# Is the Catholic Church really okay with (macro)evolution? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 19, 2003, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010 "2003-06-19T21:46:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/21 "2003-06-20T01:50:27Z")
Yes, the two terms are used separately by biologists, occasionally for different mechanisms (see [http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/jargon/jargonfile\_m.html](http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/jargon/jargonfile_m.html) ). But they are both part and parcel of evolution as a whole. **RJ** ’s broader point is dead on, though. SciCre adherents like to pretend that mac and mic are entirely different things, allowing them to accept some parts of evolutionary evidence whilst continuing to dismiss others. But they’re wrong. Mac and mic are terms used by scientists only as a semantic convenience. It’s all evolution. Period. ---
**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:** [June 20, 2003, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/22 "2003-06-20T01:51:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Blake \* > Sometimes. Sometimes species are divided despite frequent, common hybridisation. **Sometimes groups are condidered the same species despite being infertile**. The fertility criterion for species definition is far from rigidly applied and appears to be on the way out altogether. My bolding-- can you give an example of that? For those interested, the most recent edition of _Science_ has a series of articles dedicated to “The Tree of Life” and some current changes being made. I noticed that the “tree” published there clearly showed the split between maruspials and placentals to have come **after** the split between those two groups and monotremes. Reminded me of a discussion some of us had on the subject just a week ago or so. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/23 "2003-06-20T01:52:41Z")
The Catholic Church’s position is that there is no PROBLEM with evolution (it just has a couple of additional caveats about the role of God). However, that is not the same thing as saying that they have a particular doctrine that mandates this belief. So your friend is wrong in saying that the Church is against the evolution of species, but right in that there is no problem, as a Catholic, in believing that what she calls macroevo doesn’t/didn’t happen. Basically, the interest of the Chruch in this is this: they realized that many devoted Catholics think that evolution happened, and they realize that this is what mainstream science has to say about the situation. So what they do is come out with a discussion of a) why these people are not “bad” Catholics and b) their guidelines on what one still needs to believe, as a Catholic, regardless of whether they believe in evolution or not. Essentialy, the Chuch felt the need to clarify that belief in evolution is not necessarily a threat to Catholic doctrines. However, that is not to say that they endorse one particular set of facts over another, and if, hypothetically, evolution were disproved, then they would still be in the clear (and indeed, so would those Catholics who believed in evolution). ---
**Author:** ![Tallayan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Tallayan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tallayan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/24 "2003-06-20T01:54:23Z")
Well first off, at least from what i have been taught and think. Now as you mentioned Neanderthal. One of the things I remember is that Neanderthals buried there dead and had primitive religions, while the hominid before them just left the corpses there, so i suppose the church would say sometime around that period, when they started showing religious inclinations, they had souls. ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/25 "2003-06-20T02:04:06Z")
Oh. Thanks. It is perfectly clear now. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/26 "2003-06-20T02:06:44Z")
Unfortunately, the Neanderthal all died out long before the invention of Catholicism. 😉 While there is evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead (with flowers, no less), claiming that the existence of certain Neanderthal artifacts or practices qualifies as evidence for Neanderthal _religion_ is, in my not-so-humble opinion, sheer speculation. ---
**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:** [June 20, 2003, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/27 "2003-06-20T02:07:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tallayan \* > \*\*Well first off, at least from what i have been taught and think. Now as you mentioned Neanderthal. One of the things I remember is that Neanderthals buried there dead and had primitive religions, while the hominid before them just left the corpses there, so i suppose the church would say sometime around that period, when they started showing religious inclinations, they had souls. \*\* There is some evidence that Neanderthals sometimes burried their dead, but we have no idea whether they had religious beliefs as we would define them. And if both species had souls, you run into the issue that two seperate species (that presumably could not interbreed) had souls. Anyway, as someone pointed out, the Church seems to be saying that they don’t disagree with evolution, but don’t officially have a stand on how that scientific fact meshes with Church doctrine and/or dogma. How conveeeeeeenient…🙂 Maybe they learned their lesson after the Galileo fiasco. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/28 "2003-06-20T02:10:18Z")
> [@](#): > > My bolding-- can you give an example of that? The best animal example I know of is the rock wallaby complex. There are several species, or possibly only one, lumped under _Petrogale assimilis_. Some races are interfertile with some other races, but not with all. Despite this lack of interfertility they all remain _P. assimilis_. It appears that all except two races can hybridise via one or more intermediates. It’s a type of strange ring species situation. To make it even more compex, several ‘races’ of P. assimilis have recently been split off as distinct species, with at least two having distinct chromosome counts as well as infertility with the type species. The debate on their status as species still continues since the may be interfertile with some of the type races and this hasn’t been fully tested. Very complicated over all. ---
**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:** [June 20, 2003, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/29 "2003-06-20T02:20:39Z")
Blake: Sounds like a population on the cusp of speciation. If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you have, for example, three groups: A, B, and C. A and C cannot produce fertile hybrids, but both can do so with B. And the A/B and B/C hybrids can produce fertile hypbrids as well. Very interesting situtation. It would be interesting to see exactly what percentage of the A/C hybrids are, in fact, fertile as some most likely are. Even the occasionaly mule is fertile, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/30 "2003-06-20T02:35:38Z")
Yep, it’s a series of populations that have become fragmeted. These critters live on cliff faces and scree slopes, and feed out on the level ground. There is a limit to how far an inividual will move from the resting area. As a result lost individuals may colonise new sites, but they almost never move between them. This has resulted in both founder bottlenecks and genetic isolation. Today we’ve got genetically distinct populations of physically indistinguishable individuals. Like you say, they’re on the verge of speciating, and some of them have done so. Apparently not all races wihtin the species are interfertile, even through intermediates, but the situation is so confused and they are so clearly the same species that the majority of taxonomists won’t split them. Not sure whether the AxB and BxC hybrids can produce fertile hybrids as well. As you say it sounds plausible, but I don’t think it’s ever been tried. The old interfertility species concept is falling by the wayside in light of genetic evidence and greater scope for hybridisation experiments. In reality these populations would never get the chance to hybridise so interfertility is not really as much of an issue as to whether they have any unique phenotypic or gentotypic traits. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/31 "2003-06-20T02:50:59Z")
There is still really no problem there: if there are questionable issues with who had a soul, then all that has to happen is that the “ensoulment” gets pushed back a few hundred generations or so. It doesn’t matter, to the theology, WHEN exactly it happened: just that people think it happened at some point. Of course, if anything has souls (something I don’t believe) then I would think that it would be pretty hard to ultimately deny that all higher apes have souls. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/32 "2003-06-20T02:59:21Z")
Of course if we’re going to get into that sort of debate then the Bible uses the word same word ‘soul’ to decribe fish as it does to describe people. So apes are a shoe in. Of course Catholic tradition an simply define it however the clergy like. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/33 "2003-06-20T03:00:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tracer \* > \*\*Unfortunately, the Neanderthal all died out long before the invention of Catholicism. 😉 > > While there is evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead (with flowers, no less), claiming that the existence of certain Neanderthal artifacts or practices qualifies as evidence for Neanderthal _religion_ is, in my not-so-humble opinion, sheer speculation. \*\* I don’t think there’s any strong argument that the Neanderthals had a systemized, formal religion, just that an inference can be drawn (from the fact that they buried their dead with food, tools and flowers) that they believed in an _afterlife_. They had some notion that life did not end with physical death. Anthropologically speaking, that is enough to qualify as at least a proto-religious belief, and very possibly a belief in some kind of a “soul.” ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/34 "2003-06-20T03:21:54Z")
I don’t necessarily think that the evidence we have shows that the Neanders believed in any sort of afterlife. I mean, I don’t, but I’d still put flowers and meaningful objects in a casket. It can be a perfectly ceremonial sort of thing, or even a concept alien to us: like the idea that ownership continues even after death (even though there is no belief in an afterlife). ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/35 "2003-06-20T03:25:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Local Catholic parishes don’t invent their own doctrines. True, as a rule, but there are certainly Catholics out there who cover a broad spectrum of beliefs. A few simply don’t follow actual church teachings very closely and a few have actually wandered over and started embracing a number of Fundamentalist beliefs. Wherever Behe got his ideas, it was not by reading mainstream Catholic thoughts on the subject. > [@](#): > > Also the current, overwhelming consensus of paleoanthropoligists is that Homo sapiens existed for tens of thousands of years alongside Homo neanderthalensis, a distinct human species. One would have to assume that only the former got a soul and not the latter. Basically, the church says “We weren’t there and we don’t know.” Regarding the issue between ourselves and the Neandertals: there is no particular reason to presume that they clearly did or clearly did not “get souls.” ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/36 "2003-06-20T03:35:54Z")
> [@](#): > > Local Catholic parishes don’t invent their own doctrines. There’s a difference between doctrine and what a particular church teaches. Catholic parishes have to adhere to doctrine (unless they are from Mel Gibson’s side of things): but that doesn’t mean that they can’t have other opinions talked about and taught in local areas: they just can’t promulgate them as doctrines. Only the Popa! can do that. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/37 "2003-06-20T05:47:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Unfortunately, the Neanderthal all died out long before the invention of Catholicism. You never met my great-uncle Vittorio. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/38 "2003-06-20T07:53:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tracer \* > \*\*The term that biologists use to refer to multiple changes that result in the development of new species is “speciation.” With sexually-reproducing critters, the criterion for speciation is that two (intrafertile) populations that used to be able to interbreed and produce intrafertile offspring can no longer do so. \*\* I thought it was also the case that if they simply _don’t_ interbreed (perhaps due to differences of anatomy or the wrong pre-mating cues etc), they could be considered a separate species, even if a ‘forced’ breeding could bring about fertile offspring. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/39 "2003-06-20T09:32:13Z")
They can be, but as often as not they aren’t. If that standard were applied then chihuahuas and dobermans would be separate species. Then we have a problem of what you mean by ‘forced mating’. Perhaps European and American grey wolves would be a separate species because the only ever meet and breed in captivity. If not then European and American oaks shouldn’t be separate species because they freely hybridised when introduced onto one another’s ranges. As with all non-genetic species satndards it’s unworkable at some practical level. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2003, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010/40 "2003-06-20T12:11:47Z")
> [@](#): > > My very limited reading on the subject seems to suggest that religion came about through humans assigning meaning to natural/unexplainable events, and belief in a higher power was beneficial to survival, somehow. I don’t see how one can accept the evolutionary explanation for religion and not discredit their own religion. Lets just say we don’t exactly feel threatened by a psychologist’s assumptions about the thoughts of people who died half a million years before writing was invented. Those psychologists want to find some evolutionary explanation, fine, but regardless of how it happened God is why it happened. In any event, I point out that few people, if any, understand religious thought now, and doing anything mre than vague theorizing about it on Neanderthals is pretty slim. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-catholic-church-really-okay-with-macro-evolution/183010.md?page=3)