Bjoern writes:
[...]
> These days I read my way through some good books all
> written by authors holding a TE viewpoint. I certainly
> enjoy the reading, but there is one issue I just can't
> find in these books, and that is the spirited/souled
> man as made in God's image (God breathed his spirit
> into the nostrils of man etc.). It is perfectly fine
> with me that man is a product of an evolving nature,
> but how do TE's account for man being a creature with
> a soul/spirit? I mean, how did the soul of man evolve?
> Can biological evolution explain that? And, if not,
> who can?
>
> I guess this question is not first time raised here,
> but to me it is new and pressing, so even if this
> issue was solved years ago, can somebody give me a
> short introduction?
I don't think that this is a scientific issue, but strictly a
matter of religion.
Lacking a soul-o-meter or other physical measuring devices (pace
Moorad Alexanian), for the detection of a soul's presence & existence,
let alone an instrument that works on archaeological samples, how
could one know? After all, if a fully-conscious human being, a
one-second-old fertilized human egg and a brain-dead person can all
be supposed to possess souls (this might be up for debate), why not
an amoeba, a dog or a chimp? If the first group of examples can have
souls, but not the latter group, then souls have nothing to do with
physical attributes.
But this "problem" is not for TE's alone to address. It clearly
plagues *all* ideas of human origin that deal with concepts of
souls. That is to say, if creationists figure out what souls are
and how they interact with the world, I suspect the solution could
be adopted equally well for TE viewpoints.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda
tikeda@sprintmail.hormel.com (despam address before use)
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