Well actually it could be that souls were coded into the DNA and they were activated automatically once humans reached a sufficient level of sapience.

Thats basically what i am saying. That would make more sense then God having to intervene. He should of been able to auto-soul us if he is all he is cracked up to be.

But i dont think that is what Jib is saying. He is saying God had to intervene into evolution and inject a soul into Adam and Eve. Its about the whole part of Genesis when God created us in his image. This was the necessary intervention into evolution to create a soul. Having it coded into DNA would just make it a part of evolution with no further intervention necessary.

I think whenever you start linking souls to DNA or something actually scientific, you reach the problem that if it's linked to the physical, why is it not observable or detectable in any way?

Id imagine it would be hiding in the same place as conciseness.

1. Makes sense, I hadn't realised the context of your remark.

2. Yes, the 'soul gene' would likely turn out to be in hiding.

3. Having thought a bit more about it, I believe the current hypothesis is that there was a precursor to DNA in the development of life and it may well have been RNA. So perhaps the soul gene was created along with RNA and then passed on into DNA where it remained dormant for say 1 or 2 Gya.

Arrogance basking in ignorance.

Species do change over time. I think that is a fact more or less AFAIK.
But I don't know about th rest of it.
I don't buy the part about humans evolving and adam and eve just being the first ones with souls injected. Not buying this at all.

Which part are you having trouble with?

This doesn't seem very compelling. If God is spiritual and soul's are spiritual I would not expect them to have anything at all to do with DNA. You are not the first atheist to say "If God is so powerful then He should have..." followed by something that by no means seems necessary.

I think this is a very weak train of thought and I would think that even if I was an atheist. It is just inherently meaningless.

Of course, I do not know what actually happened, but this seems internally consistent under the assumption of God.

Please clarify, are you making a singular statement about Adam & Eve or are you making two separate statements, i.e. "I don't buy that humans evolved" and "I don't buy that Adam and Eve were simply the first two humans with a soul".

EDIT: If you are making two statements, would your statement about Adam and Eve change if you "bought into" human evolution?

Obviously your answer to the following question will be complete speculation, but if you're a proponent of the Adam & Eve injected soul model (and even if you're not) where on the evolutionary timeline is the most likely time for this "injection"? Would your answer coincide with the arrival of modern human consciousness/self-awareness? Are the two, in your mind, intertwined?

Yes, the two are intertwined in my mind. I think of Adam & Eve as a metaphor, but a metaphor for the "injection" of human consciousness and free will into what would otherwise be an animate soulless machine.

Speculation of course.

Wait, apes are 'machines' as distinct from the apes that are human beings? What characteristics does this machine-ness show up in, other than inferior cognitive ability?

Well, this has been discussed in other threads, but I did not claim that I can demonstrate that apes do not have consciousness. As has been pointed out before, I cannot demonstrate that other humans have consciousness. I only know that I do.

I assume that other humans have consciousness but that is at its core a working assumption. It is also consistent with Jesus' command, "Love thy neighbor".

As I said, there are other threads where this has been thoroughly dissected, so it probably does not make sense to start that discussion again here.

Its compelling to me which is what matters and your response doesn't help clear up my curiosity. If i met God and he told me he intervened and injected souls into two people. One of the first question i would ask is why didn't he just make souls come to be as apart of his original creation. Why was intervention needed.

Also i never said souls had to be apart of DNA. They could be spiritual or supernatural and i would still ask the same question.

If the soul is not physical than making the soul is an act of creation. It isn't an "intervention", it is a distinct creation. The question you would be asking is "Why make a physical world distinct from the spiritual soul?". Why the trees and the planets and stars and our bodies, etc? Isn't that right?

Kind of. But more i would ask why the supernatural soul cant arise out of the natural and why did you have to get your hands dirty again instead making the soul come about automatically when humans "deserved" one. Him saying supernatural and natural dont work like that is one thing. You saying it is another.

I mean before we even got to theses questions i would ask what is supernatural and natural and what is a soul. Because ive never understood any of it in the first place and it might clear up the above anyway.


Gets me thinking. Many theists say conciseness is supernatural. If so and God doesn't inject it into every being. Is it not a supernatural thing that arises form the natural?

I know you think of soul and conciseness as kind of the same but this would be to the theists who dont.

I did not say that a supernatural soul cannot rise out of the physical. I simply said that there is no reason to believe that it must. And I do not understand the "deserved" comment. Until a body has a soul it is just a machine. "Deserved" has no meaning, there is no one there to deserve anything.

Again I do not know, but the way I think of it is that the soul is the component that makes me a self-aware human and not an empty machine that behaves like a human.

You keep saying natural, by which I think you mean physical in the sense of matter, forces, etc. If that is what you mean then I do not understand this comment at all. In fact it seems exactly backward, but again I may be misunderstanding.

But consider this,

I never meant to say it must, i meant to say it would make more since to me it if did. And if he didn't i would ask, why not. Why the extra step in creation of a soul when you could of just made it come about naturally when humans were ready for one.

Our confusion is arising out of the bold. By saying that you could "just have made it come about naturally" then you have built in the implicit assumption that is possible for the soul to arise from the physical. Otherwise the first question you should ask God would be: "Is is possible for the soul to arise spontaneously from the physical body?" because if the answer is "No" then the second question is meaningless. Maybe its just semantics, but I read your statements carefully and those kind of disconnects bother me.

Ive already addressed that. God saying it can't is an answer to my question. You saying if it can't or it can't is another thing.

OK, that's fine but your tone was very different at the start.

That statement is stronger than a question "Is is possible to auto-soul?". That implies that the entire package is internally logically inconsistent, when in fact it is entirely consistent except under the assumption that the soul can arise from the physical.

Again, somewhat semantics but I do feel that your wording brought on the issue. You have tried to score a stronger rhetorical point than your logical structure actually supports.

Yeah i go overboard in my tone sometimes.

Still think if you say, like Jib, God created a soul in humans at some point in our evolution. You need to ask why not just make it apart of it. Which seems much simpler. Cant is a fine answer from God and ill just add it to my vary long list of things God is incapable of doing.