# Christian Evolutionists. When did man acquire a soul ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 16, 2010, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344 "2010-04-16T14:42:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/21 "2010-04-16T22:19:43Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I find the notion of animals with “proto-souls” absurd. If anyone can show me an animal that appreciates the beauty of the world around it, debates the meaning of its existence, reads great literature, or strives for self-improvement, then I will consider the possibility. But since I’ve never seen any trace of such things in any animal, I feel pretty sure it doesn’t happen. That seems like an unimpressive list of requirements. I mean, there are plenty of _people_, nowadays, who do not do all those things you list there. Provided with the right selection of people, you might well have come to the conclusion that no people have souls, either, if those are the points on which you judge. And they’re all subjective measures, anyway. The use of being able to pinpoint, even in a more general view, a point at which “souls” started to arrive, is that we can hopefully come up with some quality or qualities that guarantee that the being in question has a soul. And then we can more readily address the question of how we should treat each other and animals rather than a blase refusal. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/22 "2010-04-16T22:20:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I find the notion of animals with “proto-souls” absurd. If anyone can show me an animal that appreciates the beauty of the world around it, debates the meaning of its existence, reads great literature, or strives for self-improvement, then I will consider the possibility. But since I’ve never seen any trace of such things in any animal, I feel pretty sure it doesn’t happen. Probably because most of those things are aspects of intelligence. If a human becomes sufficiently brain damaged that they can’t read, debate philosophy or strive for self improvement are they then soulless? As for beauty; how do we know if animals can appreciate beauty or not? If a cat is staring at something, how do you know that the cat doesn’t just think it’s pretty? > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > As for the notion that there are some soulless being in human shells walking around, I don’t worry about that either. Why consider an idea that’s been tried many times in human history and always failed? A rather ironic statement coming from a religious person; you’ve just delivered a criticism that I level at religion in general all the time. Why, indeed follow something that has always failed, has always been proven wrong when it could be tested at all? > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yet no matter how widespread those claims were and no matter what evidence was offered for them, they always ended up floundering and society returned to the Christian ideal that all human beings are fundamentally equal before God. So, in short, the idea of soulless humans has failed the test of history. But it did so because it is evil; destructive. Not because it is “unChristian”. Claiming that people you don’t like are soulless is just as Christian as claiming otherwise; Christians have believed both. And no evidence was ever offered for such claims; or against them, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/23 "2010-04-16T22:59:40Z")
When? It’s a question that I cannot answer with a date. There was a point in the history of evolution (_Homo habilis / Homo ergaster?_) when God decided (bad choice of words) that this is where humans start and gave them souls. As a Catholic I must believe that there was one original couple from which all humans descend (traditionally called Adam and Eve). There cannot be soulless humans for axiomatic reasons: got soul? You’re human. Don’t got soul? Not human. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/24 "2010-04-16T23:14:35Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > When? > It’s a question that I cannot answer with a date. There was a point in the history of evolution (_Homo habilis / Homo ergaster?_) when God decided (bad choice of words) that this is where humans start and gave them souls. As a Catholic I must believe that there was one original couple from which all humans descend (traditionally called Adam and Eve). > There cannot be soulless humans for axiomatic reasons: got soul? You’re human. Don’t got soul? Not human. A more interesting question is whether there’s anybody walking around that resembles a human _aside_ from their lack of a soul. Of course one could argue that having one souled parent makes you souled, like being black does. If so souls could very easily have spread to infect all of apparently-humanity by now. Alternatively it could be merely dominant or recessive - the latter case would be a good argument for only marrying other souled people, if you can identify them (and are one). Or perhaps souls are assigned arbitrarily or randomly. I’m still fond of the idea that they’re only assigned to people who won’t suffer harm, to ‘fix’ the problem of evil. This also would explain why there’ll only be 144000 people in heaven… ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/25 "2010-04-16T23:16:10Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > When? > It’s a question that I cannot answer with a date. There was a point in the history of evolution (_Homo habilis / Homo ergaster?_) when God decided (bad choice of words) that this is where humans start and gave them souls. As a Catholic I must believe that there was one original couple from which all humans descend (traditionally called Adam and Eve). There cannot be soulless humans for axiomatic reasons: got soul? You’re human. Don’t got soul? Not human. Soulless humans and animals with souls are not self contradictory. Calling humans = souls axiomatic is evading the question. You have a human shaped animal; _boom_ God gives it a soul and it’s human. What’s the difference before and after? Does he or she even notice? If someone zapped you with a Q-36 Soul Eradicator would you notice? ---
**Author:** ![Aelita\_Daystar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@Aelita\_Daystar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aelita_Daystar)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/26 "2010-04-16T23:37:32Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > My own twisted belief is that when in the Book Of Genesis it says “And God breathed life into Adam…”, what that means to me is that is the moment along the evolutionary continuum when humans became aware of God, gaining a conscience, and an awareness that life was more than struggling simply to survive. Well… it says that God “formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”. Considering the association that breath has with the soul historically speaking, I would interpret it as Adam couldn’t be alive at all until he received a soul. I also remember that in one of the Gnostic works they go into more detail on it and have Adam just kinda convulse on the ground before he gets infused with a soul. So, by that view, the soul is what allows any cognitive function. I would say that if someone is going to believe in a soul at all, and they are going with Judeo-Christian traditions, then IMHO the only position that makes any sense is to say that anything with more than the simplest beginnings of a brain has a soul. So, I guess the answer is souls became relevant starting with possibly the Cambrian, and that souls predate humanity, with higher functions resulting from more complex architecture of the brains where the soul operates. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/27 "2010-04-17T01:09:52Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > If souls evolved gradually like other physical features, that raises the possibility that some animals alive today might have souls, or “proto-souls”. If true, that would have some profound ethical implications. What kind of ethical implications? If it’s impossible for us to identify or measure this thing we call a “soul,” how does it make sense to claim any non-trivial ethical conclusions based on our assumptive declaration that one thing has a soul and another does not? It’s the same thing as skipping the “soul” step and making the ethical conclusion arbitrarily. In other words, both of these arguments are equally arbitrary: [ul] [li]“This animal has no soul; therefore it is morally acceptable for me to kill it and eat it.”[/li][li]“It is morally acceptable for me to kill and eat this animal.”[/li][/ul] > [@begbert2](#): > > Just to speculate, though, we could probably assume that such animals would act like we think unsouled things would act, which probably would be like, well, animals. No moral code, no special intelligence, no willingess to pay taxes. Or alternatively maybe you think that souls are only responsible for the _good_ parts of our personalities, and so people without souls would be cold, cruel, sneaky, and evil; maybe they’d work in politics. But moral codes, intelligence, social structure, and so on are _observably_ traits that arise from the physical structure of our consciousness. The only possible way to define the “soul” that won’t be flatly contradicted by physical science is to say “it is undetectable and immeasurable and has no influence on consciousness or behavior.” > [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > We can be just as sure that human beings have souls as surely as I can prove I have a squeedeleespooch. Augh! My squeedlyspooch! ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/28 "2010-04-17T02:34:11Z")
Consider this: our closest “relatives” the chimpanzees are lacking in sapience nor do they have real consciences or emotions or true creativity. What was it that gave humanity and humanity alone (on Earth) the power to be sapient? In fact God suddenly giving this “breath” to humans is more credible that humanity somehow leaping that boundary. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/29 "2010-04-17T03:06:32Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Consider this: our closest “relatives” the chimpanzees are lacking in sapience nor do they have real consciences or emotions or true creativity. Wrong; they appear to have lesser versions of all those things. And there’s no need for quotes around “relatives”; they are our relatives. We are just a wimpier, brainier, balding ape. Nerdapes. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > What was it that gave humanity and humanity alone (on Earth) the power to be sapient? Evolution, and killing. Humans used to have several close relatives; they are all dead. That is where the apparent gap between humans and animals is from; anything close enough to be a competitor got eliminated. > [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > In fact God suddenly giving this “breath” to humans is more credible that humanity somehow leaping that boundary. Nonsense. We don’t even have evidence that God is possible, much less real; we know humans are real. A nonexistent God can’t do anything. And assuming gods existed, why not give the credit to Zeus, or Ra, or some obscure South American god? Why assume your particular myth is true and not all the equally evidence-free ones? “God did it” is never the answer. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/30 "2010-04-17T03:44:53Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > Augh! My squeedlyspooch! Wow. I am absolutely amazed anyone got that reference. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Enuma\_Elish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5e9695/32.png) [@Enuma\_Elish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enuma_Elish)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/31 "2010-04-17T04:11:37Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > It wasn’t that hard for me to accept evolution and apply a non-literal view to Genesis to maintain faith in a special role for me and fellow humans in an afterlife. > > But what’s messing me up is the question I’ve recently pondered , " At what stage in the evolution of man did God imbue us with a soul ?" . This is just my opinion, but I believe you have the question backwards. We are all beings of spirit from before the beginning to the end and beyond. When did we get trapped in this physical form? That is the question. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/32 "2010-04-17T04:18:27Z")
Giving major kudos in this thread to **DanBlather** for his initial response and to **Der Trihs** for his response to **Curtis**. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/33 "2010-04-17T12:01:40Z")
I wrote to a priest once and asked him what happens to the soul of a frozen embryo,does it freeze too, does it just wait around to pop in when defrosted etc. Of course he never replied! ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/34 "2010-04-17T17:50:42Z")
> [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](#): > > Those Christians who deny evolution do not share my predicament. Can you provide a better succinct descriptor of those like yourself who are Christian yet accept evolution as a fact? “Christian who believes that evolution is a fact”. Succinctness is overrated. > [@begbert2](#): > > “proto” implies a primitive antecedent, you know. Something simpler. The fact that it lacks all the bells and whistles doesn’t mean much. The difference between an animal and a human is obvious to anybody who’s ever walked through a door labeled “no animals allowed”. Last I checked, everyone did, even the members of PETA. Some people may say that they perceive no difference in kind between humans and animals, but actions speak louder than words. Everbody acts as if the difference is clear. I see no merit in the argument that we’d have to treat animals better if they had a “proto-soul”, whatever vague definition was given for that. As I’ve said before, it has always seemed to me that animals get better treatment if we stick to the rational position that there’s a clear division between humans and animals rather tahn trying to blur the line. But in the final analysis, the “animals have a proto-soul” argument doesn’t hold because it just isn’t true. Sometimes as the complexity of networks increase new abilities and features appear that simply weren’t present in any form at lower levels of complexity. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/35 "2010-04-17T17:55:33Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The difference between an animal and a human is obvious to anybody who’s ever walked through a door labeled “no animals allowed”. That’s a pretty silly thing to post in a thread about evolution. The fossil record shows us the continuum pretty clearly. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/36 "2010-04-17T17:57:22Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > A rather ironic statement coming from a religious person; you’ve just delivered a criticism that I level at religion in general all the time. Why, indeed follow something that has always failed, has always been proven wrong when it could be tested at all? I generally see the opposite. The early Christians believed that barbaric Roman practices such as gladiator combat and infanticide against female babies were wrong. (It’s estimated that in ancient Rome 20-25% of female infants were simply abandoned to death.) Centuries went by. Then everyone agreed these things were wrong. In 1535 Pope Paul III said that enslavement of blacks and Native Americans were wrong. Centuries went by. In 1865 the last secular government in the Americas adopted that position, even if they didn’t give him credit for it. In 1887 Pope Leo XIII said that communism was evil because it treated humans as cogs in an economic machine to be manipulated by the government rather than as individuals with individual rights. Today everyone except holdouts like Cuba and North Korea agrees with his position. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/37 "2010-04-17T18:52:33Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I generally see the opposite. The early Christians believed that barbaric Roman practices such as gladiator combat and infanticide against female babies were wrong. (It’s estimated that in ancient Rome 20-25% of female infants were simply abandoned to death.) Centuries went by. Then everyone agreed these things were wrong. In 1535 Pope Paul III said that enslavement of blacks and Native Americans were wrong. Centuries went by. In 1865 the last secular government in the Americas adopted that position, even if they didn’t give him credit for it. In 1887 Pope Leo XIII said that communism was evil because it treated humans as cogs in an economic machine to be manipulated by the government rather than as individuals with individual rights. Today everyone except holdouts like Cuba and North Korea agrees with his position. Well, they got those ones right. Of course, there is the minor issue of their position on the handling of pedophiles. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2010, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/38 "2010-04-17T19:23:42Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > Wow. I am absolutely amazed anyone got that reference. 🙂 Everybody loves Invader ZIM, right? 😃 “Say. You’re full of _organs_, aren’t you?” (Now, which of those organs contains the soul – that’s the question, eh?) > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > But in the final analysis, the “animals have a proto-soul” argument doesn’t hold because it just isn’t true. Sometimes as the complexity of networks increase new abilities and features appear that simply weren’t present in any form at lower levels of complexity. I’d like to know how you think you know this. Are you suggesting that there’s a connection between “soul” and higher reasoning abilities? If so, why? And how do you know _that_ is true? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2010, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/39 "2010-04-18T05:02:11Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > Giving major kudos in this thread to **DanBlather** for his initial response and to **Der Trihs** for his response to **Curtis**. I’m not. The thread topic specifically requires that Christians answer. Not people who have rejected the ideology, and definitely not someone who actively thinks it (and the people who practice it) are evil, and pops into every Christianity-related thread to tell us about it. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2010, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344/40 "2010-04-18T05:12:08Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Soulless humans and animals with souls are not self contradictory. Calling humans = souls axiomatic is evading the question. You have a human shaped animal; _boom_ God gives it a soul and it’s human. What’s the difference before and after? Does he or she even notice? If someone zapped you with a Q-36 Soul Eradicator would you notice? In Catholic theology yes, they are contradictory. Axioms are what they are. By definition (in Catholic theology) only humans have immortal souls and immortal souls are only found in humans. That’s the answer. If you want to shit this thread, go ahead, you’re prone to thread-diarrhoea anyway. But this is a religion thread and I imagine the OP being asked in good faith in the context of religion. Of course, “religion teh sux0r” is your simgle answer to all threads. What is it? Ctrl+Shift+F8? You must have a shortcut or macro for this. No childish _boom_. It is bestowed upon conception so the whole feeling it is not up to the question. Your even more childish Soul Eradicator can be seen, if we’re going to have some sort of adult discussion, in two ways: 1. It is axiomatically (and also scientifically) impossible to build a machine that interacts with souls. Since souls are not matter or energy they escape the realm of weapons. 2. A knife to the heart, bullet to the head or a good spoonful of plutonium kill and could be said that, indirectly, are soul eradicators. So, I imagine it must feel like …being you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christian-evolutionists-when-did-man-acquire-a-soul/536344.md?page=3)