To "Santosh Helekar":
***The theologian has no problem whatsover with the original findings
in the field of population genetics. I do congratulate Dr.Santosh and
thank him for the write-up regarding Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's book,
"Genes, Peoples and Languages". It provides knowledge about the scientific
reasearch
which is going on to know how the first parents, man and woman, came to
inhabit the world.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/goa-research-net/message/3104
...>>>this field has nothing
to do with religion. The use of the names Adam and Eve
is not appropriate even in the metaphorical sense.
*** 1.I do not understand why there is so much resistance on the part of
Dr.Santosh to the fact that the names ADAM and EVE have been taken by
scientists from
the hebrew Bible. They are the first parents. The names are meaningful: Man
and Woman, 'Mother
of the Living". In different languages different names could be given. But
Bible speaks of
Adam and Eve, which are hebrew names for the first parents: 'man' or
'humanity' (with or without the article ha-)
and 'mother of the living'. Those scientists are using the biblical names,
Adam and Eve.
Allan Wilson named 'Mitochondrial Eve' after Eve of the Genesis Creation
Story
and subsequently the theory of 'Out of Africa' was developed, whether she
was the only one or many.
Also Michael Hammer spoke of 'Y-chromosome Adam'. Today monogenism has
given place to polygenism.
The theologian has no problem with evolution. As a believer in God, he sees
God founding the laws of nature by which life evolved. The
theologian cannot impose his view on scientists who do not see beyond the
limits of their empirical discipline. Nor should
the Creationists speak more than what the Bible intends to teach.Therefore,
there is no conflict with the
Bible.
2.Bible answers the questions that Science cannot answer, nor does
agnosticism. The theologian does not sustain irrational, blind faith. Faith
has its reasons
that Reason does not know. There is verifiability to Science, as well as to
Metaphysics and Faith.A dialogue is possible and desirable. The theologian
does not have to become a Scientist
(Physicist or Biologist). He must know only the most important results of
Astrophysics, Biochemistry, Genetics,
Molecular Biology and recognize them.
3.God is not a category for Scientists, because God by definition is a
reality
beyond time and space, and therefore does not belong in the world of our
scientific
experimentation. But there are questions that Science cannot answer. The
fundamental question of Philosophy,
according to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), is "Why is there
anything at all and not simply
nothing?" Science cannot answer that. Science does not speak of the meaning
of life, it is limited to the
phenomenal world. You cannot reduce Music just to Physics and Mathematics.
4.As LLCavalli-Sforza states in his book, Genes, Peoples, and Languages,
Chapter 1: "Genes and History.The Pride of An Emperor": "Any current
theories may be modified or even destroyed at any moment. In fact, science
progresses because every hypothesis can be con-firmed or rejected by others.
The great number of conditionals we use in our scientific prose underscore
this truth. While correcting the translation of one of my books, I was
terrified to see that all my conditionals had been changed to indicatives-my
safeguards had been eliminated. When we write papers for scientific
journals, we know that many statements cannot be supported in their
entirety. This seems strange to the public: isn't science infallible? In the
end, only religion claims to deliver certainty. In other words, faith alone
is immune from doubt, although few believers seem troubled by the fact that
each religion offers different answers. Mathematics may be the only
exception in the sciences that leaves no room for skepticism. But, if
mathematical results are exact as no empirical law could ever be,
philosophers have discovered they are not absolutely novel-instead, they are
tautological." The Professor Emeritus of Stanford University humbly accepts
that the results are not definitive. The work is going on. It does not
contradict the Bible.
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
