scholasticspastic

Where did all those Earths worth of bacterial spirits and plant spirits and animal spirits come from? Where do they go? If there's no purpose for them aside from feeding and clothing us, why put so much more effort into such a redundant project than was put into the main attraction?If the scriptures are about God's plan for Man, then we cannot understand God's plan for bacteria, plants and animals. Is there a passage in there telling us about their spiritual fate? Will they all be resurrected alongside us? If so, where will we put them all? There's room for us, but not for them. Not on this world. If God has plans beyond being food for us for all the bacteria, plants and animals on Earth, can we count on those plans being important to our salvation? If not, why bother trying to force what the Bible and Book of Mormon say about the other organisms to be literally true? Are the scriptures intended as text books or as guides to our salvation? I hope it's only the latter, because they're not very good at the former. For one thing, there's not enough of them. I've got more pages of text book just for my undergraduate studies- and even if we only count the classes which were required for my major. And it's safe to assume I know quite a bit less than God having read those books. It's safe to assume that I came away from reading those books knowing less than most modern Biologists.

"All living things—mankind, animals, and plants—were spirits before any form of life existed upon the earth (Gen. 2:4–5; Moses 3:4–7)."(I don't know how to do nested quotes on here.) I'm unable to find an official estimate of how many bacteria are alive on Earth. This source estimates it to be 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria alive on Earth right now. That's just right this minute. ET 9/98: First-ever estimate of total bacteria on earth How many Earths of bacteria have there been, assuming the minimum allowed time for the Earth to have existed (I'll let you use the Young-Earth Creationist figure of 6000 years for this one). How many Earths of grass have existed in that time? How many Earths of trees have been germinated in that time? How many Earths of jellyfish have been spawned in that time? How many Earths of mice have been born in that time? There has been less than one Earth of humans born in the entire history of the Earth so far. So making that claim is possible for human spirits without running into all sorts of logistical problems. But for most unicellular and plant species and for many of the shorter-lived animal species we run into silliness when we try to force that to be literally true.

I have no idea how much biology is left to learn. Therefor I cannot rule out that I know practically nothing compared to biologists 3000 years from now. I do know that I only understand a tiny slice of the biology which is currently understood and that no living person can endeavor to know more than a tiny slice of any current scientific discipline.The same can all be said for a hypothetical comparison between myself and a biologist 300 years in the future. Yes. But knowledge is cumulative. We have accumulated a lot more knowledge than was understood back in Moses's time. We aren't any smarter, but we know more stuff. We can describe the way living things work, the way astrophysics works, the way the Earth is shaped and its composition, the movements of the planets, magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, chemistry and medicine much better than Moses could have. Moses couldn't have described most of those things at all. He didn't have access to the wealth of observations we have access to now. That isn't pride speaking. That's just the way it is. Given that the LDS church is a proselytizing church, it's probably a good idea to avoid unnecessary jargon. Death is something other than "separation of the spirit from the body" because we can observe a lot of things dying which would be silly to attribute spirits to. Is there an afterlife for all the billions of trillions of bacteria which have died this year? If things without spirits can die physically, then your definition of physical death is insufficient to be useful. Physical death means you stop being physically alive. Spiritual death means you still exist as a spirit. There is no cessation of being a spirit, thus it isn't terribly useful to call it a death.Unless being cast into the outer darkness means ceasing to exist spiritually. Then we should probably call it ceasing to exist spiritually instead of calling it the outer darkness. And I would agree that it's a spiritual death.

That's how I misunderstood the statement. Which is clearly not true. Unless bacteria and dandelions and redwoods and mushrooms and trout and mice and kittens all have spirits. I'm already aware of the multiple possible meanings of "Hell." What I am confused about, also as an aside, is why some people are offended when I use the word "hell." It's on my list of cuss-words which don't make any sense.I do know a little about spiritual death. What mostly confuses me is why it's called death at all. Unless spirits which die spiritually cease to exist as spirits, it's not any sort of death. Just as I would become confused if you tried to tell me I could die physically without ceasing to exist as a living thing.

"Separation from God" doesn't take much longer to say and is much less confusing than "spiritual death."

You misunderstood me. Which I guess is fair as I'd just done it to you. I'm saying that it is prideful to claim to know things which we cannot possibly know given the vagaries of scriptures due to the times they were recorded as far as truth-claims about how the world works. Because even if God had been telling them exactly how the world works, they wouldn't have had the necessary understanding to convey those truths. Thus Moses can be forgiven for not understanding how biology works. Not only that, but it would have been pointless for Moses to learn how biology works at that time. Nobody would have believed him. This is a separate concern from understanding WHY the world works, which is something which could have been conveyed without any scientific understanding. But the HOW of the world and the WHY of the world are very different things. It is unnecessarily prideful to assume you know the HOW of the world just because you have access to a source which tells you about the WHY of the world. People back then didn't know how most things worked. We know a lot more about how things work now. We still do not know how everything works. Whenever we confuse speculation with knowledge, whether we're doing religion or science, we're making fools of ourselves. Concerning the LDS understanding that there are two kinds of death: Then don't be lazy and leave the word "spiritual" off when you're talking about spiritual death versus physical death. It's a barrier to communication. There was no way to tell from context which type of death you were talking about. Not only that, but I'm confused by what is meant by the term "spiritual death." Care to explain how that's supposed to work? Is it something we ought to call death at all? Because death refers to a cessation. If I die physically, then I cease to be alive. If I die spiritually, do I cease to have a spirit? If not, I have reservations about calling it a sort of death.

You might want to rephrase this. Not because I'm saying it's wrong, but because it's very probably sloppy.The first thing that popped into my head is: Then bacteria must have spirits. Because they die all the time. And it's a good thing they do. An interesting question is: Given an evolutionary spectrum of organisms rather than the sharp division between humans and other animals, shouldn't we expect there to be or have been organisms which also had the capacity to support spirits? If we were to encounter sentient organisms from another world which were clearly not human organisms and yet which had civilization, would it be safe to assume that they also had spirits? Is there room in the LDS faith for aliens with spirits? None of this is of doctrinal concern to me. I don't expect that we'll encounter any extraterrestrials in my lifetime whether or not they're there. It's just stuff which popped up in my head when you seemed to imply that it was necessary that there be a spirit for something to be alive. Because there's a lot of stuff which we can kill and most of it probably isn't stuff we would be terribly eager to claim had any sort of spirit. Like bacteria. Or dandelions. Speculation is fine. Asserting that IT IS SO seems to be something a lot of people get tangled up with. This isn't a sign of faith- it is a sign of excessive pride. That Man was made in God's image is written by the same people who clearly had no inkling of the information we would eventually have access to via science. God could have said or meant practically anything and that would have been the extent of the detail in which it could have been recorded by His prophets at the time. So it's probably quite risky to attach too much meaning to that stuff when it comes to truth-claims about the world.

Some of the most ethical people I've known were criminals.... Their ethics just didn't match up with ours.

It's also worth pointing out- and this is a problem, not a funny- that a prisoner is more likely to be released on parole if they convert to a religion or become more vocally faithful to a religion. That just tends to be how parole boards work. So one has to wonder how many religious people in prison are atheists who figured it'd be easier to get out on parole if they were "born again." I have several problems with a religious test coming from parole boards. Not just the fact that making people more likely to lie about religious faith is a crummy deal. Statistics about religion and criminality (or personal happiness) bothered me when I was a happy atheist. They still bother me as I work to stop being an atheist. There are just too many confounds for us to get anything out of them.

I'm going to have to admit to having been wrong here. :) The bit about not having blood is not contained anywhere in the Bible or the Book of Mormon or any other scriptural reference to the Garden of Eden. I presumed it to have scriptural roots somewhere because it was included on lds.org, but apparently they're comfortable including a lot of things which have no scriptural roots. Having gone back and searched every reference I can find to Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden, I can honestly say that nothing in the story of the Garden need necessarily conflict with biology. Now if I were to treat all the world as if it were, for a time, the Garden of Eden, then we'd run into trouble. But there is nothing in scriptural references to the Garden which disallows life going on as usual outside the Garden. So it's even possible that there needn't have been any death within the Garden while outside it things could have been living and dying as one would expect on a world with evolution. There needn't be any resultant evidential record remaining for such a relatively small place. Similarly, I can't see any reason to object on biological grounds to the literal existence of Adam and Eve. I still object to their literal creation, however. There is far too much fossil, genetic, and physiological evidence for human evolution for me to feel comfortable ignoring it based on a few lines in any book written back when nobody had sufficient access to the tools which would have been required to understand evolution. It's reasonable to expect that an entity trying to talk to people in such a time would have run into difficulties if they tried to express anything in terms of evolution. I do reject a literal understanding of death, diseases and infirmities resulting from the Fall. Again, there is too much support from fossil, genetic and physiological evidence to discount the idea that many diseases and infirmities are the result of evolutionary processes and predate any modern organisms, especially human kind. There would be no pre-human fossil record at all if death didn't predate humans and proto-humans on Earth. We can say that Adam and Eve were exposed to disease because they were forced to leave the disease-free oasis that was the Garden of Eden and I won't object to it. However, blaming disease and death throughout the whole of the Earth on the Fall stretches credulity to its breaking point. Again, I have no idea whether scriptures actually blame disease and infirmities on the Fall. I know that's a claim made in the same resource which says Adam and Eve didn't have blood. The idea that disease and infirmities are the result of the Fall might have been transmitted to me by people who had read that book. I freely admit that I haven't read most of the scriptures yet. I will readily admit when I am wrong about them. This is one of those times.

I think I could adopt the interpretation forwarded in which he was the first man to believe in God. But evolution really doesn't allow for the sort of sharp demarcations between forms you seem to be implying. Adam's children should have looked no more or less human compared to Adam than any offspring you have would look compared to you. Similarly, if we allow for evolution working for all life on Earth, Adam would have looked no more or less human compared to his biological parents than your children look compared to you. Bacteria become a problem here. I would be fearful of the idea of an Earth after one hour sans bacterial death. The idea of an Earth after a full day without bacterial death is fantastically bizarre. Those buggers can have doubling times measured in less than an hour. Most bacteria are not disease organisms, but rather constitute essential components of the ecosystem. Without bacteria there would be no plants, no animals, no humans.So, no, the idea of any time in the history of life on Earth when nothing died makes no sense to me because bacteria. Genetic engineering does nothing to evolution. Evolution is a process, not a pathway. So I'm probably missing your point here.

Are you sure we use the same definition of "enjoyed?" I guess sometimes I enjoy wincing....

I'm struggling with a few concerns here:1st: I'm lazy and there are a lot of ways a literal interpretation of scripture regarding Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden fails to jive with biology. Just for example: Am I to understand that Adam and Eve didn't have blood? How is that supposed to even work? Show me an organism the size of a human with complex organs that lacks a circulatory system! I'll be happy to go through the reasons we need a circulatory system so we don't die. I'll give you a hint: Some of this is physics. It wouldn't matter whether we had superhuman cells. Adam and Eve literally ate at least once. So they would have needed to breath. So, that one issue aside, I'm reticent to begin listing things because it's actually a very large time commitment. 2nd: Spinning off a long laundry list of personal issues concerning something that many people do believe to be literally true will undoubtedly result in someone feeling personally attacked, though that is not my intention. 3rd: This is a many-layered answer, depending upon starting conditions. There are already many ways people have parsed those scriptures into literal vs. metaphorical passages. Any answer would doubtless result in an endless series of what-ifs concerning how things might work out if I were to go with a different distribution of literal vs. metaphorical passages. 4th: Quite a few of my objections concern the entailments of what sort of a God would warp everything the way it is, such that, for instance, there are more parasitic species of life than there are non-parasitic species of life (a situation which is almost as yucky as it is cruel)? If we allow for evolution then parasites and diseases can be things which were allowed by God rather than intentionally created by God. He becomes a much nicer person. We don't have to deal with self-righteous prigs assuming someone's been a sinner every time they get sick. This is listed as a set of issues here because there was no disease in the literal Garden of Eden and disease is often attributed to the Fall. It doesn't matter whether Adam and Eve brought it on themselves, the consequences in the literal situation were designed in by God. So these are my categorical objections to a literal Adam and Eve and Garden of Eden. These categories are not exhaustive and each category can be expanded to many potential pages of examples.

Actually, in context, I said:By the standards of evidence I employ as a scientist, I can never know that scripture is true, or that there is a God. Because the sort of experience which is taken as evidence in religious circles isn't admissible as any sort of evidence in scientific thinking. Feelings are far too subjective and difficult to communicate or calibrate for them to be used in science. So from that perspective, if I wish to be consistent in how I apply standards for evidence, I cannot ever be more than agnostic about God in this life. I can never be more than scientifically agnostic about God in this life. I allow for the possibility that positive, empirical evidence for the existence of God would be available in the next life, which would allow me to be more than scientifically agnostic about God. Evidence which is sufficient for me will not always be evidence which is sufficient for others. I am convinced that I am in love with my girlfriend. There is no evidence I could present to you that would convince you that I am in love with my girlfriend. I am not personally agnostic about the love I feel, but I'm willing to be scientifically agnostic about it. It's simply a matter of disparate standards of evidence. I know the love exists but cannot demonstrate it exists. My girlfriend knows that I'm an atheist. She knows that I've struggled with matters of doctrine and that I'm trying to find a way to read scripture which works for me. She loves me. When I asked her if she'd consider, at this time in her life, marrying someone she couldn't be sealed to in the temple, she said yes. My girlfriend has spent all her life expecting to be sealed in the temple and raise LDS children. Regardless of whether I can truly convert to the LDS church, we've agreed that were we to get married any kids who came along would be raised LDS. We also agree that if I cannot truly come to faith it would be wrong to get baptized or participate in any of the covenants of the LDS faith. She knows that I will not lie. She understands that trying to come to faith is not a promise that I'll come to faith- though she remains understandably hopeful that things will turn out that way.The fact that she loves me enough to give up being sealed in the temple is a huge factor in my wanting to do my best so she doesn't have to. I understand how big that is. If I'm married in the temple I will not be agnostic or atheist. This may or may not be the case (the temple bit). I look forward to seeing this clarified. But if I come to faith sufficiently to be baptized and married in the temple, I'll have come to faith sufficiently to hold the priesthood. So this is another non-issue. If I'm baptized, I understand that's part of the commitment. I understand that the effect of working to be baptized without actually believing in the LDS faith would pervert the act from one of love to a farce. It would be an act of disrespect to the church and to the woman I love. It isn't something I would consider. If I am baptized, it will mean everything it's supposed to mean. Which includes a personal testimony and a commitment on my part to maintain that testimony for the rest of my existence. I am not so puerile as to think lying to someone I love is in any way okay. I agree that these are important questions. Couple that with my aversion to dishonesty and you can see why I'm not running around claiming to have converted right now. I will have faith if I can. I hope to retain her love if I can't.Because I have been in love before, but never like this. It's.... Well, you know I can't say what it is. Because it's love. And coming up with words which are sufficient for that doesn't seem to be something anyone's managed so far.

I particularly enjoyed this part: (underscore mine)