I heard my daughter talking to her friend, who was saying that “we come from monkeys” and B. replied, “no, we believe in God and we know that we come from God”.

Dear Father Angelo,

I hope all is well.

I plan to come visit you soon, also with my little B., who made her first communion in the spring!!

My daughter, who is in fifth grade, asks important questions.

We talked about the hypotheses about the origin of the world, about evolution and about creation, as a child can understand this.

In the end I noticed that B. believes that, however things went in practice, the origin of man was willed and produced wisely by God: this is a great achievement for me!

I say this because I heard her talking to a friend of hers, who said that “we come from monkeys” and B. replied, “no, we believe in God and we know that we come from God”… the friend reiterated that in school they teach that we come from monkeys… but B. replied that, in any case, we come from God, that He created us as He knows how.

However, I submit two questions that create difficulties for me: the first was asked of me, the second I fear will be asked.

1. Why, before creating man, did God create dinosaurs, which were bad animals, and many other animals that we have not seen? Has he done any tests?

2. I fear that he will ask me if, after Adam and Eve, the first men reproduced by uniting between brother and sister.

I see that you have already answered this question on the website… but what do you recommend me to say to a little girl?

The topic of consanguineous unions disgusts society and therefore I would not like to put it in the mouth of a little girl; that’s why I thought of saying that only God knows certain mysteries and we will know them when we will be face to face with Him… but I don’t know…

I always remember you in my prayers; please remember us.

Thank you for your advice and a hug.

Alberto

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Priest’s answer

Dear Alberto,

1. I am glad that your daughter replied to her friend in this way.

Man comes from God. God created him in his image and likeness.

Since God is pure spirit, the image and likeness is found in our soul.

And precisely for this reason the soul was created directly by God.

2. To form the body, God used pre-existing material, mud.

The language is imaginative, of course, because there is nothing to prevent God from directly creating the body.

But even the mud in turn derived from the other material that was ultimately created by God.

For the believer, there is no difficulty in the fact that God could have formed the human body from pre-existing matter, which was ultimately also created.

3. In any case, one thing is certain: from the moment of the infusion of the spiritual soul, that body changed.

If it took the body from the monkey, from that moment on that body is no longer the body of a monkey. It has become the body of a man, with the capacity for intellectual and volitional operations proper to man, which cannot be found in even the most evolved monkey.

4. However, to say that man derives his body from the monkey is hasty and unproven.

In man there is a DNA that is not that of the monkey. It is a body of a different species.

Also why don’t we see monkeys becoming men?

The reply is that that species of monkeys would have become extinct by now.

All right. But why in the meantime have the lower species not evolved into the higher ones?

Therefore the statement that man derives from the monkey remains unproven.

It is presented as a hypothesis. But from hypothesis to certain fact there is a long way to go…

5. With regards to the presence of violent animals before the creation of man we can keep as a general principle what the Holy Scripture says: “Indeed, she (the wisdom of God, T-N) reaches from end to end mightily and governs all things well.” (Wis 8:1 Vulgate).

It belongs to divine wisdom to fail something inferior so that the superior survives.

So it is for man who absolutely needs nourishment to live.

And nourishment necessarily requires the failure of the substances with which he feeds.

It could be said that these same substances reach a greater perfection, just as for the fruits of the tree it is better to be at the service of man’s health rather than simply fail and rot.

6. As to the reason why God created dinosaurs before the creation of man there is no precise answer.

If God did it, it was arranged by his divine wisdom which is infinite wisdom.

Therefore he did not do it to test. God did not need this.

We can say that it was necessary for the perfection of the cosmos because God does nothing without a purpose.

When we go to heaven we will see the designs of divine wisdom

7. About the mating between blood relatives at the beginning of human history, it must be said that it had to be done this way out of necessity.

There is the problem of natural repugnance. But it can be said that just as God sometimes suspended natural laws as in the case of the Red Sea that split in two to let the people of Israel pass through on dry land, so at the beginning of creation, precisely because of necessity, he may have suspended the natural repugnance that was felt only later.

I thank you for always keeping me present in your prayers. I do it willingly too.

In the meantime, I bless you and with you I also bless your dearest daughter.

Father Angelo

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