Incredible, I'd say ...

According to most if not all Atheists (I'm excluding Epicure!), the Flood never happened.

If this is true, all human populations started out without a memory of a global Flood.

True for whatever became the Hebrews, whatever became the Greeks, whatever became the Babylonians (both Akkadian and Sumerian ethnics), whatever became the Hindus. And I am conservative, one could argue that Chinese, Norse, even Egyptians, had memories of the Flood too.

For some reason, a population shifted from having no memory at all of a global Flood, to believing one were survivors of a global Flood, through a very narrow bottleneck of one man and close kin. Let's check the Hindu version, of which I am less sure, here is wiki:*

The current universe, is asserted to be ruled by the 7th Manu named Vaivasvata.[2] Vaivasvata was the king of Dravida before the great flood.[4] He was warned of the flood by the Matsya (fish) avatar of Vishnu, and built a boat that carried the Vedas, Manu's family and the seven sages to safety, helped by Matsya. The tale is repeated with variations in other texts, including the Mahabharata and a few other Puranas. It is similar to other floods such as those associated with Gilgamesh and Noah.[5]

2) Roshen Dalal (2010). The Religions of India: A Concise Guide to Nine Major Faiths. Penguin Books. p. 229. ISBN 978-0-14-341517-6.
4) Alain Daniélou (11 February 2003). A Brief History of India. Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. pp. 19–. ISBN 978-1-59477-794-3.
5) Klaus K. Klostermaier (5 July 2007). A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition. SUNY Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-7914-7082-4.

So, yes, Hinduism also says not only there was a Flood, but also a kind of Ark with very few human passangers.

But not only that. For Hindus and Greeks, you could rationalise to "Indo-Europeans" and for Hebrews and Akkadians you could rationalise to "Semites" - but that still leaves three distinct ethnic groups without a common ancestor. "Indo-Europeans", "Semites" and Sumerians. This means, at some point, group A met group B, and group A had no memory of surviving a global Flood, group B had, and for some unfathomable reason, instead of saying "you know what, as far as we can recall, we don't descend from you, so we don't descend from that man on a boat, so he can't have been the sole survivor of a global Flood!" instead of that they go "is that so? how come we forgot it?" - How did they get to gaslight themselves that much?

I consider that idea of how the "Flood myths" started very incredible.

Now, a certain number of people 100 years ago would nearly automatically reply "but look, the Greeks for some reason came to believe in Hercules, and we know that stuff didn't happen!" - it so happens, when it comes to what "happened" (before eyes of human observers, according to the story), I actually do believe Hercules existed. Killed wife. Was sentenced to ten labours. The last two were simply his bragging. Some of the other ones would have involved bluffs as well, but there is a big difference between believing what an official tells you (and as cousin to king Eurystheus, Hercules was one!) and wholesale inventing what you were supposed to remember from your grandfathers' and greatgrandfathers' days. I don't believe in the explanations, they are told in an inaccurate theology. Zeus and Hera never had a marital dispute about getting one or the other to help in cleaning up monsters. Hercules didn't marry Hebe post mortem. Hercules wasn't son of Zeus. For that matter, I don't believe that Vishnu appeared as Matsya, or that Enlil decided the Flood and his brother Enki decided to arrange an Ark. But I do believe the main story.

I do not believe the people invented a story and decided to pretend to their children this was simply memory, and especially not that this happened with the same outline for a global Flood three or four times independently, or that it was transmitted to people not having made that kind of decision. That's too incredible for me.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. John Baptist Maria Vianney
9.VIII.2023

Vigilia sancti Laurentii Martyris. Sancti Joannis Baptistae-Mariae Vianney, Presbyteri et Confessoris, caelestis omnium parochorum Patroni; cujus dies natalis pridie Nonas mensis hujus recensetur.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_(Hinduism)

Early human remains found to carry R1b

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Three Questions on PIE and Yamnaya (with one debate continued under Continued Debate with "Germanic Syntax") · Creation vs. Evolution: Is There a Correct Use of Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age? · Early human remains found to carry R1b · Would Proto-Indo-European Diverge Into Hittite, Mycenaean Greek, Indo-Aryan in The Biblical Time-Frame? · Φιλολoγικά / Philologica: Can a PIE Spread with Anatolian Farmers be Defended?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b
&
New Tables
Creation vs. Evolution, Thu 13 Aug 2020
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

2711 B. Chr.

0.302799 pmC/100, so dated as 12 611 B. Chr.

I) 14 000 BP = 12 000 BC

Villabruna 1 (individual I9030), a Western Hunter-Gatherer (WHG), found in an Epigravettian culture setting in the Cismon valley (modern Veneto, Italy), who lived circa 14000 BP and belonged to R1b1a.[1][8]
1) Fu Q, Posth C, Hajdinjak M, Petr M, Mallick S, Fernandes D, et al. (June 2016). "The genetic history of Ice Age Europe". Nature. 534 (7606): 200–5. Bibcode:2016Natur.534..200F. doi:10.1038/nature17993. hdl:10211.3/198594. PMC 4943878. PMID 27135931.
8) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Row 467.
Mathieson I, Alpaslan-Roodenberg S, Posth C, Szécsényi-Nagy A, Rohland N, Mallick S, et al. (March 2018). "The genomic history of southeastern Europe". Nature. 555 (7695): 197–203. Bibcode:2018Natur.555..197M. doi:10.1038/nature25778. PMC 6091220. PMID 29466330.

2688 B. Chr.

0.328739 pmC/100, so dated as 11 888 B. Chr.

...

2607 B. Chr.

0.428224 pmC/100, so dated as 9607 B. Chr.

II) 11200 BP = 9200 BC

Several males of the Iron Gates Mesolithic in the Balkans buried between 11200 and 8200 BP carried R1b1a1a. These individuals were determined to be largely of WHG ancestry, with slight Eastern Hunter-Gatherer (EHG) admixture.[9]
9) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Rows 251-272. (see 8 under I)

2585 B. Chr.

0.45483 pmC/100, so dated as 9085 B. Chr.

...

2466 B. Chr.

0.532551 pmC/100, so dated as 7666 B. Chr.

III) 9500 BP = 7500 BC

Several males of the Mesolithic Kunda culture and Neolithic Narva culture buried in the Zvejnieki burial ground in modern-day Latvia c. 9500–6000 BP carried R1b1b.[10][11] These individuals were determined to be largely of WHG ancestry, with slight EHG admixture.[10]
10) Jones 2017. Jones ER, Zarina G, Moiseyev V, Lightfoot E, Nigst PR, Manica A, et al. (February 2017). "The Neolithic Transition in the Baltic Was Not Driven by Admixture with Early European Farmers". Current Biology. 27 (4): 576–582. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.060. PMC 5321670. PMID 28162894.
11) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Rows 205-245. (see 8 under I)

IV) 9500 BP = 7500 BC

Several Mesolithic and Neolithic males buried at Deriivka and Vasil'evka in modern-day Ukraine c. 9500-7000 BP carried R1b1a.[12] These individuals were largely of EHG ancestry, with significant WHG admixture.[13]
12) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1. (see 8 under I)
13) Mathieson 2018, pp. 2–3. (see 8 under I)

2444 B. Chr.

0.545151 pmC/100, so dated as 7444 B. Chr.

...

2377 B. Chr.

0.584214 pmC/100, so dated as 6827 B. Chr.

V) 8700 BP = 6700 BC

A WHG male buried at Ostrovul Corbuli, Romania c. 8700 BP carried R1b1c.[14][15][16]
14) González-Fortes et al. 2017, pp. 8–9.
González-Fortes G, Jones ER, Lightfoot E, Bonsall C, Lazar C, Grandal-d'Anglade A, et al. (June 2017). "Paleogenomic Evidence for Multi-generational Mixing between Neolithic Farmers and Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Lower Danube Basin". Current Biology. 27 (12): 1801–1810.e10. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.023. PMC 5483232. PMID 28552360.
15) González-Fortes et al. 2017, p. 4, Table 1, OC1_Meso. (see 14)
16) Sánchez-Quinto et al. 2019, Extended Dataset 1.3, OC1.
Sánchez-Quinto F, Malmström H, Fraser M, Girdland-Flink L, Svensson EM, Simões LG, et al. (May 2019). "Megalithic tombs in western and northern Neolithic Europe were linked to a kindred society". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 116 (19): 9469–9474. doi:10.1073/pnas.1818037116. PMC 6511028. PMID 30988179.

2355 B. Chr.

0.596678 pmC/100, so dated as 6605 B. Chr.

...

2309 B. Chr.

0.621506 pmC/100, so dated as 6259 B. Chr.

II 8200 BP = 6200 BC

Iron Gate 8200 BP carried R1b1a1a

VI) 8200 BP = 6200 BC

A male buried at Lepenski Vir, Serbia c. 8200-7900 BP carried R1b1a.[17]
17) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Row 298, I4666. (see 8 under I)

2287 B. Chr.

0.63387 pmC/100, so dated as 6037 B. Chr.

...

2243 B. Chr.

0.657496 pmC/100, so dated as 5693 B. Chr.

VII) 7500 BP = 5500 BC

An EHG buried near Samara, Russia 7500 BP carried R1b1a1a.[18]
18) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Row 153, I0124. (see 8 under I)

2220 B. Chr.

0.680023 pmC/100, so dated as 5420 B. Chr.

2198 B. Chr.

0.692256 pmC/100, so dated as 5248 B. Chr.

VIII) 7200 BP = 5200 BC

An Eneolithic male buried at Khvalynsk, Russia c. 7200-6000 BP carried R1b1a.[19]
19) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Row 375, I0122. (see 8 under I)

2175 B. Chr.

0.694483 pmC/100, so dated as 5175 B. Chr.

IX) 7178~7066 BP = 5178~5066 BC

A Neolithic male buried at Els Trocs, Spain c. 7178-7066 BP, who may have belonged to the Epi-Cardial culture,[20] was found to be a carrier of R1b1.[21][22][23]
20) Haak et al. 2015, Supplementary Information, pp. 26-27. Haak W, Lazaridis I, Patterson N, Rohland N, Mallick S, Llamas B, et al. (June 2015). "Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe". Nature. 522 (7555): 207–211. arXiv:1502.02783. Bibcode:2015Natur.522..207H. doi:10.1038/nature14317. PMC 5048219. PMID 25731166.
21) Haak et al. 2015, Extended Data Table 2, I0410. (see 20 under IX)
22) Haak et al. 2015, Supplementary Information, pp. 44-45. (see 20 under IX)
23) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, I0410. (see 8 under I)

2153 B. Chr.

0.706677 pmC/100, so dated as 5003 B. Chr

IV 7000 BP = 5000 BC

Several Mesolithic and Neolithic males buried at Deriivka 7000 BP

...

2086 B. Chr.

0.743062 pmC/100, so dated as 4536 B. Chr.

X) 6500 BP = 4500 BC

A Late Chalcolithic male buried in Smyadovo, Bulgaria c. 6500 BP carried R1b1a.[24]
24) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Row 73, I2430. (see 8 under I)

XI) 6450 BP = 4450 BC

An Early Copper Age male buried in Cannas di Sotto, Carbonia, Sardinia c. 6450 BP carried R1b1b2.[25]
25) Marcus et al. 2020, Supplementary Data 1, A Master Table, Row 25, MA89.
Marcus JH, Posth C, Ringbauer H, Lai L, Skeates R, Sidore C, et al. (February 2020). "Genetic history from the Middle Neolithic to present on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia". Nature Communications. 11 (1): 939. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11..939M. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14523-6. PMC 7039977. PMID 32094358.

2064 B. Chr.

0.754934 pmC/100, so dated as 4364 B. Chr.

...

2019 B. Chr.

0.778962 pmC/100, so dated as 4069 B. Chr.

III 6000 BP = 4000 BC

Several males of the Mesolithic Kunda culture and Neolithic Narva culture 6000 BP

1996 B. Chr.

0.790927 pmC/100, so dated as 3946 B. Chr.

...

1952 B. Chr.

0.81476 pmC/100, so dated as 3652 B. Chr.

XII) 5600 BP = 3600 BC

A male of the Baalberge group in Central Europe buried c. 5600 BP carried R1b1a.[26]
26) Mathieson 2018, Supplementary Table 1, Row 128, I0559. (see 8 under I)

XIII) 5500 BP = 3500 BC

A male of the Botai culture in Central Asia buried c. 5500 BP carried R1b1a1 (R1b-M478).[27]

1935 B. Chr.

0.8273 pmC/100, so dated as 3485 B. Chr.

XIV) Not Dated

7 males that were tested of the Yamnaya culture were all found to belong to the M269 subclade of haplogroup R1b.[28] de Barros Damgaard P, Martiniano R, Kamm J, Moreno-Mayar JV, Kroonen G, Peyrot M, et al. (June 2018). "The first horse herders and the impact of early Bronze Age steppe expansions into Asia". Science. 360 (6396): eaar7711. doi:10.1126/science.aar7711. PMC 6748862. PMID 29743352.

What About "The Jimmy Akin Solution"?

"Adam was not an individual, the fall was collective" - Evil or Just Wrong? · What About "The Jimmy Akin Solution?" · 1909 vs § 390

I am sorry, I did not "read his paper" but heard him on a video, so I took the last view he presented, and he spent a bit more time on it than on others, as I recall the subjective feel, as that opinion being his own. It is possible I misjudged him on that one, he could simply not be intending to spell out his own view, here is a discussion of it, linking back to his video: Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: A Discussion on one of the subjects of Glossa Ordinaria "Mary is the New Eve" https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-discussion-on-one-of-subjects-of.html Can Catholics Believe Theistic Evolution? - Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World Jimmy Akin | 29 March 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBssnELtE94

First a qualifier. To Jimmy Akin, this is not dogma, it's a possible solution to a thorny problem or a few of them, a bit like identifying Babel with Göbekli Tepe is to me. Yes, I know the city of Nebuchadnezzar is also termed Babel in Hebrew, I do not deny they are the same ideological community, just saying they are different locations. So, Jimmy Akin should not be held as positively teaching this as the truth.

Nevertheless, it's a position he has mentioned with some favour.

So, let's deal with it.

To Mr. Akin, human origins basically evolved on the lines suggested by modern anthropology. At some point, men were sufficiently evolved to become God's image, and God made them His image. Probably at this point, perhaps later, I'm less than sure since he has so far not given chronological even hypotheses that I have seen, a couple, Adam and Eve, as individual people, were "federative heads of mankind - under God" - God's grace flowed through them to the rest of the men, and if they had continued to do so, would have continued to do so.

It's not totally inconceivable for us Catholics that God's grace can flow through even created human persons (and not just directly from the One Mediator, the divine person who became man, Jesus), so, the how is not a real problem.

However, the problem is, perhaps even the Incarnation, certainly the way it played out, with Crucifixion, only became necessary by the fall of Adam. St. Thomas opined, without the Fall, God the Son would not have been incarnate. Saint Bonaventure on the other hand opined, even without the fall, God the Son would have been incarnate to ennoble the human race.

Now, all sides, prior to modernity, agree, without the fall, we would have all been born with original grace and original righteousness, as in fact only Mary and Jesus were.

This means, tradition agrees that people other than Adam and Eve would have had grace from them, but would have had that as having grace from their immediate parents (and these either being them or having grace from them). Grace and nature would have coincided.

That we are born without grace (apart from St. Jeremias, St. John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin and Our Lord) is a consequence of sin, of Adam's sin.

So, before Adam sinned, there is no sense in which one could conceivably imagine that men already created in God's image before Adam and Eve could have come to depend on them as mediators to have grace from God, since they could not have them as parents.

So, what if they would have had the image of God quality from Adam and Eve? Well, that would have meant that prior to Adam and Eve, despite possibly human anatomy, they were beasts. But beasts cannot speak. If you can as much as say "this morning I ate yoghurt" which right now has no practical importance, you have thereby proven you are made in God's image. You can abstract from the immediate and use that to express yourself about the past. And it is very obvious that people dated by conventional science as more than 100 000 years ago actually did have this ability, which is godlike and not bestial.

If you pretend Adam and Eve lived 500 000 years ago, Genesis 3 is not history, and the Proto-Gospel in Genesis 3:15 is simply a myth. A fiction. But if you admit Adam and Eve are as far back as the Biblical timeline suggests (yes there is one, even if it is not all contained in one chapter, the part from Adam to Abraham being in Genesis 5 and 11, which is elastic due to text versions, but not infinitely so), then you either admit Biblical chronology fully, or you say people who lived prior to 7000 years ago (after Göbekli Tepe!) were not yet people but beasts, or you come back to, they were already God's image before Adam and Eve existed, which means, they could not have to depend on Adam and Eve to be God's image, and therefore also not on grace.

I think this should adequately dispose of the Jimmy Akin solution if so I may call it. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, men would have inherited grace, directly with the image of God in their nature, from them, as from parents. This excludes the idea of pre-Adamites.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Lydia of Philippi
3.VIII.2023

Philippis, in Macedonia, sanctae Lydiae purpurariae, quae, praedicante ibidem sancto Paulo Apostolo, ut beatus Lucas in Actibus Apostolicis refert, omnium prima credidit Evangelio.

"Adam was not an individual, the fall was collective" - Evil or Just Wrong?

"Adam was not an individual, the fall was collective" - Evil or Just Wrong? · What About "The Jimmy Akin Solution"? · 1909 vs § 390

We can, as Catholics, agree it is wrong, and at least evil on the level of distrust in the written word of God, as understood by the Church over centuries and at the Council of Trent.

But is there any evil in it beyond that? Yes.

While C. S. Lewis unfortunately part time embraced this error, like while writing The Problem of Pain, and while this may have been part of his reason not to convert to the true Church which at this time was soundly condemning this error (the book was published 1940, in 1950 Pope Pius XII, if still pope at this point, at least condemned polygenism:

37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html

... while this is so, in other writings, he has actually provided an antidote. He has more than once reminded that while historically, empires may seem more perennial than individual people, seen from eternity the opposite is true : people will inherit Heaven or, if not, go to the fire first prepared for the Devil and his angels. And will enjoy or endure this eternally. Empires are over and done by the hour when the dead step up from their graves : dies irae, dies illa, solvet secla in favilla. All collectives except the most sacred are parts of the favilla, the ashes. Indeed, none of them has lasted the whole time from Adam to Doomsday.

There is a corrollary to this truth. Collectives do not have souls. As they do not have souls, they enjoy no free will. Only individual people do. Therefore the first sin had to be the sin of an individual man, not a "collective sin."

If the first sin had been a collective sin, it would not have been an expression of free will. It would have been as evil of God to punish me for a sin committed by my sixteen great-great-grandparents together that none committed individually, as it would have been to punish me for my daddy spraining his leg.

There is a name for the idea that the fall of man did not follow from a free decision of Adam. It's called Supralapsarian Calvinism. Any Calvinism, including Infralapsarians, claims we are born with no free will at all, at least as pertaining to our salvation, and if we are not predestined by God without our actual decision to be damned, then we are predestined by God without our actual decision to be saved. But Infralapsarians at least claim this state of affairs only came about by the sin of Adam. Supralapsarians claim, Adam's sin was also predestined.

The idea of a collective fall, as it denies freewill in the first human entity to fall, is a modern version of Supralapsarian Calvinism.

Let us recall. The council of Frankfurt, I think it was, stated "Deus neminem predestinat ad malum" - God predestines no one to evil. "Neminem" is singular, so it can readily be translated as no one to evil. God certainly sometimes targets collectives for destruction. But that is due to non-predestined, free-willed, sins of individual people.

But it is not just collectives, but also individuals, that suffer from the sin that is called original. Including individuals who have committed no individual sin themselves, like children born with spina bifida and dying soon. Hence, it is a horrendous blasphemy against the justice of God to claim that this is due to a non-freewilled, either predestined or "predestined by negligence" sin of a collective.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Peter in Chains, Dedicace
1.VIII.2023

Romae, in Exquiliis, Dedicatio sancti Petri Apostoli ad Vincula.