Over at Discover I’ve been talking a lot about the new Neandertal admixture paper. The short of it is that it looks like most of the world’s population has admixture from Neandertals on the interval 0-5% (though some scholars, such as John Hawks, believe there are methodological reasons why this is an underestimate).
This post isn’t about science though. Rather, it’s about religion, and this weblog is a place where I can talk about that with more justification than at Discover. What does this imply for reconciliation or interpretation of ensoulment and the origin of a humanity in a religious context? Mormons believe that different sentient organisms have their own gods, so did the Neandertals have their own god? Some Catholic theologians have resolved the idea of Adam and the Fall by contending that Adam and Eve were the first human-like creatures who had souls. Did Neandertals have souls? Did Lucy have a soul?
The implications aren’t only religious. In Science there are some articles on the paper and one of them talked to scientists and ethicists about cloning a Neandertal, and one of the major bioethical issues that cropped up is that Neandertals are human, so you can’t clone them willy-nilly. Additionally, one individual noted that it would be cruel to bring a Neandertal into the world, when you don’t know how they’d fit in and function in a modern society. The same logic could of course be applied to many pure and partly Neandertal human fetuses who are brought into the world. Interesting times….
The mention of Cain brought to mind Beowulf. In the poem, Grendel is referred to as descendant of Cain. In his retelling of the saga Eaters of the Dead, Michael Crichton substituted neanderthals for Grendel.
Anyhoo, I’m sure Catholic theologians and others would simply push Adam and Eve back down the evolutionary line to a common ancestor between humans and neanderthals.
I’m guessing people will say that people got a soul before Neanderthals and modern humans split up.
Since we now know we could interbreed with them, should Neanderthals be considered a separate species?
I’d be willing to clone a Neanderthal, but I agree it might be cruel to clone only one. It wouldn’t have any company. Besides, cloning more would tell us a lot more about them. Imagine if the only sample of modern humans was Charles Manson.
If you are going down this path you might want to consider Genesis 6 (courtesy of Greg):
1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
All creatures capable of sensation and locomotion have souls, according to Aristotle. The human soul is the particular “form” of a creature of a rational substance. Your scenario raises zero problems for classical Christian teaching on the subject.
“Mormons believe that different sentient organisms have their own gods, so did the Neandertals have their own god?”
Just for the record, that is not an official or mainstream Mormon teaching, though I’ve heard many individual Mormons speculate about it.
Brigham Young did teach that procreation is the only creative process there is, though, which could imply that every species has its own “Heavenly Father.”
Mormons believe that different sentient organisms have their own gods
Got to admit I’ve never heard that one. And I thought I’d heard most of the folk doctrines.
I expect this data to be scrupulously ignored by all major religions.
As far as I can tell, creationists who are aware of the existence of Neandertals regard them as fully human descendants of Adam and Eve. So they would thus have souls. I only looked at two sites (bestbiblescience.org and biblestudy.org) so there may be creationists with differing views. But I don’t think this recent finding would present any problem for the average creationist, if the views expressed at the two sites I mentioned are representative.
“As far as I can tell, creationists who are aware of the existence of Neandertals regard them as fully human descendants of Adam and Eve. So they would thus have souls. I only looked at two sites (bestbiblescience.org and biblestudy.org) so there may be creationists with differing views. But I don’t think this recent finding would present any problem for the average creationist, if the views expressed at the two sites I mentioned are representative.”
The prominent creationist org Answers in Genesis has always favored the view that Neanderthals were an isolated population of normal humans. They are quite happy with these findings. My understanding is that this view is typical of the “young earth” creationists. See http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/05/08/news-to-note-05082010
On the other hand, the websites godandscience.org and answersincreation.com, which favor a more moderate approach (e.g. they believe in an old earth, a local flood rather than a global one, etc.), have insisted in the past that Neanderthals are completely different than humans. They want to have us believe in the strict “Out of Africa” model where all humans can trace their origins back exclusively to a small African population. They use the hypothesis that Neanderthals are an entirely separately species that in no way contributed to the human genome as evidence against young earth creationism. They are probably embarrassed by these findings, even if they don’t admit it. See http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/sld060.html#ifPiiosf5G0p and http://www.answersincreation.org/neanderthal.htm.
… Just to add possible scenarios of “creation”:
1. God “bestowed” souls upon the common ancestor of homo sapiens and neanderthals (or even some time before then). Neanderthals and homo sapiens are/were “humans” with souls.
2. God bestowed souls upon the first homo sapiens AFTER their evolutionary split with Neanderthals. Neanderthals then did NOT have souls and were not human.
3. God bestowed souls upon humans after neanderthals (and other homo species/sub-species) went extinct. Neither neanderthals nor their Palaeolithic homo sapiens contemporaries had souls or were human.
Basically, it’s now difficult, if not impossible, to deny Neanderthals humanity without also denying the humanity of homo sapiens who lived at the same time. It sounds like the old-earth creationists are the ones who need to modify their viewpoint the most.
Forget Neanderthals. When some religion can demonstrate that humans have souls, I’ll consider the possibility that they can speculate about what creatures in the distant past might also have had them. But putting the cart before the horse achieves nothing but a waste of time.
If people were even slightly rational, faiths would be embarrassed by the doctrine of souls itself, not in the struggle to arbitrarily decide which of our ancestors had them.