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God made pre-humans into people, Vatican newspaper says

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — While apes evolved naturally into pre-human creatures, it was the will and desire of God that turned them into humans, an article in the Vatican newspaper said.
“The formation of human beings necessitated a particular contribution by God, though it remains that their emergence was brought about by natural causes of evolution”, it said.
The article, published in the May 5-6 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, was written by Italian evolutionary biologist Fiorenzo Facchini.
The article said that, “when the biological conditions necessary for supporting a being capable of reflective thought were attained, the will of God, the creator, freely desired it, and man came to be.”
The article posed the question: Does this mean that humans evolved from chimpanzees?
“No, it might be better to say that at some point God willed a spark of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus came into existence the human as a being, as a subject capable of thought and the ability to decide freely,” it said.
So rather than picturing it as humans descending from the apes, it said, humans ascended or rose up from the animal kingdom to a higher level, thanks to the hand of God.
As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 1968 when he was Father Joseph Ratzinger, God wanted to create a being that could know him and be able to turn to him, the article said.
The emergence of the human is neither a casual or accidental event, nor is it something that was “strictly necessary,” demanded by God or the evolutionary process, it said.
Evolution could have ended at the pre-human stage, it said, but thanks to “the free choice of God,” humans emerged from their pre-human ancestors.
This divine intervention “does not represent an unwarranted intrusion (of theology) in the field of science — as is the case with intelligent design — but is called for in order to explain the presence of man’s spirit” which cannot come from or evolve out of the material world, the article said.
The movement from being a creature of the animal and physical world to also the spiritual was a gift from God “even if it came at the end of a natural process of evolution,” it said.
END

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God willed a spark of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus came into existence the human as a being, as a subject capable of thought and the ability to decide freely,” it said.

Animals make choices based on preferences , thought may be more a matter of feeling and images than of words but humanity in general makes decisions based on what is collected on a mental and physical experience both consciously and subconsciously therefore choices are far less a free one than you might think.
Humanity has the ability to make another choice which can place it above the animal kingdom and this is to identify with his essence rather than the content .

This is explained in depth throughout the articles. The reason why the Vatican is coming out with this, is because there is a decline in its members and they wish to ensure that there will still be room for them in the theory of evolution. Humanity does have the ability to evolve, or perhaps one could say return to its true nature again, his spiritual essence. But at this moment the majority of humanity still identifies with his mental and physical body. I feel, I think, I am happy, sad, I am he who makes choices based on experiences which are limited. How could one recognize truth? As long as one identifies with content all one can find is a relative truth, in other words a personalized idea of truth and therefore of the tree of knowledge.

Let’s take this search for the chalice, some picture it as a beautiful cup, the cup of the last supper, a cup in which Christs blood was collected. “ Holy blood” see that as the essence and the cup itself as content, contradicting as it may sound. Content/container, essence/essential , the cup being what is solid and real to us as an idea or matter, the essence is in which all takes place, birth and death, to be the seeing but not the seen, the observer but not the observed, be in it but not of it. When you do not let content rule you, then essence can take over and use the physical and mental body to express in harmony with..

Many fear this having to let go of this false identity, this I, but its being depends fully on the cycle of birth and death. While identification with essence gives eternal life. As driver of a car, you can become one with it, meaning control it as part of you, but because you do not identify it as being you, you can control it, you use the gauges as feedback, the car would like to go in a straight line but you turn it when a corner comes up. See this path it wishes to follow, a straight line, as desire and its resistance in turning as fear. A good driver knows the cars limits and abilities and the road to bring you home safe and sound.

That the Vatican’s faith is crumbling has nothing to do with the wisdom and love of god but with the personalized ideas about Him.

12-05-2008

Moshiya van den Broek