I go, now let me explain how a robust account of faith and reason can address each one of these. I do this in my class, right? So we have to identify the doubt. They just have this lingering malaise that the faith is bad. Something is rotten in the faith. They're not quite sure. They don't want to talk about it because they're worried that if they don't know, they have not found someone to trust,

that if they don't know, they have not found someone to trust, then that person will destroy their faith. So they have to find someone whom they can trust, who will guide them through these class five rapids that they find themselves in, to show them where the rocks are underneath the rapids, and then guide them around them. You see, so because we live in a polarized society and on so many fronts, and there's lack of trust in the other, what happens is they don't know someone on the other side with whom they could have the kind of conversation that they need in order to articulate what their doubts are and how to respond to those doubts with reason. Does that make sense to you? No, it makes a lot of sense. I think that we kind of get analysis paralysis, as you say,

we're being yelled at from every side, from podcasts and tweets and Facebook posts and condescending memes, that we just want to throw up our hands and say, well, I don't bloody know. And in fact, I think that's why people- But you can't say that. You can't say that because if you said that- No, you can't. That's right. Then you would be condemned as a creator or group. I think this is why people have begun to redefine atheism online. Like a lot of atheists will say, no, atheism doesn't mean a positive proposition that God doesn't exist. It just means I reject your God, which is a rather lazy way of going about it, because then there's nothing you have to defend.

All your job is to tear down the arguments of the opposing side. Right. But then the other side doesn't know how to explain their God either. Yeah, that's right. You know, if one of my friends asked, you know, who is God? Well, he's God. It's the Bible. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense to someone who doesn't know the Bible. So, you see, this is why we're stuck.

We're actually stuck because we live in an age of fideism. You either have faith in science or you have faith in the Bible. And that there's not this account of faith and reason that's able to bring the two together, which is why this, you know, we have been told, and I agree, this is the Dominican moment. The Dominican is called to engage in this conversation. And not, I would say this is actually the Catholic moment, because the Catholic is called to engage in this conversation, because his Protestant brothers and sisters are lost. They're not quite sure how to do this because of their theological account of fallen reason. And so, we have to show them how reason can move forward without it becoming an

idol. Well, tell us how to do that as we wrap up today. There are people listening. They're like, okay, yes, I'm totally with you. Everything you're just saying now resonates with my experience and I want to begin to bring the two together. Like you said, I don't know who to trust. Where do I begin? What do I listen to? What do I read? What do I stop listening to? What do I stop reading? So, the answer is you have to begin to read philosophy and the solid philosophy, what is called the perennial tradition, best articulated by Thomas Aquinas, my Dominican brother. You have to learn to talk about what's real, really real. what's real, really real. You have to have a humility that many times things are not black and white. And that there are times when you have to just explain how you don't know what you don't know. And that explaining how you don't know what you don't know is actually a way of knowing what you do know. And that Aquinas is the best way forward for this. So in one, you know, learn philosophy,

read Aquinas, find a group of people who are searching with you, but who are open to the opposition. You know, and this is what I'm going to end with. Aquinas was brilliant because he could argue the other side better than he could. So a Catholic today has to be a better atheist than the atheist. He has to be a better secular humanist than the secular humanist. He has to be a better liberal than the liberals. He has to be better than all of them precisely to lead them to Christ. Excellent points. I just had one final point I wanted to bring up, and now it's just escaped my mind. Not enough coffee.

If it comes back, I'm going to edit this little embarrassing bit out. Oh, here it is. Yeah, great points. Thomas does this really well. I love that all of his articles begin with a specific question. Would you recommend that, as you said, you want to help people formulate their doubts. Would you recommend that Christians who are listening to this do the same thing? As you say, rather than walking around with this malaise of doubts, they try and pinpoint, well, what is it that's actually bothering me? And they might say, well, an original Adam and Eve. Okay, good. Choose that and research it and kind of

chase that one down, as opposed to having these million things that you can't chase down because you don't have the time and energy. So, yeah, exactly. What is the thing that is, and I'll tell you, for most people, it has to do with morals. It actually doesn't have to do with dogma. Most people are worried that the church's teaching on human sexuality is wrong. And they know, and so what has to happen is that they have to be able to articulate to themselves in a reasonable way why they believe the moral account, the account that calls them to friendship and holiness. What does this entail? And how does this jive with science? And I'm going to end here, right? So all of this involves science. So there has to be a genuine conversation with science. I mean, if you're going to be talking about sexuality, you need to talk about mate choice. If you need

to talk about gender, you need to talk about brain science and how brain science is involved with sexual dimorphism in the brain. So all of these things, and you see there's so much information, people are just scared. And so we have to do it one step at a time. And the way that I'm proposing that we do in the Catholic Church is that we have groups of people who are actually doing this one topic at a time. So this is one of the things we're trying to do at Providence College is set up a structure where, you know, sociologists can get together, Catholic sociologists can get together with Catholic biologists, they can get together with Catholic lawyers and discuss one topic. And the idea is to systematically, in a way that Thomas did individually, which is impossible now, but to systematically deal with all the top five major objections raised for every major thing that a typical millennial is struggling with, articulate those objections and then provide reasoned answers.

Excellent. That was wonderful. Can't thank you enough. I would love to have you on the show in the future. Have a beautiful day. God bless you. God bless you. I told you that was pretty impressive.

Really thankful that Father Nick and all decided to come on the show. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this has been an educational and great show for you. If you love Pints with Aquinas and you want to begin supporting me, please go to pintswithaquinas.com and click support. There you can give money over Patreon. And depending on how much you give, I send you things in return like signed books and beer steins and free audio libraries and exclusive videos and all sorts of things. I know the reason people support

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And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life to carry you and I would give my whole life to carry you