Leaderboard

The world tells us that peace can be felt only when there isn’t any conflict. But that isn’t true! Through His gospel, Jesus Christ provides us with an inner peace that surpasses the peace the world offers. If we look to Him with faith, we can feel peace in any circumstance. - Sarah Hanson These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. - John 16:33

Yes, this is correct. And even today all people who marry are marrying their brothers and sisters. As Brigham Young taught in the October 1854 General Conference:

The wonderful thing about congregational singing is that, no matter how bad your voice you are still invited to join in with enthusiasm. The not-so-wonderful thing about congregational singing is that it’s also true for your neighbor.

Is incest per se evil? I think not. It's just defined as sexual relations between "close relatives". I don't understand why this idea would even possibly be considered objectionable. In addition, Adam and Eve were the first man and first woman, where we are defining "man" and "woman" as, essentially, Adam and Eve and their progeny. We are all children of Adam and Eve, meaning they show up in everyone's ancestry. But (non-doctrinally, same caveats as Carb gave) that does not mean that Adam and Eve were the first Homo sapiens to walk the earth, or that they were the only Homo sapiens on the planet. The scriptures make a big deal about So-and-so being a literal descendant of Noah. Whu...? How is that a distinguishing characteristic, if everyone died in the Flood except for Noah and his family? And more to the point: If someone was not a lineal descendant of Noah, who were his ancestors? I understand that many Saints in the past and even today harbor suspicion and doubt (or outright rejection) of what they consider to be the dangerously false idea of organic evolution. I will just point out that, if we accept a wider interpretation than the so-called literal interpretation of Genesis (which is nothing of the sort), then Adam and Eve and the garden in Eden can be fitted very nicely with the precepts and literality of organic evolution of human beings. Some are threatened by this idea, and that's fine. The leaders of God's kingdom have not seen fit to instruct everyone to accept organic evolution, or any other scientific theory or model that I can think of, so at this point it's pretty clearly not an overtly spiritual issue. But when we get into weird discussions like "Adam's and Eve's children must have intermarried, brother and sister! Ewwwww!", I think it's time to take a step back and clear our heads.

I mean . . . if one accepts human evolution, unless one believes that (after billions of years) two full humans evolved within a couple of decades of each other and miraculously managed to find each other and procreate, then one is interpreting that humanity is the result of bestial relationships (and even then, not ruling out incest for the first couple of generations of “full humans”, either). The more interesting question to me isn’t “why does our doctrine tell us that humanity arose from incest?”. The question is “why did God feel we needed to be warned so powerfully against incest, when anciently it apparently played such a major role in the human story”?

Start doing your genealogy. You gonna find all kinds of interesting skeletons in the closet. Presumably, The genetic code of Adam and Eve were perfect, without mutation. One of the problems with incest is the expression of recessive alleles of genetic mutations. Not an issue. Do some research on genetic bottlenecks. Cheetahs are interesting. We think they had a bottleneck last ice age. Their species is so similar that they have 0.1 -4% of the genetic diversity found in most other species. They can donate and receive organs from each other without fear of rejection.

We'll keep finding more information. Back when I was a kid, the narrative said that horses didn't exist in the Americas until the Spanish. Then they discovered that horses actually originated in the Americas. They migrated to Europe/Asia during an ice age across the Bering Strait. But those fossils date to around 8,000 BC. (before even the Jaredites). Now, we have additional fossil findings. Now they're saying that horses were here as late as 3,000 to 4,000 BC. Several Indian tribes swear up and down that they had horses before the Spanish came. But they kept them hidden because they were considered so valuable. That's why the Spanish thought they had no horses. I have yet to see corroboration of such claims. But it is an interesting phenomenon. Give it time. We'll find later and later findings until we realize that there were horses at the time of the Nephites. We have no idea how plentiful they were. But they were present. This is how a lot of BoM archaeology happens. It makes claims that science/history says is an anachronism. Then after a century of research they're proven wrong. We're proven right. Remember that Christianity has had about 2000 years of archaeology to preserve, discover, and analyze evidence of Biblical narratives. And they still can't prove a LOT of it. We haven't yet had 200 years. And we're finding things proving the BoM true at a faster pace than the world at large can about the Bible -- with a lot fewer people looking for it. Also keep in mind that the Bible has names of cities and such that are still here today. We know where to look. And there is still a LOT that is missing. We have no idea where to look for BoM evidence except it is somewhere on two continents. But we're finding more than the world can about the Bible?

The Book of Mormon also mentions that they had horses and chariots. And contrary to what most of us were taught in school about the Columbian exchange, there were horses in the Americas before the Europeans arrived.

You can count me as one of the Saints who outright rejects organic evolution from a single celled organism billions of years ago as the origin of human life upon this earth. It's not that I'm threatened by this idea, it's that it directly contradicts the scriptures and teachings of the prophets.

Silent Letter Day, aka Middle English.

Huh. Artificial Intelligence gave me this:

Huh. I always knew you were a fating a father of 11, but I'm blown away at learning are also bein6 a orthoderic masse on!