There’s a remarkable piece by Mark Shea in the National Catholic Register, “Does evolutionary science disprove the faith?” It’s remarkable mainly for its claim that you can extract historical and scientific truth from the palpable lies of the Bible.

But let us begin at the beginning. Shea goes after me for my claim—which I stand by 100%—that modern genetics makes nonsense out of the Adam and Eve story, and thus invalidates the entire Christian theology of sin and redemption through Jesus. We know now from genetics that humanity did not descend from only two ancestors, but from a population of ancestral apes that evolved into hominins, who themselves went through a population bottleneck of roughly a few thousand individuals. (For a full account of the scientific, historical, and theological issues, read Jason Rosenhouse’s posts here, here, and here). To debunk my criticism, Shea simply cites an article by Mike Flynn at the TOF Spot. Flynn’s main claim is that there could have been thousands of humans at the time of Adam and Eve, and some of these mated with the First Couple’s spawn, explaining the genetic data.

Dr. Coyne’s primary error seems to be a quantifier shift. He and his fundamentalist bedfellows appear to hold that the statement: A: “There is one man from whom all humans are descended” is equivalent to the statement: B: “All humans are descended from [only] one man.”

In other words, Flynn sees the solution in (A):

Traditional doctrine requires only A, not B: That all humans share a common ancestor, not that they have no other ancestors. . . . Dr. Coyne believes the mathematical requirement of a population numbering 10,000 somehow refutes the possibility that there were two. But clearly, where there are 10,000 there are two, many times over. Genesis tells us that the children of Adam and Eve found mates among the children of men, which would indicate that there were a number of others creatures out there with whom they could mate.

And, in his piece, Shea says this:

But this logical fallacy hinges on an equivocation of “one,” failing to distinguish “one [out of many]” from “[only] one.” Traditional doctrine requires only A, not B: That all humans share a common ancestor, not that they have no other ancestors.

Let’s dispose of this nonsense immediately. As Jason shows, and a reading of Genesis immediately confirms, there’s no evidence that Adam and Eve were anything but the ancestors of all humanity. Now who their sons married (presumably their sisters) is a matter of theological dispute, but there’s simply no evidence that Adam was contemporaneous with thousands of other people who were created at the same time. There’s nothing in Genesis to support Flynn’s claim that the children of Adam and Eve found mates among the “sons of men,” if those “sons” were anything other than Adam and Eve’s own spawn. Both men are relying here not on the Bible, but on some “traditional doctrine” that that there were originally more than two created humans.

Well, there are lots of differing “traditional doctrines” (many of which affirm the literal truth of Genesis), and this version is an attempt to evade the blatant fictionality of the Genesis story by claiming that the book doesn’t say what it seems to say i.e., that it’s all a metaphor. And to save the story, the theologians show another characteristic feature: they simply make stuff up. In this case, both Shea and Flynn fabricate a huge population of humans, not directly related to Adam and Eve but living at the same time. There’s not a shred of evidence for that anywhere in the Bible. It’s theology again, confecting stories to preserve its central message from the ravages of scientific fact.

But enough of that. Beyond this kind of religious logic-chopping lies an attitude deeply disturbing to anyone who cares about reason. Here’s what Shea says about the Catholic Cathechism (its words are in italics):

As the Catechism itself says:390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents. How can Genesis use figurative language, but still affirm a primeval event? It can do it because mythic language is precisely the best way to affirm such an event, an upheaval that inflicted incalculable spiritual damage to the whole of the human race. Translation: lies are the best way to affirm a truth. Flynn goes on in the same vein, but makes another statement that reminds me of John Haught’s assertion that a video camera recording the Resurrection wouldn’t have shown anything: Genesis’ account of the fall does the same sort of thing. It uses figurative language to describe a real event which took place here in the real world, not in cloud cuckoo land: Our First Parents abused their free will, sinned against God and fell. The mythic language is truer language than newspaper language, because it brings us to the heart of what happened, which is far more important than a photographic record of what happened. A video of the first man committing the first sin would show us nothing, for the same reason that video of, say, a young Adolf Hitler sitting in a Vienna cafe and looking at an old Jew sipping his coffee would not reveal the momentous moment he turned from thinking, “Is this a Jew?” to thinking “Is this a German?” Traces of when sin, hate and evil are conceived in the heart cannot be detected in fossilized skulls. Note carefully what Shea is claiming here: that an idle thought by one man (who, unlike Hitler, didn’t do anything!) doomed all humanity to a condition of sinfulness, only to be redeemed by the bloody death of an apocalyptic preacher. How can any rational person buy a story like that? And if the language is figurative (and there’s no indication that it is: Shea simply realizes that the story wrong in light of modern science), how does he know the event is real? Making miracles not only one-offs, but one-offs that can’t even be seen when they happen, puts the whole theological enterprise beyond the pale. That means that there’s no way of knowing that miracles happened even if you were there. This insulates all miracles from empirical demonstration, which of course means that we can no longer make people saints, and endeavor that depends on two verified miracles. Here’s another assertion by Shea in which he simply makes stuff up to save the central doctrine of Christianity:

Adam’s first sin was likewise probably invisible to the naked eye—the mere thought “No” directed at God or his own conscience would be sufficient. For all we know, it might literally have consisted of something as seemingly trivial as stealing a bit of fruit. But it was enough. It sent out shock waves in the heavens and down through human history. But the sciences can have nothing, yay or nay, to say about it.

The appropriate response is that of Delos McKown: “The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike.”

Finally, Shea touts the endless resourcefulness of Catholic theology:

Bottom line: There really are resources in the Catholic tradition for digesting this fascinating (but not, I think, anywhere near insuperable) challenge to the popular understanding of human origins and human sinfulness. The Church is in the very early stages of mulling over this matter and I am no prophet, but I suspect that, in a century or two, once the Church has finished puzzling out this matter, she will come down somewhere in the neighborhood of the territory Flynn (and others) are pioneering (though, of course, the science may be very different by then and scientists may, ahem, have come to incorporate or grasp insights to which it is presently blind due to its ignorance of St. Thomas and Catholic theology). Dr. Coyne’s approach is, alas, an example of that problem, but I will draw a discreet veil over that and simply point out that the rumors of the death of Catholic theology are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, we scientists (and rationalists) are severely disadvantaged in comparison to “Catholic tradition” and its theologians. We aren’t allowed to make up untestable stories to buttress our preconceptions, especially when they’re proven wrong. There is nothing—no evidence in the world—that would make these folks finally admit that the Adam and Eve story and its tale of Original Sin, is a simple human fabrication. They can always dig deeper into their goody bag of post hoc rationalizations.