Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: The soul

	"To utter the word "soul" in a discussion on evolution is to
be guilty of the worst possible solecism.  Once evolution entered into
scientific themes there was no longer room for the soul.  No room,
because evolutionism attempts to explain things and their origin
without invoking metaphysics; the soul, though it signifies a wind or
breath, alights on us from transcendent lips.  To exclude all
discourse on the soul, however, is to tell the man in the street
everything about evolution except what interests him.  Well, then, the
curiosity of the man in the street does not matter to the
evolutionists.  He will be invited to state his problem in different
terms; otherwise he is kindly requested to occupy himself with other
things.
	But the problem cannot be made to go away like that.  Every
human being feels within himself or herself that there is a person, an
"I," a light that each identifies with life and that each knows one
has received into oneself at the moment of conception.  Christians
know that the complete person is born twice, once in the body and once
in the soul.  The most indulgent evolutionist may meet the Christian
halfway, but he will insist that the soul, the thought is a derivative
or secretion of the body.  "There can be no mind without a body." 
Thought and memory are but results of neurological conections.
	The Catholic Church has given its assent, albeit cautiously,
to the conventional idea of organic evolution.  On one point alone has
she taken a firm stand:  Into the human body, at some stage in the
hominization process, there descended the soul, from an otherworldly
source.  The idea that the soul is produced by the forces of matter,
or is a mere epiphenomenon of matter, is something the Church cannot
accept.  Not does she consider the idea dignifying.  A papal message
in October 1996 made it clear that at the origin of Man there was an
ontological leap beyond the scope of physics to describe.  "But the
experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and
self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom or, again, of aesthetic
and religious experience"--these fall within the competence of
philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out thei
ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans.  Let scientists
please confine themselves to the material basis.
	The Church's position leaves a major biological problem wide
open.  If the Creator has placed the soul in the human body, at what
point did He satisfy Himself that the body was sufficiently organized
to recieve a soul?  And how had the organic evolution of Man proceeded
up to the moment of this hallowing?  How did a brain with the capacity
for God form in a golem?  How did the human body gradually achieve the
likeness of Christ?  The Church would not now be at a loss for answers
if she had not gone along too hastily with the idea that, in the story
of life, a hominid had completed the Darwinian course from an ape to
Leonardo, that Man had gradually progressed from a knuckle-walking
gait to an erect posture, to keep his backbone straight and his gaze
upon the stars.  My thesis all along has been that Man was born all of
a sudden, in a great leap--i.e., in non-Darwinian fashion.  His
ontological leap was a bioloigical leap as well."
		"Why is a Fly not a Horse?" By Giuseppe Sermonti
Luciano
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Certo che postare su un gruppo di discussione italiano la traduzione
inglese di un brano scritto originariamente in italiano da un autore
italiano, e tradotto in inglese dopo parecchi anni, dimostra una
innegabile flessibilità evolutiva.
Lisa

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:29:26 GMT, 
ari...@spammatialtrove.spl.at
 (Lisa)
wrote:

Io trovo significativo che il libro di Sermonti sia stato tradotto in
ingelse solo pochi mesi fa e per questo l'ho postato...comunque trovo
il contenuto (del post) ancora piu' significativo, specialmente
l'ultima frase.
Luciano
ps...E poi comparare i due testi offre un'ottima lezione d'inglese a
chi l'ingelse non lo mastica tanto bene, no?


ingelse solo pochi mesi fa 
Cioè, cosa significherebbe? Per me, una cosa sola: che, nonostante in
Italia sia ossessivamente pompato da quattro gatti esoterici (e
ultimamente anche da due gatti e mezzo cattolici) come il Grande
Decano Solenne della Critica a Darwin, quello che ha smontato pezzo
per pezzo l'evoluzionismo con le sue prove schiaccianti e
definitive... nel mondo internazionale non se l'era mai filato nessuno
fino all'altro ieri, NEMMENO negli ambienti dove gli antievoluzionisti
hanno un potere e una visibilità enormi.
Non mi pare una grande garanzia, sai?
Lisa