Arsenic and the beginnings of the old human race

Newsflash: Science may prove that there were two first parents. The presence of arsenic, replacing the usual phosphorus in the expected combination of six ingredients for primitive origins of life in the universe, may point to more than one source of life.

So, Humani Generis was right all along? Even though the combination of six ingredients with the poisonous replacement for phosphorus does not prove an additional origin, it lends credence to something the Church has found present in Scripture and Tradition all along: Pius XII held that the Church's reading of Genesis asserts that our origin from two first parents was one of a number of non-negotiable truths that God intended to communicate through the agency of the book's sacred writer. Adam and Eve all over again?

This gives the tug of war between rigid creationists and rigid evolutionists an interesting twist. Meanwhile, the old "Catholic barque" continues right on teaching along. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle, isn't it? However we came to be, we are here. And the more important question is answered already: we know where we are going.

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.

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Photo: Henry Bortman