Evolution and Human Specialness

John Farrel has written a piece for Forbes in which he cites the University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne :

“I’ve always maintained that this piece of the Old Testament, which is easily falsified by modern genetics (modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals), shows more than anything else the incompatibility between science and faith. For if you reject the Adam and Eve tale as literal truth, you reject two central tenets of Christianity: the Fall of Man and human specialness. These can then be saved only by post facto theological rationalization about why humans are special in an evolutionary sense, and also sufficiently sinful to require salvation.”

Farrel (and Mark Shea ) is not positive what Coyne means by “human specialness,” but he is convinced that genomics poses a significant problem for the Church’s teaching of the Fall:

“The Catholic Church faces a greater challenge from science now than it has since the Middle Ages when theologians at the newly founded universities rediscovered Aristotle and the great Muslim philosophers of the 10th and 11th century.”

For an enjoyable and detailed response to Coyne, look here