Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 54

Did human beings come from apes? If God could create something out of nothing, He could create man out of apes or He could create man from the dust of the earth. Whether using an ape or dust, at one point God breathed into man and woman an immortal soul that made them in the image and likeness of God.

During the 1960s and 1970s, many textbooks taught our children that we evolved from apes as fact and not theory. Homo Sapiens are a unique class of beings, distinct from apes just as dogs are distinct from cats. Neanderthals may have resembled humans and apes, but they were not of our species. Some may have initially co-existed with our first ancestors, but they died out (just as some species do today). Human beings survived and are distinctively different from apes. British scientists working in genetics discovered that all human beings currently alive can be genetically traced to one human female via mitochondrial DNA. The newspapers nicknamed her “Eve” after the first woman and the mother of all the living in the Book of Genesis. The bottom line: However long it took and whatever process was used, it was God who designed and directed the creation of human beings.